Through Chaos Comes Creation

January has been a very chaotic month. Not surprising, since we usually kick into high gear the month before Kiwiburn as we attempt to get all our projects done in time for ‘our’ festival. This year, in addition to running The Green Fairy Black Light Lounge, Bruce and I signed up to do a few other projects. Bruce is creating the main altarpiece for the temple – a twelve-foot tall merkaba complete with orgone generator device built from scratch. Both of these are quite complex and have taken months of planning and head-scratching to figure out how to bring to fruition. I’m running the Kostume Korner – a free clothing giveaway to make everyone paddock-fabulous. I’ve sporadically been opp (thrift store) shopping throughout the year, but decided in early Jan that I didn’t have nearly enough stuff, so I’ve been out several times a week hitting up all the local shops. Turns out to be a good time to do so as many of the shops are having January sales where everything is $1 or less! I’ve also had the sewing machine out, throwing together –just-a-few-more-outfits- and making sock puppets for the lounge. I’ve also got my hand in decorating a part of the temple. And, and, the theme this year is CombustInUnity – a take on combustion and community – burners like flame – and everyone’s been invited to build their own personal ‘man-figure’ or morphie as we affectionately call them. So, I’ve also been making some morphies – four 12” tall ones and one 3’ tall one. We’ve been a bit insane.

As if that wasn’t enough, we decided over Christmas that we should sell our Clyde Street/Christchurch house and we should do so ASAP. (All you friends out there that said to us back in October, ‘so when are you moving?’ to which we replied, ‘we’re not moving for another year or so’ – oh, you had such wisdom and foresight!). Yeah, after all the back and forths we’ve been doing to Wainui, we decided we need to preserve our sanity — we felt that maintaining two big properties was starting to be a bit much. And we need to preserve our capital as our big vision for the Wainui property is going to cost lots of money. We sat down one night and ran through some financial options for Clyde: redevelop into two units; rent to a family and redevelop the back building into a place for us; take on flatmates; or sell; and selling came out on top. So the question was when, and since we’re in the height of summer and properties always sell better during nicer weather and our house tends to show better when it’s WARM, and since the market is showing signs of leveling off and will eventually follow trends in the US, we decided to move it ASAP. We had Maggie and her A-team (Lee & Denese) over to tell us what we needed to do to optimise the sale: “uhm, you need to get the whole yard tidied up, move the bees, wash the windows, clean the house, powerblast the driveway and patios, patch up holes in the walls, get your crap off the floor, and do a MAJOR tidy up of the property, and bring in a furniture stager to do some ‘in-fill’ staging”. Oh no, only three weeks to pull this off. Okay, kick into high gear and find people to do some of the work. A week of calling around, collecting bids. A week of having service people here every day. Three weeks of Bruce & I packing boxes to ‘tidy up’ the house.

And, on top of all that, we decided to push forward with our redevelopment ideas for the Wainui property. We want to build another dwelling on the property – a nice, warm, sustainable house just for us. The existing house, while lovely, is not ideal – it is perfect though as a guest house and will be used to house family & friends and wwoofers. However, putting a second dwelling on the property is not currently allowed by the city council. We’ll need to get a special resource consent and will probably need to jump through big hoops to get the approval. We need to hire a planning consultant to help navigate through the council rules & regs. We need an architect. We need a civil engineer to come do a site survey of the property. Since the property is not on a city sewerage system, we’ll need to figure out our grey/blackwater disposal method and we specifically don’t want to put in another septic tank – instead we want an eco-friendly greywater system. So we have to hire a eco-wastewater engineer (just happen to know one) to come out and do a different type of survey and help us file a different type of resource consent application. Just a few things to do.

Oh, and friends Alex & Tobi were evicted from their really nice house about a week before the holidays and they haven’t been able to find another place so they’re moving into our house the day we leave for Kiwiburn.

And it looks like we’re US-bound again in May to celebrate the nuptials of good friends Kat & Drew and thus we’re trying to get plans sorted out for what’s looking to be a month-long trip.

And 95-year-old grandma has fallen twice in the last two months and each time has broken a hip and has barely survived surgery, but is doing well, but can’t go back to living alone, so the family is working to figure out her care options and navigating through the medicare/medicaid application process. {nightmare}

So, chaos. Insanity. High energy. Drive. Pushing Through. Being squeezed through the tunnel.

And what has happened in the first 25 days of the new year?

Glorious creation.

Our Kiwiburn projects have come together. Bruce, with the help of friends Sess and Dennis, did a successful test build of the merkaba in the yard in less than 3 hours. Miraculous. What a beautiful structure. Bruce’s hours on the computer modeling the merkaba, figuring out the cutting angles, has paid off. He’s really elevated his carpentry skills. Not to mention his electrical engineering skills as he’s taken apart and wired up a CD player to run through the merkaba and back out the CD’s speakers. I am totally pleased with my stockpile of clothing for the Kostume Korner and my morphies. The bigger one which is not fully decorated yet will be standing sentinel in The Green Fairy and will be part of the interactive activities of our camp.

The Clyde Road house looks amazing. I’ve now got a perfectly clean, partially staged, fully functional five bedroom house complete with two furnished lounges, a den, dining room, and office. And a big, well-groomed, lawn complete with veggie garden and fruit trees. It’s going on the market in under two weeks and we’re praying that it sells in under three months time. Send some good vibes our way.

We pushed it hard for Wainui too. Met and hired a city planning consultant. Found a civil engineer to come out and do a survey. Hired our architect and started first stage discussions of the dream house. Met with the wastewater eco-engineer and got some preliminary feedback from him. Looks like it’s going to be a tough-but-potentially-doable project. It’s just going to cost lots of money.

And in the midst of juggling all our projects, we managed to entertain a family of seven in Wainui last weekend and be entertained by our lovely friends who are never short on smart-alec jokes and laughter. Thank you!

It’s all good. And as I’ve taken to saying lately, LIFE IS FOR LIVING, so let’s get busy.