It’s been a little while since I originally posted on this topic, but I had to say I was pretty amazed at the chord it seemed to strike with Coming Unmoored readers.  One of the changes you will be seeing on this site in coming weeks is that you will see more of this kind of content.

Additionally, you will soon be seeing a modest discussion board area added to Coming Unmoored.  I’ve resisted adding one to this site because I didn’t want to compete with the couple of really good tiny house boards that are already out there like Tiny House Forum and Tiny House Village.  However, as Coming Unmoored starts to focus more on the why behind tiny homes rather than simply the what, I would like for there to be an area where readers can discuss ideas and connect with one another more than is currently possible in just the comments section of posts.

With that, I’d like to spend a little time discussing what some of my personal revelations were  when I considered the following questions:

What would happen if we started being honest with ourselves about what we really want?

What if we started being ruthlessly real?

What if we actually said the things that we think about, but are afraid to say?

Spending some time really thinking about these questions has had a pretty profound impact on my current life and where I hope to be headed.  At a high level I realized that I was really off-track with two key areas of my life: my romantic relationship and my career.

If you’ve been following the blog, you’ve already seen some of the fall-out in terms of my relationship with Charlie.  While I still love Charlie very much, remaining with him was taking me in a direction different from what is deeply important for me to go.  I very much want to have a family.  I also want to continue to explore a lifestyle of simple, independent living.  Neither of those things were going to happen with Charlie as my partner.  In order for us to remain together, the compromises on both sides would have been too dear.  So we ended up having to rebuild our relationship along different, platonic lines.

I have to say that letting go of Charlie was in no way an easy thing for me to do.  I’m still grieving pretty deeply at present.  That, no doubt, has contributed somewhat to the lack of personal entries you’ve seen online from me lately.  There’s just a lot going on internally on that front I’m not yet prepared to put into words.

The second “broken” area of my life is my career.  I’m not yet ready to discuss this one publicly in detail.  Suffice to say, I have a passionate love/hate relationship with my current position.  I have also been working insane hours for the last few months and that, along with some team issues, is sucking the life out of me.  I am still trying to fashion the solution for this one. And “speaking my truth” in this environment would pretty much guarantee I had my pink slip handed to me in 24 hours flat.  But for those of you who are close to me–it hasn’t escaped my notice that this area of my life is broken.  I have no intention of allowing it to remain so.  That’s probably enough to share for present.

With that, I’d like to ask: for those of you for whom the original piece resonated, how has it impact where you currently are?  Did it shake things up a bit?

I would love to hear your stories.

Well, looks like I just managed to double the square footage of my living space.

I was happily drinking my morning tea and tinkering with Coming Unmoored’s new template, when this enormous, yellow and blue, SuperFloat sofa went drifting by my front window.

At first I didn’t think too much of it because I could hear children playing in the distance.  I figured kids had been playing with it and just been momentarily distracted.  But then the thing started to turning he corner and head out toward the open river.

Those things aren’t cheap.  Especially not this one which seats five and comes equipped with drink holders, a wading pool at the bottom, and several Supersoaker water cannons.

So I did my good deed, went racing out in my pj’s, and managed to hook the thing before it reached the Columbia.  It’s now tethered outside my house until my neighbors, Tracy and Dan, come looking for it.  I’m not sure if it simply broke free from its line or if they’ve got child-age houseguests who simply forgot they were playing with it.

If it gets a little warmer today, I’m tempted to throw on my swimsuit and try blogging from it.  The thing is pretty much the same size as the living room in my house.

On my way home from the laundry mat yesterday afternoon, I stumbled across Polly the Ho’ sitting in one of my neighbor Paul’s lawn chairs catching some rays.  (The life vest was my addition over the holiday weekend.  Can’t have the poor girl drowning.)

Thought I’d share a quite photo.  You may also notice that someone took the time to make her mouth a little more PG for the kids at the marina this past weekend.

I have a sneaking suspicion this won’t be the last I see of Polly.

This past week is the first time we’ve hit 90+ degree weather since I moved in.  Like many places in Portland, my little place does not currently have air conditioning.  I didn’t think this would be a huge issue considering the fact that I’m sitting in the middle of a river with some of the best wind in the world.

Unfortunately, I’m learning that the lovely windows I added which only open in the bottom portions so as not to obstruct the view of the river are not as good for ventilation as I had hoped.  Moreover, I can’t leave my front door open like most of the marina residents do because Rumi is all-too-happy to go out and explore without supervision if I’m not paying close enough attention.  (It would really help a lot if I still had a screen over my front door.)

My plan is to eventually add a small, split-system AC unit but that probably won’t happen until next summer.  In the meantime, Rumi and I are spending a lot of quality time this week either under the ceiling fan in my living room, or, when it’s gotten really bad, in front of my open refrigerator.

If this keeps up I have a feeling I’m going to be developing a deep and meaningful relationship with my ice cube tray.

As it is, I’ve been taking a lot of ice-temperature showers and Rumi has gotten to the point that he’ll actually ask me to wet him down under the kitchen sink.

The temperature is supposed to break on Monday.  I can’t wait.

On a more somber note, this is the post I’ve been dragging my feet onwriting.  I’ve been using my crazy workload as an excuse to put it off, but the reality is it’s just not the easiest thing for me to put out into a public forum.  But considering I put other parts of our relationship on the blog, I probably need to put this, too… Awhile back, Charlie and I agreed it was time to stop dating.

While we’re both sad, it was very much a joint decision.  We’d reached a point where we simply could not longer ignore the fact that we want some very different things for our relationship and futures.  And the differences were significant enough that there was no way to resolve them without one or both of us compromising in ways that would leave one or both of us profoundly unhappy in the long term no matter how much we cared for one another.

The biggest deal-breaker was children.  I very much would like to have a family, whether that would be finding a partner who already had children or, preferably, having some of my own.  (And, considering my age, the later option is growing less and less likely at a pretty quick clip.)

Due to the Huntington’s gene being in his immediate family, Charlie has spent most of his life thinking that children probably weren’t an option for him.  It’s only in the last year he’s been tested and discovered he’s not a carrier.  And, as much as he’s tried to get behind the idea of children for my sake, he’s simply not there, and there’s no indications that that might ever change.  (As things stand currently, Charlie has an enormously difficult time even being in the room with a child under about the age of eight.)

Charlie also is not a believer in marriage. He simply does not aspire to have that be a part of his life.  While he would like to find some form of long-term, “committed” relationship, in his mind that means still having the ability to wake up one more, pack one’s bags, and leave in under two hours flat if things are no longer working.  (To be fair, Charlie could probably much better explain his position on this than I.  As many times as we’ve spoken about it, I’m still not certain I fully understand.)

I, myself, am not in a huge hurry to be remarried based on my experience last time.  If Charlie had proposed to me about now, I would probably have run screaming in the opposite direction.  But I do, someday, really want to be married again.  I want that commitment with another human being that you’re in it together for the long haul.  And while I have no sort of mental timeframe about expecting a ring in some certain amount of timeframe,  it’s important to me that the person I’m in a relationship be working toward the same long-term goal.

I also wouldn’t be completely honest if I didn’t say that my buying a house in Portland and my whole fascination with the small home movement had put a significant strain on our relationship.  Charlie dislikes small spaces about just as much as he does screaming infants.  And he was more than a little hurt that I chose to buy a place in a state other than where he lived.  I will probably write some more on that at some point, but not now.  I think there’s some valuable lessons in my experience, though, for others who have partners who disagree strongly about what’s important to them in a home.

There were also some interpersonal issues at play between Charlie and I, but nothing I want to go into gory detail about here.  My close friends have been hearing about those for awhile.  Suffice it to say, he’s still terribly British and I need a partner who’s more “out there” in terms of his thoughts and feeling, particularly in regards to how he might feel about me.

I still care for Charlie deeply and really, truly want him to be happy.  We’ve been through a break-up once before and we able to maintain our friendship.  It is my hope that once we’ve given it some time and space, we’ll once again be able to be part of one another’s lives as friends.

As it was, we had the most peaceful, loving break-up conversation(s) I’ve ever experienced.  We ended things well enough that we actually were able to go out to dinner and movie together before I left town during my stop to pick up belongings.  And I think highly enough of Charlie that I’d be happy to offer a character reference to his next girlfriend.

So consider yourself informed that at this point my personal story is me, my crazy cat, and a half-finished floating house.  And, for now, that’s okay.

Normally, my marina is a lovely, sleepy little floating village with occasional bursts of rowdiness.  That doesn’t seem to be the case the weekend of July 4th, however.  Then the world invades.

Long-time residents of the marina warned me that I really didn’t want to leave the marina after roughly noon on Thursday or I’d never find a parking spot again until the weekend was over.  I decided to chance it and go out for dinner.  When I returned, I lucked in to the last available “legal” parking space in the lower parking lot.

As of Friday morning caution tape started getting strung across most of the common places residents park second cars.  And, today I hear we’re going to have an actual guard stationed at the gate of the marina.  (As it is, there’s two security points where you need a code to get in.)  The city of Portland also completely shuts down Marine Drive, the main road along the bank of the Columbia, starting around dinnertime tonihgt.

The reason why all these precautions are being taken is apparently my marina, as the one sitting at the mouth of the Columbia River gorge,  is THE spot from which to watch the firework shows along the water.  Everyone with a connection to the marina likes to come down to the marina to watch the show either from our rooftop decks or from their boats directly in front of us in the river.  Plus there’s a large number of gate-crashers.  From the number of large-scale ice chests appearing on front decks, it’s looking like it’s going to be a heck of a party later.

To add to the excitement, more enterprising spirits have established entire camps across from us on McGuire Island.  The first round of drunken parties and fireworks kicked off in the camps last night.  Things were loud enough that, with my windows open to catch the evening breeze, it felt reminiscent of an oversized Saturday night party in the college dorms.  Don’t think I’m going to be getting much sleep this weekend.

So far, Rumi hasn’t been upset by the fireworks.  In fact, he’s hugely curious about what’s going on outside.  Last night he made a mad dash outside to see what’s going on over on the island.  Thankfully, he stopped at the end of my deck and simply did his little meerkat pose on his hindlegs to get a better look at the fireworks.

If it wasn’t so warm this weekend I’d be tempted to keep his life vest on all weekend just in case he gets out again.  As it is, I’m just keeping a close eye on him.

As I slowly get to know my neighbors in the marina, I’m discovering that as colorful as the home renovation stories I’ve already shared about my place may be, there are some even more colorful ones my contractors–perhaps very prudently–decided not to share with me.

For example, I finally met my next-door neighbors, Rod and Jan, who only come to visit on the occasional weekends.  Last summer, I wrote about the colony of bats that was discovered to be living under the siding of my house.  The portion of the story I was told by my contractor, Kenny, was colorful enough by itself but, apparently I didn’t have the full story.  Rod and Jan helped fill in a few more details about the discovery.

Apparently, my marina had become quite accustomed to seeing bats swooping between the houses in evening hours, skimming away bugs from the surface of the river like they were at an All-You-Can-Eat buffet.  No one really knew where they hung out during the day.  But they’d been fluttering around the marina for years, and marina residents had mentally placed them in the same category as other familiar evening callers such as our pair of herons, sea lion, and eagle.  Until the day Gene and Kenny discovered the bats daylight digs, at any rate.

Turns out, the marina’s colony had been happily living under the siding of my house.

To refresh your memory, when I bought my house, the siding was in abysmal shape.  It had been installed by someone who clearly didn’t know what they were doing.  And the weather hadn’t been kind to it in the ten or so years since then. One of the projects I hired Kenny for was to replace my siding.

One day last summer, as Kenny’s assistant, Gene peeled off a strip of siding, out flew the marina’s colony of bats—more than a little bit perturbed to be rousted in the middle of a sunny Saturday afternoon.

The cloud of bats went shooting up into the sky.  Gene toppled backward into the water.  I had thought that was the end of the story. But it only gets better from there.

Here is the the continuation as told to me last weekend by my next-door neighbors, Rod and Jan…

Just prior to the Great Bat Discovery, Rod and Jan had been sitting on their front poor enjoying cool glasses of white wine.  The front doors to their house were thrown open and their ceiling fan was on to draw in some of cool air off the water.  (Most of the places like mine in the marina don’t have AC.)  Their gangly, one-year-old German Shepherd was lazing in the doorway.

Just your typical lazy summer day on the river.  (Or so they thought, at any rate.)

Jan had just gone inside to refill her glass.  She remembers hearing Gene’s very un-Gene-like shriek, followed by a splash, and a soft curse from Kenny.  The next thing she knows, the inside of her house is enveloped in a cloud of very indignant bats who’ve refused to stop for directions.  They are not at all happy about being disturbed in the middle of their night and the house next door is the nearest dark, quiet place as far as they are concerned.

Quiet at any rate, until Jan starts screaming at the top of her lungs.  Then the bats are not any happier to see Jan than Jan is the bats.  They want out.  But they’re no longer certain where out is.

Jan also wants nothing more than to get out of the front door of the house. But that isn’t as simple as it might sound, however, as the panicked cloud of bats are between her and her route of escape.  Moreover, the ceiling fan blades have begun catching random member of the swarm and chucking them in her direction like a batting machine set to fast pitch.

And just as an added level of difficulty, the German Shepherd has decided to come to her rescue and is rapidly tearing apart the house in her attempts to snap at the bats.

Rod–moving with more speed and dexterity than he’s exhibited any time since his high school football days–wins major husband points for diving into the house, determinedly cutting through the swarm of upset  bats, and successfully hauling Jan outside.

At the point where Jan is hopping up and down on her deck, shuddering, and frantically raking through her hair to ensure there aren’t any bats entangled, Kenny shows up.  After fishing Gene out of the water, he has calmly ambled over and is quietly assessing the situation with his trademark lopsided smile.

Kenny’s first suggestion is to turn off the fan.

The second suggestion is to take the dog to the very confused neighbors’ porch and tie her up.

Suggestion three is to open the back door and garage door on the boat well to give the bats another, much quieter point of escape which doesn’t involve a blond woman still breaking into random fits of screams or a loudly barking German Shepherd who wants nothing more than to have them for lunch.

The majority of the swarm decide to take the hint and beat a hasty retreat out the back door.

Kenny and Rod then spend the next half hour or so encouraging the more befuddled and ceiling-fan-stunned refugees to follow the lead of their quicker-thinking counterparts.  And then Jan spends a good part of the afternoon attempting to restore order to her home.

How I managed to not hear the second half of the story of the bats until last weekend, I have no idea.  But now that word is out that I know, I keep running into other neighbors who are delighted to share their own anecdotes about the incident.

I suspect some degree of poetic license may be involved in the retelling at this point.  But the descriptions I’ve received of the bat colony making their final exit from my and my neighbor’s home sounds like it was worthy of a scene from The Birds.

While I am in no way thrilled at the thought bats used to live under the siding of my house, I do feel a little guilty about evicting them without providing whatever the bat equivalent is to 30-day notice.

I hope they have managed to find comfortable new digs somewhere close by.  (Just not too, close by, if you know what I mean.)

Here’s something I’m willing to wager you won’t run across on any of the other small home/sustainable architecture blogs…  Polly the Inflatible Ho’.

I’m not kidding when I tell you that I never know what I’m going to see when I look outside my front window.  Sunset, in particular, tends to be a time for interesting sights.  Admittedly, Polly is perhaps even a bit more unusual than most.

Two doors down from me is The Snack Shack, inhabited by Paul and Brenda, two of the main culprits in why “E-Walk” has the reputation as party-central in the marina.

Anyway, when I glanced up from my work this evening, Paul was peddling by with Polly the Inflatible Ho’ as his boat-mate. Paul and Polly have been busy paddling around derailing evening traffic in the marina for the last half hour or so.

Apparently this was her maiden voyage in preparation for July 4th weekend when the marina will be flooded with vistors.  (Although, as I’ve informed Paul, I’m not sure there’s anything about Polly that qualifies as “maiden”.)

Female inhabitants of “E-Walk” are currently conspiring to track down a platinum blond wig for her.  I’ve suggested a beer bottle for the mouth.  Although, I can’t really decide if that would make Polly more or less child friendly.

“What would happen if we started being honest with ourselves about what we really want?

What if we started being ruthlessly real? What if we actually said the things that we think about, but are afraid to say?

Our egos may shrink and squirm, afraid to face reality as it is; afraid to bypass all the pretense; afraid to confront the shear nakedness of authenticity.

But maybe if we could evade the grip of our ego-based fears, we could embrace unfiltered, unmediated reality.

Maybe, just then, we’d start to come alive.”

This quotes comes from Jonathon Mead’s most recent contribution to ZenHabits and it really resonated with me today.  You can read the rest of Jonathon’s article here.

Probably the biggest benefit I’ve noticed from my week-long media fast is that it made it impossible NOT to have to come to terms with some things which haven’t been working in my life.  (Plus it freed up a heck of a lot of time to actually address those areas.)

More on this particular subject later.  However, here’s something to consider in the meantime… what, in your own life, aren’t you telling the truth about?  What do you think but not say to others?  And what are you afraid to say even to yourself?

If you really give it some thought, I bet you come up with some  interesting answers.

I’ve had a couple of emails over the past few days letting me know that your RSS feeds are no longer updating for the site.  I’m currently trying to troubleshoot what the problem may be.

Please bear with me as I tinker with a few things trying to fix the issue.

If you discover you’re one of the people no longer receiving updates, I’d love to know what browser you’re using and whether or not you’re in the U.S. or not.  (Feel free to comment below.)