Some days home renovations are easier than others. For example, I was just getting ready to get rid of the extra kitchen cabinet I removed when Rumi decided it was the new official Cat Cave.

In spite of him bonding with the cabinet, I did finally get rid of it after stubbing my toe on it one too many times during the night.  I’m still getting a major guilt trip and sulks from the cat, though…

I have a feeling if feline-human relations continue to devolve, I may end up smothered in my sleep some night not too far off.  (Especially if he can figure out how to use the bottle opener by himself.)

Time for some major sucking-up to the kitten methinks.

One of the first things I did upon moving up to Portland was to join a Artist’s Way group led by Ingrid Kincaid.

The Artist’s Way is a book written by Julia Cameron. It is a program of “artistic recovery” and involves a twelve-week structure of exercises. I first did the program roughly a decade ago when the book first became popular in writing circles. I find it useful to repeat the exercises every couple of years. Moreover, I really enjoy being part of an Artist Way group because they tend to attract a fascinating mix of people I enjoy getting to know and spend time with.

The one thing I dread in the program is Week #4 because one of the exercises for that week is a week-long media fast. That means: no books, magazines, NPR, TV, movies, music with lyrics, email that is not work-related, frantic reading of the back of cereal boxes, etc. The point of the exercise is to disconnect from the constant stream of information our modern brains are constantly bombarded with so that one can more easily listen to one’s own internal voice.

Now, I don’t own a TV and I can fairly easily go a week without that or movies. Music is slightly more difficult as I really enjoy it, but I’ve got plenty of music without lyrics. However, I love NPR. And I’m thoroughly addicted to the written word. I am a voracious reader. Books are my sustenance and connection to the outside world. The thought of going without them, my news feeds, or non-work-related email for a week sends me into fits of anticipatory withdrawal.

Which, I’m afraid, also means it’s likely I’ll learn something worthwhile from the exercise. It’s hard to say, though, as I’ve never actually made it the full week before when I’ve completed the program. I’m going to give it my best shot this time, though.

Because I received a decent amount of email related to this website, I will be checking my personal email twice daily. I will also be online long enough to submit posts to both Coming Unmoored and the Small Living Journal. But if I seem a little scarce online the upcoming week, you now know what’s up.

The good news is that this exercise should free up some time to both work on my house and also to do more actual writing (rather than my obsessively following every bit of news related to the small home movement). I’ll keep you posted on how things progress.

So, I’m afraid I’m a little behind on my personal updates again. My day-job has been seriously kicking my butt lately.  Probably in part due to this being our busiest time of the year.  I’m going to be really glad when July rolls around and things start to slow down.

Anyway, playing catch-up…

Two of the other writers who are part of the Small Living Journal, Tammy from Rowdykittens and Amanda from Constructing a Simpler Life, came out to visit last week.  Both Tammy and Amanda spent a night with me each, and all three of us got together for a long lunch at the Pearl Street Bakery.

Tammy arrived in town first, and I’m afraid she got the worst of the Portland weather the first day she came out and the night she stayed with me.  She was a remarkably good sport about it, however.  We spent a good portion of the day and evening just chatting. And the next morning as the weather began to clear, Tammy ran around the marina in her pj’s like a madwoman snapping a bunch of lovely photos.  She also took several of Rumi swilling beer.  You can see both sets of pictures here.

Tammy is just as upbeat, energetic, and sweet-natured as you would expect from the writing on her blog.  She had Rumi completely charmed in under a minute flat.  She even got him hamming it up for a camera which is a complete first.  I had to keep a close eye on him when she was getting ready to leave.  Otherwise, I suspect he might have tried to hitchhike along in her suitcase.

As already mentioned, Tammy is a bundle of energy.  Thankfully, the weather cleared up from there and the rest of the weekend was gorgeous.  She spent the next few days of her mini-vacation running over every corner of Portland, managing to cover more ground than I have since moving here.  You can follow the rest of her adventures in Portland over on Rowdykittens.

Amanda rolled in late the following night.  Her flight didn’t get in until close to eleven and by the time she found the marina it was approaching midnight.  I was exhausted from a long week at work (and staying up well past my regular, wussy bedtime).  Amanda was exhausted from being in the final stretch of her graduate degree program.  Somehow, though, we ended up both being wired and yakking for a good two hours until I finally had to call it a night and get some sleep.

This would be all well and good except I then proceeded to wake up around my regular time – 5 AM since I’m used to dealing with clients on the east coast for work.  Amanda, on the other hand, had no such aspirations to be up so early.

If my guestroom had been finished, Amanda might have had a fighting chance at catching a few more hours sleep.  But she was stuck in my living room.  And, to only make matters worse, Rumi was totally into the whole house-guest thing by this point.  After having spent the previous morning with Tammy cooing over him at great lengths, he couldn’t wait for Amanda to wake up and do likewise.  So I’m afraid he kind of tried to help things along.

Amanda is a down-to-earth, extremely approachable, wickedly funny Texan.  Although she’s managed to lose a good portion of her accent from her time in California. Meeting her in-person helped me to understand how she manages to take such wonderfully candid photos of the people in the small home movement that are part of her thesis project.  I can’t imagine there are many people who, in under a half-hour of meeting her, would hesitate to tell her pretty much anything about themselves.

I worked for the first half of the day while Amanda slowly stirred to life.  Then the two of us met up with Tammy at the Pearl Street Bakery, where we had the most divine lunch of roasted eggplant pannini’s on fresh-baked bread.

Lunch with all three of us was great fun.  We gabbed at length about the small home movement and various ideas we each had.  Tammy was too well-mannered, but I pumped Amanda at length about her experiences interviewing various people in the movement as part of her thesis project.  Amanda is a fantastic storyteller, which made listening to her all that much more interesting.  And we chatted about all sorts of other things going on in each of our lives.

Naturally, I lobbied hard for both of them to move to Portland and help me start our own little small home outpost outside of Sebastapol, California.  (With both of them bringing their other halves in tow.)

It was with some regret that I finally had to wrap-up lunch and get back to the marina (and the rest of my work day).  Before heading on to the rest of her trip, Amanda interviewed me and also took some pics of both me and my floating home for her project.  I haven’t seen any of the pics yet.  But just based on some of the ideas she came up with, I’m really interested to see how they turned out.

Then Amanda went along her way and was off to interview Mokihana Salazar in the morning.  You can follow the next leg in Amanda’s trip here.

Anyway, it was fantastic to meet both Tammy and Amanda in person.  I rather selfishly hope they’re both back here soon!

Lest you think I’m making up the story of the frequently-appearing Pomeranian in a life vest, I’ve attached footage of one of the row-bys below. She quite frequently floats by in a kayak, as well.

One of her owners corrected me about the fact that she’s actually a Long-Haired Chihuahua rather than a Pomeranian. She’s apparently quite sensitive about the distinction. So please consider this my editorial correction.

So while I wasn’t able to make the small home get-togethers in either San Diego or Sebastapol that happened a few months back, the small home movement seems to have decided to come to me.

Tammy from RowdyKittens.com and Amanda from Greenaerie are both going to be in Portland this week.  Tammy is actually intrepid enough to be willing to crash with me at the floating home for a night.  (I’ve warned her it’s pretty much going to be like camping except with slightly better facilities and most likely more sawdust.)

Tammy and I are currently trying to coordinate a get-together with Amanda.  I also know she wants to get some photos of my little floating home.

So don’t be too surprised if pictures and video footage of various degrees of silliness show up in the next week or so.  (I’m sure Rumi will get in on the act with at least Tammy.  He can smell a cat lover a mile off.)

It should also be a good opportunity for the three of us to meet face to face and discuss a couple of ideas we’ve been kicking around informally.

As I get more comfortable with my video camera I’m hoping to do more of these quick updates…

By the end of the weekend I managed to get the wall put back together and sanded down in preparation for the new low-VOC stain and sealant.  I decided to hold off on the stain, however, until after my houseguests this week are gone.  The front two windows are framed.  I just need to re-hang the venetian blinds until I get the new window coverings in.

The upside of having traumatized my cat with the plane flight to Portland was that introducing him to my floating home was relatively non-eventful by comparison.  Well, at least to start, anyway.

By the time we made it past two airplane flights, one metal detector, one determinedly-helpful Texan, two beers, a 20 minute car ride, and a series of marina ramps in the Oregon rain, Rumi was more-than-happy to be out of his carrier inside something at least vaguely house-like in appearance.

This charitable attitude lasted about twenty minutes into him casing the joint.  Then he started to ask increasingly pointed questions  Non-cat-owners may be skeptical about my ability to translate a Balinese, but for the believers amongst you, the chatter went along the following lines:

“Oh thank Bastet!  We’re back inside. Hey, check this out!  There’s even a litter box.  Was wondering when I might see one of those.  Pardon me for a second, here…  Ah.  Much better.

Now how’s a chap supposed to get something to eat around here?  Oh, I see.  Kibble over here.  And water.  Mrpmh!  Chomp. Slurp.  Uh, you don’t happen to have a beer lying around anywhere, perchance?  Oh well.  No worries. This will have to do for now.

So where in the world are we exactly?  Oh never mind.  You’re no help.  You don’t even know where they keep the beer here.  And if I ask you, you’re likely to stuff me back in that dreadful carrier.  (Sniff.)  I’ll just have to check things out for myself.

Interesting.  Interesting.  Hmm.  Smells like birds.  (Dinner, perhaps?)  Oh, hey!  A koosh!  Don’t know where it’s been, though.  Better drop it in the water bowl.  You can never be too safe about that sort of thing…

Hmm.  Nice views out the window.  Warm spot of sun.  No small children or dogs in sight. Not too bad, all things considered…  just… where exactly is the REST of the house?  And where did they put the furniture?  How’s a cat supposed to nap around here?”

At which point I received an inquisitive yowl of inquiry and piercing blue-eyed stare.  And no matter how many ways I tried to explain that the two rooms and bathroom were all there was, he simply didn’t seem to get it.

Rumi spent most of the first night walking a puzzled circle through the doors of the house trying to figure out where the other rooms had got off to. About every fifth lap through the house he’d stop by the sleeping loft, stuff his paw up my nose long enough to wake me up and inquire again about what exactly was the deal with the place.

Sometime around 4 AM I decided it probably was a really good thing I hadn’t bought a Tumbleweed or Rumi would have found himself stuffed down the compost toilet in my desperation to get a few hours sleep.

Oddly enough, the fact that our new home was situated on the water didn’t register at all with the cat at all until Day 2.

Just before lunch, Rumi was lazing on a sunny window ledge in the front room when a fishing trawler roared by at top speed.

Rumi’s ears flattened and his eyes bugged out of his angular little head.  “That’s a BOAT.  What the freak is a BOAT doing tearing through our front yard?!”

And before I could field that question, the wake from the boat hit the house, rocking it violently from side to side.

Rumi hastily scuttled from the window sill to the floor where he did his best impression of a two-dimensional object until the worst of the rocking had stopped.  Then he looked up at me in abject horror.  “Oh you have GOT to be kidding me!  You’re telling me we’re on water?  WATER?!!” he finished with a squeak.

I tried to scoop Rumi up into my lap to comfort him but he was having none of it.  Instead, he scurried to his carrier and tucked himself inside. If he could have figured out the zipper I’m pretty sure he would zipped himself in, too.

Managing to reassemble some small modicum of dignity, he blinked once sagely and then informed me: “You can take me back to the airport, now.”

Needless to say, Rumi spent most of Day 2 having the feline version of a nervous breakdown.  I guess that’s understandable considering he’d just discovered his new home was built upon the most hated (to him) substance on the planet.  And I, the one who was usually at his every beck and call, was the one who’d taken him into this very personal version of Cat Hell.

I think what probably saved our relationship was the ducks.

Sometime in the late afternoon of Day 2, our local momma duck and seven ducklings swam lazily by.  Rumi was able to catch a glimpse of them from within the confines of the carrier.  He might have been able to resist Momma Duck by herself even though she was, by far, the biggest bird he’d ever seen.  But the ducklings were just too much.

Rumi was back up in the windowsill chattering in monosyllabic feline lust before he knew what hit him.  And even after they drifted away he had no interest in going back into the carrier.  He was just so blown away by what he’d seen.

That ended up being the only duckling sighting on Day 2, but a heron swam by about fifteen minutes later.  And then a Pomeranian in a kyak a little after that.  That pretty much clinched the deal.  Grudgingly, he told me it might be okay if we hung around and checked things out for a few days.  I just wasn’t to go getting any crazy ideas about baths being okay for cats while I was on this whole water kick..

Since then, Rumi’s favorite place to hang out is in the window by my desk.  Periodically he’ll ask me “Will you get a look at this?”

I suspect we may have just found his personal version of cable TV.

(For the die-hard Rumi fans, I’ve attached some rough footage of both Rumi and the ducklings below.  Be forewarned that I’m still trying to figure out how to manage the camera without making viewers seasick.  Especially when juggling a leash at the same time.)

For those of you who don’t happen to follow me on Twitter, I flew Rumi up from Albuquerque to Portland this past Tuesday. It proved to be a bit of a day.  For both of us.

Just in case you’ve missed the references in the past, Rumi is my one-year-old, bat-eared, Balinese cat. He’s quite spoiled and he has all the survival instincts of a developmentally-challenged lemming. He’s also quite the character, as my friends in Tucson and Albuquerque can attest to.

The beginning of the adventure was when I discovered that the ticket to stuff Rumi under the seat in front of me costs $15 more than my own. My friend Amber pointed out after-the-fact that I should have just bought Rumi his own seat. (Which, in fact, he ended up having anyway because the plane was so empty.  We had a whole aisle to our self.) I have no idea why an airline feels compelled to charge $115 for the right to stuff a cat under a seat. I can’t imagine they have much additional costs involved with having a cat there rather than a purse.  Admittedly, they do have to track how many on-board pets they have so that they don’t inadvertently set one of their allergic passengers into an asthmatic fit.  However, I suspect the pricing is a lot more about lets-take-advantage-of-a-captive-market situation.

Anyway, the next step in the adventure was getting  Rumi into his carrier the morning of the flight. Charlie recently had to drop Rumi off at the vet to get his teeth cleaned and the process took him 45 minutes. It was not at all pretty. (Believe me, I heard about it from both the boyfriend and the cat after the fact.)

So, needless to say, Charlie was dumbstruck when I simply scooped up Rumi, dropped him in the carrier, and smoothly zipped the thing up on the first try. I, of course, attributed this feat to my remarkable rapport with animals. The truth of the matter, however, is that Rumi is less awake at 4 AM than most caffeine-dependent humans I know.

You better believe he woke up in a hurry after that, however.  In his world, little black cat carrier = nothing he’s going to like as a next stop. By the time I was ready to load the carrier into the car, it was busy bouncing around the living room as though I had the Tasmanian Devil packed inside, and the wails of dismay issuing from the carrier were fluctuating over a three octave range.  I swear I could have opened the windows on my Mini and been mistaken for an emergency vehicle we were so loud.

Rumi finally settled down about the point I reached the airport.

Checking him in was uneventful and even a little amusing when they issued him his own little kitty boarding pass.  The security line was another story entirely.

I just want to go on record and say that whatever nimrod at  Homeland Security who wrote the requirement that all pets now have to go through the metal detector with their owners has never had to stuff a hysterical seven-pound cat back into a carrier when they are quite clear about the fact that they didn’t want to be there in the first place.

I normally try to wear comfortable clothes when I fly. Based on my experiences this week, I don’t recommend this approach for anyone traveling with a cat.

Tuesday morning I was wearing a pair of yoga pants, a white tank top, and a hoodie.  Nevermind that I’ve been allowed through the Albuquerque metal detector wearing the same hoodie on multiple occasions before.  This time I was asked to take it off.  Because, God knows, on top of my Weapon-of-Mass-Destruction Balinese, I might have explosives or some such nonsense in the zipper of my hoodie.

Long story short, I normally only wear white tank tops under another piece of clothes in lieu of a bra, so I was showing a lot more skin in the security line than I felt comfortable.  And then I had to pull Rumi from his carrier.  Rumi clung to me for dear life as we went through the metal detector together.  So there I was trying to cradle my cat to me with one hand and keep my tank top from being yanked down to my bellybutton with the other.  I was only about half successful on both accounts.

Things only got worse on the other side, when it came to trying to get Rumi back into his carrier.  He was hanging on to my shirt for dear life and I just about lost my top entirely trying to peel him off my body, much to the amusement of the security guards–none of whom were willing to offer any sort of assistance.

I’ll be eternally grateful to the Texan businessman in the line behind me who helped me save what little was left of my modesty by helping me disentangle Rumi from my shirt and get him back into his carrier.  He kindly explained to me he had a cat back home he really missed but whom he suspected would be even less acomodating to flying than my “little treasure”.  (Ladies, anyone who doesn’t think knights in shining armor can show up in Stetsons has never met this guy.)

Thankfully, the rest of the trip was fairly uneventful. Rumi eventually reached the conclusion that things inside his carrier were far less scary that things happening outside.  And by the second flight he’d recovered enough of his equilibrium that he worked his usually charm on the stewardesses.  They actually offered to bring him his own beer when they caught me letting him sneak sips off mine and, at the end of the fligh,t they awarded him plastic wings.

Suffice to say, by the time Rumi and I reached my place in Oregon, all either of us wanted to do was take a long nap which probably helped ease the transition somewhat to the floating home.

(To be continued…)

Usually I try to publish Coming Unmoored’s heavy-content articles during the work week because that is when the site has its highest traffic days and I like the message of the small home movement to reach as many people as possible.  However, this is such a wonderful, in-depth interview that I wanted to ensure people had plenty of time to watch and digest the whole thing without feeling the stress of possibly being caught at the office using their computer for “non-work uses”.

Shay Salomon is one of the founders of the Small House Society and she has written my hands-down favorite book on small homes: Little House on a Small Planet.   Below is an interview she did with Peak Moment as part of a book tour for her book.  It should be noted that this was filmed prior to the bottom falling out of the housing market.

Shay does a fantastic job of explaining the appeal of smaller homes and why there is a growing interest in them.  I recommend setting aside a half hour to sit down and watch the video.

For additional information on Shay Salomon and her book, you can visit her website.

Just wanted to post a quick note to wish everyone a happy Earth Day.  Personally, I have mixed feelings about the concept.  I fully support the idea of promoting living more sustainably on the planet.  I just worry about the group of Americans who feel good about themselves for forgoing the use of plastic shopping bags for one day a year.  That’s in no way going to cut it, gang.

But before I really start hopping up and down on my soapbox, I’d just like to say I’ll be celebrating Earth Day by sitting home this evening and methodically pulling nails from a huge pile of boards my contractors left so they can be reused inside my house.

In the past, my solution was largely to throw money at the problem.  I’d hire outside help and not pay very close attention to how they got things done.  I’m making an effort to be both a lot more mindful and frugal these days.