Put on Hold- What now?

If you don't know about the Coronavirus and have not been effected by it in some way you clearly live under a rock and I would like to join you.

Of course I will be on the other side of the rock, more than six feet away and with my own private area. I promise to bring toilet paper and share it.

Like much of the US we are in Coronavirus induced holding pattern as our state heads into the projected worst weeks of infection and continues its "stay at home" policy. We haven't directly interacted with anyone outside our house in over 3 weeks...maybe it is 4 now....I have lost count. So far we have been able to avoid entering a store for shopping and being within 15 feet of any person outside our household. A combination of curbside pickup, Amazon, Misfits produce subscription and our deep freezer's current "full o' cow" status of have allowed us to become full fledged hermits. On the upside we do not need to wear the latest fashion trend I am now calling "trashy chic".

Unfortunately the chaos has effected the daily lives of everyone we know but so far even the few people we know that contracted the virus have all recovered. I hope that statement is true in the long run.

This whole situation is unfortunate for everyone world wide. So many people getting really sick and so much disruption. As far as the build goes, we are delayed for an undetermined amount of time. In the last couple of weeks we have had several conversations with the builder. The first one several weeks ago was very reassuring on their end. They intended to continue with the build as long as they could get materials and that the situation looked good. This was a surprise to us and a bit of good news. Then the Coronavirus situation in NYC blew up. Part of our state is essentially a suburb of NYC and its connection to the city has never been so clear. Our second conversation a week later was a bit more what we expected to hear the first time. They are still planning on going forward but are in a wait and see pattern. That just changed into a full fledged delay of unknown length where they will put us back into the schedule once things are clearly better. The last communication I received via email needs clarification because it could be interpreted to mean, now that they took us off the schedule they don't have time for us for several quarters. If that is true "several quarters" means we will be delayed until next year! I really hope I am reading the email wrong but we are braced for the worst.

Instead of getting us down we plan to rethink the order of things. The original plan was to have the builders come now and we would be working on all the conduit for electrical in the dome walls right along with them. Since that is not going to happen right away we have decided to switch gears. We are going to start the process to get our septic system built and to connect the utilities to the house from the barn and well. To save money we are doing all this ourselves so it will take longer than if we were to hire a septic installer. First step is to get our surveyor back out and update the site plan, mark the septic and resubmit it to the health department for approval. We did this a few years ago but some mistakes were made in the measurements so the health department is requiring it be redone before we can pull a permit. There is a lot of paperwork and coordination involved in getting the septic put in so we need to get it started as soon as we can.

Right now we putter around doing little odd jobs. We moved dirt around to prep the front of the straight wall patio area. The builder had asked us to build the dirt up in that area prior to them arriving.

Now we will have to dig it back out a bit to do the septic. A friend is clearing field edges and dropped off a load of large logs for us to cut and split in our free time. We have also been working on cleaning up one of the old cow fields pulling rocks and stumps so we can mow with the lawn tractor. All kinds of fun stuff. I am actually super happy that we can mow that field now because it means less ticks and I can finally win the war against the poison ivy in that field. I am horribly allergic to the stuff and now it can no longer hide from me under all the other plants! It's the little things sometimes. I do think of ourselves as lucky in this horrible global pandemic. Mr. Dometastic still has a job and is working from home. We are not stuck inside and have plenty of open space. I can still do a little work, although, almost all my time is now dedicated to being a coronaschool parent. That is going as expected. It is stressful and often not productive. I now get to relearn everything I forgot from 7th grade and get into arguments on how to properly solve algebra problems. Did I mention I was an art major....there are multiple reasons for that. For many years Mr. Dometastic has teased me about my horrible math skills. He isn't wrong but all that teasing has emboldened my 7th grader to think I know absolutely nothing. Thanks a lot Mr. Dometastic!