Friday, July 3, 2009

Vashon, chocolate milk, free pizza

We arrived home last night and had a pizza delivery. I had chocolate milk in my morning coffee because there was no milk-milk in the fridge. Clearly, we need to do some grocery shopping really soon. The Pizza was a fun - I ordered from Pagliacci because we arrived home at dinner time and I felt like a treat. When I got out my check book to pay the deliverer said it was a FREE PIZZA. Its something about rewarding frequent pie-ers and "your number came up." Just to be clear, we are not frequent pie-ers from Pagliacci because they don't give us coupons and we are pizza cheapskates but now I feel a lot of goodwill towards them.

Move to Vashon?
Anyway, the 5 days on Vashon were lovely. I feel I know the island a little bit better which is good since the discussion on whether to move to the island continues. Despite his protestations, Josh's idea of planning is to look at online postings for 2+ acres and go "oh, what about that one." By contrast, I am a plodder. These are my questions:

If we bought 4 acres on Vashon:
1) Would the schools on the island be good enough for the kids?
2) How could I work and maintain the gardens / chickens / goats / vegetables / house / kids / lawns (ride-on-mowers) / community building?
3) With low vaccination rates on Vashon and significant body of water between us and SCH is it SAFE for Wren to live there?
4) Would I find sufficiently stimulating community and diversions on the Island?
5) Would I feel isolated?
6) If a bomb hit Seattle while we were visiting family abroad (so we survived) but all our money was in real estate, we would have no assets. Is it wise not to plan for this contingency?
7) Can we afford to own two properties and how much hassle is it to rent your home to strangers?
8) Do I want a goat I can't milk and my family won't let me eat and/or can I handle the breeding of goats for milk? If not, why have a goat? This seems effete. Just generally, why have livestock if the family won't eat our animals?
9) Would this kind of life lead to any change in habits for the kids and Josh or would they just sit inside our Vashon house and absorb their screentime and leave me with 10 extra chickens, a new goat and 4 extra acres of housework?
10) What would happen to our little menagerie while we went away on vacation?
11) Would our friends from Seattle visit or would we be starting from scratch?
12) What region of Vashon is the most amenable to my way of life?
13) How much would a place like this (on Vashon) cost? We have seen less developed ones for under 500K.
14) If the ferry was bombed or broke or something else occured to it, could I paddle a canoe across to the mainland in an emergency?

These are big questions. I do not have the answers but Josh continues to find lovely looking properties with tempting gardens. Further, I recall the happiness I felt in the Blue Mountains visiting friends yurts and cabins in the woods there.

So much of our lives is about sensible choices and doing things for the long haul but that can leave you defering life until you are too old to dig a ditch. Something about doing a thing because it is exciting and lovely and fun is good enough. We don't have to be utterly safe to make a thing worthwhile.

4 comments:

nautilus said...

There is something about space and bush and forests. I think that one of the best things my parents gave me, inadvertently maybe, is a childhood in the country - even if it was African bush country.
On a careful note, could you rent a place for 6 months or a year to start with, before you finally committ?
Love MUM

Wyndi said...

your moms idea is great! we would visit you there and here! I was thinking about setting up izzys pool and having a play date what do you think?
I was saying that izzy has started talking and now is never quit now! lol.

would you want do go on a bike ride sometime? I am just starting and pulling izzy so I am not super string but i think it is fun!

Wyndi said...

i love tier pizza Steven got me hooked! we ordered it last week 1st in a long tech with no pizza and izzy ate two slices on her own! wow!! at least it had a lot of spinach on it so she got a good amount of veggies :)

tamusana said...

I'd be most deterred by point #3 (low vaccination rates: Switzerland recently had a measles epidemic, with one fatality, because of that); #9 (the wonders of the digital age make this too easy, and likely); #10 (you would have to pay someone a real wage to get them to care for your crops/plants/animals sufficiently... a week of neglect can blow the whole thing). As for #11 - surely your mom can brief you on the best way to escape from your island to the mainland in an emergency? :-)