Miss Tick ..her story

Our Miss Tick was freshly hatched from her university studies when we met some years ago.

She was newly married to a monkish young fellow student.  They were part 

of a group of young idealists who were embarking on an experimental lifestyle comprised of such things as living sustainably, communal living, shared economies, and recycling everything from water to compost to dumpster food. 

As she tells it,  "We were doing our best to educate (and un-educate) each other and ourselves as to the most manageable ways to navigate our lives as 'adults', and were finding it hard to apply the academic concepts, church-fed dogma, and all of the other information we had spent the last 4 years gobbling up, into the reality of post-college life."

They moved into an old rundown farmhouse, where they quickly procured roommates, chickens, a rooster,  2 big dogs, barn cats and the like.  

In their enthusiasm, a creepy landlord, dilapidated  heating and other items 

were overlooked.

And so began the big adventure of creating  intentional community, living off the land, eating locally, organically and all the rest.  

In addition, Miss Tick was providing hospice care to a dying woman, mothering her brood of chickens, as well as stray friends, cats and anyone else who might need her care.  She also headed up a co op of gals crafting books to save poor Indian women. She studied midwifery, herbalism, and religions.  Oh my!

  

Now what she had intended to accomplish can be summed up in her words, 

"I was grateful to be so far out in the country because it took me away from so many of my friends and gave me the most alone time I had ever experienced.  That is not much considering  I was living and spending most of my waking time with other people, but it still felt liberating to be so far away from the people who I had seen almost every single day for the last 5+ years."

"At the farm, breakfasts were usually eaten together and we had mandatory communal meals and 'family time' every night that had to be home-cooked and made with food that was found or grown…or at least local, organic and cruelty-free." 

Miss Tick seemed to have put herself in charge of managing these arrangements and holding everything together. 

As time went on various frictions emerged. Their relations became increasingly strained and unhappy.  Affections waned among housemates, and soon, new love interests were added to the already cramped space. To make matters worse, they had not signed up for intentional community and were simply there to freeload and live with their prospective partners.  Things were getting increasingly out of hand.

Miss Tick was becoming exceedingly irritated with this state of things.  
In fact, others would attest that she stayed pretty irritated for the better part of that year.  

She was blazing on the inside and trying to be 'oh so nice and reasonable' on the outside.

Things deteriorated rather speedily on all fronts. Their happy family was coming unglued, disputes ensued and no amount of communal negotiations brought them any closer to their dream of peace and tranquility and the inspired life.

As Miss Tick sardonically concluded  ..

"One big happy family, in the middle of nowhere, with a log burning stove and a dozen angry chickens."

 So, dear Deb.  There is a peek into the setting in which that dream came into my life. 

Love, --The Ticked One