06/23/2025
My neighbor Jim was loading his truck with what looked like half a demolished dock, and I'm thinking... what the hell is wrong with people throwing away perfectly good wood?
"You want this junk?" he yells over. "Storm tore up my pier last month, insurance guy said it's worthless."
Worthless. Ha. I looked at those weathered planks, all gray and smooth from years of water and salt, and I swear I could see a whole city in them. Maybe it was the lack of sleep. Maybe it was the fact that Rick and I had been fighting for three weeks straight about everything and nothing. Or maybe I was just losing it.
But I dragged every single piece into my garage.
See, Rick thinks I'm crazy. Has for about two years now, ever since I started what he calls my "wood hoarding phase." We'd been married 31 years, and somewhere around year 29, I guess I hit that wall where you either find something that's YOURS or you disappear completely. For me, it was making these little houses out of scrap wood.
Started simple. A birdhouse here, a fairy garden there. But then I found myself staying up until 2 AM in the garage, painting tiny windows and doors, adding little details that nobody would ever notice. Rick would come out in his bathrobe, coffee in hand, and just shake his head. "Honey, you've got seventeen of these things now. What are you gonna do with them all?"
I didn't know. I just knew I needed to keep making them.
Then last month, scrolling through Facebook at midnight (because that's what you do when you can't sleep and your husband's snoring could wake the dead), I stumbled across this post about the Tedooo app. Someone was showing off their handmade wooden signs, and people were actually BUYING them. Like, real money. For things made with their hands.
So I downloaded it. Figured what the hell, right? Posted a picture of one of my little houses, wrote something like "handmade from reclaimed wood" and went to bed.
Woke up to 47 notifications.
People were asking if I took custom orders. If I shipped. If I could make a whole village. A VILLAGE. And suddenly I'm sitting there in my kitchen, still in my nightgown, crying into my cereal because strangers on the internet understood something my own husband didn't.
That's when I knew I had to make this thing. This whole little village. Not just one house, not just a few... but a place where people could imagine living. Where every window had a story, every door had a family behind it.
I worked on it for six weeks. Every morning after Rick left for work, every evening after dinner. I painted windows to look like warm light was glowing inside. Added moss to the roofs like they'd been there for decades. Made tiny chimneys that looked like they were smoking. Even stuck little succulents in windowboxes.
Rick stopped asking questions after week three. He'd just bring me a sandwich around lunchtime, kiss the top of my head, and say "how's the village coming?"
Yesterday, I finally finished it. All lined up on that old board, looking like somewhere you'd want to live. Somewhere quiet and simple and good.
I posted it on my Tedooo shop last night. This morning, my phone wouldn't stop buzzing. Orders, messages, people sharing photos of their own little villages. And right there in the middle of it all, a message from a woman in Oregon who said she'd been going through a rough patch and seeing my village made her feel like there was still magic in the world.
That's when Rick walked into the kitchen, saw me crying over my phone, and said "Good tears or bad tears?"
"Good tears," I whispered.
He looked at the village sitting on our counter, all those little houses lined up like soldiers, and for the first time in months, he really LOOKED at them. Not like they were clutter or my weird hobby, but like they were... mine. Something I'd made with my hands and my heart.
"They're beautiful," he said quietly. "I'm sorry it took me so long to see it."
