Coffee Chat

Good Morning! It's amazing how quickly April has creeped up on me. I've spent a lot of time reflecting over the past year. It's amazing to think of the changes that have encompassed my life, over the course of a year. I try not to be negative but there are times you become so overwhelmed you end up on that path. It becomes a vicious cycle of overwhelm, frustrated, and annoyed; and you have no idea how to get off the roller coaster ride! So, today's coffee chat is about the snippets of my life that I care to share.

Last year, in April, we decided the move to Southern Missouri was in our best interest. It also meant selling our home, uprooting our lives, and learning a new culture/region. While the job market around our home was rapidly diminishing, it was terrifying to think of everything that needed to be done to prepare for the move. Naturally, I feel like the main dynamics of the move fell on my shoulders. I struggled with the move. I had a home that I was making my own, and aside from the job market...everything was pretty good. I will say, I told my husband when he mentioned moving, that I would go where ever he wanted to go. I never dreamed of the chaos that would follow.

After waiting nearly 3 months, he needed to start the job he was offered or lose it. The house hadn't sold yet, the house we had considering buying here was a complete joke and so was the real estate company, and we had no options...except him moving and us staying. Obviously, that was not ideal either. From the time he moved, the kids and I did chores, kept up with the yard work, continued their schooling while I kept up with the house, bills, meals, real estate marketing, showing our home, and managing the kids and my own adjustment to not having my husband there. A couple months into separate households, it became apparently that that was not going to work for much longer. We decided that with the harvest season approaching, we needed to be here, because he wouldn't be able to make the 6 hour drive on weekends through harvest. Our couple months of being in a camper turned into nearly 7 months, and the house still hasn't sold.

So, we decided a camper would be a temporary solution for harvest season. First of all, I do not recommend this, ever!!! We had to pack up the house initially for the move, then unpack and repack to fit in a camper, and leave our big animals and most of our belongings scattered from one end of the state to another. It was horrible! It's still a struggle every day. Knowing we have the livestock in one location, still have belongings at our house, now we have a storage unit in town, and our rental house here too. I am feeling a little more settled, but there is still stuff scattered. We have stuff crammed into our rental house, but I do really like it and it's location. We were able to find a rental house that gave us most of what we were used to, and most of what I needed to function.

I am pretty blessed with finding this rental house. It sits on 6 acres, has room for a garden, the kids have room to run, we have a home to live in until something gives with the sale of our house. Although, I am really sick of paying for 2 houses. I have prayed for months, for our house to sell. I have to believe that there is still something the Universe wants me to see, and that is why it hasn't sold. I sure wish the Universe would give me some indication on the lesson though...I'm tired of dealing with it all!

I have spent nearly 7 months feeling like a piece of paper tossed into a tornado. Feeling so scattered, so torn, and crumpled; is exhausting. The first month or so in the camper wasn't too bad. Then, the loner it drug on, the worse it was getting. Too small of space, no room for the kids to play, no quiet space, and cooking was a joke. It was causing the kids to battle constantly, my husband and I were arguing regularly, and the overall morale, was bad at best. The only thing good that came from that camping experience was meeting a couple of good friends.

Now, we have our rental house. It's about 1000 sq ft smaller than our house, but it has a LOT more room than the stupid camper. We have 2 bathrooms...and bedrooms that allow all of us to have space. We have a full and functioning kitchen that allows me to cook and bake the way I like, a living area that is big enough for all of us to sit together, my dining room table that has bore witness to so many conversations, outdoor room for a swing set/garden/games of catch/and bonfires. We are far enough off the road to not be bothered by road noise, no sirens wailing at all hours, and no campground own complaining because my kids are outside without me standing over them! I know this rental house is not permanent, but it is a nice and peaceful place. I also know that someday, hopefully sooner than later, I will be back on a farm. I will be able to have my horses and the kids cows again. I will have larger gardens and plenty of room to store everything I preserve. Until then, I'm am trying to make the best of the best situation we've been in for about a year. Now, if our realtor would just get our house sold!!!!

This past weekend, my husband tilled up an area for my garden. Thankfully, a good friend had a tiller he let us use! So, I have a 43x22 garden for this Summer. I'm not sure how to handle this small of a garden, but it sure beats the heck out of no garden!!! I get to learn how to garden in sand. The soil here is mostly sand and clay. Neither of these, do I have experience with. But I love a challenge, so I'm about to learn. I got all the seeds planted, and can hardly wait to start seeing them grow! If everything grows well, I should be able to can/freeze a good amount of vegetables later this Summer. Taking my shoes off to garden, has always been my thing. However, the threat of sand burrs changed this years course on that. I did clear an area that allowed me to ground in the garden. Sand is so different that black dirt. Not just in the obvious sense, but also in it's grounding effects. I'm still learning and will continue to learn and grow.

I have almost gotten our rental house unpacked. There is a lot of clutter right now, and it's frustrating to me, but I'm working on it. I need to build some shelving units to allow for the smaller space. We got rid of our dressers, years ago, when we started making all the closets in our house customized with clothes bars and shelves. The closets here are decent but not set up for not having dressers. I need to figure out a space for a desk; build that and a cabinet for my husbands guns, and a small cabinet for the kitchen too. Unfortunately, I can make everything, and have them all designed but paying for two houses has the budget so tight, I just can't make it all work, just yet.

If you have never done it, imagine paying a house payment and utilities - in two locations, for nearly 8 months! I can promise you that the finances will suck the life out of you in a hurry!! I have always done the responsible thing, but there are days...I just want to walk away and be done with it! It gets very frustrating to watch so much being wasted on something you are no longer using. I'm going to stay positive for now, and know that everything will happen at the right time...even if it's not in our time.

We have been in our rental house for a month now. I keep praying for everything to work the way it's intended to work. The kids are adjusting well, and loving having space again. I have begun feeling settled and have found time to just be without letting stress overwhelm me, and I hope that relationships, finances, and life will adjust and allow for growth.

For today, I'm going to end this blog with a positive. I am no longer stuck in a sardine can, feeling trapped and ready to go postal! HA! It's all good. Everything will work out the way it's intended to. I just need to learn the patience to not be so demanding, I guess!

Have a beautifully blessed day!
Salli

Coffee Chat - March 2017

Gosh, it's been so long since I've found the energy I need to write, let alone having internet strong enough to run anything. It was like being thrown into the dark ages, for the better part of the last 7 months. So much has happened for me, to me, and a lot has changed as well. So, as with all my coffee chats, we'll just roll with the thoughts and I'll apologize now for any un-respectable language that may come up.

Let me start with 6 months in a camper. NEVER AGAIN! The overall plan was a couple months until the house sold or we could find a place to rent. As a typical plan goes for us...neither happened. By January, I was ready to climb the walls. The good of the camper was so that our family could be in one location, together. However, I learned very quickly that although that was great, it was not enough. I had doll house appliances that I was attempting to take care of my family with - 3 meals a day! The oven did not work, and there was no point in fixing it since the biggest pan to fit in it was a pie pan. There were 6 gallons of hot water, which meant 1 person could take a 3 minute shower, and then you had to wait 2 hours for it to reheat another 6 gallons of water. While I love smaller places, a camper is WAY too small for a family, PERIOD! It may work fine for summer trips, or vacations, or even couples but the space was way too confining for me. I have spent 18 years getting used to wide open spaces, room to wander, garden, raise livestock, and room for the kids to be kids. I have always had a kitchen I could make work, to provide my family with meals, make them the baked goods I know they love, and to preserve the foods we have grown and raised. Camper living is fine if you don't have much, don't have more than a couple people, or if you find a camping location that isn't owned by assholes!

A shift in perspectives is something I have been able to do, most of my life. I can remember being told to put myself into someone else's shoes, and it's something I still try to do, regularly. However, I've found that while I try to be respectful of others feelings, emotions, and decisions...mine are not respected, and most of the time are taken for granted. I begin withdrawing when I start feeling that disrespect and the feeling of being taken for granted. I bust my backside, every day for everyone else. My needs/wants are always at the bottom of my to-do list. Yet, I'm constantly being asked for more. To do more, be more, or whatever. Rarely is it acknowledged the extent of what I do. For that matter, there are only 2 people that actually know everything I do in a day. While I am ready to drop in bed at night, the majority of the exhaustion is mental exhaustion...just trying to keep up with everything.

I am at day 20 of being in our rental house. While 90% of our stuff is unpacked, there is still a lot left to organize, some left to unpack or store. Our rental house is pretty nice. It's not a permanent solution, because the idea of half enough space doesn't sit well for me, for an extended period of time. However, the house is nice, the owner is great, we have A LOT more room than the camper, a yard for the kids, and plenty of room for a garden. The house is a ways off the road, so we don't have road noise, jake break or sirens going off every 5 minutes. I can sit outside at night, and see stars! I have full size appliances again, even if they aren't the best...they beat the doll house ones in the camper! We can have bonfires again, cookouts again, and there is plenty of nature for the kids and I to do our nature walks!

If we could just get the house and camper sold! I'm so tired of the hurry up an wait. I am an action type person. I see an issue, make a plan and do it...not see it, dissect it, rearrange it, then make a plan and let the plan hang in balance indefinitely. I need chapters to close for my peace of mind. We solved the camper living issue, by renting a house. Now, we need to sell our house, sell the camper, get the rest of our crap here, get a place found here that we can get our horses and cow with us, and close the chapter of our lives that just won't seem to go away!

Very rarely do I allow myself to be selfish. But today I'm going to. I have spent 18 years, learning to function and eventually learning to love the farm/country life. I left towns and cities, because I knew that wasn't for me. Then all of a sudden, I was thrown back into a town life, and I hated it!!! Anyone that knows me, know my dislike of saying the word hate. But I did, I hated town life. I loved wide open space, minimal traffic, the livestock noises, chickens clucking first thing every morning, sitting under the night sky and realizing how small we all are, and the overall space to move. We found a fraction of that in our rental house. We had just gotten our house set up to be functional as I was making our lives self-sustainable. I had my big, beautiful antique sink, I built a monstrous pantry to hold all the jars of food I planned to preserve, we had our horses, cows, chickens, pigs, and 3 large gardens and then shit went south! A 3 year freeze in income that barely supported us anyway, a constant increase in expenses, learning the real estate game, a few bad decisions in livestock and life and here we are. I want the life I had built at our house, but I want it here. I want to see if we can pull our lives and relationship back into the direction that we want it to go. Every single road bump we have had, has been a direct result of our house not selling.

I'm angry, annoyed and quite honestly, very resentful of the house not selling. Because of the area it's in, its difficult to find a realtor that is willing to sell/show it. The few that are, are not MLS. So, I held off listing for a while, because they weren't going to do any more than what I had already done. Unfortunately, I finally listed with a realty company in the same county, because I just didn't want to deal with it anymore. I am just one person, and with all the directions I am being pulled, I am stretched so thin, I just couldn't keep up with it. In my 42 years of life, I have never given up, and even through some of the most trying times of my life...I have kept going. I have never been as close as I am to breaking, giving up and saying screw this...to everything except my kids. I'm strong but I'm tired. I have spent a year now, dealing with this giant transition I knew was coming. I tried to prepare myself, my kids and our family for what this kind of move would entail. Obviously, the plans for this move have become a giant mass of crap, but still. I have made that kind of life changing move before...20 years ago. It can be a very large undertaking to move like that. Doing so with children and animals was going to require me to be on top of the game, and then having to do it the way we did is like dealing with the government! A complete and total cluster!!! I did the majority of packing at the house, then when it didn't sell as we expected - I had to pack differently to go to the camper for our temporary residence. When I finally had all I could take, I packed most of the camper to either go back to the house or find a rental house. The we found the rental house, and the kids and I spent a week at the house repacking boxes that had been sorted through, taking apart furniture, and packing the rest of the house contents to bring here. In addition to a week there of 3 meals a day, cleaning up from those meals and finalizing details there, arranging the moving truck and getting it picked up, then loading it an dragging most of our life here. I got here, had to clean the rental house before we could move much in because the last renters were slobs, had to physically go to the electric and water company to get them switched to our name, unpack not only the moving truck but also the camper, while trying to keep up with meals, laundry, put furniture together, and make room for the belongings that came from a 2000 sq ft house, into a 1000 sq ft house. None of this includes trying to find furniture to replace what we didn't keep, the husbands job, and my youngest child turning 8.

There have been so many times over the years, that I pray for people in my life that will respect me, and value me as much as I value them. I do my best to always treat others the way I want to be treated, but I've decided that people are really oblivious anymore. The large part of society has become so self-absorbed, they have become expectant that everyone will do everything for them, take care of them, cater to them, or they get angry. They have forgotten how to do for themselves. They whine, cry, become narcissistic, or outright cruel; and then expect all to be well when they finally get their way. What so many neglect to understand is that there are certain cuts, that run very deep and they take a long time to heal. Continuing with repeat behavior, just opens those wounds back up.

Even with all the chaos in my life, I am pretty happy. I know there isn't anything I can't do. I have really pushed the envelope of wanting to give up, but I'm not a quitter. It's not in my genes to give up, without a fight. My heritage and ancestors survived, thrived, and many made larger moves than I have; but they did it. They fought their way from New York, Virginia, and North Carolina. So, made it through the Trail of Tears, They ventured through new lands, through harsh conditions, through several states. Determination, persistence, stubborn, hard headed; it's in my blood. I may get knocked down, but when I get back up...I'm going to be pissed. I won't stay down.

I have felt a lot of different feelings over the course of the past year. So many uncertainties, and questions. So many worries. I have struggled, it's no doubt. However, each struggle is a lesson I try to learn from. While some lessons have been painful, some have been an emotional trauma, most have been a reminder. Reminding me that I am strong, I am capable, and I do not need anyone to validate it.

For today, I'm going to close this coffee chat. My mind is going a thousand different directions, but I have other things I need to do. I'm looking forward to returning to my regular writings, and getting my life back on a semi-straight path! ;)

Have a blessed day, my friends!

Salli