one year later

This post was from my personal blog when I had them separated...
I noticed yesterday that it has been one whole year since I put anything in here. a whole year. Wow. And so much has changed in this last year. We moved to Florida in March. We moved back in August. Hubby worked from September to December 3rd. And he''s been laid off since. While we were in Florida my spiritual side seemed to almost vanish. I spent more time being sad, lonely & depressed than I did enjoying being near family & friends. I learned there are fewer real friends than I thought. I learned you can't ever really go home. I learned you can't step back into a world you left because time changes you.

The spiritual side of me seriously went dormant while we were away form here. Is it back? Not quite to my liking yet, but I can say I feel so much better, even with the current circumstances, being back up here. That has to mean something.

So one of the main reasons we went was to be there for my husbands father. He has made pretty much a total recovery. My mom is doing alright, but she put things in a way that made me love her even more. When we told everyone we were leaving & coming back here my mom was sad. But she understood because we told her how miserable we were, trying to live there. She told me how she wished all her family could be right there but she knows we all have to live our lives. I love her for that.

In my last post I talked about how this Valley seems to be a stopover for many. I know now that our time here was not finished. I'm not sure what exactly we have to do here, but I vow to try & enjoy every minute of it. I have noticed that since we've been back, I have felt a pull to be more ... in tune with Nature & learn more. Now I just need to find the discipline to accomplish that.

I also mentioned that I saw us not staying in Florida forever. Seems that was true, & even much shorter than I thought. Do I still see us going to the southwest? I'm not sure. I have been so wrapped up in being back 'here' I have not given it much thought.

I also said I had made peace with moving. I think I lied. I tried to convince myself that I had made peace with it. I tried to convince everyone else too, that it was what we needed to do. We did it & we can't undo it. All we can do now is learn from it.

I hope this year brings lots of learning for me.

The last quiet evening of July

Well here it is the last quiet evening of July. It’ll be August in an hour. Where the heck has the year gone? I really am amazed at how quickly time goes by these days.

So on the mall front, we’re just waiting on the contract/lease papers to come back from the mall big wig to Stacey. I’ll go sign them & we’ll be all set. After a couple more emails earlier this week, we got things straightened out. I pointed out a few things she could not ignore, & told me we could do it my way for this year. This year is all I’m asking for. We don’t know what next year brings, so I’m not gonna worry about it now.

Vacation. I got the tickets bought for the trip to FL. In the week we took to get things in order, the prices went up. Thankfully not over the money we got. I had to check carefully because several airlines now charge you extra to bring ANY bags with you. Pfft. I don’t think so. So I found some that only charge extra for the 2^nd checked bag. That should work for us. We fly out on Halloween in the evening. We’ll hop over to Seattle, kill about an hour, then catch a nice long flight to Atlanta. We’ll arrive in Pensacola at 9am Saturday morning. Should be cool. We’ll be there until the following Sunday morning. Then we leave FL at 9, get home to Wenatchee at 630. Fun. Hopefully it’ll be a good time.

For the first time in quite awhile, I’m not nervous about a show. I’m excited about it. I’ve never actually been to Ellensburg, so that should be cool too. I’d really like it if we can have the profits pay for dinner before we head home. That would be fun. I’m really looking forward to meeting some of the Etsy team people too. I spent Wednesday making a bunch of bookmarks. I finished up this morning then worked on some slight sign alterations. I’ll get them printed from Office Depot on Friday. Then I’ll get all my containers out, go thru them, see what needs to come, what stays, & get them packed to go.

We finally got my honey set up with a Yahoo messenger ID and a Gmail email address. Look out internet world here he comes! Until we get him a system built from the 3 towers we have, he’s using my laptop. He’s pretty happy.

Hmm .. what else? Guess my brain isn’t wrapping itself around much right now. So I’ll close for now, get this uploaded, & unwind a bit before bed.

Life ramblings, again

Funny how fast life changes. Didn’t I just recently say that? Well, here we go again.

Tim came home Thursday & said there will be no swing shift, for now. Just when both of us had made peace with the fall out it would present. So, never mind. Right. Guess it’s a good thing tho, in the big picture. One crisis averted.

So then comes all the mall stuff. I made brief mention of it. Tuesday Connie & I got to see the inside of the store at the mall that we hoped to turn into our own store for the holidays. We want to open a all hand crafted, made local store. Most of the people participating will be people who also have a shop & sell on Etsy. The thought of Wenatchee Valley Etsy was born.

I talked with the Asst. Mgr for the mall, Stacey. We know each other now, from the “crafters corners” the past 2 years. I asked how much the store would be to rent, for either a month, or 6 weeks. She asked how many people I was thinking, I told her possibly 4 or 5, maybe more, depending on a price. So she quotes me a price of $1500. Insurance & power included, for a full 6 weeks. Wonderful. I began to get in contact with people. We all figured, the more people we have, the less per person it would be. In total, it looked like we’d have 7 of us.

Now, our plans for the store, which I made very clear to Stacey from the get go, was to not have individual marked off space, but intermingled displays, like any other retail store. In the “crafters corner” we all had our own 10x20 area. This is definitely not the case with our plans.

So all of a sudden Stacey tells me I can only have 5 people. That makes it 300 each, which was keeping it fair for the others. Well, the “others” are all a part of the “crafters corner”. We are not. I tried to tell her that telling me I could only have 5 people was like telling any other tenant how many suppliers they could have in their store. All she could come back with is that it wasn’t fair to the others. It’s not my fault! We came up with this idea on our own.

We were going back & forth via email yesterday. We left it unsettled, as she is out of the office today. Come Monday tho, we have got to find a way to settle this.

What else?

I’m playing hooky from the market this Saturday. We’re going to go out & get away for a day. We’ll be taking Connie & friends, but it will still be nice. About an hour or so away from here is a waterfall. Snoqualmie Falls. I’m looking forward to it. I hope I can do justice in pictures like other photographers have.

Saturday evening we have the opportunity to go to a party. Not sure if we’ll go or not, as Connie was kind of not invited. So, we’ll see.

Last night (Thursday) I finally got to spend some time with an old friend, Leah. Someone who we all thought had become a horrible person, thanks to someone else. Wow, the pull some people can have on others is amazing. I was one of them who got pulled in. I'm still not sure I understand it all, but anyway. I’m so glad I got to clear the air with her and begin to mend fences. It was good. I had intended to stay for maybe 2 hours, as I knew she had to get to bed. I got there just after 8 & it was after 1130 I think when I finally left.

So the work news started out bad & fixed itself. The mall thing started out great & is running into brick walls. Mending fences with a friend. Working on another line of bookmarks. Being excited about the show next weekend. Feeling close to my honey. With good thoughts, I hope everything works out for the best.

Oh yeah… our November vacation. Almost forgot to mention that. Another one of those things that we had planned for one way, that’s turning out to be another way. Sigh. But I think we both will be okay with it. Guess we kinda have to be.

We had planned to have this be a true vacation. We’d stay in a motel, rent a car, & be free to do what we want. Sounds doable right? Wrong. Tim’s mom & step dad had offered, way back when we first mentioned this, to pay or help pay for our tickets down there. Awesome. That meant our savings would go further. Well, with that said, it was made known that since they were pretty much footing the airfare bill, they expected us to stay with them. After all, they hadn’t made the trip out here this year, so they wanted to be able to see as much of Tim (& *gasp* me) as possible. We made mention that if we had planned to stay with anyone, it probably would have been Tim’s dad, since Tim had not seen him at all since we moved up here. Well that didn’t fly with his mom. Neither did staying in a motel. She said that if we’re going to go somewhere where there is family, it’s just not right to stay in a motel. Then the sob story of Chief’s (Tim’s step dad) health got thrown in. No telling how much longer he’ll be around. We’ve been hearing this for over 3 years now but anyways … It would mean so much to him just to know we were sleeping in the same house. So, of course, we had to give in. We’d never hear the end of it if we didn’t agree. Dammit. Sleeping at my in-laws was not even on the list of things to do on my vacation. Tim said the same thing. But he’s such an easy going, pleasing guy… he just goes with it. Ok. Whatever.

So, once we know money is there we’ll buy the tickets. We’ll be leaving here on Halloween, and returning the following Sunday. This week was chosen to make it easier to get the mall store going & open earlier. So, I may wait a week to buy the tickets to see if the mall thing can be ironed out first. If it turns out it wont work, we may move the vacation to a week later.

Ok, I think that’s all the thoughts I wanted to get out. You get a cookie if you’ve read all this.