June 28, 2013 9:40 PM
843 days
2 years, 3 months, 20 days
That is the amount of days, months, weeks, hours, minutes or seconds I have had the privilege to enjoy this incredible journey to date..actually as of ninety seven minutes ago. So am I having fun yet. No, not yet but I thought this might be the day so I decided to blog about this amazing journey. I could probably count all the ways I have tried to make this move fun and enjoyable or even acceptable to me, but since I am starting today I will just tell you all about this crazy experience and all I have done to stay sane and alive.
"Did I say Sane? well that was my first mistake already because I was never sane.
So, I was told that I would love the move and have plenty of time to relax and enjoy the scenery.
Second mistake, How many people do you know who are Bipolar with Multiple personalities can sit and relax. If you do, please tell me because I am not one of them. I don't sit, until I think I have completed every single task I have assigned myself for the day. When I do sit I do not stop moving; My leg swings, my foot swings, my arms flail (that's the Italian in me, can't talk without using them) and my mind and mouth never ever seem to stop. Just ask anyone who knows me, I talk and talk and talk; I talk so much even the television has rejected me. I'm not kidding, it keeps shutting off when I am talking to my favorite shows or watching the weather to see if a tornado is going to take me away that day.
I'm also OCD so dealing with new situations is driving me insane all by itself. I have to identify all the new dirt as opposed to the old dirt and all the creepy crawly bugs I had 60 years to learn about on the east coast. I had been well educated on how to escape those beasts or remove them from my space, better yet I was so good at knowing all the things I was afraid of I could predict when they would be there and make my plan to eliminate before the fact. I have to start all over now. I have to know which plants are safe to touch or not, which mushrooms will kill my dogs or not; which night the mad dogs and wild cats are outside before I take them for a walk or risk them pooping inside instead. Although that is a problem, they seem to like to poop outside. With the dogs, Pekinese's, I do not have to worry about where the bugs are in the house because they let me know and then they don't sit down either. Just sniff and bark at every little creature that passed me at the door and got inside.
I don't know how many mice I caught because Teddie, my new puppy has told me, using his eagle eye and incredible fast acting nose. Oh, and of course the alarming bark he sounds off. Just one bark lets me know he has been on the trail of a critter who has joined us inside our humble abode.
"Humble Abode" What exactly is that? Modest, Meek, Lowly and a thousand other descriptions for the word and none quite fit. But compared to where I used to live I guess some of those words more than fit; I come from New Jersey, the land where everyone pretends they are rich and work hard at trying to look it too, or just die trying hard to work for the money to prove show how rich they are.
The word rich however; also holds a lot of different hidden meanings. You can be rich (wealthy) with money, love, possessions, family and life. You can be poor of all those things too. I guess I choose to be humble, that way I can be rich with some things and poor with other things.
You can also be rich (filled to capacity) with stuff, like I was when I came here. I had lots of stuff and no place to put it so I sold it and made what now I would consider lots of money. Funny, cause two years ago I would have thought it was very little money and only enough to invest in a night out or some new materials to purchase materials to make more stuff. Maybe would have been enough to buy a stocking stuffer for one of my kids when they were younger that would have long since been given to the dogs to play with or thrown out with the trash. That is the same kind of stuff that I wish I had now to sell for money so I could earn enough to buy more stuff. Imagine that, I just recycled a whole lifetime worth of stuff in one paragraph.
I have determined that I sold lots of stuff and that I really felt rich with money from selling that stuff but I did not say what I did after I sold it. I invested in smaller and used stuff so that it would fit in my much smaller and well used space. I spent it on paint to make the humble and small abode livable. I bought bug sprays (all the cheaper brands that never work so I spent triple the amount of money and eventually bought the brand I knew to be tried and trusted) and mouse traps, and more items to help me to settle into this space and make it my own.
I did not always live in this space; first I lived in a smaller one.
In the process of preparing this place to make it livable I had to go to the store and find the things I needed. Well, that was a laugh and a half all by itself. "You are a thousand miles away from the east coast and you expect to find all the brands and items you are used to using". I must have been crazy. It took me a couple of months to find tomato paste and in some stores I still can't find Genoa salami. "What?!! I'm Italian!, Doesn't anyone eat Italian food here in tornado alley? Because all I see are fish and pork joints". Sorry but my stomach is not ready for this, I am used to spicy meat balls, hot sausage and pasta, veal and eggplant parmigiana, paste fajoli to name only my favorites" I am not used to pigs feet and guts or fish with their eyes still in.
There are so many foods I have not found yet that I might sell more stuff to pay postage to have it sent from Jersey, where I can always get my favorite foods.
If they send it here, it will have to be flown in, because that is the only way they will be ever to carry all that weight over the mountains on the east coast, but then they can slide in to the midwest and coast because the land it is very flat and sandy so no airplane would crash and smash. The worse thing that would happen is it would drill itself into a hole and kill a couple thousand moles and that wouldn't be so bad.
Ever try to walk outside in a sandy area that has mole holes and tunnels all around you. I really think sometimes that I can feel them going underneath my "humble abode" because it vibrates and shakes as if there was a ground breaking sink hole forming. Maybe they cause the sinkholes, because I do not know any other animal that is busy enough to make a thousand holes in one day all over the lawn. I have been told that those animals do not come out during the day so why did one go right past my foot and then solidly under my husband's heavy shoe? I'll tell you why, cause he knew there was a crazy Italian from the east coast who is afraid of her own shadow living here. He wanted to scare the pants off me and just about did.
Have you all caught on to the way my mind works yet? Yeah, these are some of the rantings of a bipolar woman with a new lifestyle and no one but a television or keyboard to tell it to. No one else wants to hear this crap. They all think I don't have anything worth listening to. That is probably why the television and computer takes fits once in a while too; much overuse and abuse, kind of like me.
