I blame it on the sun and a good cup of coffee. Our moving adventure started last summer when we were visiting my parents in San Diego. We were living in Olympia, Washington at the time and were eager to drink in the glorious weather that California offers almost year-round. In fact, we were literally drinking cups of coffee on the balcony overlooking the San Diego Bay when it hit us. We could make a change. We both looked at one other and said, “Wouldn’t it be nice to live where there’s more sun? Doesn’t this feel good?” Yes, it was that moment that planted the seed: the seed that would grow to be a most unruly vine that would entangle our hopes and dreams in its tendrils. Dramatic? You betcha! It’s been quite a wild ride!
That defining moment on the balcony led to a series of events that we thought would go relatively smoothly. Some have, and some definitely haven’t.
- We put our house on the market in one of the worst financial times ever. The result? No one bought our house after many months of keeping it clean, spending money to prettify it, and living like guests in our own home.
- We are renting a house here in CA rather than buying, since our house hasn’t yet sold. The result? We’ll be moving again in a year or two, once we buy. Ugh.
- Rentals are competitive here in the Bay Area of California, not to mention expensive. The result? We lucked out and got a house in a great neighborhood, on a corner lot, that takes dogs, has air conditioning, and is near anything we could want. Score one for us! That said, it wasn’t in the town I wanted to be in.
- While driving from WA to CA our car broke down and we were stuck on the side of the road in 90 degree weather with two kids, two dogs, a cat and some of our belongings (that’s us in the picture). People drove by and waved to us like we were on vacation. Really! The result? We paid almost $200 for a taxi ride back to civilization (yep–the dogs and the cat rode in the taxi, too. Hubby rode in the tow truck) and more money to spend another night in a hotel.
- As the taxi dropped us off at our pet friendly hotel (LOVE La Quinta Inns), a very large dog barked at my dogs, causing our alpha dog to become anxious and bite our other dog’s tail. The result? Blood all over the lobby floor and a “helpful” stranger admonishing my dogs with, “Your mommy should take better care of you!” (Their mommy had to hold herself back from biting HER!). I cleaned up dog blood off the gorgeous tile floor with my tail between my legs!
- The next day, as I was taking one of the dogs outside for a potty break, we went up a little hill to the designated pet area. My black lab/german shepherd is 11 years old and her arithritic hips are in bad shape. She slipped down the hill and took me down with her. The result? I slid on my back three feet, scraping six inches off my arm and embedding it with dirt and rocks, not to mention blood everywhere.
- Once the car was fixed and we finished our drive to CA, we soon learned on 103 degree day that the air conditioning wasn’t working. The result? Four hot, sweaty, cranky people and three overheated pets.
- On the same day the air conditioner went out, a pipe burst in our master bathroom. The result? Water streamed out of our kitchen ceiling, through the lights and the microwave and onto the floor.
I can honestly say that has been one stressful time. There were times when I felt sorry for myself and times when I was just so tired of life’s curve balls that all I could do was fall into bed. Sometimes I felt indignant that life wasn’t fair, not unlike a six year old who got a smaller piece of cake than her sister and was having a hissy fit about it.
I’m a big believer in learning and growing through challenges, and this has been no exception. And I’ll share what got me through this tough time in my next blog post. For now, I just wanted you to know that, sometimes, before we can learn from stressful events, we just have to let ourselves feel sad and overwhelmed and whatever the jumble of feelings are without trying to “fix” them.
That’s where I am. It’s not where I’ll land forever, though.
Stay tuned for the positive spin, what I’ve learned, and how I’ve gotten through it.
Sometimes, the thought of a summer stretched before you with your kids home can make you wonder how on earth you’ll keep your kids busy. You’ve probably heard the phrase, “I’m booooored…What can I do?” more than once. When I was growing up (no, I didn’t walk ten miles in the snow to go to school–it was San Diego!), if we were bored, our parents said to us “Bored people are boring” and “Good. I have some chores you can do.” We learned to be un-bored very quickly. Funny how that worked! When confronted with cleaning or yard work, we suddenly found more compelling things to do.
Recently, I double-dog dared my newsletter subscribers to do something that is hard for many people: to name 3 of their strengths. Many of you reading this blog post may already BE on my newsletter list and were one of the ones who wrote to me and said, “This is HARD!” One of the reasons I was so compelled to do this is that I’ve noticed that the strengths-based movement has taken hold in schools and businesses, but is lagging behind in parenting. And when I say lagging, I mean SERIOUSLY lagging. Just look at all the books on “mom guilt” as part of the evidence that moms are hard on themselves. It’s like we’ve finally come clean that motherhood is hard and that we compare ourselves to others, but we don’t know how to get out of this emotional quicksand.