That's great, darnit!

Well, I'm a little disappointed, even if I have some really great news.  Our generator broke, and we took it in to The Home Depot for the warranty work to get done.

And they failed miserably.  I'd had this really great blog post written and planned out to complain about The Home Depot and the repair service runaround we'd gotten and how they super sucked.  I was really excited to tell you about the whole story - I'd gotten very floral with my language and it was a great post.  I was just holding onto the post until the end of the runaround and could tell the whole story...

Then the local store went and replaced our generator at no charge even though the repair service wouldn't cover it under warranty!!!  Darn it!  They went and ruined my post with their confounded good customer service!!!  So long story short, our generator broke and the Kennewick, WA Home Depot did a great job fixing the issue.

What is going on???

I've been giving some thought to the overall goals of this blog.  Originally I thought it would be fairly instructional - on topics such as living off grid and homesteading.  I've recently realized that I barely have any idea what I'm doing!!!  Really, most of my blog posts have been more along the lines of what NOT to do rather than the proper way to do things!  And you know what?  That's okay!  One thing I'd decided that I really wanted to be above all else is authentic.  If I were to provide all kinds of instructional information to you, without feeling like I knew what I was doing, it'd all be a lie.  So really I feel that the blog is going in a more memoir-ish direction.  A learn from my mistakes direction. A learn as I go direction.  And if I really know how to do something, I'll show you how to do it.  And of course there will be food!  And hopefully farm animals!  And if there’s anything you want to hear about, let me know!  I just might go that way, too!

Um…..hi?

She said sheepishly.  My last post was over 2 years ago.  (That stuck in my throat a little.)  But what I’m about to tell you is probably going to stick a lot more.  Especially since this revelation has been 2+ years in coming…

And it’s uniquely difficult since in my last post I was espousing the benefits of being open and telling the world your problems.  Little did I know that the problems could get so bad I would crawl into a hole and not come out for years.  I just couldn’t bear the thought of anyone knowing what was going on.  I was ashamed.

Well, remember how our lives were in upheaval and we were moving?  We ran out of money and lost our home, but had a new option, albeit a less than optimal one…. Things didn’t quite work out that way.

Our gift horse turned out to be more of a profit driven ass (did I say ass?  I meant mule.)  The miserable situation that we had been offered came with an exorbitantly high price tag.  Would you like some skin along with the blood you are trying to squeeze from the rock??? Homeless and destitute are not words that some people understand.  But again, luckily for us, some people do.  My dear husband talked to his family.  He hadn’t wanted to do that, because he was ashamed too, but our only other option was moving into the national forest.  There was a family meeting and we were allowed to move our travel trailers onto the family plot.  And all our junk and the chickens, too.  I think we are technically gypsies now, since we have been living out of the trailers for 2 and a half years.  It has been a humbling (and pretty miserable) experience.  I try everyday to be thankful for what we have, and grateful for the blessings we do have.  Things could be worse.  So there is our dirty little secret and the reason I haven’t felt like talking for a whole 2 years.

(You may ask, “What the heck?  Don’t you people work for a living?  What’s wrong with you?”)  1) Don’t judge, Judgey McJudgey Face, lest ye be judged.  2) Yes, we do.  But since I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia several years ago, my income has steadily gone downhill because of the jobs I am able to take (I make maybe a third of what I used to, on a good year) and Woody’s business took a nosedive in 2008 from the “Great Recession” and it never recovered before being laid to rest in 2011.  And our bills just didn’t seem to understand that our income took a $50K a year hit.  We could have liquidated all our assets and been solvent.  And be living comfortably in an apartment just like the rest of the world.  But our dreams wouldn’t die.  We want to escape the rat race, and the only way to do that was to hold onto what we have, not sell it!  We work, pay our property payments and our bills, just like everyone.  Only whereas we once could afford rent in town and to buy our property, we can only afford one of those.  We chose the property.  And it is remote enough that at this point we can’t live there and still make enough money to pay the other bills off. [A town of 90 doesn’t have lots of openings in the job market.]  So yes, we work, and work hard, but as of now we are still trying to save our dreams from the chopping block. 
Wow, that’s a huge load off my chest.  Now that I’ve yelled it from the rooftops, maybe I can go ahead and move on with life.  We’ve continued homesteading as much as we can in the trailers, and still have our little flock of 14 chickens.  As soon as we save up enough for a well for the property, we might just get moved up there!  Wish us luck and stay tuned for more updates.

Learning Curve

I'm still new to this blogging thing and am taking all of you with me through this torturous learning curve.  I haven't had much time the last few weeks to blog and what time I have had, I was working on a specific post that I've had in mind for a while…. Which ended up becoming a much larger project than I thought it would be.  What I have learned from all this is that if I have a post that cannot get posted within a day or two, it must be put into a project pile and I will post an 'easier' entry.  Otherwise it becomes a quagmire!!!  So now I'm digging my way out.  And we've had to dig our truck out of quagmires before and it takes some time!!!  Hopefully this is one of those times where I learn my lesson the first time.  Keep your fingers crossed and stay tuned for my looooong project post.