Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Our Weird, Wild, Wonderful Adventure

Well, that's one way of looking at it. You could also call it fearsome, frantic, foolishness. Monumental mess of memories. My life right now is all of those.

It's because my family and I are embarking on a brand new chapter of our lives. We're undertaking one of those "major lifestyle stresses" you read about.
In one week a crew of people will take over our home and pack everything into boxes (that I haven't already packed). The next day everything will be loaded on a truck and taken to Madison, Wisconsin.

I am very much looking forward to living in Madison. Hubby is pretty much just "going along", but fairly positive about it all. Our grown daughter will be moving with us, but it will be quite a wrenching experience for
her. She's a born and bred New Jerseyan. This home is the only one she's known, so it'll be a tough move for her. That will also make it harder for me. I can feel her pain because I did what she's doing.

Almost 30 years ago I remarried and left all my friends and family to come live in this strange land called Oak Ridge, NJ. It was possibly the hardest thing I ever did. Facing every holiday, birthday, anniversary without family around was tough. There were tears (and I'm not a cryer). I made friends, but most friends spend all those special days with their own families. I was miserable for so many years and just could not find any peace with life in New Jersey. Ultimately, I resigned myself to making the best of it. So, not to make light of my daughter's pain, but I am still very much looking forward to the move.

However, nothing EVER goes as smoothly as we'd like. We have a buyer for our house. But they wo
n't set a closing date until we install a new septic system. We're currently waiting on the permit approval. So we will be making this move before we actually have the closing on the house. Therefore, we will be somewhat short-funded. There will be enough to manage it all, but here's the kicker.

We have no kitchen in our Madison house. Last October I had it removed to install hardwood floors throughout the house. I have the new one all ready to go---all I need is money to pay for it. After the closing on the NJ house, that won't be a problem, but until then, we'll be "camping" in our kitchen area. I'm sure it'll all work out, but it's pretty frustrating--this not knowing when the closing will occur. It's like feasting on nails every day.

I don't know when I'll ever get back to this blog again, but hopefully I'll be able to report that we're happily settled in our new home with our new kitchen.