Welcome to the New Year

Hi, folks. It’s been a few months since I’ve gotten in here, and I’m sorry. Crazy abounds around here, particularly lately, and it makes keeping up the way I’d like difficult.

We’ve been very lucky (knock on wood) to have avoided contracting the virus, which is all to the good, but quarantine is definitely taking a toll. Because of underlying health conditions, even though restrictions have been lifted somewhat, we haven’t been taking advantage of that fact. The kids are still streaming their classes, despite school having reopened part time, and they probably won’t be going back this year at all. The lack of social contact seems to be very much affecting Bryony, and last month we had to admit her to inpatient care at the hospital. My ten year old child had several plans in her mind for committing suicide, and had been cutting herself as a coping mechanism.

Ten years old.

My heart broke. There is no other phrase for it.

As a family, we sat down and discussed it with her. We told her that the fact that she had made actual plans meant that we were officially over our heads. We could no longer deal with things on our own, and she would have to go to the hospital. She agreed; she wanted to go. She wanted to get well. And her mama just fell apart at that point.

Bryony told me to think of it as a really long sleepover at a friend’s house. And she told me that no matter how close or how far she was from me, she would always be with me. My youngest child, my baby, so brave. I was a wreck.

And so, I drove her to the emergency room, where she was admitted, and we were told that she would be there until such time as a facility opened up that could take her. Until then, they acted as a holding facility, keeping her physically safe, but not doing any actual treatment. I would be the only point of contact because of Covid rules.

There has been a distinct division in the family lately. On top of everything else, Aneira had come out as trans, feeling more comfortable identifying as male and pansexual, something that I am struggling to reconcile within myself. Understand: I love my children. There is nothing they could do to change that. And I am not phobic in regard to the LGBTQ community. I want to be supportive of my child, but where he says he has been thinking about this for years, this is an entirely new concept for the woman who gave birth to two daughters, and now has a son and a daughter. Loving him and supporting him does not mean that I don’t mourn the daughter I no longer have, and I hope that makes more sense to someone than it currently does to me. I have a son who is a stranger to me in many ways, who has the face and form of the daughter I bore, and it’s very hard for me to wrap my head around. And because she is now he, I am no longer the go-to parent. He and the hubby have become very close, where he and I have lost that closeness. He feels more in common with my husband, particularly in light of my husband’s own preferences. So there is a division right down the midline of the family, with Bryony and I on one side, and Aneira and the hubby on the other.

With Bryony in the hospital, and the buddy-buddy closeness of the other two, I felt very alone, and I pulled back. I spent all of my time either in the studio or the bedroom catching up on tv shows I hadn’t watched in awhile. And though both of them professed to be missing Bryony as well, I couldn’t feel that they did. They had each other, while the child that remained close to me wasn’t there. I was depressed and scared and sad, and it didn’t feel as though anyone else was, so I withdrew more and more.

Bryony stayed at the hospital for two long weeks, with me visiting as often as I could. She wasn’t the only child there, and in fact the doctor said that they are seeing a spike in the number of children in the pediatric behavioral health ward, believing that parents are seeing more behavior issues because of the quarantine. Because of that spike, beds were in short supply at treatment facilities, and Bryony was released to outpatient care after two weeks because a facility never opened up for her, and it was decided that it would be worse to continue her exposure to those who had worse mental health issues than she did, so home she came. In addition to ADHD/ODD, she has been diagnosed as borderline bipolar, something we feared happening because we had our own issues.

But the familial division has made itself felt. I haven’t quite come back all the way from my own withdrawal, and I still feel very much in the middle. Bryony is still acting out, though a bit less than before, and her brother and father have very little patience with her, so I am acting as a buffer between one child and the rest of the household, while struggling to maintain my own equilibrium and failing. It doesn’t help that I can see both sides of the problem, because I can’t seem to find a way to fix the problem.

I’ve continued working on different projects in weaving and crocheting, and even cooking, and I’ve posted on Instagram (@sibelabmom, if anyone is interested in following me there), and I’ve begun therapy myself, but this is the first time I’ve felt settled enough to blog in awhile. So, sorry for the long ramble!!

Read Full Post »

Sidetracked

I came into the studio today with the sole purpose of trying a little harder to organize the area, but there are problems. One is just the sheer number of little items that pile up everywhere. It’s not the larger pieces of equipment; those are easy. It’s all of the little ones, particularly those of which you don’t have eight million of the same item. Take shuttles, for instance. If you just label a drawer for shuttles, you can toss all of them in there, and you’re done. But say you break them down according to the looms they’re for: rigid heddle, inkle, floor loom, etcetera. Well, the Flip only has one shuttle, and I’m not going to earmark a drawer for one shuttle. So it goes into the desk drawer, with the small box of miscellaneous clips, another of stitch markers, and so on. The top of my desk and the desk drawers are a mass of little things that don’t really have a place to call their own…yet.

Some things, you know will live on your desk forever because it’s the best place for them, things like pens and paper clips. The rest, you kind of have to make up as you go along. One of the things I’d like to make is a series of pockets to hang on the desk hutch, to hold the studio remote controls. Yes, there is a television, as well as a stereo in the studio. I don’t always want it to be quiet in here. Sometimes I want music, other times I put on movies…it depends on the day! The stereo has a remote, the tv has its own and the satellite remote, the DVD player under the tv has a remote, and the fan has a remote. On the desk, they take up a lot of space, but hanging pockets would take them out of the way and still keep them organized and accessible.

I’ve also got this rolling cart with ten drawers that has been awesome for me. I’ve ordered four more of them. Two are for the studio, the other two are for the kids to neaten up their bedrooms. Especially Bryony. We won’t discuss her room. If you have kids, you can already guess. If you don’t have kids, once upon a time you were one, so you still have a pretty good idea.

My other problem is my ability to be sidetracked by other projects. Today, it was the little mini inkle that got me, and then this blog post about being sidetracked lol!!

Read Full Post »

Rabbit Hole

Filling up, with more to spin!

I can’t be the only one who does this: look up at the top of the rabbit hole of fiber obsession and marvel at how deep s/he has fallen.

I started the long fall back in 2011, intending only to learn how to weave. That was it, the sum total of my ambition: learn to do what I’d been wanting to learn since that first potholder loom as a child. But then, I wanted to have communication with other people who shared the interest, and I joined Ravelry, having no idea that it was the entrance to Wonderland. Crocheting and beadwork, which I already knew, and weaving were followed by spinning, then inkle and tablet weaving, then a desire to learn to use a spindle, then loom knitting, and things continued to explode from that point on. If it had to do with yarn or thread, and sounded interesting, I had to at least try it. Most of it stuck, to varying degrees, with definite favorites emerging from the chaos.

When I look around my studio now, I often think that I need to call my homeowner’s insurance and find out if I need additional coverage just for the contents of the studio, because I know, in the case of a disaster, replacing the equipment in there would be all but impossible without insurance. Rich, we most assuredly are not.

I imagine that most hobbyists, particularly those who do not actively sell their wares on a regular basis, wonder the same thing. Yarn, in itself, is not an expensive item, but once you have a stash built up, as most do, to lose it can be costly, especially if we’re not talking about acrylics. And that’s just the yarn stash! Tools are a whole different level of expense! Some, like tongue depressors, are inexpensive. Commercial tatting shuttles and needles don’t cost much. Handmade tools, though, cost a significant bit more, made, as they often are, by those who use, or whose spouses use, their own products. Those people know the pros and cons of those too, and they often reach a level of quality that the mass-produced counterparts simply can’t match. They do the job well enough, sure, but they don’t feel or behave the same way.

Then there are the larger pieces of equipment: the looms, the drum carders, the spinning wheels, the accessories that help us to use our equipment efficiently…all of these things add up. I’ve seen ads from folks giving up their hobby, selling off the contents of their studio, and the costs run into the many thousands of dollars. I used to scoff at those ads, until I started adding up what each individual piece was worth.

The rabbit hole is not a cheap residence. It is, however, worth its weight in gold, in terms of my sanity.

The nice thing about a fiber arts studio is that you generally only have to buy a piece of equipment once, and it will last for many years. And the depreciation rate is negligible, although the cost in terms of space might drive your other half crazier than financial costs!

Hmmm…I’ve just about talked myself into calling the insurance company. My studio is kinda bursting at the seams. It’s taken years to build up, but there’s a lot of stuff in there!

Speaking of tools, you can see from the photo that I’m well on the way to loading the Mayan spinner full of yarn. I had to stop myself earlier. I only spun for about an hour, but it’s entirely too easy to get a rhythm going and forget to give yourself a break. By the time I put it down last night, I’d spun for a couple of hours. I didn’t feel the effects immediately, but I did feel them! So I kept myself to an hour this morning. It actually wasn’t too hard to restrain myself: the central air vents are limited in the studio, and the spinner actually requires a bit more physical work than a drop spindle. I actually found myself getting hot from swinging the spinner around. With the lack of air conditioning, it was not hard to decide to stop for a little while. Besides, I want to spend some time on the looms, too. And on the blanket!

 

Read Full Post »

Out of the Mouths of Babes

As we were sitting in the living room the other day, Bryony asked me a question: if I could do anything, have anything, be anything, what would I do, have, or be?

We had each been doing our own respective things in the same room, which is pretty common. She was engrossed in Minecraft because she’s somehow managed to lose Animal Crossing — again — and I was wrapped up in weaving, vaguely listening to her chatter. It’s not that I don’t listen to her, it’s that she is a child whose tongue starts wagging the second she rolls out of bed, and it literally does not stop until she rolls back into it. I’m not the worst mother in the world, but neither am I the best, and I simply cannot listen actively all the time, or I’d never get anything done. So, vaguely listening, but she insistently repeated the question, and I picked up on it the second time.

My first inclination was to laugh — only a child could ask such a question and think it was simple to answer, but then I realized that it actually was. If money was no object, who and what would her mother be? What dreams would I fulfill if I could do so, just because I wanted to?

It didn’t even take much thought. I’d move the family north, probably to the New England area. I’d build a house. Not a mansion or something ridiculous, just a house. I’ve never felt that a family of four needs a house with thirty bedrooms and sixteen bathrooms, with a home theater built in, complete with reclining leather seats. I don’t want a place so large that maid service is pretty much a requirement. Five bedrooms, four bathrooms, a gourmet kitchen with plenty of storage, living room, dining room, and a weaving studio with lots of windows for natural light attached to the house. Maybe a barn, so we could have some horses. The house would be on a couple of wooded acres, but still have city water, sewer, and gas, because I don’t ever want to deal with a well, septic, or propane ever again. Central air, of course. A pool? No, darling, probably not. Maintaining animals is one thing, maintaining a pool is something else again.

Was that it? Was that all I wanted, just an awesome house to hang out in? She wanted me to take it further. Well, okay, I’d also like to travel to different places and learn different weaving techniques from different cultures.

She grinned at that, completely unsurprised by that answer, and I laughed. My kids know me pretty well. Mama is fairly predictable.

Then came the big question, the one I suspect she really wanted to know: would I still have her, her sister, and their dad? Absolutely!!! That didn’t even need to be asked; I would never give them up! They are my family, and I love them. They go where I go!

She went back to Minecraft after that, curiosity — and maybe insecurity? — satisfied. I, however, was daydreaming about the things I would do if I could.

Clearly, I need to hit the lottery.

Read Full Post »

The “New Normal”

This phrase has been a mantra in our house since we moved a year ago. Having a new normal seems to be our new normal.

We didn’t have a problem when we left Arizona to move to Colorado, probably because the kids were very young, and the adults were actually happy to be leaving the desert behind. Leaving Colorado has proven to be a gaping wound for the entire family. The children were old enough that their friendships had forged deeper connections, and leaving them was harder, no different than it was for their parents. It hurt, the more so because the longer we were in Colorado, the less we wanted to leave, and over the years had come to the conclusion, unconsciously, that this was our place. For me, the only thing Colorado lacked was a beach.

As much as we miss our friends, we miss the scenery just as much. Days like today, we feel it the most. On a warm, sunny day in Colorado, too nice to stay indoors, we would have headed for Black Forest or Foxrun Regional Park. The tall pine forests are just gorgeous to view. We had avoided Black Forest for a couple of years after the forest fire there, because it was painful to see the burned areas, but we had gone back to driving through every chance we got. And though it was a long drive from our house, Foxrun was always worth the drive, with its fountain in the center of the lake, quiet hiking trails, two playgrounds, numerous picnic areas, and places just to lie on a blanket and soak in the environment. The park was huge, well-tended, and rarely unbearably crowded, with trees everywhere you looked. We spent time there in every season, including winter, when the kids would play on the equipment and we adults would hide out in the truck.

It isn’t that the scenery in North Caolina is not beautiful, because it absolutely is. I have yet to really come across an area where I thought it to be ugly. It’s just different.

We knew from the beginning that this move was going to be hard. We just didn’t anticipate how hard it would be.

Read Full Post »

Focus

As this shelter-in-place saga continues, I find myself in an almost surreal place, and it is playing merry hell with my head.

To begin with, everything is different since we moved, and almost a year later, it’s all still new to us. It’s a different environment, climate, populace. So completely not Colorado. I don’t say that as a complaint, simply an observation of fact. We left pine forests for magnolias and sweetgums. We left cold for hot. It is different here, and we have yet to really become comfortable here.

Another difference is that hubby is working now. It’s been seventeen years since he was last in the workforce, so that feels odd too. And now the kids are home, and homeschooling, and we are all forced to stay in. And that has suddenly become an issue.

You might say, “Yes, but you’ve been home for the last year”, and you would be right. But I didn’t realize until now, when I’m not doing it, how much running around I did on a daily basis that made being home less of a problem. Between taking kids to school, going for groceries, picking kids up, various little errands here or there, I was actually out of the house almost as much as I was in it.

Now, however, I find my focus eroding. I. Don’t. Have. It. I am bouncing from project to television to book to different project to sleeping. I can’t stay with any one thing for much time. I started the blanket, and I have been working on it. I crocheted masks yesterday. I pulled out my tablet weaving loom and managed to do that for only one full repeat. For two days, I have been completely unable to play Animal Crossing, and I love that game. But it’s too slow for a brain that is bouncing off the walls. Even blogging is affected. I can’t get through a whole post in one shot. I’ve already had to go outside in my driveway, on a windy, rainy day, just to breathe. Twice.

I don’t know if this is my BPD manifesting a manic episode, or if it’s just being forced to stay still, or both.

Then you add in life’s normal little annoyances, and there’s an extreme desire to either scream, or just sit in a corner and cry.

My tooth started to ache two days ago, as if infected. Naturally, this happens in the middle of a pandemic, just when you don’t want to go near anyone, particularly a dentist, who has to get really up close and personal with your mouth. There’s no telehealth appointments with a dentist. If he can’t get his hands in your mouth, he can’t help you.

I know there are people who have it worse. We are lucky that none of us have contracted the virus yet. We’re lucky to have a home with a backyard that we can go to when we need air. Rationally speaking, you know when you’ve been lucky. You know you’re playing Russian roulette, and you’re going to keep playing until the virus is stopped or your luck runs out, whichever comes first. And you pray, every night, that you and yours will be spared. And you sit in your house and quietly lose your gorram mind.

I can’t focus. And if this is what my ADHD child’s brain is like, then I need to be more sympathetic.

How are you coping with sheltering in place? What things are keeping you from losing your mind?

Read Full Post »

…And Trying to Get Back On

As you may have guessed, I am having a bit of trouble in that department. I did start a new warp. The sett on the thread I used this time was 12 ends per inch, which drastically reduced the number of ends I needed to create. This is awesome, as far as I am concerned. We’ve gone from 432 ends to 216. I am very happy with this. So it’s still five bouts, four of 50 strands, one of 16. Wonderful! …except I made two mistakes that I didn’t see till after the fact.

The first one was that I had gotten so used to following one path on the warping mill, I forgot I had moved the guide thread over by one peg, and wound one bout short. I, of course, did not see it until the bout was done. One of the 50 thread ones, of course. Life would have been so much easier had it been the 16 thread bout.

The second mistake came when I put the five bouts on the loom. Once again, a 50 thread bout…I lost the cross. The bout is a mess.

At this point, I rage quit. Temporarily. As in, I will return to this when I calm down. Probably once the children are back in school, and I have a bit more time.

We’ve celebrated our first Yule and Christmas here in North Carolina. We had a family over for Yule that is as pagan as I am, and for  Christmas it was just the four of us. And I’ve decided I’m going to stop with these huge dinners that I’ve hung onto all my life. We’re only four people. Aneira eats less than a sparrow does, the hubby eats only a tiny bit more as he doesn’t really care for either turkey or pernil, I don’t eat a lot as I’ve been in the kitchen all day and am sick of looking at food, and Bryony will pick over what’s on her plate and complain about nearly all of it except cranberry sauce. For Yule, we had gone simple: a huge vat of chili, to feed eight people.  It was perfect.

Why didn’t I do the same thing for Christmas? Well, based on my own self-psychoanalysis, I can only come to the conclusion that it’s my mother.

My entire life, right up until I had Aneira, my mother did Christmas, and she did it up big. A turkey and/or ham, a zillion sides, dessert, dining room table decorated with a nice centerpiece, and special dishes and silverware that were only seen during the holidays. Some of my best childhood and teenage memories are tied into those holiday meals, and I think they kind of act as my last link to my mom. But Mom has been gone for 13 years now, and I think it’s time that I realized that the holiday meals she cooked also included our extended family, where mine do not. I am hundreds of miles from my closest relative, and hubby has none left on his side. As much as I love seeing those meals hit the table for the memories they evoke, they’re largely a waste of food in the end, because the four of us are never going to finish that much food. So I’ve decided I’m not doing it anymore. Instead of a turkey, it’ll be a chicken with a couple of sides. Maybe I can find a small version of pernil, who knows?

Read Full Post »

New Look

The surviving giants of my backyard

You might have noticed that the blog look has changed. I figured it was time! It’s been awhile since I updated the aesthetic around here. The header picture is actually a photo of the trees in my backyard, which I thought was a decent photo considering it was taken with a phone, and in keeping with the foliage theme, I thought a deep forest green would make a great background. I couldn’t figure out how to change the white background of the text area, though…I had in mind a pale sage green for that, but I’ll take what I can get!!!

Green used to be one of the colors I hated most in the world, right alongside yellow. I was a serious tomboy as a child. I never willingly wore a skirt if I could wear jeans and sneakers, and most of my friends were male. But I went to a Catholic school, and uniforms were required. Jumpers for girls, with little X-shaped ties…wanna guess our colors? You got it: green and yellow plaid. Eight years of it put me off of green and yellow for years. And while I’m still no fan of yellow, green and I are back on a decent footing with each other, because green is the color of forests. While I don’t have a green thumb, I love trees. The more, the merrier. It broke my heart to cut down so many of the trees around this house, but there wasn’t much choice.

I often think that I would love to live in Bilbo Baggins’ Hobbit hole in Bag End, as seen in Peter Jackson’s Fellowship of the Ring. Rivendell would suit me too. I think if I were surrounded by all of that beautiful greenery all the time, I would never get anything done. I’d be too relaxed, daydreaming, or both.

Probably both.

Okay, definitely both.

Well, that’s the story behind the cosmetic changes to the blog. I hope you like it, and that maybe the relaxing qualities I feel from the colors will carry over to you. Happy crafting!

Read Full Post »

Getting Back To It

While still unpacking, I’m also getting back to work here, and setting up the new studio, while it hasn’t been a breeze, well, it’s getting done. Sometimes it seems as though the majority of the boxes belonged to the studio! And though it’s roomier than the last, it is quickly reaching the cluttered stage.

There are new things in here that I can’t wait to use! The takadai/ayatakedai I ordered a year or so ago arrived, and I’m dying to try it. Along with that, there is a core stand for doing kumihimo braids that have, well…a core. Plus, I finally sold the Leclerc Nilus loom, and bought my dream loom, the Schacht Mighty Wolf. That was a “squeeeeeee” moment for me: 50th anniversary loom in cherry wood. Setting it up was…interesting. It’s heavy, and getting the Wolf stroller onto the legs was not fun. But she’s all set up, though still unnamed, and ready to go. And I bought her a gift of her own: a warping mill, which can carry a much bigger warp than the board can. So all four of those items have definitely contributed to the “bursting at the seams” scenario I’ve got going on here.

I’ve gotten back to chain maille as well, and I’m building up my ring stash. I’m also trying out metals and sizes that I’ve never used before, and learning new weaves. I’ve also covered the studio in dragons lol. I love them, so there are figurines and ornaments quite literally everywhere in here. Maybe they’ll bring good luck!

All of this is moving toward really getting the Etsy store underway. The girls wanted to sell their Rainbow Loom bracelets in order to earn their own money, so they’re already listed in my store. Now I’m working on building up my own inventory. I want to make this store productive, and I’d like to start hitting craft shows and such too.

I’ve had my first official customer, too!! She wanted a sterling silver bracelet in Byzantine weave, and that went out in the mail last week. When I spoke to her after she got it, she was very happy, which makes me happy. We’ve been friends since we were both little, so it was really important to me that I get the bracelet right for her, and the fact that I did, so my work is appreciated, well, wow…that feeling is awesome! Not many win-win situations nowadays, but this was one of them!!!

Space in here is entirely at a premium at the moment. The three new pieces of equipment are large, so that accounts for a lot of the space. My spinning wheel is still in its travel bag up in the bedroom, and there are a myriad of things still in boxes in the garage that need space in here too, but I’m not sure what box contains which items, and the movers just kind of piled everything in there in such a way that we can’t get to everything, so we have to empty out boxes in the order that we can reach them, which brings the entire house into play. Remember, this house is half the size of the last one, so space comes into play for everything, and we’ve had to get creative, particularly in the kitchen, which is much smaller than the last one!

I don’t have an actual pantry anymore…this house predates pantries becoming a common thing…so everything must go into cabinets. I honestly don’t know how I thought it would work, except to say that the kitchen looked a little bit bigger when there was nothing in it. I knew the countertops were going to be an issue right off the bat: the upper cabinets come down so low that you can’t store things like blenders or mixers on the counter. So first, we bought a metal wire shelving unit for the one bare area of the room, and that rapidly filled up with large items like the Instant Pot, the crockpot, the breadmaker, etcetera. And we were still opening kitchen boxes! So we went online to Mayfair and ordered a mobile island. Now, you have to understand the size of the kitchen, which also doubles as the laundry room (it has one of those folding door closets to contain your machines): to go across the room from the dishwasher to the fridge, you can take two normal steps for an adult, or one large one. Between the two appliances, I could lie on the floor and be touching both of them. There is not much room! But I brought in a small island anyway. I needed the storage and the extra counter space. It works…barely. It’ll work better when I can manage to get everyone to stop using it as a catch-all for stuff they put down and never pick up again, and when there are no laundry baskets in there. Sadly, I think that means it will never work better, because no one ever moves the hampers, either!

Unpacking a house kinda falls into the “Circle of Life” category. Really, don’t laugh!!! Every room is connected in some way during that time. You can’t unpack every box in the living room, because you haven’t found places to put the kitchen stuff you just unloaded onto the sofa. And you haven’t found those places because you’re waiting for the storage pieces you ordered. You can’t put the boxes of pet supplies in the glider room yet, because you haven’t quite got that room under control, because there’s a living room box in there (how did that wind up here???), because there was no more room in the living room, because there are kitchen boxes in there, because you have to actually use the kitchen so you didn’t load it with boxes. And there are bedroom boxes in the living room, studio boxes in the bedroom, clothing boxes in the garage, and so on.

I make moving sound like fun, don’t I?

It’s not. Anyone that has ever moved at least once already knows that, and those that haven’t yet experienced a move, well, you’re lucky and avoid it as long as you can!!! LOL.

Read Full Post »

New Home, New Life

Yes, we made it to North Carolina. We arrived April 18, closed on a new (much smaller) house on May 2, the movers arrived toward the end of May, and we have been unpacking since then, trying hard to get everything done and in place so that we can catalog everything that got broken in the move and make a claim on it all. Sadly, so far there is quite a bit.

The ferrets stayed behind in Colorado with friends, until we could get settled. I didn’t think having incredibly aromatic animals in a hotel was a good idea. The gliders did go to the hotel, and the dogs went to boarding.

Unlike our last move, the long-term hotel was very different. The last time, in both hotels, there were separate bedrooms. This time, we were all in one room, with a kitchenette, which made for some tension. Nobody wanted to be boxed in like we were, but we had to deal with it. There were definitely some days, though, where it was tough.

With two glaring exceptions, the trip across country was pretty uneventful. Flat all the way, although the Mississippi River gave me some trouble, with my fear of heights. The next thing to terrify me was the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee. I think. You don’t realize you’re going up until you reach the point that you have to go down, and it’s a very steep grade that also twists and turns all the way to the bottom. And the speed limit is 55. With trucks and cars speeding by you. Needless to say, I thought the speed limit should be 10 mph. By the time I got to the bottom, white knuckles all the way, I was shaking and crying, and couldn’t bring myself to take the truck above 60 (it was a 75 mph speed limit). This is saying something, as I’m a leadfoot and always have been. I’ve been much better since having children in the vehicle with me regularly, never going more than five mph above the limit unless I’m alone–then all bets are off. But I couldn’t even get to the speed limit after that experience!

Oh, wait, there was a third harrowing occurrence! This one involved the dogs. Well, one dog. The youngest one.

I’d bought a topper for the truck bed, specifically for this trip. Brand new. I had it one day before putting the dogs in it to hit the road. Within an hour of getting in the truck, miss Valkyrie ripped out the wiring of the topper. How kind of her.

Then we made it almost all the way to NC without incident, until Hwy 20, where she proceeded to rip the screen out of the topper window, and tried to jump out of the moving truck. Mind you, all dogs were anchored to the steel loops of the bed. So hubby, in the rental car behind me, was honking and trying to call me, and my kids are having a meltdown, while I, having already seen what was going on, was trying to get off the highway. We rearranged the dogs at that point, so she couldn’t get to anything. And I was very happy to drop them off at the boarding kennel, finally, that afternoon.

I’ll leave the story of our move here, and get back to it next time!

Read Full Post »