chapter one and the lesson( tent)

Warning this is a long, probably personal post so please dont feel the need to read it( i am writing to let it go) but please do enjoy the photographs of our last day camping at the beach! we are now in the white mountains in nh. i will share photos with you very soon.

swirling in my head has been my thoughts about what these last few weeks have been like and the "why" that follows it. the lessons i have learned, the joys, the fears and my favorite why i believe all was meant to be.

less then a month ago i believed i would be heading to california. california being the reward of a challenge i had put for myself that turned out to be something others( in the industry) wanted to support. I had envisioned, studied, prepared and not to have the it completely air tight( you need to let ideas, plans have room to move) i left others to chance. one day randomly as i often did i went to craigslist "house swap" where i thought to myself how great it would be to find a home in montana or colorado for me to have as a center base, when i cam across a swap in california. although california had never been part of the stops i had planned on making, the fact that it was at the gates to joshua tree national park had me intrigued so i responded. A few weeks later ann and her daughter came to visit, nervous of either outcome- it was done they loved it and soon we would be swapping. the home i was going to was a dream adobe, guest house, pool and all the privacy one could dream about. the icing on the cake was that i had just met very genuine people and that feeling of it was meant to be showed it's head and we were all giddy!

Now came getting the house ready, i saw so much wrong with it, yes the house i love through my lens is not how i feel about it at all at times. chandeliers on the floor, paint not just right, bathroom leaving much to be desires. I did work hard to make it as perfect as i could. like when preparing to sell house you end up making some of the changes that you wished you would have made before, the fun part of a swap is you come back home to these things. Then the news came that my adventured would be delayed with no promised time except heading to the desert any later would be impossible. my plans had taken a one eighty.

I wanted my guessed to come regardless, it was not their fault and i must admit to being excited that they were here to see there family expand a baby was to be born, due date may 9th( is that right). i wanted it to be smooth for them more than anything. So we checked out our options, do we stay with friends, do i vist my family and leave kevin to stay at his..after much deliberation we taught "We will live in a tent for how ever long" i was excited!

the day my guessed arrived we had already headed to newburyport. we wanted them to make themselves at home asap without us being there. they called and were pleased and ann said" it felt as if we came home" tears ran down my face as i heard the message..because i was so anxious that i might have overlooked something. as i wrote on the post about living in a tent we arrived to our destination and the sun was setting and just then " it was meant to be" popped into view once again.
Then we received a call that something had gone wrong with the house but was completely fixable, so we thought. It dragged too long their patience was to kind and i thought it will all work out! but a lesson i had learned - when my body and mind begins to shut down i see everything with rose colored glasses and i find myself reassuring everyone, or more so i start to reassure myself that everything will be okay, and that the solution is just around the corner and believed it myself.

While "K" and i where loving living this way more than we anticipated( do not get me wrong we love. love hiking and camping) but this as stated in a previous post was a little different- but no sacrifice.( this is how i feel and although i am sure kevin feels similar, he would have to write it himself to reassure certain individuals that could not imagine finding happiness in such a situation). So even though we were enjoying it. I felt the failure seep through. How did i not for see this? how i had tried so very hard to make it perfect and now that too was not to be. now the grey set in and for those who were depending on me to make it smooth.

then the anonymous comments- i had not seen it and received a few phone calls and many e-mails asking if i had seen it. when finally did, i wanted to shrug it off, listen to all the lesson i had learned about; what i know is to be true and someone else's perceptions of the truth. but i failed there to- the anonymous managed to seep through. Now of course some of what that non- anonymous was saying was true- if you are still reading this you would have come across a half a dozen-no wait this is a long post two dozen:) typos and incredible bad grammar. yet it-was the tone of how it was said "......is horrible" the person wanted to hurt me, not criticize ( there is a difference to me), then there was the whole"... be a contributing part of society?" i can't argue this point, i just can't. then came "toughen up" well ironically i had found that i had started to use my blogging as a journal of sorts that sometimes i too felt like i was whinny-yet that was for me to feel and not for some anonymous (wait non-anonymous) person to say..i used to keep everything to myself and somehow i started to release it, feeling as if some others could benefit but also that i did not hold on to it for decades as i once did. then it it hit k,my family and i that this person was not anonymous but someone close enough to know some but not all. i responded with a comment in the only way i know how, turn it into a lesson. i was okay with it. like i said there was some truth in it. Yet i also believed that the person could not believe that my experiences were true and that we actually run with the punches and enjoy them too.

then in the evening late, late in the evening i received a call saying that the anonymous was back with a vengeance. i refused to read it, in fact i stayed away from my computer till noon the next day( which is usually impossible for me) but somehow i was trying to prepare for it-wow was i wrong i was not prepared at all- no i was sucker punched( do you guys like my cliches- stole them:) he( soon we will know who ( maybe them) that person is, since blogger and tech friend have decided to look into it) really went to town(oops another one:) at first it hit me hard, then for some reason i let it go within a few hours, yet an underlining feeling was that this was someone close to my husband and i. but there is where the anonymous person let a few things slip as well as the fact that it was hard to find some truth in what (he ) wrote. although i have owned a tea shop for many years, right now it is dormant. i had never went to a tea convention, ever. i have went to many others in my life time mostly landscaping- i had never went to a tea one because most of them where in vegas( which to me was not conducive to tea) and a lot of money. then the person said filling my fans with fake interpretation of my life- well the only thing i know how to do is to show the beauty of the things around it, no matter what my circumstances are -there is always beauty- always a "this is meant to be moment". that is how k and i live- we make the best of it. but the non- anonymous wonders why i do not share the grey- read my blog description( go ). and like all grey days the blue sky often follows. then came mother theresa comment- something i am not sure if i understood- i do not have a halo on my head, never will but i also have learned that i am a good person( those words are hard for me to write) for i struggle with them everyday- yet i have met a lot of horrible people who make no effort and are full-time selfish people- that is not me and yes i saying it outloud!

now your comment about me being a "fake" i ask a fake what exactly? i think it is the opposite that bothers you, the fact that i see it- life is what we are living now- that there is four seasons in everyday and i embrace it! and finally the comment that killed me( admitting that you upset me this much bothers me)"lets ask "k" how he feels..." i think the person is angry. first because instead of writing kevin i write "k". i like the sound of it, most bloggers refer to their spouses by an initial as if we a re protecting the identity:) this part leads me to believe you are close to him and care for his well being or maybe you think you do- but perhaps if you were there when he first read it- you-would see that i could have after a bit shrugged the comment off until i saw how much it upset him, just like i and (real) friends around he got it- that this was coming from someone who was passing themselves as a friend.. k and i talked it over on a long walk with the dogs and decided we would drop it but what happened was we both started to suspect everyone- that is happens you suspect even-the ones you care for the most and because we love our friends and family we decided that it would be best to find out whom this person(s) is, not because the words affect us anymore they don't, but what we do care about is that there is an underline hurt that has us afraid of trusting the people we have been so close too and because we love them all we must rule them out.

wow this was long!!!!!!!!!!!

Now i will quickly finish this off by saying that except for the anonymous part. we are so glad that we have been tenting. I have learned that i did not need so much stuff and love the simplicity of having less. i discovered that this was a great way to practice what i will one day soon be doing across the country and finally that everyday can be the best day ever!
and that is why i say this was meant to be!!

oh and ps. the baby is tsill in her belly- that is another lesson they come out when the are ready !