Here is a sad attempt at segueing a prolonged blogging absence into mad excuses and rapid-fire blogs from a new neighborhood.
I don’t even know where to begin.
The last time I posted something I think Clinton was in office. Many changes have transpired in Life since then turning what was supposed to be the Gardiner Summer of the Backpack (remember that whole Wonderland Trail thing we had a permit to do in early August and the whole basis for this Blog? Yeah, neither do I) into the Gardiner Summer of Todd Taking a New Job, Selling a House Very Fast, Frantic House Hunting in 100 Degree Heat, Two Weeks of Homelessness, Moving a Shit-Ton of Stupid Crap Two Hours North, and at long last, Unpacking It All in a New Mountain Town (with a sprinkling of Dread That We’ll Have to do this All Over Again in Seven Months).
Perhaps needless to say, not much backpacking happened in there. But there WAS a lot of house scrubbing, crap sorting, hand-wringing oh and a dump truck of stress sandwiches for everyone to enjoy as we sent Todd off to start his new job and I wondered what was to become of my own career.
We somehow navigated it all and finally found ourselves handing over the keys to our house and contemplating the two-week abyss between where homelessness began and the moment when we could get into our hard-fought rental (it’s a small town). We could have chosen to get a pricey vacation rental or holed up in a hotel. But please, that’s not how we roll. So into the pop-up camper we went, cat and all.
The girls and I took the opportunity to pretty much immediately escape to New York for a week (facilitated generously by my dad who could hear the panic in my voice about the ramifications of me spending 24/7-type time with my children, the house-less situation notwithstanding) leaving poor Todd to try and manage a new job, a cat in a cage and a dog who decided to claw her way out of the camper the one (and only) day he decided to try and leave her in it while he went to work. She has this thing about lightning (even if it’s three states away) that leads to holes in campers. It just so happens that she also hates wind and clouds. And low pressure systems in general.
Escaping the realities of Litter Boxes in Confined Spaces – spending a week of homelessness at Home.
All of that (and many more lost blog-worthy moments) is behind us now and we only have the one small hurdle of having to move again into a house (should we ever find one in this tiny town) that we’ll call our own. By random and fun chance, friends from our old town made the same move with their kids within a week of our exodus. Never underestimate the comfort of a familiar face in a new town.
And now, having gotten this bit of mandatory explanation out of the way, let us return to the fun Hiking with Unwilling Children-type blogs that we all signed up for.
Not such a bad view from our new abode.
No I Will Not Carry That Rock 