36 hours upright, 3 hours of sleep, rough weather = goofy chick

Ensconced back in the micro-haus in balmy weather, last week feels like it passed in some kind of dream form. I’m pretty bone-weary in all honesty.  It was a very emotional trip, in both good and bad ways, thanks to incredible friends.

The roughshod road trip was to pick up venison on another person’s timeline.  When someone offers you a gift, you don’t argue with their schedule.  You just go.  Rain, tornadoes, accidents all crammed my timeline down telescopically into choices between sleep or arrival on time in consideration.  But I was one dingy person by that time, let me tell you. And I can be pretty dingy on a normal day 🙂  My bed looked like nirvana as I shed my gear and crashed for a couple of hours before going to pick up the Pup and return for some decent lengths of real sleep.

While the week’s turn of events traversed gut-wrenching to exhilaration, most of them deserve a write up of their own, which I’ll attempt to do over the long weekend. The Cliff Notes version follows:

Widow is staying, so I didn’t have to evict a 62 year-old woman, despite the painful discussions that got us to that final point. Will the long term plans she have provide fruitful? Only time will tell.  For now, I have set aside that financial and emotional worry.  To each day its own problems.

Camping was a blast! Primal survivalist me got a pure injection of go-go juice, even if one of my best friends said she no longer recognized me in my ‘citified’ apparel.  In close to ten years, she’d never seen me outside of jeans, boots, ball cap and oversized sweaters or flannel shirts. I think it might have surprised her that I actually have a girlie side, lol! But I can still hoist  a cooler full of frozen venison with ease, even in high heel boots, so don’t let appearances fool ya 😉  Guess it is a good thing I didn’t pack any of my pencil skirts, she might have been permanently traumatized…

I had face time with one of my strongest and longest supportive friends, something we try for often, but, like my other close friend in the Midwest, we often fail to connect in real-time. When we do, those moments are cherished. She fed me like I was a calf going to market next week and took me on a whirlwind visit with some other like-minded people carving their way in the world outside of the box.  I am thankful for the time we had together and look forward to the day we are within same day driving distance again.  And then we will road trip to Kansas for a yak session of epic proportions!

The weather was hairy all the way until my home state on the return trip.  Accidents happened right in front of me.  Rain and cross winds played with vehicles like match box toy cars.  And they put rest areas too darn far apart in GA.  Just sayin’.

So I am home again, fired up for my future plans, stocked with hugs and laughter, and fresh venison. Time with my family awaits this week as we cobble together Thanksgiving plans for my Mom. I am thankful for safe passage to and from, and all the lessons, joys, pains that I experienced.

Life is a grab-the-ring event.  Other people have huge brass rings they want to grab.  I’ve narrowed mine down to very small, very simple things. The bitch is in the waiting for the proper point of departure from one type of life to the next.  I get frustrated that it is taking so long.  I get concerned that I’m romanticizing the real living conditions I am aiming towards when combined with the latter stages of life. Planning for an older, less spry me is difficult when I feel the way I do now every day. Re-framing day-to-day life without the conveniences that are the norm for most of us today is difficult, particularly when there are not many real-life examples to study. Marrying all of this to some kind of employment to fulfill needs I won’t be able to produce is the trickiest part.  And then there is the doing it all alone undertone that sometimes brings elation and feelings of great accomplishment, and at other times leaves me feeling empty and unimportant. In the end, we only have ourselves to answer to – if we are where we are, doing what we love, and hurting no one else.  But I have some of the best friends on the planet, who encourage me, believe in me, and sometimes when needed, hold my feet down on the ground and give me some doses of hard reality to keep me from jumping off a cliff to end up broken on rocks below.  To all of you, thanks.

And that’s the Cliff Notes version.  Stay tuned for an introduction or two to some fantastic folks I met along the way that got smart while young and are carving their own lives off the beaten path.

Happy Monday to all!

~SE (gypsy home from the road)