Preface

So, I can’t remember if or where I’ve written about my life. I’ve been talking about it on Facebook, but that’s all I’ve had time for. I had to take a break from writing to deal with my life and now I need to take a break from dealing with life so I can write and deal with my life.

I’ve been dreaming, hoping, wishing, and wanting to move to the west coast – specifically Nevada – since 2006 when I went for a trade show for work. I’ve only been out west a handful of times – AZ, NV, CA, and every time I just wanted to move there. I’ve checked housing prices in both NV and AZ.

Until about 6 months ago, it was a dream, Hope, wish, and want. Except it’s coming true before my eyes. My husband has to relocate for his job, and obviously the family goes with haha. We’ve known we were going to move to NV since about January for certain, but we initially said we were going to wait until next summer to move. At some point in May, we changed our minds, started looking at rentals in NV and put our house up for sale.

I toured our new house on a video chat. When we get there next month, it will be my first time stepping foot in my house hahaha. It’s almost double the size of our current house and has enough bedrooms for everyone. Our backyard is fenced, backs up to empty land, and the horizon is mountains.

In less than a month, our lives and all of us will be packed and driving across country. I’ll be going from a 45 minute radius of living in the same place my entire life to over a 45 hour drive between anything I’m comfortable or familiar with.

Naturally, things are batshit insane. My life was scheduled around living here this summer. I had a girls trip scheduled in the middle of this to go to Asheville. While I was there, my teeth decided to go insane, I had an emergency dental appointment that we rushed from to get to our scheduled and planned tattoo appointments on our VK.

When I booked my hydra back piece, we weren’t moving yet. Now, I’m rushing to try to get it done before we move. Last week, I had my second session, and tomorrow, I have my 3rd. In the middle of getting tattooed literally weekly, I got a root canal on my bad tooth, and I’m getting my teeth handled bc I’m dumb and should have done it before there was a problem.

The kids all have check ups of every kind in the next few weeks to make sure I’m covered both from a registration perspective but also, I don’t know how quickly I’ll get everything set up out there. I have one free day for the next 2 months. It’s randomly June 28th. I am afraid there’s something major I forgot. Haha.

I have been doing nothing but driving to and from everything, cleaning my house for showings, packing when I can, and brainstorming everything I’m forgetting because who the hell can keep track of all the moving parts of a quick cross country move?

It’s been pretty emotional for all of us. We’re all so happy and excited, but sad, upset, scared, and anxious. We’ve been doing a really good job as a family talking through it all. We spent Sunday as a family at our last PA renaissance faire, we have a goodbye party that I’m forgetting tons of shit for on Saturday. It’s bittersweet. It’s challenging. The kids are out of routine, we’re pulling up roots while they’re at the age they should be digging them deep. They’re making friends left and right, and that’s fun but it also makes it harder to say goodbye.

I’m really proud of how much the kids are being open and talking through their feelings. I’ve had a lot of 1:1s with everybody and I keep repeating – to myself and them – all of our feelings are okay. It’s okay if we’re happy and sad. We don’t have to pick one. It is both. We can be sad to say goodbye and excited about our new lives too. We can feel confused and scared. This is a big deal for all of us, and we are all being brave and doing it anyway even if it’s scary.

In my corner, I’m just trying to stay with myself. It would be so easy to escape my emotions in being busy or stressed, but I’ve been using free time to meditate, because I haven’t had the energy to process this all in my writing. Meditating is helping me find calm and be more responsive and less reactive and kind of just… give me space to understand myself.

I think all of us innately want to make bad feelings go away, but then they come back with a vengeance usually. So, I’ve been using meditation and my hours in the car to sit with my emotions, let them fall out of my eyes if they have to, and really really focus on being grateful for all of this. There’s nothing fun about all the craziness right now, but there is fun in such an incredible life changing adventure. The people moving to NV could have never done this before this point. And now, we’re so ready to start this new chapter.

The kids have been talking about the stuff they’re going to do in their new backyard and how they want to decorate their new rooms. My oldest is excited he can get a basketball net, my daughter is excited she can make new friends, and my youngest doesn’t understand what’s taking so long.

It has never been crazier in my life, and I don’t think I’ve ever been happier in my life.