Bye-Bye Birdie.

Fair warning, I haven’t had a chance to edit photography so this is going to be a bunch of words…. with a few not the most artistic… we will call them slice of life snapshots. WELCOME TO THE I LOVE ME FEST! I will do my best to offer philosophy where I can.

I am writing you from my desk, or at least I think it is? I can’t see any surfaces on it to properly identify it as there’s papers strewn about my kids have colored on, for some reason an unopened can of rootbeer full calorie at that, gross. Birthday and other cards I need to mail out, stationary dumped, and a giant rainbow stuffy that needs mending with a needle and thread.

I can already hear my husband appalled I put this on the internet.

I have always said my desk represents my current mental state, and it has never been more true than this moment. Summer break with 3 kids and a husband on nights has won the war.

To stay on brand with disaster intended to write the blog “Bye Bye Birdie” almost two weeks ago. The intention was to make a VLOG with a garden tour… of mice and men. The title made me giggle to myself with the Ann-Margaret little wave as the Ducks were driving away with a very sweet older couple that has given them a much happier home.

Now listen. The Goth Ducks were my life, but due to the nature of life on a homestead, they were eaten. The first loss was told to me at 1am when my husband nudged me awake “the ducks are out…” and we managed to wrangle them up out of the yard and back to their coop. Which partly due to an error in design and why shoulder all the blame when I can also point out they never understood the concept of the building being safer than a corner. After that we spent every night corralling them and catching them and putting them up. Until the one night Hugh had to work and I did all I could on my own and they ended up under the coop. I thought well that’s a pretty safe place. I was wrong. The final Goth duck was gone the next morning. The other ducks were cute don’t get me wrong. But I had to buy 6 to get the last two goth ducks…. and well….

They have a much better set up now and there is a pond they get to visit. The couple had lost their female duck earlier and their drake was lonely… it was truly meant to be.

This year was all about trying things we wanted, and now I know ducks are just a big no for me. But at least the bees have worked out.

Okay. About falling through the floor.

Before we start this story, if you are from Florida like I am… the land of no basement, everything is built on concrete slabs here are words I didn’t know:
Subfloor is the flat boards underneath your flooring that sit on joists, joists are the little wooden beams that carry the weight of your home.

It’s funny to me to complain about the mess on my desk as I just returned from refilling my coffee cup and was reminded that a large portion of my house only has plywood as a floor. Which is a marked improvement from the gigantic hole that was there for 3 days. You see it was supposed to be a simple two day project of replacing subfloor. But when we finally cleared the two layers the joists were done… just wrong and we realized the dip in our floor wasn’t from bad subflooring but poorly done repairs. You know, we keep thinking we are desensitized to the “WTF” of seeing bad repairs in this home, but seeing how they just put some sort of concrete over a hole by the back door where the wood rotted because they never fixed the gutters… you know you are not wrong for making a judgment on their character.

When we saw this all we could think about was that moment when Commander Shepard sees The Thorian in Mass Effect 1….

“Nothing’s ever simple is it?” - Commander Shepard

Falling Through the Floor:
The Ultimate Grumpy and Sunshine Moment.

The true non-fantastical version of Grumpy & Sunshine is a lot more “Against my better judgement.” And a lot less, “You’ve bewitched me body and soul.”

When we realized there was particle board Hugh got out the circle saw and cut through the first layer so we could remove it in chunks, which you should do anyway. Once we got through that layer he started cutting the plywood underneath. As you can see in the photo above cutting the top layer left marks in the plywood layer.
THIS IS MY MAIN DEFENSE.

Hugh had just cut across the plywood and I was getting pelted by little bits of chipped off wood as he cut and also realized I should get on the other side of him since that was where I would be going with the scrap wood to take it to our trash pile on the trailer. So I made my move stepping out of the range…. or so I thought.

Pain. There was no flashing of my life there was simply taking a step in full confidence and then suddenly realizing all of my weight was caught by my left hamstring (who is the real MVP of this story) and my right leg was dangling… and throbbing. If I had properly proportioned legs to my 5’6” frame this may have been different, but I was given stumps like trunks and thus my leg was saved from all my weight landing on it after an unexpected 3 foot drop. Score for short legs.

I looked over to my husband who was staring at me. That glaring intense villainous gaze he has. Those large green eyes boring into me from behind safety glasses, the anger intensified by immaculately groomed, yet still rather large and dark eyebrows. Lips pursed in a hard line. I knew was he was thinking, omg. You fucking idiot. But he took a jagged breath for control and a deep accusing voice asked, “Are. You. Hurt?”

This is not what romance novels have taught me to expect. He was supposed to leap up from between the joists where he stood in the crawl space and run over to me ripping me from my hole into big bulging manly alpha male arms! Then he would scold me from this safety net about how I am his entire world and I need to be more careful with his world and bandage me up with tender yet callused hands.

This is where I mention in our early 20s I had a head on collision pulling out of our apartment on the way to formation at 0530. When I called him he had heard the impact from inside nearly a block away “that was you!?” and he came running to me half dressed in his uniform. Once he got me home from medical where I was cleared the scolding began
“YOU COULD HAVE DIED!”
10 years later I don’t think it’s wrong to have expected this again.

“Yes, but not injured.” I responded.

Then her turned the saw back on returning to work. And they say romance is dead.

This is what happens when you’re a cute little brute that meets your soulmate when you’re both junior enlisted Marines. YOU GET NO PITTY PARTY. You also don’t get to use the excuse of I’m too pretty for manual labor when your spouse knows you’ve hiked up mountains with a 100lb pack.

This is equality ladies you have been warned.

Why suddenly all of the house work and trying things out we want to do?
Well, we’re planning to move.

Now calm down. For those who like my cozy content on Instagramdon’t worry. We are going to be here for another year so you will get plenty of chickens and gardens. And once we move I will container garden and obviously I still have to feed my heathens. Homesteading doesn’t have to be on 14 acres. Baking bread and canning are parts of my life now, and those can go anywhere with me.

It’s not because we’ve fallen out of love with our life. Though, to be honest since making the decision it has been really difficult to stomach parts that come with homesteading…like the never ending lawnmower repairs. But mostly we want to reduce our time spent on maintenance now that the kids are getting older, so that we can have that time with them.

And also, we’re both going back to school.

Hugh has just begun his ASN>BSN program. And he has hopes to get into a grad school program for a different area in the medical field. If he gets into one of those programs next year then we are packing up and going with him. If he doesn’t well he is going to look for nursing jobs with higher pay and bonuses. Either way, we’re ready to leave where we have been for nearly a decade. It was one of the reasons he left law enforcement for nursing, so that we could move. And now it’s time to move on.

We never truly let ourselves root here, and it was finally time to face the fact that we didn’t consider where we are home. We aren’t the type to be afraid of starting over. He will be 33 in two days and I will be 34 this fall, and to us that seems so young that there’s no harm in uprooting and finding a new place to plant our family.

Which will eventually be back on a rural home, hopefully with woods like our, but definitely with a lot less open land to maintain. When we bought our home we imagined we would get into larger livestock, but we never did and we’re glad we didn’t because we just don’t have the time. Maybe when our kids are older, but for now we enjoy the freedom of only chickens.

And I did saw WE. I am also headed back to school to finish an English/Creative Writing undergrad and hopefully with enough GI bill left over to convince Hugh to let me go on for a masters so I could do freelance editing or who knows where that path will lead. Right now he reluctantly approved because he just wants me to finish up my degree. I am happy to because I may need to get a job with benefits if he gets into his desired program. I don’t mind working for a year so his dreams can come true, and also those dreams allow me to return to being “trophy wife” which is my self-proclaimed title.

That’s all I have for now. I have to go pick up paint and get back to work after a few days off to let our bodies recover.

See you on the other side.

XOXO
Rosie