Day 1

Greetings!

I'm so excited about starting this new chapter of my life.  The title of this blog is Playing by a Whole New Set of Rules! and that's just what I'm doing.  My focus is not me to the exclusion of everyone and everything else ~ but it is me as everyone moves on to new things.  Suddenly, I have time to focus on me!

Last year I left my government job of nearly twelve years to start a motorcycle repair shop.  The shop is up and running but after nine months in business, it was apparent it wouldn't support all of us.  The months leading up to the decision were agonizing.  There were many ugly moments.  Moments where I questioned my intelligence, my intuition and certainly my sanity.

Timing is everything ~ the day I told our partners of our decision to leave the cycle shop was also the day my mother-in-law sold her home.  It had been on the market for a year and a half.  The property was large, rural, in a desolate area, held thirty-five years of family memories and was where her husband, the patriarch of our family, went to heaven four years earlier.

May 2011 was amazingly hectic.  We had to be out of our apartment by the 20th and my mother-in-law was moving to East Texas on June 2nd.  Add to that a trip to Dallas, a trip to Fort Davis and two trips to Houston with stops in Fort Davis as well...6500 miles in all.

A moment of insight about me.  If I've counted correctly, I think I've moved 36 times (that I can remember) in my lifetime.  I hate moving.  I hate packing.  I hate carrying everything in boxes.  I hate unpacking.  I hate having to un-decorate.  I hate not being able to cook and having to eat off of paper plates.  Are you getting the picture?

More insight about this past eleven months is that our lives have been a huge moving state of flux!  We started packing to move to El Paso in July 2010.  We lived in boxes for six months before I was finally able to move.  The five months I was in El Paso, I had a bed, two folding chairs, two folding tables and two tv's in a 1350 square foot apartment.

Even more insight into me.  I love to decorate.  I love a comfortable home that is a haven from the world.  I love Country French.  I love to cook and entertain and share and celebrate life.

We are less than two years away from my husband retiring from his job.  With the cycle shop situation looming, we looked at options and avenues we had only dreamed of in the past and in the end have decided to sell 90% of everything we own and move into a motor home.

That means selling almost everything that is now in 600 square feet of storage space.  Almost all of our furniture, decorating, kitchen, hobby and outdoor items are headed to consignment and antique stores.

Fortunately, this project and I are not on the same tight timeline as before.

Today, I got a smaller storage unit across from the two we already have.  I needed a staging area to start sorting through everything.  I opened the first box and inside it were candle sconces and pictures that I really liked.  I thought, "Oh, how pretty." I remembered where and when I had gotten them and I knew they would never work in a motor home.  I put them in the consignment box.  I know I can do this!!!

It's hot here, humid.  I think it will help me lose weight!  I used to hate sweating too.  Not as much as moving though.  I thought sweating was unladylike.  Now I find it purging and purifying.

I'm calling today, Day 1, a success.