On the hook

First and foremost, we want to thank everyone who sent/bought us so many needed items for the holidays - we actually don't know how to thank you enough!  We realize how blessed we are because we have everything we need and then so much more!!!  We know that we would not be able to be where we are if we did not have all of our loved ones helping us out, either through the items we need or through the encouragement and support you send.  Both are blessings to us and we give thanks to you and the Universe for you being in our lives!

In previous blogs, I have mentioned our Dock Lord, the man who was renting the house we were tied up behind.  Now, as much as we appreciated that he had experience as a live aboard boater, we did not appreciate his pessimism or some of the hostilities we felt from within the house.  Furthermore, a week before Christmas, the Dock Lord informed Rob that he knew we are on a really tight budget but that his electricity bill was $50 higher than he had thought it would be, so he was going to double our $225 monthly rent.  Rob promptly told him that we would be out by the end of the month and got to work making sure that would happen.

The big leap!

Eric, Cory, and The Wonder Dog, Jamie

When I was three years old, my parents, my brother, our dog, and I moved from El Paso, Texas where we were wearing shorts and t-shirts to Vermont... in January... during the coldest and snowiest winter Vermont had seen in 77 years - literally.  We moved back to Texas on my fourth birthday, six short months later, after my dad determined that maybe this Texas family did not need to live through another northeastern winter.  I sort of remember a moving truck and have the faintest memories of new things to come because we were moving again.

As Rob, the cats, and I drove to Florida this past week, 4'x8' trailer in-tow, I was overwhelmed by this memory (or, due to lack-of-concrete-memory, "knowledge" may be more fitting): at 26- and 25-years-old, my parents were moving their six- and almost-four-year-old (oh, and The Wonder Dog) from one end of the country back to the end they had just left in search of income and a comfortable, stable life.  The first morning we woke up on the boat was Rob's 36th birthday, my 35th will be in seven months - we are literally a decade older than my parents were and we just moved with a spouse for the first time in either of our lives, no kids yet, running away from an unstable economy and lack of jobs, looking forward to adventure and an unknown future.  And, yet, the part I kept getting caught up on was that I am a wife moving with my family (the cats help round us out as a true family) across the (bottom part of the) country.  That part was blowing my mind!