We're Still Here
We are back after months of silence. The past 4.5 months were filled with us dealing with a “project” that was really the last thing we wanted to do. But being in the bind that we were in, we had to suck it up and fix the problem that wasn’t going to magically disappear. Obviously, I’m being vague here. It’s a personal matter that I don’t want to share the details publicly.
But it took everything out of us to go through days after days full of stress. It’s been simply putting our heads down and grinding through it. Working without much thinking except for the task on hand. This “project” has put us and our relationship through the test – again. I’m not going to be so cliché to say that we’ve come out stronger. Partially because that’s just trite and because it would be BS. We’ve simply come out of it without doing too much damage.
Aside from occasional dreams of being back on the road, we’ve pushed thoughts of road life far from our minds. It’s a coping mechanism. There hasn’t been any point since we knew it wasn’t happening anytime soon. Also, our life on the road felt (and still sort of feels) so far away. Almost like it was someone’s life. We’ve been more stationary this year than any other. We’ve only moved the Toaster twice in the past 7 months. Those combinations mean we simply haven’t had much to say on the blog.
We had figured the moment this project was completed (which it is!) we would be packing up the Toaster and hitting the road. But that’s not the case. We’re taking a month to breath. But Jerud and I are doing it our own individual ways and separately. We’re two such different people. In order to survive, we need space.
One thing we do have in common is that we’re both a “the glass is half empty” kind of people. I don’t think one of us has always been this way, but unfortunately, we bring this side out of each other more than other qualities. Despite all of our bitching and moaning about our recent situation, we still found some upsides to it. In other words, “how it could’ve been an even shittier situation but wasn’t thanks to…”
As you may have already forgotten, but the craze and popular hashtag this summer was #totaleclipse. Jerud really wanted to see it while I was unusually nonchalant about it. If we were on the road, we would’ve had to deal with the efforts of finding “the perfect” place to view it and the stresses of not ending up somewhere extremely crowded and getting there in time. Rather, our project forced us to be in a town that happened to be in the path of viewing a 100% eclipse. We simply walked a mile away from the Toaster to this open space that only had two other vehicles and watched what turned out to be mind-blowing experience.
Summer in the Carolinas means hot and humid. The work we were doing left us disgusting and physically tired. But thanks to an Aldi grocery store in the next town over, we were able to OD on good priced watermelons all summer long. I share my mom’s insane love for watermelons. There is nothing like pulling out a huge bowl of refrigerator-cold pyramid slices of juicy watermelon after a long day of hard work.
Worst case scenario would’ve meant we had to stay at an RV park while we dealt with the project. Luckily there was a nice empty lot with enough sunlight that we were able to continue to boondock in the Toaster while having easy access to our daily work. That made our situation 100 times better than what it could’ve been.
Being back in the southeast during the summer meant there was an actual need for A/C. Jerud’s been wanting to run a window A/C unit off our solar set up for a long time. He got to test it out and we got a break from 90+ degree days and evenings.
When we didn’t finish our project by the end of October as we had originally hoped, we got to see the fall colors and spent Thanksgiving with friends who we cherish.
And just the other night we watched the Geminids meteor shower. Not only did we see a bunch of meteors, but we got to see a fireball!!! I had never heard of them before that evening. In non-scientific terms, it's a large super bright meteor that seems to be falling in slow motion. We even saw the (potentially smoke) trail it left behind!
I share these with you because we’re trying hard to change this aspect of ourselves - where we only see the negatives of the situation and get sucked into how shitty things are. Either way, there’s a glass with water in it. And when you’re dying of thirst, there’s water to drink.
(I have no idea what that means.)
