La Cucaracha

******This post is from October 2013, taken from my other blog "Melo Out With Me" and pasted here******

Turns out there are cockroaches the size of my head in here in Texas.  Okay, maybe not that big, but a couple of hours ago I'd have sworn otherwise.  Does anyone remember those Presidents Tests for gym class back in the 80's?  If there was a test for high jumping I'd have passed it and set a record, for the way I reacted tonight when confronted with the biggest friggin' cockroach this Minnesota native has ever seen.  In the bathroom of our master bedroom, no less.

I lose out on the Mom of the Year Award tonight for having made my son cry with my screams.  Hopefully the therapy won't cost him too much when that memory catches up with him 15 years from now.

It's karma.  Last night I was feeling really cocky (no wordgamey-punny thing intended) when we got home from our homeschooling meet up, where we met at a park and learned about spiders and scorpions, and then went and actually sought them out on an evening (dark) hike in the park.  It turns out there's this neat little trick where you can use a flashlight to see the gazillion pairs of spider eyes looking back at you as you stroll through the peaceful park under the moonlit sky.  Someone found a scorpion with their black light and I boldly got within 2 feet of the creature as it crawled around on the expert's (aka crazily brave bug guy's) hand.  I went home feeling like I could do this thing.  Texas bugs weren't gonna get the best of me!

Twenty-four hours later I was a quivering, blubbering, freaked out mess.  In front of my 7-year-old son.

Dropping my husband off earlier at the truck yard for another OTR trip did not help my anxiety.  Nor the fact that today was the first day that I felt truly homesick.  But we've been planning this move for years, and we've finally made the dream a reality.

We can check off the biggest box; we've snuck out of MN just before the cold winter hits and we've made it to balmy Texas.  Eventually we'll buy that piece of land in that "just right" spot and start building our adobe eco-efficient home, grow our own vegetables, and live in harmony with the earth - bugs, snakes, and all.

In the meantime, I'm going to be honest and say that I can't help but calm my nerves with wine, google the deadliest, most chemically laden poisons to rid this house of cockroaches, and sleep on the couch tonight.  Maybe I should try hypnosis.  I have seen quite a few metaphysical places here in San Antonio that have been beckoning to me to stop in.

Envisioning my Vision Board

A few years back, when The Secret was all the craze, I made a vision board.  I really enjoyed making it, because it really did get me to focus on my goals and desires.  I would use it quite frequently.  I always felt happy after focusing on those goals during a meditation or even just daydreaming.

I had a lot of stuff on that vision board.  One was a van, and that one came to fruition.  I was pretty pumped about it.

My son was a lot smaller at the time and I was working a full-time job on top of being a mom.  We were going through some really tough times with losing our home.  You can read all about that in my earlier posts.

Anyway, I kept up with studying about the Law of Attraction and I have had some really sweet things come into my life because of it. I'll have to post about that soon.  You'd be amazed at some of my stories.

But I sort of lost track of my vision board.  It got put into some boxes and now, 3 moves later, I'm not even sure if I have it anymore.

I may just make a new one, rather than search like mad for the other one.

After all, goals and dreams do change sometimes.

It's a cool, rainy Sunday today.  Perfect day to work on a vision board.

Maybe you could do one too?

Living in Almost Mexico

I started this blog a few years ago, and there have been times when I have felt like I should delete it because our lives have taken such a different turn than what we'd planned back when I started recording our journey.

I've changed my mind.  Hey, that's my prerogative, right?

If there is anything that has stood out to me in the past few years as a lesson to be learned, it is that life is a journey, and it is as much an adventure as you are willing to make it be.

So, although we are not living in Mexico, we have still been brave.

1. We have stepped out of our comfort zone, gotten rid of more than half our possessions, and moved across the country, to Texas.

2. We are homeschooling our son, which has had its ups and downs, but has been a great decision all in all.

3. We are studying up on permaculture and sustainable living, so that when we finally purchase our land we can build our adobe home and live as much in harmony with our environment as possible.

4. I am beginning to focus more on my writing, which means you will begin to see more and more entries here.

5. We are spiritually open to living full and meaningful lives, no matter how much money is in our pockets.

We are open to other adventures.

We are learning that the possibilities are endless.

I hope you will continue to join me here.

Hello?! Is anybody in there?

Forgive me readers, for I have slacked (BIG TIME).  It has been 2 years and almost 3 months since my last confession, er....I mean, blog entry.

There was a crisis, of the mid-life variety, to be had.  Since I started this blog until now, there have been arguments, tears, revelations, months of excessive wine consumption, the trying on of several career hats, the purging of excess material items and the moving of what was left, the loss of a private yard and the gain of an apartment courtyard, drama with family, and drama with schools (both my son's and mine - by the way, I was an elementary teacher for two years between the last post and this one).

I am awake now.  WE, as a family, are awake now.  We're wasting no more time.  We're setting out on an amazing new adventure.

We've learned so much along this journey during the past few years. Writing about all of our growing pains in one blog post would be ridiculous.  I mean, yes, I'm a Leo, but I learned long ago that my problems don't need to become everyone else's, and in that spirit I want to refrain from treating this blog as a place to bitch and wine (or whine), lest I bore you to tears and beyond.

Therefore, I've created a list, and a "blog plan."

The LIST consists of things we've learned and decisions we've made, and I've numbered it, so as to appeal to other list maker types and to give myself the appearance of being an organized person.

1.  We want to do all we can to avoid having a mortgage, ever again.  Therefore, we will build our own eco-friendly, adobe home,  with our very own, 40-something-year-old bare hands.  We may enlist in the help of friends and do-gooders when the time comes.

2.  We are no longer moving to Mexico, for a few reasons that I don't care to expand on at this time.

3.  We are moving to Almost Mexico.  In ONE WEEK we will be driving a trailer to San Antonio, TX, where we will be housesitting for a short time (1-3 months).

4.  I am homeschooling our son.  I could write volumes about the reasons for this, but I'll skip the fury fed typing for now.

5.  We are ready to be the people that we are meant to be.  We are ready to actually live our lives the way that we want to live them and not care about American Dreams and peoples' judgements and scrutiny.  We hope we can help others to wake up and pay more attention to what's going on inside their hearts and heads and less to what's happening in Hollywood and Washington DC.

BLOG PLAN:  I'm going to change it up to include a wide spectrum of topics.  I'll give more news on this and will provide a link when the ducks are quacking in a row.  :)

What a ride this life is turning out to be!

From Here to There and THEN to There

Aaaaand, exhale.  

The last 6 weeks have been a whirlwind with a new job, a new daycare for our son, and now..............the ax is coming down.  After almost a year of waiting and wondering when the final countdown would begin, we got the letter in the mail.

Our mortgage company has restarted  the foreclosure process, according to the letter from the lawyers. 

Last fall after filing for bankruptcy I flailed my arms for a bit, in a vain but valiant attempt to regain the bank's trust and redeem our mortgage.  After awhile I lost my steam and we began to look at this whole experience as a learning one, and one that would give us the push we need to finally leave this tundra we know as Minnesota. 

We are tired of living half a year, every year.  What I mean is, we feel dead every year when the snow is here and the temp is low and we're enclosed in our house like animals in a zoo.  We are not winter people.  I used to be, as a child.  Now? Um....not so much.

We haven't made our final decision on location, but it looks like sometime next spring or early summer we will be headed toward warmer climates, most likely in the Southwest. 

Mexico is not out of the picture by any means.  It is still what we consider to be our ultimate goal.  But we have decided that we don't want to land there with empty pockets.  So, for now, we will go to "Almost Mexico."

Maybe I should change the name of this blog.  Or maybe "From Here to There" is just going to have an extra detour along the way. 

We're excited.  Never thought a foreclosure letter would make me smile, or give us such inspiration. 

It's all in the way you look at it.

Lo Que Pasa........

Disculpenme, mis amigos!  Please excuse my absence, my friends.  There is a reason for my silence.

You see, a few weeks ago I received a phone call from an employment agency.  When I glanced at the caller ID I thought, "Ho hum.  Another call from this agency, probably to offer me an ill-fitting job which I'll have to politely decline."  Nope.  This was a job offer alright, but it was from them, directly.  An in-house position.

I am now a staffing consultant at an employment agency.  A very exhausted and overwhelmed staffing consultant.  I arranged for daycare for my son at a Spanish immersion daycare only 1 minute from my office, and every morning and evening this week we made the commute together.  This is to be our routine until kindergarten starts, when we will make only a short commute together, since school is closer to home than my work.

What does this mean for our Mexico plans?  Nothing, yet.  We are taking it one step at a time.

We are grateful for this new opportunity, since we desperately need to save money, no matter where we choose to live.  It fell onto our laps, and we're goin' with the flow, waiting to see where it takes us.

Apart from my new job, we have also had a few very delicate conversations with my mom and dad about our Mexico plans.  There is still a slight possibility that we could end up moving to what I am starting to think of as "Almost Mexico", which would include Texas, New Mexico, or Nevada.

No matter what, we WILL be leaving Minnesota within the next 18 months or so.

As for now, I am trying to keep a career woman mindset, so that I can help bring in the dough for our family.  Who knows, maybe I'll love it, make lots of moolah (there's a lot of potential for commission), and we'll end up in our dream adobe home in the Southwest, just one short nonstop flight from my in-laws............

Winds of Change

Tonight, while sitting at a food court in a Twin Cities mall, while bags of merchandise bounced hurriedly by, possessively toted by the American Dreamer after a hard day's work, I caught a glimpse into a simpler life.

One of my Spanish tutees was using his laptop to show me photos of his trip to Paraguay.  His 30-year-old nephew lives there, in a tiny room which used to be used for storage.  He is a street musician and a friend to many.  He has no kitchen, so each day he heads out to the local market and buys fresh food to eat.  Whenever he has leftovers he gives them to other people or to a dog who lives in the neighborhood.  He lives day-to-day, has lots of artist friends and acquaintances who seem to be passionate about environmentalism, and at the moment he has no plans to move on to what some may consider to be "greener pastures."

What do you make of this?

In some ways, it sounds like heaven to me.  Yet there is another part of me who knows I'd miss computers and TVs, couches and a refrigerator and pantry........... the list could go on.  But I'd still love to spend a year in his shoes.

It would be a bit impractical to choose this sort of life with a family in tow.  So instead I dream of an existence which is sort of half-way there, with an energy efficient adobe style home and buying locally-grown food as well as having a year-round garden of my own.  An income that comes from our own business, which either doesn't feel like work or it takes up only 25 hours a week, or both.  Days well spent, with time for meditation, exercise, laughter, conversation, and good food.

A simpler life.  That seems to be a strong theme these days, what with economic crises, wars, global warming, and pursuits of more fulfillment from life.  What do you think?  I think there's a change brewing in the air.