What a long strange trip it was.... has been...continues to be...

I'm back amongst the living, so to speak. We got our internet hooked up yesterday so now I can chat, and visit, surf, check my 200 or so emails... think about etsy again...

It was a nightmare getting to this point but was all worth it in the end. Bennington is a beautiful place to live and best of all... hubby is doing much better. He has a broken back, in case I haven't mentioned that before. He wasn't able to work the last four years that we were in Hawaii and had slowly been getting worse. Now he is doing well enough that he will be able to help unload the container, if it ever gets here, and is even talking about getting a job at some point.

The worst part of the move was giving up my "kids". The girl that was renting our place had agreed to take them so that they wouldn't have leave their house. Then less than a week before we were scheduled to fly out she had the landlord call us and tell us that her father was making her take all the cats (five of them) that she had at his house and therefore wouldn't be able to take ours. We all cried because it was too late to do anything else and I had to take them to the humane society.

I say nightmare because everything that could go wrong did every single step of the way. But at the same time someone always stepped in and saved the day. We found two young guys to help load the container while at the Toyota dealer trying to sell my car three days before leaving the island and on the day that the container was delivered. Up until that point there was me and the guy who had replaced me at work who offered to help. We lucked out though and ended up with four helpers. Granted... we had to rent a U-Haul because they couldn't get the container up the driveway into the yard which meant that everything had to be loaded and moved twice. Ugh.... then the U-Haul almost got stuck in the same mud that prevented the container from getting the hill....

That is only a small portion of our trip; we are thinking about writing a book someday. The house that we are renting smelled so bad when we got here that we were seriously thinking about breaking the lease and finding someplace else to live. We have decided to stick it out and and are spending many hours cleaning a house that apparently hasn't been loved or cleaned in years.

On the bright side... I have a new RAV4 with a V6 that goes really fast and is fun to drive. Now the snow won't be a problem this year. The weather has been wonderful... sunny and warm almost every day. Good thing too; our blankets are all in a container slowly making its way to here from California by rail. That is a story for another day but hopefully in two more weeks we will have all of our belongs once again.

I even have a chair to sit in once again so can start spinning in the evening. I didn't have a chair the first week we were here so was standing all day long. You would be surprised how much you miss the little things once you don't have them.... chairs, extra glasses and mugs, fabric, forks, spoons, knives, fabric...

I wasn't planning on writing a book here but with an adventure this big it is kind of hard not to. Hopefully things are back to normal now and I will be able to post more often. Oh yeah... food is a lot cheaper over here. :)

All the things we've missed

Now that we are getting closer to our move date we are starting to get excited about the things that we will be able to get again once we are back on the mainland.

Here is what we have come up with so far:

Grandma Brown's Baked Beans
Real Bologna from the deli case (hubby keeps talking about bolonie hats but I think that might be more of a "good ole memory" type of thing.
Molson's Beer
Jeremiah Weed
(Can you tell what we think about most of the time time? :) )
Saranac Beer
Pete's Wicked Ale
Real bacon
Mustard from Oscar's Smoke House in Warrensburg, NY
Good Music... yeah for weqx in Manchester Vermont... boy have I missed you!

That is all I can think of for now.

We haven't made much progress on getting rid of the kitties. I was hopeful last Sunday when I took one of them to be "interviewed" by a couple looking for a new kitty. I knew it wasn't going to work as soon as he answered the door. They were both in their 70's and Lei'a is comparable to a two year old. She wanted to jump on the piano, the tables, knock over the pictures, and generally be herself. I had to hold on to her real tight until we left. It was probably for the best as I had to take her to the vet Tuesday morning because she had gotten bit (unbeknownst to us) and her toe was abscessed. $165 later... she doesn't look too bad this time, they only shaved her toe instead of her whole foot and leg like last time. The local humane society now has a website where they post pictues of pets that need a home so I sent them all the info on the girls; one of them is listed already so here's hoping someone will see them on there and give me a call.

We now have both vehicles up for sale and I only have 6 more days of work. Yeah!!! I will be talking to Matson tomorrow getting a quote to ship all the junk door to door.

I have been doing a little spindle spinning, not much the last few days but some. I seem to do the packing on the weekends and just deal with the day-to-day stuff during the week. I think that is it for now; I'm falling asleep.

Until next time, happy spinning....

Featured Roving of the Day

This roving will make some wild looking yarn; that is for sure! It really is bright orange with little bits of mango color here and there. I listed this a week or two ago and I can't believe that no one snatched it up right away. Of course I always think that about the new rovings that I list.

I don't know how much longer my shop will open so if you see something you like grab it now. I think we may have finally found a place to rent! My goodness... who would have thought that it would take so long to find a place to live. Between thinking about that and the heat I haven't done much crafting at all. I did get a couple of great quilting books for my birthday; one of which is out of print that I found on amazon.com. Yeah!!

And the timing couldn't be worse but I think that my quilting muse has decided to put in an appearance. Figures, just when I need to start packing and put everything away I have all these great ideas floating around in my head. So I have been doing quick drawings and making lots of notes so that hopefully when I look at this stuff in a few months I will remember what I wanted to do. I am also trying to decide what crafts I should keep out until the last minute so that I have something to work on that doesn't take up too much space. I think I am going to leave one small tub out and stuff as much roving into it as I can and just work on making singles until it is time to leave.

Will I be sorry to leave Hawaii... I don't really think so. I do miss the mountains and the changing seasons. It looks like we will be in Vermont for the fall colors and that makes me very happy indeed.

Until next time... happy spinning and quilting.