Since June of 2018, I haven’t written very much. We were in Arizona preparing to sell our house and move to Ohio. We arrived in Ohio in September of 2018, and since that time our lives have been pretty well turned on their ear. I haven’t had the energy or luxury to think about writing blog posts because we have been overwhelmed with the chaos of our move.

I won’t belabor the tired story. If you follow my blog, you will know what has happened. We think our moving van rolled. We had a lot of broken furniture and possessions. Had our move gone as it should have we would have a substantial financial cushion when arriving in Ohio, allowing us to eradicate all but mortgage debt while leaving us a good sized cushion to invest for a rainy day. That didn’t happen. We still have multiple rooms with broken furniture. We are still living with unpacked boxes in our living room, bedroom, front hall, computer room, upstairs bedroom. Our front porch floor needs to be rebuilt. We have repaired about a quarter of our furniture. We haven’t the resources to do more at this time. We have a trip we need to take to see some friends of ours and everything else will have to wait.

Mind you; we have not been in this alone. My oldest brother has made several trips hauling broken furniture 110 miles round trip to be repaired and has then retrieved it for us. He has helped us with all kinds of projects, and he and my sister-in-law have also been great company when we just needed to get together over a meal somewhere. My youngest brother spent a day with us when we had just received all of our things and did a stellar job helping us tame the chaos.

Shortly after our move, I managed to injure both hands and finally went to the Doc to figure out if I had fractured something. Thankfully the answer was no. But I am wearing splints to help the carpal tunnel that hadn’t bothered me in decades and the new thing, the inflammation of the tendons on my left thumb with the fancy name: de Quervain’s Tenosynovitis. Typing and sleeping are hard. Both hands have some swelling, pretty constant tingling, and numbness.

Despite all, we have had some pleasant interruptions. This last weekend my daughter, son-in-law, and little granddaughter came to visit. It was just what the doctor ordered. What a fun visit. We now have one nearly finished downstairs room – our dining room – and that meant that we could gather at the table there in pleasant surroundings. We also celebrated two April birthdays, and we celebrated Easter together – albeit a week late. My husband Ron and I were taken into membership at a Lutheran church about a half hour’s drive from us and were pleased that my daughter’s family were able to join us for that service.

They headed home on Monday but not before we were able to have a couple of meals together and load up a bit more of my daughter’s things stored with us when she went off to school. That was such a help and has since allowed me to tame a few more places in the house.We have made progress. We have hung what seems to be a gazillion family pictures up the front stairwell. We have had trees trimmed. My husband has worked miracles in the taming of the back yard. We finally hooked up with a lawn service and have had our lawn mowed.We have moved Ron’s painting equipment to the basement and will turn one room there into a makeshift art & jewelry studio. It might prove to be a much-needed clubhouse for escape. If so, it will be the second such escape room – we have also created The Rialto Theatre on the second floor.It is 3:10 a.m. I think I will give sleep another try. Thank you for taking the time to read my blog post, for your comments, for sharing it on your Facebook page, for hitting the like button. Thanks for your many contributions which allowed us to repair quite a few pieces of our furniture. Thank you for walking with us through what has been a pretty rough patch in our lives together. We cherish our family and friends and all the readers of my blog. We always love hearing from you. I give thanks to all of you for hanging in there with us. Your prayers, encouragement, and thoughtfulness have been a great blessing to us.