Catching up..

I haven’t  been blogging much for the last year, I keep trying to ‘get it back’ but so far I haven’t been able to.  I promise to keep working on it, I am, after all, one of God’s work in Progress after all..I DO read most of your blogs, however, and quote when I can.

I need to come clean with most of you and let you know what has been happening with Carl and I the last couple years..No, it’s not earth shattering but for some reason I need to let you, my friends, know what’s been paralyzing us so badly.  This might be a very long post.  I need to write this for me more than anything I guess..

Most of you know that for several years we moved fairly frequently.  We left our home in Claremont, CA, only our 2nd home in over 25 years of marriage, in July 2003.  We sold it for a nice profit after being there for 6 years..Carl was ready to retire and I had been ill the previous year with Epstein-Barr Virus and was out of work for several months.  EBV is an off shoot of the herpes zoster AKA Chicken Pox that we get as children and can manifest it at any time later in life..it hit me like a brick…I have never been so ill and so tired and fatigued.  Life as I knew it changed the day I was diagnosed with Epstein-Barr Virus.

 Epstein-Barr Virus

Some not so fun reading for you..anyway, I was off work from my school job from late November, 2002 until late March, 2003, and to be honest I only went back as I felt pressured..And I went back half time, which in what I did really didn’t work out, so in retrospect, I should have stayed out until school was out in June..I love that thing called ‘looking back’..I have done a LOT of it in the last 9 years..It’s one of those things that are NOT helpful in your life, but I can’t seem to put some things in the past.

As soon as we moved out of that house, I felt remorse.  Big time remorse.  That was MY house..it was a HAPPY house for the most part..It had a large backyard and pool, many fun times were spent with family and friends in that backyard on holidays and birthdays..and with the house gone, those good times felt gone to me.

Anyway, for some reason this home has never ‘left’ me..we have been gone now longer than we lived there..I have driven past this home one time, and it hurt my heart.  Carl doesn’t understand why I have an issue with driving past our old homes..this is REALLY the only home that it bothers me, but I don’t as a rule like to cruise past old homes…there is just not a point to it and says to me ‘what might have been’..  I will ALWAYS miss this house, always…but time to move on, and that is just what we did.

In September 2003 we moved into a brand spanking new home in a town call Beaumont, CA..lots of real estate booming going on and we had spent 5 months waiting for our new home out there to be finished. 

We moved in and once we felt settled, at least to me, it didn’t feel ‘right’.  We decorated, hired painters to come in and paint, we fixed up the backyard from dirt to a haven, but there was something amiss.  One day my mom and dad, who at the time lived in the east Coachella valley for many years, made the 30 minute drive to our new home and we went to a pancake breakfast the City was putting on..Might have been for the 4th of July, or some special occasion.  Anyway Carl and I both noticed that my mom and dad both seemed weak.  Mom had had knee replacement surgery the summer before, and my dad could barely walk, was hobbling all over the place.  For the first time they both seemed OLD to me.  We were not real happy in Beaumont, it was going to be several years before any kind of shopping plazas were built, like Home Depot or Kohl's or Wal-Mart, which are there now, but were not at the time..We had to drive 20 or 30 miles to go to Home Depot, or even out for a nice dinner.  Did not seem like our ‘cup of tea’..We thought long and hard about it, worried for my folks, so suggested to them while real estate values were UP, maybe it was time for them to sell their longtime home and we were wanting to move to Northern CA for a long time, near Carl’s brother and his family, a country house east of Sacramento..so we decided to start looking for a two family home where we could live along with my folks, something where they would have their own area.  We looked most of that summer up north, I even applied for work with a local school district near Roseville, and was offered a job in their Junior High School library..so..we so decided to sell the Beaumont house by owner, we had a buyer within a week or so, had the escrow company do the work and I left to start my job in Granite Bay, leaving Carl behind to pack up while I lived in my brother and sister in laws motor home on their property until we found and closed escrow on a home of our own.  I flew home every weekend without fail to close up our Southern CA home…we found a wonderful home not far from my brother and sister in laws home, put in an offer and bought it after a goofy escrow..It was just what we had always wanted, on almost 3 acres, needing some work, but was ok the way it was…It had a huge kitchen and open floor plan..One end of the home near the kitchen had a large bedroom and bath, and our plan was to take part of the garage and turn it into a living area for my folks, so they would have their own part of the home, bathroom and bedroom..  In the meantime my folks were still in the desert and for one reason or another, their house was not ready to sell, or didn’t’ sell, or whatever.  We bought that home knowing we could not carry the note on our own so each month put a bit of a struggle on us.  We moved to that area as our younger son had moved up there a year earlier and was working as a correctional officer, and Carl’s brother and wife had lived up there for many years, and their adult children and grandchildren were all local so we would have family there.  We had lived in our home in Newcastle for about 6 months when my brother in law announced that he and his wife had decided to move to Utah and leave Northern CA.  Talk about knocking the wind out of us, it did.  We had asked them several times before we moved there ‘if we move up there are you going to stay there’, and the answer was yes.   Not their fault, they had a right to move on with their life…but at the time it did knock us for a loop..So, with my folks not seeming to be moving toward coming to live in Nor Cal with us, and us being unable to pay for the home without them, we needed to sell our country home.  I had also had a relapse of the Epstein-Barr virus that spring and struggled to be able to stay at my school and work..

As you can see, it was a beautiful country property, but was not to be for very long.  My folks for some reason now have decided they don’t want to come up north, but how about the St. George, UT area?  Housing was less expensive there, and maybe we could find something to fit us for less money…so we took a trip to St. George and found a home we thought would work for the 4 of us..  A nearly new home with a large bedroom full bath and extra den on one end of the house for the folks, and a large master bedroom for us at the other end of the house.  It was a fairly large home at 2700 square feet, large modern kitchen and dining area, separate office for me and mom, and a separate casita for any guests that came to visit.  So it seemed pretty perfect for our situation. 

We moved in there after we sold our CA house, another long distance move for us..We are not spring chickens so these moves have taken a physical toll on us.  My folks got their house sold and moved in with us about a month after we got there..they sold or got rid of most of their furniture so bought a new living set, entertainment unit and bedroom suite for their new part of the home..WE bought a brand new master bedroom suite that I had been wanting for about 10 years..Things looked pretty good…lots of room for the 5 dogs between us, what seemed like a nice neighborhood.  We got along for the first few months, but as much as I love my dad, he is not easy to live with and I suddenly remembered WHY I had moved out at age 19.  We can love our parents with all our hearts but sometimes what seems like a good idea turns out to be not that good of an idea after all.  Oh my what had we done…In addition to Utah being like a foreign land to us..crossing the border into Utah was like stepping back in time 20 years. .Everything in town was run by the ‘old boys’ club.  It would have been very hard to find work had we been looking since we were not part of the ‘old families’ that had settled the area..things with my dad were going downhill day by day and it really got to the point that we were ‘living’ in our bedroom.  Finally my sweet husband who really has always had my back said, something has to give..he was not happy, no one was happy in our living situation..  It was not working out..such a sad thing for me but I knew it wasn’t working out for a long time…in the winter of 2007 we purchased a little mobile home in the state of Washington for us to get away to during the extremely HOT St. George summers..  We went up there for a couple weeks in the summer of 2007, took some furniture and a washer and dryer.  The home already had a refrigerator, dishwasher and electric stove…the windows had already been replaced with vinyl windows, and the roof was fairly new..the price was right, $20,000 with space rent at $250 a month..It was a darn cute little place and directly across the lane from my uncle Wayne, in his late 80’s at the time, and all my cousins live within a 30 mile radius..During the winter of 2007 we put the Utah house on the market, which by then had taken a dump, and sold it in July 2008 for $100,000 less than we paid for it..My folks had earlier that year moved back to the Palm Springs area desert from whence they came and bought a house in a nice country club area….we loaded up, dogs and all, and headed up to our little WA mobile home, where we stayed until June 2009. 

It was difficult, 800 square feet, 3 dogs, a landlord and couple neighbors from Hell.  We knew it was too small for us to stay in permanently, however, we loved Washington State, so we started thinking ‘where do we want to go’.  We really wanted to go back to Nor Cal and be near our son Scott and new wife…but housing was still very expensive there and we knew it would take too much our of us financially to do that, in retrospect that is what we should have done anyway, now we have two grandbabies there that we barely get to see..

In the meantime in the spring of 2009 my dad kept after us to come look at some of the resale homes in their area of the desert, country club setting, gated community, low cost resale homes…so we looked at a lot of listings they emailed up, spoke with my dads real estate agent and found the house we are in now..the price was right about 100,000 less than a similar home in Northern CA where we wanted to live..so we bought this place we are in now and have been since June of 2009.  We are not ‘desert’ people.  The heat is horrendous, especially with my fibro..with our finances so tight, we don’t have the financial ability to take day drives or even an overnight to the beach or mountains to escape the desert heat..It feels like being in a prison.  The wind blows constantly..The dirt and dust are unbelievable..It’s not for us.  The desert is an Oasis for many people, they just love it here..We are not those people.

We are not sure what the plan is now.  We loved WA state and would love to return to Washington..we are not in a situation to buy another home right now, even though we are some of the few who are not underwater in their home…we are not sure we want to have home ownership again anyway..something goes wrong, call the landlord.  there are pluses and minuses to each scenario..We won’t know until we decide to sell this house and make a move..  One thing will not happen, I will not live more than One days drive from my grandchildren..  Ever.

So we are left with some decision making now..houses are starting to gain some value, the round of foreclosures in our little area seems to have passed and it looks like more ‘straight’ sales are taking place..Is it time?   My gut says yes, my heart says its so much work.. 

The main thing that happened to us is a decline in our emotional health over the last couple years..A combination of a lot of things, not one thing has triggered these sad feelings, just a lot of things..One thing about Carl and I, we don’t get mentally wiped out at the same time..we are able to be strong for each other, thank goodness or I don’t know what we would do…I started struggling again late last year, I knew I wasn’t ok but I wasn’t sure what to do about it.  I have been on many different medications..  My psychiatrist (who does the  prescribing of psychiatric medications) decided to change what I was taking to something else..I gradually cut back on what I was taking and started taking the new drug.  I got through Thanksgiving but the next week I got sick and about lost it.  I was having severe anxiety, couldn’t breathe or sleep, and felt I was ‘DONE”.  I didn’t want to go on any more…Carl drove me to my doctor and she suggested I admit myself to a behavioral health facility.  I needed to get a grip on my medications.  This was on November 30th, 2011.  This makes me cry when I think of it because most of my life I have been really strong..but I needed to go and get some intensive care..I went to the Loma Linda Hospital facility in Redlands, I have to say I had the most caring staff and nurses I have ever known..very kind..I was only there for a few days and talked to lots of nurses, doctors, interns, etc.. but it was what I needed to do.  There were a lot of group workshops on dealing with anxiety, stress, etc..hopefully I never need to return but I don’t have a fear of a place like that anymore..  I was there for 4 days and learned a lot about myself and what was really bothering me..once I got back home, the first two weeks were a struggle.  I was taken off all caffeine, so I had caffeine withdrawal..then I was getting used to medications I had not taken before, more settling in.  It was getting close to Christmas, our first Christmas with Grace Lily and oh I so wanted to be able to travel and be with her.  As each week passed I became a little stronger and when I was able to walk into my son and DIL’s home the few days before Christmas and be with the three of them, I was so happy I had come this far!

As the year has gone by, I am doing ok.  Like everyone I have good and bad days.  I know that people who do not suffer from depression,  don’t always understand why I can’t  ‘get over it’ then of course in addition to that add in my physical illnesses, the EBV and Fibromyalgia along with depression sometimes I’m just not in a good place..I do try to look at the glass half full, but some days I just can’t see it.  I try.  I am in a much better place this Fall, thank goodness..I feel like we have a lot to look forward to with both a granddaughter and new grandson..We are traveling to their Nor Cal home for Halloween to take them trick or treating, and of course Christmas is just around the corner again.

Once again our future is up in the air, and we are not sure what the right thing to do is.  We do know that we do not like the desert at all..A lot depends on finances and some good luck.

I know this was so long but I felt I needed to say these things..the last think I want is pity for for anyone to feel sorry for us.  We are ok.  But this is part of what is causing me such ‘blankness’ if that is a word.  I have a very hard time blogging since I was hospitalized.  My mind feels very blank..But I do love reading your blogs and commenting when I feel I have something intelligent to say..but most times I just read them…

I appreciate those of you who have stuck by me and sent me kind and inspiring messages, who do read my blog when I can write and in general sticking with me during a very difficult period of my life…Thank you for sticking with me and being my friends