Living on the Frontier

I can’t believe we’ve been back in Portland a month.  It feels like it’s been a year, which is how life can seem living on the prairie, harvesting acres of quinoa, felling logs for the sauna and fending off hordes of zombies.  Oops, I guess that’s another blog entry.

           

Since returning, I’ve unpacked a 53 foot moving van (six crates) worth of our worldly possessions, put a 1000 miles on our new prius, driven to Seattle to get Wasabi, driven Dylan downtown each morning for school (hmm, guess that’s where the miles come from) and started working two days a week.  I’ve also rewritten a short story and am in the process of making drastic changes to my book.  I’ve had my friend Holley—the stylist for non-celebrities—over to figure out why I have a closet full of clothes and nothing to wear (this will be a later blog entry), and have started all the work the holidays entail, including finding and decorating a new tree, shopping, and hanging up the front porch lights (backwards at first).  Yawn, I think I’m ready to take a nap.  No wait, I still have to bake something for book club.

I’m not complaining.  But since Andy isn’t here I’ve been feeling a lot like Ma Ingalls, where taking out the trash is akin to rushing frozen laundry into the house during a blizzard.  I’ve always said that without Andy I’d be sitting in the cold and the dark, which is almost true.  There’s a light bulb burned out in the hallway and I can’t reach the fixture…

What I’m imagining as my own private living history experiment, is actually the plight of single moms each day, but add in huge financial worries and all the acrimony and stress that usually goes hand in hand with a divorce or separation. To my single mom friends, or friends whose significant others are away most of the time, I raise my glass to you.  Actually I’d rather we raise our glasses together, but I know how hard it can be to hitch the horses to the wagon.  If you can make it over, please bring a blanket…and a light bulb.