a year since march ended

last year's march was awful. i don't think i complained too much via social media or blogging because, well, i hate that sort of nonesense. but now that it's a year gone, i can say that i wasn't sure how we were going to muscle forward. the prospect of staying in alaska one more year made me nearly homicidal, truth be told!

p lost his job. and a lot more than that for reasons we never really unraveled. people are awful, awful beings at times and while he's fairly stoic about it, i still wish plagues and locusts on a few folks in the old neighborhood.

a couple weeks before that bottom dropped, we found out we were almost FIVE months along with a surprise baby. holy #%$@. we'd JUST had a baby. how could we possibly have another one with just one lousy income?

the house. the house was a piece of junk with it's haunted downstairs, uncooperative heater, and rickety front staircase...but it's where we were. so when the landlord's brother (landlord died a few months prior) told us he was selling SOON, i was sure life was about to land in a ditch.

there was no work for my company in the houston office. period. but the anchorage office offered to float me some work until i had the baby and then i was on my own.

we had to leave pepper. p rarely talks about it, but he mentioned the tears he shed driving her to our good friends' house to be fostered for a few weeks. that was tough.

so we did it. sold nearly EVERYTHING we owned. left alaska with tears in my eyes on may 27, 2012 because i was pretty certain i'd never see it again. i'm cool with that now, but at that moment, it seemed so final. never. again. no reason to, right? our families are in texas and virginia, vermont and new jersey. all far, far away from alaska.

we lived with no furniture for weeks. the kids ate off plastic storage bin 'til ricky shivers rescued a farmer's table from the parking lot and BAM all of a sudden we had a stick of furniture. things came in slow and steady from that point. and now here we are.

i never got a new job in houston. i was hired in katy to run a house full of four kids and one husband. two fish were added to the roster, though nobody offered me any more salary for it. i also got the chance to teach fourth graders creative writing for an entire year on fridays.

my life changed SO MUCH since last march. i get goosebumps when i think of the journey we traveled from there to here. but it's been a year now. a long, bumpy, fast-moving year and it all started back there.

in other news, things are looking downright unpoetic around here lately. i try to keep up, i really do. but they outnumber me and well, things look a little haphazard and UNPINTEREST like. Hahahah. Stupid Pinterest makes me hate my house somedays.

have a great week, ya'll!

I'm hiding my face with my hood because Roo moonlights as Wolverine with her claws. We've all been scratched and now I'm too savvy for it. Ha!

Smoothie time around our place. The kids are permanently stained acai-purple and I've lost more tablecloths to these smoothies than I care to count...but they love them. And they love helping dad make them. The can of raid on the windowsill? That's a product of the GINORMOUS spider P had to kill off the wall. It had fangs, ya'll. It had to go.

My boy. My boy wonder. He's studying poetry in his class and he's started copying down the ones he likes and he leaves them all over the house in his haste. I love this so much and remember doing the same thing with Shel Silverstein poems...his favorite poet, too coincidentally.

Piles of mess. They're everywhere in this place. Too bad Raid doesn't kill those, too.