Sure, there is my wife, and we like a lot of the same things, but some of the things about which I am passionate, she just doesn't feel the same way.
Another thing is that I have specific interests, but sadly I don't know very many people, if any, who share the same likes. It is not as if they are specialty niches, either; the things I like have millions of followers, just none of them happen to be people I know. But this has led to me being alone in a crowd more often than not, and also being criticized and belittled for my interests, most often from my family, with pleas of "why can't you just like things normal people like?"
Once, a while ago, I had friends with whom I shared experiences. We have drifted apart and they no longer call or visit, so now I simply write, and enjoy the friendships within the shows I watch. I can write new friends into my stories, and then they will be with me where ever I go. I have started following some podcasts, so at least I can listen to them and then one of them reads out listener reviews, so they are starting to know me, if a tiny bit at a time.
Once, a while ago, I had friends with whom I shared experiences. We have drifted apart and they no longer call or visit, so now I simply write, and enjoy the friendships within the shows I watch. I can write new friends into my stories, and then they will be with me where ever I go. I have started following some podcasts, so at least I can listen to them and then one of them reads out listener reviews, so they are starting to know me, if a tiny bit at a time.
Perhaps you will come to like this blog (and I may do a complementary podcast or video blog as well) and if you do, then perhaps you can think of me as your friend.
So I suppose I should give a brief rundown of my current situation. Up until the middle of 2020, we had been living in Lexington, Kentucky, but we were sort of boxed into a situation where we were renting a place in town, and couldn't seem to save up enough to move out to the country where we wanted to be, away from being constantly surrounded by noisy neighbors. We wanted to be out of the city, where we could see the stars at night and go out in the woods when we wanted, and could have whatever animals we felt like. We really just wanted to have a little farm and homestead, and live a bit off the grid. When I say "we", I am referring to my wife, and our daughter, who is now six years old. In the beginning, I just wanted a nice house on some acreage so I didn't have to hear the neighbors, and I could have a few emus and alpacas, along with my tortoises and cats. My wife (Skye) was more into living off the grid, and being self-sufficient. Together we created a vision of what we both wanted, but we still didn't have a way to get there.
My mom had a rental property back in her hometown in Louisiana, a house on five acres, with some small outbuildings. Sadly, it was still being rented out, and it had fallen into disrepair from lack of regular maintenance. We saw an opportunity where we could revitalize the house and property, honing our skills for our own property we would buy, and increase the value of her house for either much higher rent, or to sell it outright at a profit. So my mom gave the renters a few months to move out, and the four of us moved down to Louisiana to start this new adventure in our lives.
Due to my job, and the Coronavirus restrictions, I came down a month after the three of them. (Not exactly: I drove the moving truck while my mom drove her car, and Skye drove ours, at the beginning of May. Luna, our daughter, rode with my mom, and my brother had flown up to help with the driving on this 800 mile trip. I helped them settle in, got my brother off to the airport, and then drove back to Kentucky, where I had to quarantine for two weeks. Then I worked a little more, and Skye flew up and we packed up another truck and drove down again the beginning of June.)
We took stock of the situation, decided what needed to be done, and assigned priorities. We found out that it was very difficult to get licensed skilled craftsmen to visit the property for work due to us being close to an hour away from the nearest city. We figured we could do a lot of the work on our own; it would be less expensive, but it would take much longer. And then everything changed in late August when Hurricane Laura hit, and a tree fell across our house.
It was a large pine tree, and it was two weeks before we got it removed by some volunteer workers, and another week before we had power again. Sadly, that was a year ago, and we still have been able to get a contractor here to repair the roof, even though it is fully covered by a big-name insurance company.
So the house was still livable; only the living room area took damage, and we could safely use the kitchen, bathrooms, and bedrooms. The roof has a large blue tarp over it, and is shored up and insulated on the inside. It has however, put a crimp in our plans of remodeling the house, as we can't really make any improvements until the repairs are made.
We have done some work to the outbuildings, converting one shed into a hen house, and we bought some chicks to raise. That has been an adventure it self, and I will be having a sub-blog for that. Luna got into it so much that she asked for (and got) an incubator to hatch her own chicks, so we got some small quail, and we have run three batches of eggs through, and now we have a bunch of quail along with our chickens, and five ducks.
