Yesterday was the big day, the get down & dirty…literally.
I spent the day filling boxes, thank goodness Jane Ellen (one of the cowgirls from our ranch, well I guess technically she is a “goat girl” as she tends to our hundreds of goat that we raise). She gets down when she packs, seriously she has rhythm for it! I didn’t know she was coming, I thought Rusty our ranch foreman was making the box drop. Last year when we arrived I had the sense to save all the boxes, knowing that we weren’t going to stay too long in one spot. The cowboys loaded a pickup truck and took the boxes back to the ranch. Where they stored them was unknown to me, that was until this weekend when Lee opened a stall and revealed the hot mess of card board awaiting attention! That’s right folks, our boxes were sitting in hay and smelling pretty!
Of course Lee thought it not a problem, in his rough cowboy talk “Don’t be a Princess, we’ll dust ‘em off and they’ll be fine.” I crinkled my nose and thought Oh, mang (Tony Montana inflection) : “Well I’ll be sure to put your stuff in ‘em.”
The good news was that when Jane Ellen showed up with ‘em they were really cleaned up, minus the few worms, what kind I have NO clue, only Alma mumbled something in Spanish regarding the possibility of them falling into my coffee and killing me.
Once again Jane Ellen came to my rescue, bending over and scooping them up with her fingers, I shrieked like a chicken, Jane Ellen just calmly kept to the task and in her warm Tennessee accent said “If that’s the worst thing I pick up today I’m siked.” Then my mind flashed to watching one of the cowboys stuff the “Bulls Meat Wallet” back into a momma cow who had just bore a new calf, I think it scared me as I was pregnant with my first baby and the fear of what would happen if I went into labor way out there on the ranch!
Anyways, back to the move, Brooke (a gal pal and friend of Lee’s) wasn’t really into the remnants of mice poo either, but we made it through the trauma, I’m thinking it might-could do me good to spend the day with Jane Ellen out on the ranch, buckin’ up and gettin’ tougher with the outdoor world….Hmmmm?
I know that moving is traumatic as I have done it so many times since I met Lee, we’ve set up more house’s than I grew up in. We lived like gypsies for years, splitting our time between 4 different places all at the same time. I decided it was better for us to travel and stay together than apart when the girls were babies, plus it was way easier having a home than a hotel room.
Yesterday I was smacked by time, what the last year has been about and who I was just a year ago upon moving into this big ‘ole house.. The emotion that came as I cleared each room was huge.
A year ago I thought I was going to die – seriously – die, I thought there was no turning back. When I arrived in Nashville I had been told I had a 50 percent chance of intestinal cancer. A year later I’m leaving this house – knowing that I’m going to live.
