2012

Finally, 2011 is gone for good. I just hope 2012 is a better year for me and my loved ones!

2011 was a year full of loss for me.
I lost my best friend of more than 20 years in a bad car accident...
I lost my only year round job as a bartender due to ridiculous scheduling conflicts and personality defects...
I lost regular work at my theater job due to major mismanagement...
I lost a friend that I worked with at the bar because she was too stupid to know better than to drive drunk.
And a very close family friend lost a son who's idiot girlfriend convinced him to try Heroin just once! And that was all it took...just that once.

And now I am losing my home....I am not in foreclosure or anything like that. I don't even own a home. But we are in the process of having to move...to another state....to another city...to another home far away from the home I have lived in with my husband for the last 7 years...in the hometown that I grew up in and lived in for 29 years...

And with this move I will lose the only job that I have ever really loved (and the only one I still have)...my job as Backstage Manager in Concert Production for 2 local venues.

And I will lose the close proximity to my family...I will not get to see my niece grow up...or be there for every family function, no matter how crazy and dysfunctional those gatherings may be, I will still miss them.

Due to our last minute planning and decision making in all of this, we are doing this move the way most immigrants move to this country. My husband is going first...he already has a full time job offer...and he will send money back home to me. He will be staying with our best friends in their basement...talk about going backwards in time. The last basement I lived in was in my mom's house after a really bad breakup in my early 20's and I really hoped to never have to do that again.

But we cannot survive here with both of us being unemployed. We have always had at least one really good job. But as it is right now, both of us have no real money coming in. And we both work in the concert production industry as well as having our own small businesses. But that is very seasonal work...which is why I kept that bartending gig even though I hated it. Just one night a week at the bar paid our bills during the slow winter season.

So we drove to Michigan on the 30th to spend NYE with our friends in our new "Hometown"...what a start to the new year! We packed up his important tools...the Consew, his Industrial Sewing Machine and lots of fabric and of course some of his clothing and personal items. He designs and makes messenger bags that are really popular in this area with all the Bike Messengers and the aging but still old school Punk Rockers...

His sewing machine is a huge money maker for us. He can do pretty much any size job with this machine! He makes and repairs theater curtains, scrims, pipe and drape, table linens, costumes and any other fabric item needed in the world of Concert Production. But this machine and all that industrial fabric is very heavy and takes up a lot of space when packing and moving!

But we got it all unloaded today and into the basement of our friends' house in Ann Arbor. His new workshop is all set up and ready for production! It kind of looks like any teenagers apartment in their parents basement...complete with a foldout couch to sleep on! Haha! But I am truly grateful for the friends who have this space for us. Without this, I don't know what we would do.

I will be heading back home in the next few days...driving through the Allegheny Mountain region in the snow, by myself, is not looking really exciting at the moment. As much as I love snow and look forward to the very cold and snowy winters in Michigan, I am not looking forward to this drive back to Virginia. Luckily my daughter let me borrow her 4WD SUV for this move!

It feels like we are just starting out as a newly married young couple just out of school or something...but with all the knowledge and jadedness of someone who has already done all of this crap before! I certainly don't feel like someone with a 23 year old daughter and over 20 years of professional work behind me.

I don't feel like a grown up.

I feel like everything just stopped working correctly and in order to survive I have to just start all over again. So it is exciting and depressing all at the same time. And these are all decisions that we had to make very quickly. We weighed our real options and put it all out on the table...and this is what we came up with. So I am really hoping that we made the right choices.

And I am really hoping that 2012 has much more to offer than last year!



So we are trying to figure it out on our own. We are trying to find a place that we can call home. A place where we can work to pay our way and build up our own businesses again. A place where we can create and be together and be happy.

But for now, I know that I am going home to an empty house...except for my cat, who I hope is not too pissed off at me for leaving him home alone and confused.

And we have lived apart before and I know we are strong enough to do this, but it does get lonely and we are both prone to being dark and depressing. At least he finally learned how to Text Message on his phone. Can you imagine living so far away from each other and not being able to text each other! Awful.

We both just got free iPhones too...when Apple came out with the new iPhone 4, AT&T decided to get rid of the 3GS models for free. This is our first foray into the world of smart phones and so far I like it. But I am always way behind everyone else when it comes to new technology. I just prefer to wait until they work out all the kinks and the prices drop to an affordable (or even free) level.

I am trying to have a positive outlook on everything coming my way...I just have to wait it out for now. But I do have some earring challenges and other fun beading projects to keep me busy...there's nothing like having all the time in the world to focus on my beadwork! It will just be really quiet and lonely at times.

So I am sure I will spend a lot more time beading and writing about it all here...and hopefully later this week I will have some photos to share of all the earrings I will be making this month!

I hope you all made it to 2012 safely and are looking forward to a better year! Even with the "End of the World" looming this coming December...a week after my 40th birthday! Haha!

Happy Beading and Happy New Year!