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The Steady March Forward

// August 27th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // adventure, thoughts

In the hectic helter-skelter of our lives I am sorry I haven’t blogged more. I have been writing, mostly for myself, and essays for other purposes. Life is marching forward as usual. We just celebrated our 8th anniversary by going to Tofino for the day.

We went there because eight years ago just before we got married our whole family took a break from wedding preparations and went to to Tofino the day before, for a much-needed pause in the obvious chaos. It was strange to see the pictures of our extended family from the same day at the same place and reflect on what has changed in all that time. Pictures of parents and future in-laws and siblings all playing and relaxing on the beach, and now in that time both sets of parents have divorced and married and paired off with other lovely people and the siblings have grown and had children of their own. And here we were at the same beach with our own three girls, just two responsible adults who took our children with us on our anniversary beach trip because we can’t ask anyone to take them for the whole day. That would just be too much. Two people, celebrating eight years of togetherness by wrangling children and yelling at them to Be Quiet While I’m Driving! Two people falling asleep in the sand and hoping they don’t wander too far.

Our closest friends got married to each other and we were part of the frenzied preparations and tears of happiness that brings. Weddings to me are like throwing endless swathes of white and frilly and lacy and flowery things up into the air and hoping they all land in a nice arrangement before leaving a path of destruction behind a happily smiling and beautiful waving couple as they drive off. John took a break the day after to climb up the backside of Mt. Arrowsmith with friends and family. This was another tradition, something he had done with his Dad probably at least ten years ago.

John and I are hurriers. We married young, we had kids young so we could do things later when we were young, started businesses young. We do things now. We are impatient maybe, we hate to wait. We try to pack our lives with experiences rather than with things.

The bus was an experience. We camped for five months with three kids in a large sardine can with a space heater. I say that to myself out loud just to realize what we did. Why did we do this? Because one day we can look back at our lives and say, “Do you remember when we lived in the bus? I can’t believe we did that! Wasn’t it amazing?” The bus never really got physically done, but the original purpose did. We did something together that was proportionate to how close we wanted to be as a family because of it. We learned about ourselves, and what we can handle, and how to communicate. We learned that you can’t drop out of society, as much as you might want to. You can avoid society, it’s true. But I don’t think we even tried to drop out, we just played with the edges of normal to see what it felt like.

And now we are going to start fresh and do something we’ve never, ever done. We are going to try following a line that most people follow. Our children are going to go to school this year. I’m going to school this year. We are renting a suite. We’re going to be… normal.

Or somewhat normal. We still won’t have cable. We won’t have many things. In a way I think we’ll be pretending until we retire, and all of that eccentric hurry will seep out of us now and then. I think trying to be normal seems a bit… weird.

The Albatross is for Sale

// August 15th, 2010 // 3 Comments » // bus conversion

It is with heavy hearts that we announce that The Albatross is for sale. There are many reasons that we have had to change some of our plans. We will still be mobile and plan to get a 5th wheel, but we need to pass the bus on to someone who can spend the time to finish it. There’s not much more to go and we did all the hard work for you!