There are winter winds outside howling and trying to get in the Moby and I just can’t sleep.   The windchime outside my bedroom window is dinging and clanging and I can hear the wind trying to get under the old lady’s skirting and it’s keeping me from just sleeping away this night like any other.

But I don’t mind.  I actually like that I can hear the winds and the rain and feel a little more connected with the storms that come through at night.  It reminds me that we are all just a wall of brick or stone or wood away from being out there, on our own, in the cold night.

I’m feeling particularly bad for a fellow blogger…  Jenna at Cold Antler Farm.  She’s having a little trouble with her landlord and neighbors understanding her need to have animals around her and their care and all that stuff.  We’ve all been there, especially if we’ve ever had to rent a house, a home.  Been there, done that.  Renting your home is always a delicate balance.  You have to be careful and dance around what you want and what they want and it’s so easy to get that balance out of whack.  I’m thankful that I have moved about half the way from that.

Sure, I’m in a park and I rent the land that my home sits upon.  I’m sure that it can easily get out of hand, if I were to stop following the park rules, or just decide to do something, well, unusual.  But so far, things are great.  And it’s a little different.  I can pretty much choose to do whatever I want with the interior and exterior of my home, it’s all mine.  And since I’m fairly conservative in my outside decorating and yard ornamentation, I believe I’m going to be just fine. I asked about chickens and was not surprised to hear that they don’t quite fit in with the plan of the park, so that was probably my only real rebel streak in me…

That being said, I am careful to keep my nose clean… and my yard as well!  Since so many of my neighbors have some, well, interesting decorating schemes, I think I’m pretty safe.  We aren’t exactly talking about a gated community here and well, I think sometimes that the management believes that any attention to the yards and mobies is a good sign of community strength, so they look the other way when some of the seniors get on little plastic animal kicks and the yard sale knick-knacks and weird color choices of homes.  I concur.  I would rather see a moby yard filled to the brim with little plastic critters than the slovenly mobies where people could not give a care and treat them as disposable flop houses.

But I digress.

I’m still feeling the pain of Jenna in this awkward situation.  Having to find homes for a few of her animals, the uncertainty of her dreams of her own land getting dashed and the whole feeling of hopelessness in your own charted course of life.  It’s a bummer, no doubt.  She’s got a huge following on her blog and her writing, and she’s young, she’ll learn from this.  We all do.  And we all still continue to learn.  I have a couple of young guys around me, and they are going through tough times…  money issues, unemployment, young families.  That’s a tough time in life.  Winds in life that blow hard and can sting.  My own eldest daughter is really struggling with that whole transition from teen to young woman and she’s not happy.  Others may be pushing her to morph, but I am not.  But still, those winds blow and there’s not a whole lot we can do about it.

I haven’t written a lot the last couple days, primarily just super busy with the business.  We’ve got over 70 orders in house and Maggie and I just dropped off about 20 packages today at the post office.  We had a record day of sales today, guess that whole Cyber Monday thing is a real thing.  The last week has been more than we normally do in a whole month and it’s only going to get more crazy for the next couple weeks.  That’s a good thing, but it’s also stressful.  We end up spending a lot of that income to stock up and buy supplies and get help in to get through the crazy time.  It will level out soon and then we’ll reap the bounty of this extra hard effort.  It’s almost like a harvest of a cash crop…  I imagine that working hard for say, the wheat harvest or corn, it’s a tough bunch of days, getting it all in, little time for music or reading, crafts, fun or hobbies.  It’s wake up, get working, go to bed tired and do it again the next day. I know that we only have about 15-20 more days of this and then it will get quiet for awhile and we’ll have the winter to chill out and recouperate and not have to worry for a little while how to pay the lot rent or the car insurance, that kind of thing.  Good stuff.

I had a birthday last week as well… the 25th.  And as I face this, the second half of my life, that made me a little self reflective.  I have been considering this…   so many people live to about 80 and 90 with all our medical advances and such, so turning 45, well, that’s about half a lifetime, if I’m lucky.  I’m relatively healthy, don’t smoke, drink only once in a while with a friend or two, try to watch what I eat.   Got a weigh issue, and I should probably be facing that a little more diligently, but aside from that, I’m fairly sound of limb and mind.  I’ve lost tooth or two and my knees are achey, but I think hitting 45 fairly intact is a good thing.  There is a contentment factor that I have now, that I’ve never had before and that means the world to me.  Got two sweet daughters that are doing fine, own my own home, cars, etc.  and don’t owe much to the world.  And thanks to that website, I even have outside confirmation that I’m making a pretty low impact on this old world.  Feels good.  I’ve made it through now 16 years of self-employment, and that is pretty cool.  Sure, got some regrets along the way, but how can you walk on this earth for 45 years and not gather a little bit of the road dust from your journey?  It’s all good.  It’s all part of life.

I think part of why I can’t sleep tonight is not just the winds.  I’m just terribly excited about life and how things are going.  I am.  I have new products I want to work on, songs I wanna write, music that needs to be played.  Heck, after the next couple weeks, money to be spent!  I have a new used car that SHOULD be done this week and that is so exciting.  I’ll be getting a new used computer next week.  And I’m saving up my birthday and holiday cash to get a used Nikon D40 camera hopefully!!!  ( I do feel a little like a kid waiting for Christmas!)  (Thanks Dad!!)

So yeah, that excitement is giving me this adrenalin rush that makes it hard to just lay there and listen to the wind and all.  It’s such a great time to be alive.  I am so thankful for every blessing that has come to me and mine.  I am so grateful for finally feeling like I am home and I need not ramble any more.  I’ve had folks say oh, if you do well, you can move to a house, and all, but to be honest, I would be happy to spend the next 45 years in my little moby.  It feels just perfect and fine to me.  I’d love to move it to it’s own little bit of land and that would be my final spot!  I would love to live in one place for more than 5 years.  That is the longest that the winds have ever left me alone to root in.  5 years.

So blow away, I’m staying put.  This is my home and my family and my roots now.  I’m one happy little Moby mom.

Does it show?