Life Goes On

The sun is about to plop behind the mountain. I came out here thinking I could snatch another 20 minutes or so of rays but I’ve barely settled into my lounge chair and there she goes making her way down to go greet someone else with morning sunshine.

Right now I feel as though I’ve left the world I was in and I’ve made a transition over to the other side. What I am living right now in this moment is such a switch from what I’ve been living for the past while.

Tonight I sit on the beach on the edge of the Okanagan Lake and I breathe in tranquility from the chaotic life we’ve been living this past while. This overnighter at my sister’s house while she is away comes as an absolute rescue for my jumbled soul.

Thursday night we decided to go ahead and push on with our legally binding contract on the townhouse with the hope that the seller would be more complying when she saw we were going ahead with the deal. We were wrong. When the realtor tried to set up a time for us to go in and do the house inspection she flatly refused to let us in. At which point our realtor said. “You know what, you’ve been right since the start, this deal smells too much like rat, and at this point I think we should kill it unless we want to go through the courts because it’s only going to get uglier as we try to push this through.”

“Nope, not going there”, I said. “It’s not my style and life is too short to have to fight your way through it, besides, I don’t need that kind of negative energy in my life. It’s time to move on and to let it go.” So once more the search is on although I must admit the umph has gone out of my sails and at this point. I am doing more of an interior search while checking in with Spirit to try to get some answers as to what this all means and if it means we are not meant to be here then where is it we are meant to be.

I am asking the Universe to point me in the right direction and at this point I am open to whatever the Universe points in my direction. If it’s someone saying, “Here’s a job and a place for you”, then I’m willing to go even if it’s in Tim Buck Two. After all this time of searching and nothing coming our way, as much as I love this country, I figure maybe it’s not where we’re meant to be and I’m willing to listen to any guidance that sends me another way. What matters most is that I’m able to give of myself and be of service in the work I love doing – wherever that may be.

So the night we decided to let it all go, I said to myself, “Well at least we still have the older 5th wheel (the people who run the park offered us to stay in when the other little trailer we were living was sold two weeks ago) to live in at the moment. After having all the leaks and things that could go wrong and did in that one, it was not too bad after all. But.....

Unbeknownst to us until Saturday, we weren’t the only inhabitants of the premises. It started out with one bite on Andree’s foot. A spider we thought, so we got the vacuum and did another clean up but the next morning there was a couple more bites. I went on a search in every crook and cranny for spiders but didn’t find any. In the meantime Andree’s bites are getting bigger, redder, itchier and more uncomfortable. Se we get her some Benadryl. It makes her drowsy and she hits the sack early. During the night however, she gets itchier, more uncomfortable and we get more and more suspicious. I settle her back down and I leave to go find an internet connection and check out our suspicions as this doesn’t look pretty.

The morning light sheds even more light on this, by now, very discouraging and painful dilemma. Andree gets up covered in even more bites and wanting to crawl out of her skin. Big red, puffy welts are springing out everywhere making it almost impossible not to scratch. I get her in the car and take her to a walk-in medical clinic. Doc takes one look at her and utters the very words I Googled during the night, “bed bugs”.

The verse my mother recites when I go to put her to bed comes into my head. “Goodnight, sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite, if they do, take your shoe and hit them until they’re black and blue.” I thought it was just a silly old rhyme. Not!

Medications, ointment, many cold showers, ice packs and tears were the order of the day. That followed by a day at the laundry mat washing pillows, quilts, blankets, clothes and even Bailey and Fred, the trusty old teddy bears had to go through the machines and tumble around in a hot dryer.

Out went the mattress to the dump and in came the fumigation stuff forcing us out of our modest but humble home into a motel room for the night. Finally at 9:30 p.m. Andree, myself and Pumpkin checked into the Saxon Inn. After we let go of some of the stress, the anger, the hurt, and the sheer exhaustion and the trial of this latest episode, we were able to let some of the more positive side of things come in.

After all, here we were, in what a person could call a REAl place. A place to shower with actual taps to control the water temperature to what feels right to us instead of being pre-set. A real bed to sleep in without having to climb a ladder to get in or out and one where we could actually sit on or turn over without knocking ourselves out. And room to walk around, to go more than one or two steps in either direction.

And as I write this, here we are now with a second night away, a second good fortune in a row, this time at my sister`s place where there is tons and tons of space. After our little abode this feels like the Taj Mahal. It will be tough going back to the old campground and settling back into the groove over there – once we wash it all down again that is. Life is full of surprises but life goes on.