Holding Pattern

This may end up being a more emotional entry, so bear with me, friends.

We have been living in the new home for nearly two months already. Where has that time gone? we've survived the hottest months of the year living in a trailer all while either super pregnant, giving birth, or nursing a newborn. We've bounced from Doheny to Prado to Jurupa to Yucaipa back to Prado. Our plan was to leave on our adventure of traveling this Thursday, but wow... is there still a lot to take care of!

We've discovered a lot of loose ends need attending to before we leave. What with our plan to stay local the way we have until after the baby was born, we stored a lot of items that we knew we wouldn't need for the hot summer months before we set out. We now need to sort through our warm weather clothes already in the trailer and bring in some colder weather clothes from storage. We're somewhat (well, maybe considerably) ill prepared as Southern Californians for the types of weather we'll be experiencing out there, and I'm pretty sure I'll need something more than flip flops for most places we'll visit. It ought to be interesting learning whether I'll fit in my pre-pregnancy cold weather clothes with this post-pregnancy body. A trip to storage is in order; luckily Brent stored those boxes near the front of the storage unit.

We've discovered a few vehicle maintenance items that need our attention before we can set off safely. When I was following Brent from Yucaipa to Prado last weekend, I gasped when a cloud of brown smoke came wafting out from beneath the driver side tires of the trailer. We pulled over before hitting the freeway only to discover that we've only had one good trailer brake this entire time. Of the four tires on the trailer, only one brake had anything left (and it is very little!) while the other three have been worn down to the metal. This isn't our doing. It was likely towed with brakes engaged across the country from the factory to the dealer and then dragged this way around the dealer lot. We don't trust the dealer to fix this for us, so Brent is opting to address it himself.

In making small talk with a woman I met in the laundry room at Jurupa, I learned of her story towing their fifth wheel and experiencing a blow out. We had experienced a blow out in our other trailer and it resulted in some damage to the exterior skirting where the tire shredded it from underneath.  Our damage wasn't bad. Her story involved a terrifying ordeal on a crowded Southern California freeway and a discovery that no one would help them in the moment despite multiple forms of road side assistance insurance. Her biggest advice was not to let the tires get low and to drive slowly. I started paying more attention to our trailer tires and for four month old tires, they are looking uncomfortably worn and disturbingly low despite being filled to capacity. Brent studied them more carefully only to announce that they are made in China. Enough worry over the inevitable behind us, we decided we would go ahead and replace the tires before hitting the open road.

We also discovered that the truck was struggling considerably. It's a hefty workhorse truck: a one ton diesel Chevrolet. All the same, it was time to research ways to make it more of a Clydesdale over quarterhorse and Brent upgraded its power train with a Banks system which will improve our brakes (Jake brake!), towing power, and mileage.

Add to the vehicle chores things like pediatrician visits, birth certificate acquisition, financial tasks, doctor appointments, and final visits with friends and family... well, we haven't left the local area yet and will not be ready to by our initial deadline.

Living local while not technically having a home has been a bit of a struggle. It's one thing to look forward to seeing the country and having a new baby. It's another to add the responsibility that comes with the new baby to living in a trailer and still be stuck local while weighed down with loose ends and obligations to attend to, all with no technical home base we normally rely on for stability. We spend our days in the car running errands spanning the width from Chino to Yucaipa. The dogs are stuck in the trailer for long days at a time waiting for us or are toted around with us in the car, waiting in a locked and air conditioned vehicle while we run into one place or another. With the baby on board now, we're stopping 2-3 times (though we set a record of 5 times the other day) for nursing pit stops during errands, adding hours to our time in the car all in all. Going to the grocery store is squeezed in at odd hours of the night and anything resembling routine is more of a wistful wish than anything of a reality.

I worry endlessly about Evelyn. She's given up her home with her yard and all the space that came with it; her friends at school and home; many of her toys (in storage); her cat (who we agreed was not happy with this lifestyle); and now her only child status. She is soon to say goodbye to her cousins and grandparents and she is anticipating this and is immensely sad over it. We're finding ourselves telling her "no" all the time because there is more to worry about living in a campground. She can't just go outside by herself or take off and play; we can't always go with her. We can't always play with her when he asks us to. She's expressing more anger and becoming more defiant. She's opting not to talk when I sit down to ask her what's wrong. She's biting her nails even worse than before and she's added to it more worried and nervous habits like chewing her hair or her shirt. She worries about Heidi going to Doggy Heaven someday-- should a 4 year old be this worried over what more she can lose?? Brent and I fear this was a bad choice for her. I cry a lot over it.

Whoever said that living this lifestyle is easier and more carefree was lying. We are always washing dishes, cleaning, or putting things away. Dog poop has to be picked up immediately. Going outside means latching dogs to leashes and leads while also juggling kid and baby locations and plans. Getting ready to go anywhere is a task, digging for clothes now lumped together in jumbled piles from a closet space we never found time to organize. Getting online to take care of obligations or to shop for necessities we discover we need before we leave means taking the laptop from its storage place and digging out the wireless jet pack and powering it up, as well. Trying to fit in time to do my hair or put on make up is even more of a challenge than it was in a home what with sharing one little bathroom and having to tell Evelyn I'm busy as soon as I sit down to make myself look less tired because she's asking me to play with her or help her with something again. There is no sitting around in lawn chairs sipping lemonade and taking in the sights... at least not yet. Will it ever be that way?

The most emotional part of this situation comes with the inevitable-- saying goodbye to friends and family. We've sold everything in California and have uprooted our real estate obligations in this state. We are about to go see the country. It's likely we'll see places we like more than where we've always lived. A result of this journey may likely be that we find a new home elsewhere in the country with nicer people, greener pastures, and better communities. We may  not return to life as we knew it in California. While this sounds like a wonderful opportunity for our small family, it's immeasurably sad and immensely bittersweet that this holding pattern life we're living now is perhaps the last taste of normalcy we'll have for the life we've always known. We're packing in visits and sleepovers and trying simply to not think about how significantly this journey will change our lives and our accessibility to the friends and family we love here.

We plan to return for Christmas. We're focusing on this to add an element of comfort to what we're doing. The fact is, though, Kailyn will be four months old then and Evelyn will be closer to five years old. The family and friends who have been an active part of Evelyn's life and seen her grow will not experience the same for Kailyn. We plan to return again in April but as we're planning the January-April leg of our trip, we're finding we'll be too far east to get back to California, realistically. Because I need to return in April for work, it's looking more like it will be just me and Kailyn flying back at that time... or depending on what we can work out, maybe we won't need to return at all in April, meaning we won't return to friends and family until after Kailyn is walking!  This is where it gets to be too much reality...

I told Brent yesterday, "I expected this experience to be more carefree." And then I wiped more tears away. I'm worn thin right now. I'm tired, I'm worried, I'm exhausted by my own emotions. Maybe it will get better once we're finally out of California. Maybe, in other ways, it'll get worse. Either way, we're committed. We're circling in a holding pattern and waiting for the runway to clear. The runway always does clear, eventually.