Real life is too scary – I want to get back to the ghosts.

My intention was to follow my recent post – I’m going to need a new tagline. – with one more in keeping with my usual topics. (A meditation on why so many stairways seem to be haunted, maybe, or a photo-essay of a local abandoned house.) Instead, I feel compelled to write a bit more about our situation, because, upon reading the comments it garnered, I am beginning to think that I didn’t share quite enough.

We do not want to give up the chickens. If we thought we could stay here, we would certainly count on those reliable old girls to help us out with their eggs.

My husband’s former position (ok – salary), however, will not easily be replaced, and I haven’t held a regular job in 10 15 … since I was a young, miniskirt wearing, single mom, slinging drinks. For multiple reasons, we will be living on a fraction of what we have grown accustomed to – and we’ll be doing it for a good long while. We can’t afford to stay here.

There. I said it straight out.

We are about to experience a major lifestyle change. The positive spin is that the change is one we were very slowly and gradually working toward. It’s just happening before we were ready for it.

We will be moving to a medium-sized town, where there will be jobs (for all of us) that don’t require a commute like the one my husband has been enduring for a decade. We will live in a two bedroom apartment – just me, my husband, a strapping 16-year-old son, an oops-he’s-bigger-than-we-thought-he’d-be dog, and *some goldfish named Chicken. We will enjoy having a reliable internet connection and decent water pressure.

We will miss the stars, and the wild turkeys, and the fire ring, and the … well, lots of stuff – but we knew this phase of our life would end eventually. (The some-day goal still includes a trio of hens in a cute, town-sized coop, but we won’t have a yard any time soon.)

We had hoped that our geriatric hens would peacefully expire before the time for our migration came. Now that I’m sharing how I really feel, I might as well tell you we also have to re-home our two elderly cats. As well as my mother’s adorable but ridiculous pedigreed Persian. (He’s just a yearling, but we reluctantly took him in when she recently moved to a retirement home.) AND we’re worried about the two “feral” cats that adopted our barn because the mouse-hunting was good, thanks to the scattered cracked corn.

I had also hoped that I would be contributing financially to that new lifestyle with my writing. Now I’m worried those ambitions will have to be set aside, again, as I figure out how to hold a proper job.

The truth is, I’m freaking out. I just don’t want to bring too much of that into this blog. My chicken/tagline post was an effort to acknowledge the situation in a darkly-humorous sort of way – the way in which I thought “The Paranormalist” would handle it.

I can tell you right now, it’s easier that way. These upcoming changes are so huge for me that I assume some of my real-world angst and confusion and awkwardness will continue to bleed into my blog, but – mostly – I’m just hoping that I can figure out how to keep writing about my beloved creepy stuff.

So. Next post: Abandoned house or haunted stairways?

~

*The number of goldfish we will have is in negotiation. I was thinking nine, in honor of the hens in our current flock. My beloved is thinking three, in expectation of our future trio.

WriMoProg note: 4 + 40 = 44/200