Urban Harvest

Quite often towns and cities will plant fruit trees as part of a beautification process and then when the fruit is ripe and ready for picking, nothing is done with the fruit. Usually it falls to the ground and decomposes.

Now there is a world-wide map that shows where this fruit might be found. The website is still a work in progress but it does contain quite a bit of information.

Click here at Falling Fruit! 

Crochet Coral Reef

The art of the Crochet Coral Reef

What the Future Holds

Oh, if only I knew. 

The future is always an uncertain thing. But like the old saying goes, "When one door closes, another opens." Only this time, we may be building the house so that door may open.

We're creative, inventive, optimistic people. And I know deep down the Universe will not abandon us. We have had moments of deep despair and moments of intense joy and hope. We cling to the moments of hope and joy and love. Pushing aside the dark despair which tries ever so hard to shut out the light. 

We  are not ones to sit and bemoan our situation. We are exploring our options and not ruling out anything at this point. My posting here may become random.  So much to do......

So Mr. Trickster, if you happen to be reading this, We may be down but we are certainly not out! You will need to find someone else to aggravate!

Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass. It's about learning to dance in the rain.

On Becoming Homeless

Greed. 

It's all-consuming. It gets its hooks into a person and turns them into some kind of monster - just like in a horror movie.

The man who owns the house we currently live in has become consumed with greed.

He chose not to let us know that the monthly mortgage payment had risen. So for an indeterminate time period the balance due kept climbing until we were extremely behind in our monthly payments (even though we had been making our 'normal' payments in a timely manner). This gave him what he thought was leverage to get us out of the house so that he could 'flip it'. And profit a nice chunk of change.

We had to go to court to settle the mess. Four weeks of waiting and worrying. That was the worst 4 weeks of my life!  

Worry about what kind of judge we would get.
Worry about my daughter and her children - would they be able to find something they could afford in the area? At possibly a moments notice?
Worry about our four-legged kids - would Hubby and I be able to find a place to live that would take all the animals? The thought of having to take any of the critters to the pound was more than I could stand. The tears came often. The thought of being homeless weighed heavy on our minds.

Fortunately the judge was a reasonable person and dismissed the case. But we still have to find another place to live. Our contract on the house will soon be up and we are unable to obtain the necessary home loan. And because of our four-legged kids, finding another house is proving to be quite challenging. There is a great prejudice in this area against large breed dogs.

Life is not fair. It never has been and it never will be. I can cope with the normal, everyday unfairness.  But these extreme challenges are beginning to wear on my nerves. I do believe I need to have a talk with that Trickster.

Our Fragile Existence

We are reminded on a regular basis just how fragile our hold on this plane of existence really is. Lives, futures, so many of the things that we take for granted can be turned upside down in a blink of an eye.

My Life the last 4 1/2 years has been proof of this. It began with my Husband's untimely job lay-off. Our income was cut in half - an amount which may not seem like much to some people but when a person is already living on a shoestring, a thinner shoestring can make a huge difference. We staved off hunger and kept our heads above water. We managed. We adapted. 

Then came the opportunity for my Hubby to attend college to get a degree in what we thought would be a good career. Little did we know that the degree he received wasn't 'enough of a degree' to earn anything but minimum wage. Frustrating to say the least.

Our daughter has had her own share of lessons about how fragile Life can be. First her Husband, an ironworker, fell two stories while working on a building. He lived but the damage to his body was severe and he spent the next couple years in and out of operating rooms and physical therapy. And then just when there was almost light at the end of the tunnel, her husband was arrested (and extradited) for a crime that took place decades before. My daughter, 5 months pregnant at the time, was now faced with packing up and moving her household across country as well as being the support system for her three small children. Fortunately for her, family was able to help with the move. She and the kids went to live with her older brother, only to be kicked out of their house by a controlling sister-in-law six months later. Hubby and I were living back in Colorado by then, so she and the kids came to live with us. We tried to provide them with a loving, stable environment. Especially through the court drama and later turmoil of her husband's death. So much angst for a young family to go through. 

While all of this was transpiring, Hubby and I were dealing with our own worries - a house in Arkansas that sat on the market for a year and a half before it sold, mounting bills, a job market that discriminates against age and lack of education. But we managed. We bounced back. We adapted. 
We all adjusted to living with each other. It wasn't easy at times - I know the kids sometimes got tired of living with two cranky old people. And well, the two cranky old people had to adjust to Life with small children. But our Lives were full and filled with love.  
And then things began to change. For the better. We all thought that Life was beginning to look up.

But the Trickster wasn't finished with us yet.