Life is too short to be serious all the time. So, if you can’t laugh at yourself, call me…I’ll laugh at (with) you.

It’s been almost two months since I last blogged something here other than food. August was a crazy month for us. If you follow my stories on IG you probably already know most of what happened.

If not, I will bring you up to speed …

A little timeline recap:

We are now living IN our barn while my husband builds the house. To be fair – its a very nice living space and not hardly a barn at all.

Everyone keeps asking when the house will be  ‘done’  and I just look over at my husband with a super sweet smile and say “maybe by my birthday?” which is in February. He says by next summer, I guess we shall see.

It’s hard talking about timelines when you’re married to the contractor and builder. It doesn’t make it any easier that I can see it all happening right outside my window. February is MY personal goal, but I’m not sure we will hit that deadline.

Side Note: If you have tried building or ordering anything new throughout this pandemic you’ve probably also experienced a HUGE delay in delivery times. A lot of this will unfortunately be out of our control.

Anyway, we closed on our house on Friday the 13th of August. That day, we were shuffling boxes around as we organized and tried to decide where to put everything for the next 6-9 months. At one point during the unpacking/sorting process I walked under a ladder. My husband reminded me of the superstition associated with this bringing ‘bad luck and misfortune’. I don’t personally believe in silly omens like these, but it’s funny to point out when you look at the weeks that followed.

Soon after moving in, we discovered there were high levels of iron in our well. All of our new white bathroom fixtures started turning bright orange (as well as my hair). We began stocking up on bottled water for all of our drinking, cooking and hair washing needs. Even our pets (dogs/chickens) had to have bottled water. I’ve never been so appreciative of simply having good, clean water.

Then…. our hot water heater only allowed for 3-5 minute hot showers before turning ice cold. Cold showers with room temperature bottled water for hair washing (insert grimacing face emoji here).

Then our dog got sick – really sick. He couldn’t keep anything down and was vomiting blood. At the very same time this was happening, my husband started feeling sick. I took the dog to the vet, then ran to pick up a few at-home Covid test kits. We found that our dog had somehow perforated his esophagus and my husband tested positive for Covid.

Ugh.

My first thought was that we literally just moved into the smallest space imaginable and now we have to try and social distance.  Having already been exposed to the virus, we couldn’t leave.

We all ended up testing positive for Covid.

Our dog was released from the vet – thankfully the clinic provided contactless drop off. But over the next 5 days he was still unable to keep much of his food down. We were trying to take care of ourselves and a very sick dog.

Keep in mind this all happened within a two week period of time. I will say it took my husband and I down pretty hard. Given that we are both vaccinated we were pretty shocked at how both of our bodies responded to the virus.

Good news, we are all (including the dog) doing much MUCH better today.

Throughout all of this (and I know I’m leaving parts out)  I realized that I can either look at this series of unfortunate events negatively by getting frustrated and angry – OR – I can roll with the punches and navigate my way through them.   At one point my husband and I just looked at each other and started laughing. It could have been the way the sun was hitting my orange hair, but I’m pretty sure we finally just surrendered to the situation we were in. Some of what we were going through was of course serious, but the silly little things like my hair and cold showers (although not pleasant while sick) were something we could endure with a little humor.

This entire experience has made me realize life and all of it’s unexpected curveballs. Sometimes (oftentimes) we can’t prevent or predict the things that happen to us.

We all go through ‘stuff’ each and every day. Some things, more serious than others but we never expect the unexpected (Capt. Obvious).

When life throws you a curveball, take a deep breath and throw it back.

Laugh and let go.

I’m very thankful we were blessed to regain our health and strength back. I pray for those that haven’t been as fortunate as us.

Other updates: Our well is fixed, YAY! No more bottled water shampooing and my hair should go back to blonde. Still taking short hot/cold showers, that should be fixed by the weekend. We are out of quarantine and hopefully armored with extra antibodies for the short-term.

I’m sure more adventures out here await us. I’ll keep this blog post handy and remind myself to find humor in whatever comes our way. Most of what I write I need to read and read again – I’m just as guilty as anyone.

There will always be better days ahead.

Oxox,

Shannon