Not sure if I can type with my pinky finger bandaged or not but I am going to try. The vegetable peeler mistook my pinky for a carrot. But I'm going to give it a go. 

I think the best place to start is with New Jersey. We lived there for 10 years and really grew to love it. We loved the small town feel of our town—West Milford—the people, the culture, the countryside, the ethnicity of it all. Yet, as much as we loved it there Rick was wanting to retire and one of our dreams was to live at the cabin full time. No way could we retire in NJ and keep our beautiful house with the pool. It's an expensive state to try and retire in. Our property taxes there were $17,000 per year! And, those of us who know us best know that the cabin held a special place in our hearts and lives. We made the 3 day cross-country journey every year, sometime in the spring and somtimes in the fall to spend two weeks there.

So we retired to the cabin. Our cabin on 73 acres of high prairie, off the grid. In winter, Colorado did not plow the dirt roads leading to it, so the best way in was through Laramie, WY and then south to the border. Wyoming plowed to the state line but it was 5 miles further to our cabin. Did you know that the wind blows in Wyoming? (Understatement there!) It deposits snow that is so deep and drifted you can't get through. We did buy a track vehicle, but still we had to park our truck at the state line at a "neighbor's" and leave it there. We toughed it out for a little over two years before we decided it was a good idea to buy a house in town and keep the cabin for weekend getaways. Off the bucket list. Live at the cabin full time.

Moving back to a place you haven't lived in for 10 years creates a few problems. The whole Front Range of Colorado had exploded in population. It was pretty unrecognizable from the place we remembered. People were ruder. The building of houses, stores and shops, restaurants was non-stop. It seemed as if every week there was yet another cornfield or vacant piece of land that had earth movers crawling all over them tearing up the earth to build more subdivisions where every house looked alike. Where would the water come from for all these houses? Colorado gets drier and drier every year and water is becoming more of a problem.

Traffic was terrible. And most of all, where was the culture we had in New Jersey? Colorado was so, well, white bread. It had been (as us older Coloradoans say) "Californicated" and not at all like it used to be. It was not the Colorado we knew.

Our old friends? Well, as you would expect they had all moved on. Many of them had become grandparents and were totally immersed in them. Can't say I blame them, but it wasn't really our thing. We lost them before when they had children in the first place, and now again it was a repeat of that all over again. Not having children is for sure a lifestyle choice. We had no idea how much that decision would affect us in the years to come. Neither one of us has any regrets. 

The cabin's spell on us had started to wane. Our beloved cabin was not the same after having lived full time in it for 2+ years. It was no longer a getaway place, but somehow had become less of a getaway and more of a second house. I think we ruined it by living there full time. For several years the forest fires made the air outside unbreathable. We could not have campfires anymore. Our lovely pine trees that used to surround us had all given up the ghost to the wretched pine beetles. Now dead, they kept falling over and creating more and more work for us to keep our walking path free from fallen trees. It was ugly. We lived in fear of our cabin going up in flames, or even worse that they would save the cabin but the property surrounding it would be nothing but a burn scar, rendering our property's value next to nil. We decided to sell, which we did at a really good price. That helped us to buy our house here in North Carolina. Neither one of us regret our decision, even though the cabin was integral to our lives and all the dogs that were basically raised there from puppies. It was time.

We've done many moves and have never regretted any of them even though some of them have been difficult, like moving to a foreign country and learning a new language where our vocabulary was reduced to that of a 2-year-old. We adapted ourselves to whatever environment we were put into and learned so much from those experiences. Those experiences shaped us into the people we are today. I would not trade those years in Europe for anything. 

To sum up the question WHY:

Our move here was basically driven by unhappiness where we were. We wanted back some of what we had in New Jersey. Life is way too short to stay where you are not enjoying it. So if you are just hanging around waiting for something to happen differently in your life, make that scary leap and JUST DO IT.

This was a sign in the Dublin Airport:

That is, in deciding what the next blog entry will be. I have multiple things running around in my head that I want to write about here but I just can't decide which one should come first. Can you help? Here is a list of things I am thinking about:

• Fall/Autumn in the South
• Our house here in North Carolina.
• Our not-so-good "Adventure in RVing" that was our scouting trip to decide where we wanted to land.
• Why? People are always asking why we left Colorado.

Which one would you like to hear more about? The "Fall/Autumn" one is in the form of a poem. Well, sort of. Kind of.

Okay then. Like the title of this entry says "it's official" meaning I am starting up the blog again. I won't be announcing it on FaceBook when I do an entry, so if you want to read you will just have to check back here from time to time to see if anything is new. As you will notice, I have no idea what to call this blog. My old blog was obviously ''a "new" Jersey Girl" when we lived there from 2006-2016, then it went to the "Off the Grid" cabin blog for both Rick and I, and then I tried under the blog name "Used to be a "new" Jersey Girl now living in Colorado", which was pretty lame if I may say so myself. Both the name and the content. So, I am at somewhat of a loss. I don't want to be "a "new" Southern Girl" because I am NOT Southern and not a girl anymore (don't I wish). Thoughts anyone? Leave me a comment if you come up with something!

I'm not sure how much I will blog. Just when the mood strikes me I guess. As far as photos are concerned, I know they featured heavily in my old blog, but things are different now and I don't have that much to photograph. So hopefully you will join me on this new adventure! Stay tuned ... first real entry coming soon!

P.S. Someone suggested to me that I create a mailing list of people interested in knowing when a new post goes live. If you would be interested in this option, let me know by Messenger! Thanks! The list is private.

Nobody reads this dustly old blog anymore anyway. So I decided to post this. If you read this, bless you for caring about this old blog, but please be gentle.

I am appalled at our country. What have we become? We are going backwards in time, not forward.

We applaud “the right to bear arms”, which was stated in our constitution hundreds of years ago and not valid anymore today. We are not fighting an enemy. Sure, people who hunt should own guns. But not weapons that were meant for the military and certainly not for civilians. Why would anyone need a weapon like that? They don’t. But they get them. 

No control over guns that can kill so many people at one time. Our decaying government hands us biscuits instead of bones. (sorry I have dogs)

And seriously, how do you REALLY feel about knowing someone at your party is “packing” a gun? I would not feel safer at all. Is this one of those western we used to watch on TV? Let’s all have a shoot-out! Oops, we missed the real culprit, so sorry we got you instead.

Yet we overturn Roe vs Wade and add more control to what women can do and not do with their OWN bodies. 

Women have pretty much always been under the rule of men who think they are superior. Of course they do, they are MEN after all. Those who go about and rape us, have incest with us, and nary a thought about the complications and results of their greedy sex-driven acts. They don’t have to carry a child to birth and then decide what to do with their life that has been destroyed by such acts. The men? Do they have any regrets? Do they want to provide support for that child created in such an act that even religious people should find despicable? Hello no, they were just acting on their hormones.

Do you really believe that “God” is looking down on these women? Surely he would intervene. What is he doing about it? He is a very busy MAN for sure. And why do we all think “GOD” is a MAN? Please. Although, maybe he is. Why would a woman “GOD” place that burden on us knowing what it would entail. Questions, questions. They will never be answered.

My advice for “man” kind? Go find yourself a goat. And, if men were the child bearers we would never be having this discussion. 

Okay, I feel a tiny bit better now. But not much.

I might be fleeing to Canada after the next election

Last week I noticed a cute little bird hanging around our front yard. Especially in the morning hours when it would sit perched on one of the stakes that helps to keep our little pear tree upright. And no, it was not a partridge! Sorry, bad joke. I identified it as a phoebe after watching its behavior. You see, phoebes are in the flycatcher family and they like to catch bugs. They are sweet birds and good to have around.

Yesterday morning I looked out the window to see a blob of stuff on our front porch which I thought might be a nest. It was. Apparently it had blown down from it's precarious perch on one of the columns on the front porch. No shattered eggs, so thankfully this nest was either abandoned or just didn't have babies yet. Notice the interesting materials used in building it. Pieces of broken tumbleweeds (we have lots of those), various assorted grasses, and big pieces of insulation snatched from one of the houses that are being built all around us. Our section of the street is an on-going construction zone. Do you think the insulation keeps the nest warmer or just scratchier?

Not to worry, the phoebes have an almost identical nest on the other column that they are using as their home base. This one is well protected from the winds and well enough anchored that I don't think it's going to go anywhere.

Note: As I opened the front door this morning to take a photo of the existing nest (below) one of the phoebe's flew out of the nest, hence my title!