So I got an app called Marco Polo and fell in love ant thought hit this would make blogging easier! So I guess you are going to get to see me ramble now!
Author: AmyJ0724
Hi! My name is Amy Johnston, and this is my newest blog adventure. Here you will find tips and tricks in each post to that I have learned in my Technical Writing class as well as from my own experience in the Blogosphere. I hope this helps you make your technical writing into exactly what you want it to be! Please feel free to leave me a message or find me on my socials using the links below and ask any questions you have. If I do not know the answer, I will find the answer and get back to you, then we both will have learned something new!
Life after the 2 Dirt Roads
Yeah I had a rough 2012. (Why 2012 sucked). But I pulled it together in 2013. Moved to Colorado Springs, Started school to become a jeweler, even started dating again! Met this one guy who really made me smile. Met one guy who was a complete hottie. Met a lot of asshats. I decided to stick with the guy who made me smile. His name is Jim. Good job, takes care of himself, likes movers and goi g out and having fun. Likes to travel. And cute too!
Well I went off and fell for him. And he fell for me! He was from New England and told me about his family and how he missed them. Then he told me he wanted to move back east to be closer to his folks. As much as I LOVED COLORADO SPRINGS I loved him more, so I said I would drive. In 2014, once I was done with school, off I went to New Hampshire. Half way between his family and mine. It was perfect.
We loved New Hampshire and bought a house in 2015. It was the most amazing house! I started my business full bore from that house. I joined the local business group, the local woman’s club and even the local fiber group. I made friends and became part of the community. I felt more at home in that little town than I ever had before.
1 year to the day that we bought the house Jim lost his job at the hospital due to downsizing. Of course that same day he got another job offer. This time he would be traveling. 13 weeks at a time in one city/town and then off to another. The first assignment? Alaska. He loved it. Me not so much. I missed him. I was rambling around in a 6 bedroom, 3 1/3 bath 2 kitchen house all by my self. Well me, Abby and Sweetie, and 5 bunnies and the bird that hated me, but the animals and the house are totally different posts!
So while living in this house I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and depression. Huh? Me? Depressed? Why??? Fibromyalgia brought on by P.T.S.D.??? Really? Shocking!
As I slowed down because the pain got worse, the sad got worse. As the sad got worse the pain got worse. My arms got weaker, my fine motor control was going but between having paid cash for my tools and supplies my business was making some money. I told Jim that I wanted to retire completely and concentrate on my fiber arts because I had lost interest in Jewlery but I felt I had to keep working because I told my Mum that I would make Sterling Lace profitable. The day I realized that I was profitable I closed my doors. I was tired of hurting myself and dealing with people who would ask me to design something for them but decide the finished piece cost to much, or people who would see a price of $15 on a pair of earrings and ask me if I would take $10. NO!!!!! At $15 they are one hell of a deal so I won’t take $10!!! If you can do better than a hand crafted sterling silver pair of earrings for $15 then you go right ahead and get your earrings at Walmart!!! Do you ask them if they will take $5 for that pair of earrings mass produced in China??? But anyway…. I was getting fed up with people and tired of hurting myself and bored. And that was the end of Sterling Lace Creations.
Jim was fine with me closing the business. I was taking care of the house the best I could and being a “home maker” while he was home. I was also planing our wedding! It was just goi g to be a small back yard thing… that got bigger and bigger and way out of control until I threw my hands in the air and said screw it let’s elope!! And he said fine! So we went to The New Hampshire Highland Games and had a beautiful outdoor Scottish hand fasting on the side of Loon Mountain! It was perfect.
So now I have my loom and my spinning wheels and so much wool I could never spin it all, in a house that is to big for one person. My new husband is off working in California. Married in September alone for our first married Christmas I said screw this’s I’m going to California for Valentine’s Day! So I threw the Dixie and the Irish Wolfhound in my little Jeep and drove cross country!
Jim and I had a blast!!! I realized he was the fun part of my life and I needed to be with him. So our plans of selling the house and buying a little place in Virginia (so I could be close to my best friends and my Mums family while he was off working). Turned into let’s not get a house, let’s get an RV and I can remake that instead and we can travel for his work!!!! That quickly turned into “I ordered the rv today!!! They will have it finished by mid June! (Yeah, he bought a brand spanking new not even built yet 5th Wheel. So I went back to New Hampshire in May, sold more stuff, packed it all off to storage, sold our house to our new real estate agent (it became her personal home) sold my Royal Endfeild, his car and bought a pickup truck, and drove to South Dakota to meet up with Jim to pick up our new home and head back to California! All by mid June!
To say I was exhausted would be putting it mildly. So now I am trying to adjust to a 42 foot RV in a campground from a nearly 5000 sq ft house on 10 private acres, ordering everything we will need in the RV, because the deal was I could get rid of all the old stuff and all the memories and ghosts and get stuff that belonged to Jim and I and our new life. It was also one of the hottest summers on record in Northern California and the AC in an RV isn’t really the greatest. We also went running from a local forest fire after weeks of breathing the smoke from the Car fire!
And then suddenly that assignment was over and we were on the way to Portland Oregon!!! Gawd! I was so excited! No more driving 45 minutes to go to the Safeway or CVS! It was over an hour to the closest Walmart for cryin our loud!! Well before I could settle in to life in civilization again I needed to go back east to see my family and play storage swap. So I hooked up my little camper… yep he bought me a little camper so we could go camping on the weekends… yes we lived in an RV in a campground, but that’s Jim! He also got it so I could go tack classes where ever I wanted, all over the country! How sweet was that?!? Anyway, I hooked up Tilly and off I went back to Maine.
This is where the story gets interesting my friends. I will do another post with more details about my trip east, and the rest if’s all of that later… that’s where the plot twist happens!
To day is a lousy day
So if you read anything in the From the Corner Of Two Dirt Roads blog you know that my husband and the love of my life, Ed passed away in 2012 unexpectedly. I remarried and we were full time RVers until I found out that Jim had a girlfriend. He got a girlfriend so I got an apartment. In Virginia. 2 doors down from my best friends. I could not have gotten here without Monica and David. She is with her grandson today. David needed stuff at a big box lumber store and I get a military discount thanks to Jim’s 20 years of service so I went with him. David and my Ed were a lot alike. Builders, makers, do’ers. I was looking around the store and thinking I want a guy that is a do’er. Someone who can build stuff. Someone that can make all of the projects in my head. Someone who enjoys that kinda stuff. It I want him to be tall, good looking, someone with older kids, read no child support, someone like David. Someone like Ed. I want Ed. I realized today how much I miss my Ed. I came home and started painting my crown molding. Had to sit down. Decided to put up my towel bar and just couldn’t do it. I yelled “Ed I can’t do this!!!!!” And heard silence. And cried.
Now I am writing this all out and when I am done I will go finish painting and hang my towel bar and carry on.
An experiment
I hate doing things alone. Shopping, museums, restaurants, festivals, movies, concerts, alone? No. What the hell fun is that? There is no one to giggle or laugh with!
Well, in just over 2 weeks I won’t have much choice. Go alone or stay home. Yes, David and Monica will be home sometimes and we will get to go do fun stuff. And yes Aunt Norma and Uncle Doug will be around but they live (or will be living) several towns north of Roanoke and I doubt they will feel like driving all that way to my place just to go to Joanne’s with me.
So I am going to experiment. I am going to be using this blog as a companion. Whenever I want to go do something fun I’ll put it under the “Lets go do something!” category and I will snap pictures of the pretty, unique, funny or sad stuff I see. I don’t know how often this will happen but I hope it gets more frequent as I get more comfortable with it and as I get more comfortable with going out on my own maybe I won’t need to write posts about every single adventure. But we will see!!
Just a little bit about me and my newest project
This blog won’t be anything fancy to start with… just my thoughts, unfiltered. I am currently trying to get my laptop set back up so I can make it a bit fancier.
Some things you should know about me, as of this moment:
- I am 47 years old
- I am married and unbeknownst to him I am about to become separated at the very least
- I am retired but I just graduated and became a National Certified Phlebotomy Technician
- I am located in the Portland Oregon area
- I have 3 dogs who I love more than life
- I have 6 step kids and 2 grandchildren who I am not close to
- I have my dad and 2 aunts left and I do my best to touch base with them as often as I can. My other aunts and uncles I have never been close to
- I have friends in Maine, New Hampshire and Virginia.
- I am a Spinner, Weaver, and student of fiber arts
- I am a new quilter
- I love decorating and making my space pretty
- I also have tattoos cause I like to decorate me too!
- I have had a blog in the past and thought it would be easier to just start over, hence the tag line. Here is the link back to my past. From The Corner Of Two Dirt Roads
- I write the way I think… and that means a lot of pauses indicated by “…”‘s. I am not a grammar expert,
- I’m not the best at spelling so I will change words if autocorrect can’t read my mind and text to talk is failing me too.
- This is going to be a very personal blog. My friends and family will not know about it so this will be my safe space to bitch about them without hurting anyone’s feelings. And yeah. I will be changing names and places to protect myself more than them.
- I will tell you about my work but not the name of the place I work… again to protect me more than them…
- I’m not a consistent writer, or blogger or podcaster, yep… had one of those too… The Pagan Widow Podcast. I may jump back into it…
- I hope to make this much more fun than just bitching about my family and moaning about my past
- I want to share my hobbies and projects and progress in my studies.
Beyond 2 Dirt Roads 