2019 Recap – The Year that Broke My Barn and I Found My Heart

2019 Recap, starting with a record-breakingly-awful winter that went way beyond driving us all out of our minds. When I wrote my first blog post in January of 2019 I was feeling pretty good actually! My pellet stove was keeping up, I had a warm and wonderful home, and, at least compared to the winter before it, things were going just fine in my life. I bought myself some ridiculously awesome jammie pants and, for the first time EVER, stayed in them and did nothing. I know, it sounds silly, but I’m usually dressed and in my shoes within 15 minutes of getting out of bed. A conversation at a family gathering enlightened me that its genetic.

My uncle: Every morning around 4 or 5 I get up, get dressed, put my shoes on, get a cup of coffee and then stare at the wall thinking, What the hell am I doing?

My uncle’s retired and that sounds awful. And yet, I was doing that – albeit way later in the day – but still! So, I stopped it! I gave myself permission to stay in my jammies and, gasp, not even get out of bed until I feel like it!

I had no idea what I’d been missing.

Now I’m an addict. ALL of my neighbors know I wear zebra striped fuzzy pants to feed the horses and I don’t care.

My mom stopped by one day, took one look at my outfit, and asked: Going to Walmart?

My new Landry Room

My remodeled entryway

Also, for the first time EVER, in 2019, I took a full five days off from my day job and completed My Laundry room and tackled my entryway complete with refinishing the floors, fixing all of the warped trim (from that awful wood stove I got rid of in 2018) and repainted the ENTIRE ROOM!

But what was a not-so-bad winter turned into the worst winter EVER. Official temperature was -42 at the airport five miles from me and the wind chill was -67. And then, to add insult to injury, we went on to have record breaking snow falls.

I CAN’T STRESS THIS ENOUGH: IT WAS DANGEROUS AND REALLY SCARY!

I’m now on a first name basis with everyone who works at my local liquor store and I joined the wine card club for discounts. Our first snow was in late September of 2018 and our last was in late April of 2019.

I LITERALLY SHOVELED SNOW FOR SIX MONTHS!

My old barn, along with thousands of others throughout the midwest, did not get through it unscathed. It was devastating and sad and just heartbreaking. But no one was hurt, my horses were safe and sound and the falling of my barn was, honestly, just a matter of time anyway.

It was still really shitty though.

My new kitchen reveal!

(One thing about being trapped inside for so long, I got a lot done but boy was I sick of my house by spring!) On top of the excessively long winter we also had a really late spring too granted most of us locals just started to pretend it was spring anyway lol.

After completing my entryway I had moved on to my kitchen, tearing out the closet, fixing the entire room, repainting and refinishing the floors. Since I moved into this old place in 2015 I can finally say what I accomplished in 2019 means I really LOVE my kitchen now.

When “spring” FINALLY hit I was out-of-my-mind ready to get outside and finally tackle my summer to do list! First, I moved my horses’ stock tank into the back of my garage and got the electricity disconnected ASAP from the barn.

I purchased myself a battery operated chainsaw and totally love it. It was actually fun (for the first time ever) to cut up wood because it was me dreaming of all my future bon fires and not cutting up wood to freeze to death in my house all winter.

I know I’ve said it before but I WILL say it again, my ex putting that wood stove in the middle of the kitchen to heat the entire house with was the absolute stupidest idea possible. And my getting RID OF IT in 2018 was an absolutely spectacular decision!

(And I can really say that with total confidence as my new pellet stove and electric heat got me through that awful winter and the last one without a hitch! And its taken me nearly two years but I have finally fixed and repainted out all of the smoke damage done to my home too.)

One of the things I looked most forward to in 2019 was being able to garden again!

I built raised beds in my garden and OMG it was so wonderful! And I also made diy “irrigation” for my garden and flower beds just to make my life easier too. I ended up pickling 45 quarts of cucumbers and dilly beans!

I am NOT planting that many cucumbers ever again OMG!

I tackled my garage ASAP and then, throughout the majority of the summer, I kept working on it and will be appreciating that awesomeness literally for the rest of my life. My cousin’s 40th birthday party gave me my initial push as I can’t fit 100 people in my house!

It was SO amazing for the party!

Having my entire yard filled with friends and family, this home and place being able to accommodate them, is such an incredible joy for me. Come hell or high water, I will be having a family party here at least once a year for as long as I possibly can.

First I insulated the garage and added power.

Then (with some help) I covered the walls with bubble wrap insulation.

Then I added an access door, a new path and,

finally even repurposed my livestock mats under the new seating area!

There’s still a lot more plans and work to be done out there but I’m really on my way to making my garage dreams come true!

My peonies and perennials really did glorious this year throughout the summer and I took full advantage of the nice weather working down around my little farm.

In the horse shed I added a “wall” to give them fully three sides out of the wind and did a little organizing out there to make my own life easier too. My hay storage moved to the east side and I tucked my grain up in a better spot while also adding some shelves and a solar light!

Summer is absolutely my season!

Still though, in 2019, when the weather turned back to fall I was ready to get back to working on my home after spending six months outside lol.

I have to believe that people who don’t experience winters like we do probably live their lives much differently. Pretty much the only time I’m inside the house during the summer is when I’m sleeping and the only time I shut my bedroom windows is if its raining!

By the time fall hits my house badly needs to be cleaned and I am ready to enjoy walls again. Especially after I finally completed the one BIG job that I had to get done before winter that I absolutely LOATHED the thought of.

All the stone that my ex put up on my house that was falling off is officially totally gone. I ripped it all off along with all of the ancient stucco behind it. I fixed my house, prepped it, flashed it and put up new siding.

I also went ahead and put in a new outdoor spigot and another outlet on the front of my house too along with new grading and mulch on top of it! PHEW!

With the completion of that I literally crossed the last thing off of my summer-to-do-list.

And then something happened in 2019 that I didn’t even see coming. I was so ass-to-the-grind-stone to fix and finish and clean up what I felt were “emergency” things after my divorce that I hadn’t really thought what it would feel like to get passed them all.

It just hit me.

No longer being in my home with the weight of so much to do around me (smoke damage is a very terrible thing). No longer looking at my trashed garage and thinking about how it needs to be fixed and finished. No longer constantly worrying about water damage etc from the rock that was falling off of my house.

I moved in here in 2015 and I’ve never been in this situation before.

Of course I still have lots to do lol! But now its things I can’t wait to do to improve my home and my life, to not be fixing but to be building forward… Is fricking amazing!

And, even more amazingly, in those months last fall, when I landed in this incredible moment, I also met someone.

Or maybe its not amazing at all – maybe it just makes sense.

I had so much I wanted to do, so much to fix and focus on for me… I needed to reclaim not just my entire home and property but also myself. During those years men were an utter waste of my time.

I needed to LIVE. And I totally did.

I was single for two years and really I was alone here with no real help during the two years of my marriage before that too. Its a cliche we’ve all heard before that proved true for me.

When I healed, finally loved myself, stopped hiding, stopped looking and was just living and loving and appreciating the life I had to its absolute fullest – is when Lodi came into it.

(And Annie too – my Lodi came with a lovely little doggo. I lost my last dog in Easter of 2016 and had simply not had the heart to adopt another, it was the longest I had ever been without a dog in my entire life… My mom stopped by one day and saw Annie’s dishes and doggy stuff spread around the house she told me, “Its so good to see that here again!” I couldn’t have agreed more.)

I think the idea that the Universe works in mysterious ways might just be bullshit. Maybe when we’re ready our hearts holler them home. I knew I’d been hollering for him when I realized how badly I’d been missing him… and I didn’t even know him.

He took my hand the first morning we were together and we danced in my kitchen and I cried.

It is remarkable how much can happen in two years. When I threw my ex out I was so worried about making enough money to survive that my family literally bought me several months worth of essentials for xmas! (Toilet paper etc.)

But over the next couple of months my finances adjusted to just me being here paying for just me… and it turned out I’d been paying my ex A LOT of money to live here, lie to me and cheat on me.

After I threw him out I wrote a plan that I called Operation Blissfully happy. The idea was that maybe now that I had control over my finances I could get everything paid off so I would be able to pay extra on my mortgage and be totally debt free within 10-15 years.

When I wrote it it felt a little far fetched but…

Almost two years to the day my divorce was final, at the end of 2019 – that dream became my reality!

This is the MOST adulting thing I have ever felt: I AM THRILLED! I have no debt besides my mortgage! I can’t believe how much can change in just a year or two. If nothing else 2018 and 2019 taught me definitively to just keep going.

Work relentlessly toward your goals no matter how far fetched they may seem.