"Your dream doesn't have an expiration date."

Hello, and welcome to the beginning of whatever is going to happen here!

After a REALLY long time of preparing to buy some land and get going with our plans... we decided we had to stick around Weinland Park a little while longer.

Last week after talking with the lender I had my heart broken when I realized we couldn't responsibly accept their loan terms, and we would have to wait to get out of the city.  After all the preparation, the late nights planning and studying, the networking.. the EVERYTHING... I felt like my boat had blown up and I was sinking.  With my boys, no less.  The disgust I felt at living here another year was all I could think about.

The morning after my talk with the lender, I was making breakfast for the boys and looking out the back door into the yard next door.  There's this awful rotten building next to mine that's been essentially vacant for at least the 7 years I've been here.  The yard is just caked with all the funk it's been filter-feeding from the fairgrounds, campus, the railroad and the freeway.  Glass, twisted wires, trash, construction detritus...poo.  You name it.

I was feeling pretty sorry for myself thinking,"My god I can't do this another year.  I can't take this boxed-in feeling, afraid that the boys are going to wander in there and get hurt.  I have all these ideas and no dirt to conceive them in.  Our window can't HOLD any more plants!!!  I'm a failure to my kids!  They're going to pick up terrible behaviors and end up in prison with Max from A Goofy Movie!"

So I'm having my panic pity party, glaring over the fence at that yard and I began to think,"How dare that man neglect a perfectly good piece of earth?  Who is he to keep it locked away when I would give Wayne Newton's left index finger for even that much space to work with?"

Then it hit me... (insert Grinch grin)

I decided that I'm not going to wait for a space of our own to start my super secret squirrel business plans that I've been brewing for 4 years now.  I'm just gonna have to nudge some elbow room out of this city, and I'm not going to spend another warm season feeling like my boys are playing in someone else's livingroom when they're outside.  Or toilet for that matter. (yuck.)

One of my inspirations for truly believing this is possible is a writer named Jenna Woginrich.  She had this mindset that once she made a goal, it pretty much had to happen if her life and choices revolved around that focus.  I also picked up this crazy idea that sometimes it just can't hurt to ask.  For permissions, or help, or negotiated circumstances.  Well, so far it's been working.

I put my plan out there.  To take over that awful property, clean it up and try to coax something to grow over there.  Funny thing about humans... we like to be in on a good plot.  You know what happened?    That same day one person offered me all her old gardening tools, and another family just happened to have a weed whacker someone had given them the day before.

Then yesterday I ran into the potential new property owner, who was actually thrilled at my proposal since it will take a LONG time for the building to be habitable.  Win/win situation.  He gets a beautiful yard for future renters, and I get a greenspace for this season...