It's been a year.

It's strawberry season again in Florida. It's been a year since we bought our five acres of land. I have to tell you folks, I'm worried.

Nothing has been done.

It's hard not to think about the time that's past. This time last year were were signing on the dotted line. Our dream was budding like the strawberry fields we pass on the highway. Bright and full of promise. We were looking forward to a full harvest.

We haven't done anything. Granted hubby was in Iraq until October, but I still feel like more should have been accomplished. Something should have gotten done.

We have no house plan. No land plan. No RV to live in while we build. No savings to build this dream of ours. The land is supposed to get cleared later this month after we drove up and discovered it coated in six foot tall brush. The land soothed me then, fed my soul, even as we walked along the road bordering one side of my future. I still felt the pang of this new set back though. Something more that needed to be done before we could ever start. We're planning on having a shipping container delivered after the land is cleared. But it hasn't happened yet.

I had hoped to have the well and septic done by now. At least have a house plan drawn up and finalized. Something tangible. Some fruit trees maturing out there so they'd be ready for us in a year or two. A year has already gone.

I've had this Barnheart for a long time but it kept getting pushed aside with day to day. New things happen to offset the need -and it is a need- that move the longing to the backburner. Not necessarily bad things, just the regular. Life. Dishes, laundry, school, illness, a car crash, well...you understand. "Stuff" gets in the way.

I get excited over things that ten years ago would have had my brows furrowed in confusion, shaking my head over the ridiculousness. Me? Smile over manure? Lay in bed unable to sleep, not from worry of work, but because I want to sketch out a coop? Long to be disconnected from the electric company? Not hardly.

But something changed those ten short years ago. Slowly building. Changing my course of action, pulling me back to roots I didn't know I had or wanted. That lazy churn isn't cutting it for me anymore. There is a shift that needs to happen. By God if it doesn't feel like a cosmic cataclysm is brewing under the surface of my skin. Boiling, rolling, waiting to get out. Never calming, never leaving, needing to be fed.  I worry ten more will go by before...No. I don't want to think about that.

I said a few months ago, in December, when the thought of resolutions peppered the air, that this was the year. We were going to get progress done. We were going to have our plans solidify and our march towards that simple little plot of land was going to begin.

I'm trying. I really, really am. We will get more done this year. Even as we're now two months into 2010 and I can practically feel the days slipping through my hands, sliding through my fingers like tears streaming down my face as I feel my Barnheart acting up. We will get more done.

Life, don't make me a liar.