After 14 and a half years, I am leaving Los Angeles not with a bang or a whimper, but with a clackety-clack and a bumpety-bump. A week from today, Jon, my tv-show-creating husband; Sadie, our eight-year-old daughter; Gus, our 11-year-old dog who can barely walk; and Homer, our 5 1/2-month-old German Shepherd puppy who can't stop with the play-play, will all head across our great nation in BOB. BOB is a 1987 Ford RV that Jon found on Craigslist and bought off an old couple who had only managed to put 61,000 miles on it in twenty-five years. After a very thorough tune-up, I'm now replacing mattresses and curtains and such to get it ready for our journey across the country. We leave four days before Christmas. We arrive seven days later in Massachusetts, get ready to sign the final documents, get the keys, and move into our new house on 11 acres. Four days after that, Sadie starts a new school in our new small town in Western Mass (after four years of being schooled in urban LA). Two more days and Jon returns to LA to keep working on his tv show on Nickelodeon. And Sadie and me and the two dogs? We start our new life. Jon comes as much as possible to visit and spends hiatuses with us. Sadie and I dive in.
This blog is meant to chronicle what it is like to start your life over: At 41 years old. At eight years old. We will interview each other. When we first picked up the RV from the old couple's kids in Covina, Sadie rode back in it with Jon. Her words? "That was the coolest thing EVER." We'll see how she feels after days on end crossing Oklahoma and Missouri. Right now all three of us are dealing with that impossibly human emotional state: ambivalence. We can't wait to go live in the country. We are heartbroken to be leaving our loved ones here. We don't know what it will feel like to have Team Ross broken up for periods of time. We are taking it day by day. Hope this blog gives some insight on it all.
