This year has been a year of change for us. In January my husband got a new job…Yay! But the job involved a lot of travel, so I had to get use to his new schedule. He’d fly out early Monday morning and fly back home late Friday night. After a while, we thought it might be a good idea to live closer to the airport. So, we had two choices to choose from.

1) Move closer to Tampa

2) Move to the Orlando area

It was a very easy choice for us. We choose #2…mainly because our three oldest children live there and our grandbabies. I was really looking forward to being with my kids and granddaughters more often and finally having all of my family in the same place again. So I started looking for houses right away but, I didn’t really find anything I liked or anything that fit our needs…so I kept looking.

Then in March, we got a phone call…we never wanted to get. My sister-in-law passed away. She never got the miracle that we hoped and prayed for.

We will miss you forever…Laurie!

I still can’t believe she’s gone.

In May, my husband found out about a new job opening with the company he works for. He would be able to be home every single night, which is what I was hoping for, but it was in Arizona. I’d been doing some research on the best place to live if you have Fibromyalgia and it all pointed to Arizona or New Mexico. Long story short…he got the job…Yay! But it was bittersweet. It meant I had to leave my three oldest children, my three grandchildren…Faith, Paige and Grace, my mother and my workshop. That was not an easy thing for me to do. But for the first time in my life, I had to put myself first. I need to get well. I really couldn’t live in Florida anymore. The longer I lived there…the worst my allergies got…which meant the worst my Fibromyalgia got and most of all…

I wanted to be with my husband

My husband had to start his new job on June 8th and we had 4 weeks to move. OMG…I hadn’t even started packing yet! So, I spent all of my time looking for houses and packing. I started packing my books first, then my pottery shop. HOLY COW…I never want to do that again! I never realized I had that much stuff in my workshop. Packing a 25-year-old pottery shop took me more than a month. The next time I have to pack my workshop…

I’M HIRING SOMEONE ELSE TO DO IT

The house hunting wasn’t easy. I kept sending my husband houses I found on Zillow, he would go look at them on his days off. I can’t even remember how many houses my husband looked at, they either had pets or rugs, or both…which is not good for me or my husband…who has asthma. Thankfully my husband found a really good realtor who found us a house with no rugs and no pets…in a really nice area. Needless to say, we were not going to make it there in 4 weeks.

So, instead of leaving Florida on July 3rd like my husband was hoping to do, we left on August 4th. It’s a good thing too, because I was not done packing.

Welcome to our new house

My plan was to take some time off from making pottery to work on my book. I really want to finish it. But I still wanted to make pottery.

Then this happened…

The movers destroyed poor Charlotte…my kiln. They also damaged a lot of our furniture…more about that in another post. I really didn’t care about the furniture, we can re-paint and refinish the furniture and my husband fixed my desk chair. But when I saw my kiln…I had tears in my eyes. Charlotte was my work horse, she made everything I made…more beautiful.

I’M SAD TO SAY THAT…

RAVEN HILL POTTERY IS NOW OUT OF BUSINESS…TEMPORARILY

I never thought I would say or write those words, but there is nothing I can do about it. It’s taken me a while to write this post, because I didn’t want to. So, now I have to say goodbye to pottery for a while. I hope it’s not too long. I miss it already. My hands itch to dig into a bag of clay and make something. I had so many plans, so many ideas…so many things I wanted to make.

So, my new plan…is to finish my book, get a literary agent and get published.

Then I can buy a new kiln and have a new workshop.

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