People often ask us, "How do you do it?" in the context of living without a car. Well, folks! Here's a glimpse into the illusive world of car-free living. It takes a little bit of hard work. A lot of sweat, tears and the odd swear word. But eventually, you make it. Sometimes cursing yourself for buying so many groceries in the first place.
Dan: I mean, who really needs to eat that much?
Amanda: Well, we do, after hauling it all home!
Now you may say to yourself, that cart doesn't look all that full and she's only carrying three bags of groceries! How hard could that be? Well, little do you know that the cart, full of groceries, weighs upwards of 100lbs that we had to haul up two very large hills! And Amanda is carrying another 40lbs divided between three bags! Folks! It gets heavy and cumbersome. But, we continue to do it.
Why?
We are stubbornly bound and determined to make it as long as we can without a vehicle.
Again, Why?
We don't really know. Perhaps, we trauma block these incidents. Okay, really. We rarely do such large trips anymore. We've gotten a bit smarter in our old age and have begun to take weekly trips to the grocery store. This lightens the load a bit....okay, a lot.
So, how do we do it? We put one foot in front of the other with a bag in each hand, and a heave-ho on the cart handle. Somehow we make it home, with a (slight) smile on our face!
The not so nice part of the day is dealing with family when your parents are divorced. Both my mother and father were invited to the event. But this tends to make things a bit awkward at times. They are able to be civil with one another, but neither really desires to make conversation with the other. This leads the children to do the inevitable conversational bounce between. Since my brother was busy with his baptism, this meant that the responsibility was left up to me and Dan. I feel as though we did a good job, bouncing between the parents. It was a little easier since my brother wife's family was also there. They have a good relationship with my mother since we see them for birthdays every couple of months. This took some of the responsibility off of me and Dan and put it onto them. But it was still interesting to bounce between parents, trying to keep my father company since he didn't know any one (and we're still trying to repair a very damaged relationship) and keep my mother from feeling like we were abandoning her for my father (since she still has emotional issues to deal with). Yep, its just one big confusing mess. 
But the hardest part of the day was when my father was asking us what we were planning on doing after Church. We knew we were invited to my brother's house for lunch, but my father wasn't. (It just gets really awkward when both parents are in one place). We sort of avoided the question, by saying that we were at my mother's discretion. (yah for no car!) But it still posed more than one awkward dance away from the truth. But I guess that's what its like when you have divorced parents. Its awkward at times, not necessarily uncomfortable, but just awkward. We love my parents, but its definitely easier to love them when they are not in the same place at the same time. And perhaps it will get easier the more times it happens. (I think this may be the third or fourth time they've had to be in the same place at the same time since their divorce almost 7 years ago). But this is just one example of living with divorced parents and the troubles it brings.
