Tag: Moving

New Life?

Last Tuesday, when I was having my morning coffee, a wave of relief washed over me like Gulf water easing white sand around a buried shell. I felt somehow cleansed.

I said to myself, “I am now really retired. What will I do?”

A line from Mary Oliver’s poem came to mind. “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” 

When the awareness of retirement really hit, my mind recouped the last fourteen years. For twelve of those, we cared for my parents. The last one-and-a-half began with Mom’s death at the end of June 2022 and questions about our next move. Actually, the possibility of moving began much earlier. Mom was in favor of downsizing, too. We were no longer able to care for The Compound as we wanted and as needed, and hiring enough help was prohibitive and highly unlikely. It was not a difficult decision.

So we started getting ready. We thought we’d list the place in Spring 2023, in time for a new family to find our lovely spot and get moved in before school started. I admit I procrastinated, but my dear friend Cathy and I cleaned out garages large enough to house eight vehicles with room left over. We sold some and gave away more, passing down furniture and ancestral pieces to our children, my brother, and his family. Our estate sale left us in worse shape than before the sale! I can’t tell you who manages a good estate sale, but I can quickly let you know which company not to choose. Seriously, just ask me.

We browsed realty listings in anticipation, and one house kept catching my eye. It went off the market, and we thought, oh well, we missed that one. Mysteriously, it came back a month later at a much lower price. When two of our children saw the same listing for The Cottage (it seems they were looking, too), they each said, in so many words, “This is your house.” We fiddled, diddled, and bought a house before listing The Compound. Our dear realtor friend Karen was with us every step of the way. We closed on The Cottage on September 22, 2022, and began the relocation process, leaving a few pieces of furniture and decor for staging and passing down more antiques to our children and cousins.

I can confirm that two homes build a recipe for stress, and our two-properties situation lasted almost a year. For three seasons, I cleaned, mowed, and weeded. Dave knocked down weeds and cleaned up the edges of driveways, sidewalks, and flower beds. He watered, thanking the Universe when the rain came. The brutal winter meant ensuring we had no busted pipes at either place.

Karen listed the house in November 2022. There was plenty of activity at The Compound, but no takers. We knew it would take the right buyer for the place. There was that persistent possibility of eight bedrooms, three kitchens, six bathrooms, and three (maybe four) living areas. Not everybody could fit into that situation.

We dropped the price a few times, realizing that the market had slowed, and it still seemed that the people who needed it most could not afford it. Investors, of course, wanted to lowball.

We both watched finances. There was no scraping by, but the upkeep on The Compound was expensive. There were improvements we wanted to make at the new house that we had lovingly named The Cottage. They had to wait for the sale.

Dave, my steady partner, kept us on the right path. Unpacking the basement waited like a stalking bobcat, but necessity called for the consistent care of The Compound, all the while trying to be a good wife and feeling the weight of Mom’s death underneath all the hoo-roar.

We came near to closing with a family wishing for space for an au pair and frequent visits by family from Japan, only to have the deal fall through a couple weeks before signing. Our hearts fell for a while, but along came a woman who said she wanted to house parents, in-laws, and her best friend’s grandmother, providing caregivers 24/7 when needed. She planned significant renovations, she said, including adding gas-powered whole-house generators. She loved the grounds, especially the muscadine vines, blackberries, and strawberries. She told me to leave the wildflower garden to seed for next year’s spring. She bought the staging furniture and decor. It all felt right.

So, how do we fill our time now? Well, currently, we blow and pick up leaves every day. The cottage is in a woodland setting in the middle of a 1980s planned development. No one would imagine the number of leaves we manage. Looking at the front of the house, you wouldn’t suspect the designated wildlife area that is our backyard. There are trees at least one hundred years old, and they shed their leaves in fall and winter. It seems they never stop.

I spend more time with Dixie, my spoiled Shihtzu/Poodle mix. She is a Shi-poo. I cook dinner most days, enough for lunch leftovers, and breakfast a few times. I check and post on Facebook. I’m trying to get comfortable with Instagram.

It seems Dave and I see more physicians these days. It’s not abnormal. I mean, we are eighty-one (next week) and seventy-four. We have at least one or two appointments each week, and each one can shoot the whole day. Then, there are the maintenance people for the HVAC, irrigation, plumbing, and other household fixers.

My routine is not yet stable. I plan to plan.

Every once in a while, I drive by The Compound. It looks ragged and a bit abandoned. No one lives there. No improvements have begun. Nobody cuts the grass until it’s hard to mow.

I don’t feel sad. I’m surprised that I don’t. I just feel such deep love and respect for that glorious setting. The Compound not only housed more than a few bodies, but also fed the souls of those who passed through the doors. The memories will last forever.

There are a bunch of videos online of people fighting through tangled vines and groin-high weeds to find a lawn and, usually, a house. Sometimes, they work on public property, mowing around poles, signs, and speed bumps and humps. Sometimes, they’re even working for nothing! The videos are delightful and somewhat therapeutic.

I probably spend too much of my time watching YouTube.

Trying to love two women…

Is like a ball and chain. Sing it with me,

Trying to love two women is like a ball and chain. Sometimes the pleasure ain’t worth the strain….

Lord, ain’t that the truth. What we’ve got right now is two houses, and sometimes the reason doesn’t seem to justify the strain of two old people trying to take care of two places.

Dad died. Mom died. Dave and I are getting older by the day. We knew we could not maintain The Compound with its possibility of eight bedrooms, three kitchens, or maybe two distinct households. Or perhaps three, and at one time, four, but here we are….

We were so close to closing on The Compound on the ravine. A young family wanted the property to afford space for an au pair and extended family for visits that sometimes last months. They were enamored with the grounds: the wildflower gardens where butterflies, bees, and birds feasted; the twenty-five varieties of daylilies and iris; the shade gardens of violets, trillium, and ginger; the formal foundation plantings of small, round nandina, Happy Returns lilies, and varieties of buttercups and tulips; the shade mounds of ferns and hostas. They made sure I would not destroy the charm of all these flowers.

It all seemed perfect until almost the last minute. There was a problem with financing that could not be overcome.

So now, in upper-90-degree highs, we are mowing, weeding, trimming, and cleaning all these beds and meadows. It’s so hot. We begin at 7:00 A.M. or so and work until it’s just too hot to do much more. This morning, we worked longer than we should have. Our friend who was helping us almost passed out. Dave was headed toward heat stroke. From now on, our friend will work inside. The house needs a good cleaning.

Trying to love two women, you can’t please yourself.

At best it’s only half good, you just can’t stock two shelves.

Yeah, well, one can try. We took inventory today of our cleaning products. Our cleaner prefers a special kind of mop. We got it. We also have every cleaning product known to man, much more than our cleaner can use. We’ll share them after the whole Compound is sparkling.

Trying to love two women Is tearing me apart. One has my money, the other has my heart.

My goal right now is to take pieces of my favorite plants to the new house. New, huh, we’ve been at the new place for almost ten months. The shade gardens here sometimes feel neglected. August is not the best time to plant, but it’s hard to kill iris or daylilies.

We knew selling the Compound would mean finding an extremely unique family to make that big old rambling place their own. We also knew we’d have to maintain it until those people came our way. Our realtor continues to work it daily.

Several people pray over it every day. God love them.

You know, I knew a man once who tried to love two women. It didn’t work for him. (Actually, my numbers could be wrong. There may have been more than two, but who’s counting?) I know I’m glad Dave and I only have two houses.

Trying to love two women Is like a ball and chain, Trying to love two women is like a ball and chain,

Sometimes the pleasure ain’t worth the pain. It’s a long, hard grind, and it tires your mind.

Day 2: Not as bad.

It’s not over, but it is better. The fever is gone. The body aches have subsided for the most part. The headache is much improved, although the full, foggy head is still around. I’m eating broccoli salad for breakfast. Now to get the coughing to subside.

I was already having some trouble with my asthma, warranting a visit with the pulmonologist week before last. I had a televisit with my primary care physician yesterday. We talked mainly about the anti-viral drug. It has several side effects that I don’t like. She prescribed it, and if the symptoms should suddenly worsen, I’ll take it later today. I feel like my body can deal with this mild case.

The pulmonologist had a few better ideas. Use the nebulizer. Use the rescue inhaler. Lie on my belly for 30 minutes several times during the day. Evidently, that helps the lung tissue on the back. Huh. And then she told me to take some Vitamin D, some zinc, and Vitamin C. Increase the aspirin dosage to 325.

I think about all those people who had a real case of this cruel virus, so bad that millions died. I’m in the compromised bunch, and I am so thankful that President Trump spurred a quick development of the vaccine.

I’ll do everything they tell me to do. No one told me not to work, so it’s back to packing (and unpacking) a few more things.

It was bound to happen.

So this is an image I downloaded from the Internet, but my lines were there, much more definitive, in about 20 seconds into the 5-minute waiting time for the results.

We moved our SleepNumber bed to the new house yesterday, but it wasn’t set up so we stayed at The Compound last night. We have two beds here, one full, one queen, that will be sold in the estate sale. Dave and I wrestled the sheets and comforter onto the queen bed, and both of us slept there.

At about 2:00 a.m., I woke to a feeling that I had to get out of that bed because everything in my body hurt. I first decided it was the mattress so different from my bed, but about an hour later, I thought, “Oh sh*t, I have Covid.” My throat was sore, and my nose was running so much that I put a wadded-up Kleenex in my C-pap mask under my mouth. I later transferred my tissue to above my lips, since, well, stuff was running down my mouth. I thought maybe my temperature was rising. Cough, cough, cough!

After being awake for two hours in that miserable bed, I got up and thought I’d just quietly pack a few boxes. All I could manage to do was sit in a chair. I didn’t know what to do with myself, so I finally eased back into the bed. I think I dozed a little. 6:00 came quickly.

I started searching for our Covid tests, and don’t you know, that husband of mine had them readily available. He’s a little more organized that I am.

The first test was quick to produce a positive result. I thought, Wait a minute, I better check the expiration date. 07/22. Oh well, we won’t pay any attention to that one. The next two in the medicine cabinet had expiration dates of 11/22. Well. Let’s just see.

Once again, those bright little lines rushed across the test result card. I texted everyone I’d seen in the last five days and told them to watch out!!!

I have a fever. Last time I checked, it was 101. That’s uncomfortable, but bearable. My throat is sore. A homemade diet Margarita makes it feel better. My ears hurt. My head is a bowl of moving rocks that seem to want to find a way out of my skull. Every joint hurts, joints I’d forgotten about or didn’t know existed. I lean on my nebulizer machine.

My mind: There is a big fog surrounding my head, and it takes me twenty seconds to find the name of something I want to talk about. The latter doesn’t bother me too much because I was already a bit wafty with names and words before the virus hit.

The moving continues. Neil went to the Xfinity store to pick up cable boxes, installed those and the network, and assembled and hooked up the TV our realtor gave us as a housekeeping gift. Tomorrow, when I go over there, I’ll have new stuff to work with. Tonight, Neil and his son will move some refrigerators to the garage, and bring back a table and chairs that doesn’t really look good in the new house. He’s already done something like this just a couple days ago. When we moved a table, umbrella, and six chairs to the upper deck, it was obvious they just did not fit. No one could get under the table comfortably. Neil replaced that extremely heavy set with a bistro set I had planned to leave at The Compound.

Neil checked the koi and winterized the irrigation system. He keeps an empathetic attitude and doesn’t complain (too) much. Actually, he doesn’t complain at all.

Dave will sleep in the queen bed again tonight. I’ll sleep on a full bed in my Dad’s room. We’re going to have a freeze tonight. I’ve moved every plant to the walls of the house for safety. Tomorrow we may have to take them all inside. There is a huge palm at the other house that should have been brought inside. Some of my favorites may get indignant or even freeze, God forbid.

I cannot think too much about the plants right now. I’ve done what I can do. Thank God for Neil. Thank God for Dave Revell, the best husband in the world.

This better not take more than a few days.

From the Compound On the Ravine to…

A Cottage…

On a (Smaller) Ravine.

We didn’t intend to move this soon after Mom’s passing, but then this house popped up and three other family members and our realtor saw it just about the time Dave and I saw it (they were searching) and everybody thought it was the perfect house for us!

It was quite the deal but we closed on September 19, and now we’re packing and moving. Packing and moving are now “quite the deal” since we are not taking everything and there is an estate sale in November. Staging the house for sale and preparing for an estate sale are two entirely different things that shouldn’t happen simultaneously.

But we’re known for some chaos.

We’ll tell you more later. There’s so much more to say.