Our New Home is...a Folder?

At Northlake RV Resort, Houston, Texas...

Talk about downsizing! 

First, it was the big home in the country on ten acres that we built before we realized it would consume all of our spare time to keep it up. 

Then, it was the big house in the city, but with a small yard. Fine for me, but Sandy spent all of her time keeping up five bedrooms and four bathrooms--for two people! 

Then, it was the much smaller RV-port house with an even smaller and xeriscaped yard. Fine, but we were retired and traveling and found that we didn't want ANY of the the kind of bondage caused by home ownership.

So, we thought we would show you our new home:

Yes, it's a file folder. We are now one of about 14,000 other folks who also live in file folders in the Escapees mail facility in Livingston, Texas:

Okay, okay, for you literalists, we don't actually live in a file folder; we will be living in Phannie, of course. But for those who don't know that, our address of record will be Rainbow Drive in Livingston, Texas. 

We drove up to Livingston to set up our Escapees mail handling account at their headquarters building, located about six miles southeast of town in a pretty wooded area:

We were met by Ashley, an irrepressibly cheerful young lady, who showed us around and helped with the process, and we were quite impressed with the facility. We didn't really anticipate how large the operation would be. The fact is that Escapees actually receives more mail for its customers than the entire population of Livingston! 

When we were driving away, I looked at Sandy and asked how she felt about living in a file folder. Characteristic of her good nature, she said, "Well, it sure won't take long to clean house!" 

Yes, even though it's stressful to have go through so many changes so quickly--especially a woman, for whom the nesting instinct is strong--Sandy has always been more than willing to give new things a try, even if they seem pretty harebrained. God bless her; it's easy to love someone like that.

After this, we drove to the local tax office to change our auto registration and to the DPS to change our drivers' licenses. Now begins the process of making address changes to everything else. We will inevitably forget something in this process, so we'll hang onto our UPS mailbox until we're sure everything is switched over. 

We've had a wonderful holiday break with the kids, but we'll be heading back to Fort Worth in a couple of days, where we will obviously be incredibly busy getting transitioned from stick and brick to bus. So stick around, and we'll see if we make it.

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; please forgive me if I don't appreciate it enough each day.