So What Do You Do All Day?

At Llano Grande RV Resort, Mercedes, Texas...

We're often asked that question. The answer, of course, is "anything we want." That may seem a bit flippant, but it is still true. The marvelous gift retirement gives us is time--time to spend doing those things we enjoy and ignoring those things we don't particularly like to do. Take housekeeping chores, for example: I don't think most people realize just how much time they devote to maintaining their residence and grounds (unless, of course, you have staff to do it for you, which I would guess most of us don't). I'm not going to replay all the whining I did about this while leading up to the house sale, but the older I have gotten, the more I have resented its thievery of my time--precious time that inexorably grows shorter each day. 

Now that the house is gone, an enormous amount of time and money have been freed up to use for things we enjoy. That could be something as simple as watching a sunset or sunrise (we don't see many of the latter). Or reading a book. Or watching a movie. Or taking a walk. We certainly don't devote much time to housekeeping. Daily chores in Phannie take maybe 15 minutes; the rest of the day is ours.

When we arrive at a new destination, we may go out for a meal or eat something in Phannie.  Then we relax until the following day, when we may venture out in the car to see things that interest us or to find a good restaurant.  We've spent the last couple of afternoons showing Steve and Jackie around the Rio Grande Valley area. We stopped in at Retama Village and Bentsen Palms (upscale RV communities) for short visits with Mike and Marian, Ginger and Jesse and Bob and Janet. We've also tried out several local restaurants, among them Salazar's Hamburgers and Nana's Tacos, both of which are always good. We also stopped by the Don-Wes flea market to look around and picked up some fresh pineapple and, oh yes, the obligatory freshly popped kettle corn and mini-donuts, both of which disappeared in fairly short order. I'm not sure what happened to them. 

Javier scoops up a bag of kettle corn, freshly popped in the big cast iron cauldron to the left. Smells so good!

Jackie tried on a pair of sunglasses but didn't buy them. "A little too understated," she said.

Sandy found a plastic snake which I shamed her into touching. Since she is deathly afraid of snakes, it wasn't very gentlemanly of me, I admit. She doesn't look very happy, does she?

One of the cardinal rules for fulltimers seems to be that nothing should be rushed. For the purpose of this discussion, something is rushed when 1) more than one activity of any kind is planned or 2) the event planned contains no provision for a nap. If this rule is not followed for some reason, then it is essential that a day of rest is observed immediately after the transgression.

Don't roll your eyes at me; I don't make the rules!

Okay, maybe a day like this seems a little tame. But you should know that there is no shortage of laughter and no shortage of appreciation for our good fortune to help occupy our time.

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

One Final Offload and We're On Our Way!

At Llano Grande Lake Park Resort, Mercedes, Texas...

We sheepishly disgorged Phannie and Mae onto our hapless kids in Houston, and yes, they're still speaking to us, but I think only because they are finding some pretty cool things among the stuff we unloaded on them. (Note to others who have this idea: If you're dumping stuff on your kids, include some nice things they can use.)

We also had a nice dinner at at Kobe Japanese Steak House with Mindy and Tyler and the grandsons, and we also had the extra pleasure of the presence of Sandy's sister, Brenda. The boys really enjoyed watching the antics of the chef cooking on the Teppanyaki grill.

The next day, we bade them goodbye, Phannie's interior looking much more inviting now with the absence of the piles of debris. We headed for Corpus Christi, a favorite area of ours, where we would spend the night while en route to the Rio Grande Valley. 

The weather was uncharacteristically cold and rainy during the trip to Corpus, our having followed a cold front southbound from the DFW area. As a result, Phannie and Mae took on a most unattractive layer of road spray.  There was nothing we could do about the grime except wait until we arrived in the RGV, where we can always get a good wash job for a bargain price. (No, unless I'm desperate, I don't wash it myself; it's too big and I'm too lazy.) 

While we were in Corpus, we felt compelled to have a fine seafood dinner at Snoopy's, one of our favorites, just across the bridge on the bay. 

With our seafood fix out of the way and a good night's sleep, we headed Phannie south again. In Kingsville, we met up with Steve and Jackie, another fulltiming couple we recently met during a trip through Austin. We found we had a lot in common--so much so that they ditched their fiver for a Phaeton like Phannie (except newer) a few weeks ago after seeing our coach and hearing us brag on it. We caravanned with them for the rest of the trip to the RGV, where we are excited to show them around and have them meet still more friends of ours. 

As soon as we arrived at Llano Grande Resort, I phoned up Jesse, our wash guy, who agreed to come out the very next morning and clean up both coaches.

Jesse scrubs the grime off a very dirty Phannie

Steve and Jackie's parking spot was close by, and we couldn't wait to walk over and take a look at their (new to them) Phaeton. To say we were impressed would be an understatement. It is a beautiful motorhome, appointed just as they wanted. We felt very happy for them and proud to have had a small part in their choosing this new home on the road. We know they won't be sorry.

Owners of the coach, held by Jackie and Steve

Jackie and Steve love Llano Grande, one of the nicest parks anywhere. And yes, for those of you in snowy climes, those are palm trees--no snow down here; just warmth and sunshine. Sorry!

Now that we've reached our first fulltiming destination, and the madness of the purging and sale of the house is quickly fading, we are finally beginning to get a sense of what this new lifestyle is going to be like. It is, in our view, the ultimate indulgence of a fantasy of freedom and travel. Imagine having the means of traveling in the comfort of a motorhome whenever and wherever you wish and staying as long as you want. Imagine going to where it's warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Imagine staying in a beautiful place until you're ready to move to another that is equally beautiful. Imagine meeting many new friends whose paths you often cross in your wanderings. Imagine not being tied down to the responsibilities and expense of a house somewhere. Imagine no work and all play. Well, that's us.

Not for you, you say? Well, that's fine; we don't have to understand.

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

Fulltiming: Finding a New Normal

At Northlake RV Resort, Houston, Texas...

Our escape from the DFW area didn't go as planned--on the same day as closing the house sale--there were just too many loose ends. For one thing, we agreed to stay another day to spend time with the new owners, teaching them the essentials of all the electronics in the house. This was a formidable job, as they were definitely not what you would call techie-type folks. At the end, I had gotten them to a point where they could get most everything to turn on and off. That was about all they could absorb for the day, I'm afraid. We did leave for them the instruction manuals for all these gadgets and for the appliances. Digesting all of them will require quite a lot of reading that is, well, boring at best.

Although we had planned to take a direct route to the Rio Grande Valley after closing, we decided to make a dogleg down to Houston, so we could take some more things we were giving to Mindy and her family--things that we hadn't identified and purged when they departed last week in the rental truck. Every little bit helps, as we will begin to reevaluate the storage unit the next time we return to the area. We can already think of things we kept that should have been discarded in the 21-day purging mayhem that we created for ourselves.

Finally on the road, we looked like the Clampetts of Beverly Hillbillies fame. Phannie and Mae were both loaded to the gills with some of our belongings that were being force-inherited by the kids. I didn't take a photo, because it would have been too embarrassing; we hope they'll still be speaking to us after this. It wasn't until all this stuff was unloaded in Houston that we began to take a deep breath, as we realized that Phannie's interior would return to normal, which it did in pretty short order once Sandy put her mind to it. In fact, it was quite astonishing to me how many extra things we loaded aboard the coach for fulltiming, yet these are not really obvious when looking around. Fortunately, Tiffin builds lots of storage space into their products, and Phannie certainly is no exception.

I had my own challenges in the belly compartments. I knew I wanted to carry an air compressor (more convenient than the air system on Phannie), but the one I had at the house was too big to carry in the coach. The solution was a new Craftsman Air Boss compressor that just happened to fit perfectly into the electronics bay near the front of the coach:

So, you might ask if we have had any 'aha' moments after this massive paradigm shift? Well, the answer would be yes, but not as profound as one might think. For one thing, we have just been too busy to give it much thought. I will tell you, however, that I had a happy moment when I erased from my iPhone the apps that I used to review and control all of the security cameras and alarm systems that we installed at the house after the break-in a few years ago. That single act--deleting the apps--gave me a good deal of instant relief, as now I know that no matter what happens to the house, it's someone else's problem. It's hard to quantify the sense of relief I got from this one thing but, I can assure you, it was huge.

It seems odd that we will not return to this house that we lovingly had custom built, but it finally became obvious that it didn't serve any function except to store our furniture and the other stuff that we have largely discarded now. It was in many ways an impediment to the travel goals for our senior years, and these goals do NOT involve sitting around a house.

So, we're moving toward a new normal that will become more obvious, I'm sure, when we've recovered from the trauma of this move. We're definitely looking forward to that.

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

Exhausted But Free!

At Treetop RV Resort, Arlington, Texas...

It would be difficult to describe adequately the exhausting chaos of the last few days leading up to the real estate closing and the possession of the house by the new owners. If you have fulltiming on your mind and think you can rationally and reasonably purge all of your excess belongings in 21 days, then please--for the love of God--don't try it!

The first couple of weeks seemed to go pretty well, with what we thought was a system in place to deal with the various dispositions of the goods. It was about at the end of this time that it became evident that our system was not purging fast enough to reach the goal of cleaning out the house in time for the closing. So, we studied our options and decided we would do what any trained professional would do--panic! 

The most time consuming and frustrating part of purging is the fact that you actually have to look at every single thing you own, no matter how small, and make a decision as to what to do with it. And after nearly 40 years of marriage, we had a lot of things--thousands of them, in fact--to look at.

As closing date drew nearer, our evaluation of each item and the decision about its disposition was afforded less and less time. And within a couple of days of the closing, our looking and thinking turned into mere glances and no thinking. By the last day before closing, the stuff was being tossed into large boxes labeled "Last Minute Junk." Any semblance of the orderly process had flown out the window.

Almost all of the "last minute junk" went straight to the storage facility to be sorted out the next time we're in town. Unless, of course, a mysterious fire consumes the storage facility at a time when we have a good alibi. Where is Guido when we need him?

But, somehow we did it; the house was empty within a few hours after closing, but not without its exacting a toll on our rapidly aging bodies. I don't know when we've been so tired.

Our exhaustion was so great that we really didn't get to appreciate fully the huge change that just happened in our lives. We think it really won't hit us until we actually leave the Metroplex and get on the open road in a couple of days. But that's another post.

Here are a few observations that we can share with you now that that we're houseless:

In order to keep your sanity and your health, take a least a year to do your downsizing; more time is better. Doing it in 21 days is utterly ridiculous! (In our defense, weak as it may be, we thought the house would take much longer to sell.)

Be brutal about the things you discard; we are a ridiculously affluent society, and we actually need very few of the possessions we have accumulated.  (We weren't nearly brutal enough, but it did make us feel better that we gave all of our excess things to family or charity and sold nothing.)

Keeping a bunch of stuff in a storage facility is a loser. The rent charges will soon eclipse the value of the things you kept. (Yes, we're guilty, but we can correct this mistake; we're going to purge again when we get our senses back.)

Digitize the old paper photos and slides--especially ones of important family members, friends and events. You can start doing this years in advance, and you won't have thousands of photos hanging around in boxes, deteriorating. By the way, it's up to you to save this legacy for your descendants; your knowledge of the subjects in the photos is irreplaceable. (We have many photos digitized, but not nearly enough.)

I wish I could report that we have entered a realm of euphoria that is only achievable through this newly found freedom, but it is just too soon. Right now, we're still recovering from our self-induced exhaustion, but we do know that living in Phannie seems like being home, and it makes us happy; that can't be bad. We will keep you posted.

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

One Week To Go!

At home near Fort Worth, Texas...(but not for long!)

I wonder if we'll make it? By the time the house sale closes next week, we will have been purging for 21 solid days, which may be some kind of record for the fewest days spent on such a project!

If we had had our right minds, it would have been 21 months! I've lost count of the number of trips we've made to donate stuff at the church thrift shop. Also uncountable have been the trips to the storage unit, where we drop off things that will also likely be jettisoned when we're able to think clearly again. And no one except the trash collectors know how many bags of trash they have picked up from the curb. It seems inconceivable that we have downsized twice before in years past. If we hadn't, I think I would just climb in a garbage bag and leave myself for pickup.

The kids will drive up from Conroe and join us this weekend for a visit. Once they're here, they will be presented with a rental truck onto which Tyler and Carlos--our handyman--will load an early inheritance. These items will consist of things Mindy has claimed and others that we think they might use. (We've cunningly boxed up the latter, so they can't tell what they are.) Then Tyler will drive the truck back to their place in Conroe where they will perform a triage of their own; and who knows what they will keep? I know we don't care; we're just glad it's going away. 

Adding to the chaos are the innumerable address changes to show our new mail drop as the Escapees facility in Livingston, the transfer of our utilities to the new owners, the servicing of Phannie and Mae, as well as doctor and dentist visits for both of us. We have also arranged a couple of sessions with the new owners to familiarize them with all the electronic gadgetry associated with the security, video surveillance and entertainment systems. I'm afraid this might be a bit of a challenge, as it would for anyone not accustomed to today's technology. I think I have most of the owner's manuals for these things, so maybe leaving these behind will help. We've also assured the new owners that we are only a phone call away. They are a very nice couple, about our age, who have a 36-foot Winnebago Tour. The house will be perfect for them, and they are excited.

With all that's going on, we have had little time to think about the radical change in our life that will take place in only a week. I'm sure it won't really hit us until we pull away from our neighborhood for the last time and head Phannie toward the warmth of south Texas. However bewildered we may be then, I'm pretty sure it won't last long. 

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

Days Twelve and Thirteen

At home near Fort Worth, Texas...

Okay, the holidays are over, and we're back at the chore of purging, purging. We have had another bit of good luck, however. The new owners are purchasing most of our furnishings! That is a huge help, in that we can mostly just walk away, not having to arrange for a big furniture moving effort! That doesn't mean we won't be busy up until the last minute, however. We are still making daily trips hauling non-furniture stuff to the storage unit and to the church thrift store, to say nothing of the junk we're taking to the curb as trash.

It's getting more difficult and tiresome to make the dozens of decisions each day as to what to do with every single thing we pick up. And these things are getting smaller in size and almost seem to be growing in number! We question our judgment at times, unsure that we have correctly categorized an item, asking each other's opinion often as to whether it would likely have any use or value to anyone.

Bear in mind that we have gone through several downsizings, and we really haven't been doing any hoarding. In fact, some of the storage cabinets have remained empty after we built the house. It's just that we finally have to deal with the small stuff that just accumulates unintentionally; I call it the detritus of life. A junk drawer, for example, is a source of a lot of frustration, because there's good stuff in there along with the junk. And it's not easy to try to guess which is which.

The hardest thing is trying to keep the sentimentality out of it to the degree possible. We realize that we can't keep every single thing our children and grandchildren have touched, but Sandy certainly would like to, if she could.

We also realize that, once the decision is made about each item, it will almost certainly be okay. After all of our previous downsizings, including our parents' estate sales, we can't think of a single thing that we wish we had kept.

Something that has been particularly annoying for me is trying to decide which articles of clothing to keep. I think I'm like most guys in that I really don't have "favorites" like Sandy does. If it fits comfortably and is functional for the weather of the day, then it's good to go. I try to observe some kind of color matching, but this has largely deteriorated into two categories: Things that are red-orange-brown and things that are blue-green-yellow. There are certain colors that simply defy categorization; these include black, white, gray, beige and pink. Who knows what to do with those? (Fortunately, I don't think I have anything pink, except maybe a tie--which I certainly shouldn't have kept.)

Here's the kind of dilemma I face: I probably have three or four dozen mostly casual shirts remaining after having given most of the dress shirts away. These are all in good condition and fit well, and I don't dislike any of them; yet I can't keep dozens of shirts in Phannie. So which ones do I discard? 

To keep from getting a headache, I have decided to put the excess into storage and deal with this later. I'm sure that, before long, I will open up the storage unit and say to myself, "What was I thinking?"  

And so it goes, all through each day. And in the back of my mind is the nagging realization of something quite ominous: (I'm whispering now)...we haven't even started on the attic!

God help us.

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

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.

Well, That Didn't Take Long!

At Northlake RV Resort, Houston, Texas...

We had a great Christmas with the kids in Houston and, oh yes--it looks like we're just about houseless! There is a bidding war for the house! The first offer came in less than 24 hours after the house was listed. The second arrived two days later, and so on. And guess what? The latest offer is for more than the asking price!

No, we weren't expecting this. We didn't know what kind of interest buyers would have in such a unique house. We thought it would appeal to, say, one person in a hundred who might own an RV.

I guess we partly attribute the quick sale to realistic pricing. We have had some local armchair experts tell us we priced it too low, but these are the same folks who have had their house on the market for a year with no interest. The brutal fact is that a house--or anything else, for that matter--is worth only what someone is willing to pay for it. We were very careful to research the comps on our own and, surprisingly, the listing agent came up with the exact same number we did. 

Frankly, we were anticipating having weeks or months to finish the purging and packing, but now that's out the window. We've got to get our track shoes on! Holy smoke!

Stay tuned as we do this belly-flop into fulltiming; this should be interesting, to say the least. Pray for our good health and at least some sanity!

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

Days Ten and Eleven

At home near Fort Worth, Texas...

This is really getting old. Yes, I know we have just begun, but the triage of our stuff is perhaps the worst part. We must literally have to look at every single thing we own, even if it's just a piece of paper, and decide what to do with it, knowing that, in many cases, we're probably making the wrong decision. Now that I think of it, only one disposal path of the three (keep-toss-give to the kids) is likely to be the wrong one: It's the things we keep. I know we are doing too much of this one, but we just don't have the stamina to do a deeper purge until the dust settles a bit.

We keep finding stuff from the past that should have made the last purge when we moved from the big house. Look at this old pressure cooker from 1976, smartly showing a popular color of that era:

We've never used it and didn't even know we had it, yet somehow it survived the last holocaust of our stuff. Who thought it was a good idea to have kept it this long?

Here's something else we've had that's been made obsolete by the Internet:

Does anyone not use online dictionaries now?

I was almost glad to take a break to do a little repair on Phannie's shore power cable. Phannie's electrical compartment is on the driver's side of the coach, which is the side nearest the edge of the RV port. The power cable runs along the outside perimeter of the slab, where it plugs into the Phannie's power cord.

Because of all the rain we've had, the receptacle had gotten wet and, since water and electricity don't like each other, the receptacle on the end of the shore power cord shorted out, looking like this when I took it apart:

The grabbers on the end of the hot leads were thoroughly welded to their wires, so I had to cut all of the burned wire lengths off and fit them into a new receptacle. This took a while, since the large-gauge wires were a little difficult to re-dress and snake them into position. I didn't mind, though, as it meant I wasn't having to make a thousand judgments about what to do with our stuff! The new receptacle worked fine after the repair was complete, and I probably saved a hundred bucks by salvaging the cable. From now on, the receptacle will have the protection of a plastic box to keep it dry.   

For those of you who haven't yet had the kind of fun we're having in preparation for fulltiming, although you intend to, we offer these observations:

1. If we had waited much longer to do this, we probably wouldn't have undertaken it. It seems the older we get, the more daunting such a thing becomes. And in the daunting department, our meter is pegged out right now. If you're going to do it, make it sooner, rather than later, if you can.

2. As we have gotten older, material possessions mean much less than they did when we were younger; family and friends become more important, and that makes it easier to let go of your things, including the house. A disinterest in possessions seems to be a common theme with most of our contemporaries so, since you know it's coming, why not start giving some of your excess to those who could use it? The sooner you do that, the more time you will have to make wise choices as to its disposition.

3. No matter how well a house is designed, it demands a lot of expense and a lot of attention--attention that takes away from the things we enjoy doing. We have reached a point where we come home merely because the upkeep of the house demands it, and that doesn't make much sense to us. 

We are going to take a couple of weeks' break from the purge and enjoy Christmas with the kids. The house will be on the market next week, and we'll continue purging and reporting on it after the holidays.

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

Day Nine

At home near Fort Worth, Texas...

The weather was way too gorgeous today to be holed up in the house packing boxes. Yet there I was, zig-zagging around, trying to decide (with the final verdict coming from you-know-who) what goes to the kids, what goes to storage and what goes to trash. The trash is easy--I just toss it in the big trash can and, when full, tie up the bag and take it to the curb. Since this upheaval began, the garbage truck has picked up twelve huge bags that were packed as full as possible without breaking, like these:

In addition to that, the recycling truck picked up two huge bins, like this one:

The question has to be: If there was this much stuff in the house that we don't need and weren't using, why are we just now tossing it?

Okay, as I write this, I am mindful that this is the second time I have posted photos of garbage in this blog; this is beginning to concern me. Am I slowly going batty? Will nightmares be next? I think I'm paying way too much attention to this. 

But before I call over to Terrell (nearest town with an asylum) to have myself picked up, I think a little self-analysis is in order (pausing and stroking my chin, as if I had a beard). Okay, here is the diagnosis: My obsession with trash is due to two things: 1) I was weaned too early [I use this to explain most of my neuroses] and 2) keeping track of the trash helps validate that I am making some degree of progress--progress that is not always discernible amid the rest of the chaos. Pretty good, huh?

Let's just go with that; no need to call the asylum, after all.

Walking back into the house, this is what I see--boxes everywhere:

And in the attic:

Is it any wonder that I need the comfort of seeing the trash go out?

I can just see some of you fulltimers out there (you know who you are) who have already done this and are barely able to contain your glee as I wade through all the junk that we should have gotten rid of long ago. Go ahead and enjoy your smugness...you deserve it. But I'll remember.

Phannie's belly compartments and Mae's cargo area are rapidly filling with stuff that's going to the kids. We've sent them lots of cell phone photos of things we think they might want, and we put it in their boxes. (But we also toss in things we don't ask about, figuring they can get rid of them if they wish. Don't tell them.)

Sandy has spent the last two days shredding papers with sensitive information; I don't think she ever wants to see a shredder again.

The new vessel sink will be installed in the guest bathroom tomorrow, and Carlos will be here next weekend to do a final cleanup of the yard. After that, the listing goes live. We will be in Houston, wondering.

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

Day Eight

At home near Fort Worth, Texas...

The last couple of days together might constitute a half-decent single day of purging, so I'm going to say the last two days will be Day Eight. The tradesmen who have been here putting the best face on the house have collected their checks and finally departed. Only one thing (we think) remains to be done: The vessel sink in one of the bathrooms will need to be replaced, as it has developed a crack.

Just getting the house ready to show has cost us thousands of dollars, and it is only seven years old. Add to that the property tax bill soon to be paid, the utilities and other expenses, and we are talking some serious cash doled out to maintain a place that we can't wait to leave, only to worry about it when we do. I'm not sure why it's taken so long to come to grips with this insanity. Wait a minute...when you're insane, you aren't aware of it, are you? If that's so, then perhaps we're just slow. Very slow.

Our progress has been slowed by juggling the workers with doctor appointments and yearly lab work they insist upon. We find ourselves at the doctors' offices far more than when we were younger, but that's largely because of the increased number of medications we need whose prescriptions can only be renewed after a checkup. They've got us over a barrel, don't they? The inexorable dependency on doctors and medications is not lost on us (even though we've established above that we're slow), and we know this is a harbinger of a time when we can no longer be patched up enough to travel as we do now. This realization is not insignificant among the reasons why we're trying to free ourselves of as many responsibilities as possible. 

Another expensive speed bump was caused by both our cars' needing mechanical work. Mae had developed some wear in her front suspension, so I had new suspension kits installed on both front wheels, which improved the ride greatly. Add to this a burned out high-intensity headlight in the Escalade that set us back...well, let's just say, an outrageous amount. No, I didn't try to do it myself; you have to dismantle a good bit of stuff under the hood to get to it.
Now I'm beginning to wonder why we need two cars besides Phannie. (I told you we were a little slow.)

Even with all this going down, we were able pretty much to clear out the study and about half the cabinets in the laundry room. We also made two more trips taking discards to the thrift shop.

Oh yes, and we rented the storage unit at a nearby facility. It should be interesting to see what all ends up in there and how long it remains after we trip over it for a while and discover that paying good money to store it is yet another form of insanity. I guess the next thing you know, I'll be seeing a shrink!

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




 

Day Seven

At home near Fort Worth, Texas...

We have returned from the annual shopping frenzy that is Canton, Texas. Once again, the guys were largely successful in staying far away, kicked back most of the time but industrious enough to fix dinner for everybody on one evening. Ribs and baked beans were for the grownups, and mac and cheese for the kids. I even made egg rolls, a favorite. Tyler did go out into the vendors area for a while, but we considered that a rite of passage. Everyone should do it once, I suppose.

As I predicted, Sandy bought stuff only for the kids, keeping with our commitment to downsizing. Speaking of that, I will go ahead and tell you that getting rid of stuff is tedious. At least, we sort of have a system now. We have a supply of empty clear plastic bins with lids plus cardboard boxes. In every room, we set out a plastic bin and two cardboard boxes. Into one cardboard box goes stuff we're taking to the kids; into the other goes stuff we're taking to the church thrift shop; the plastic bin holds those things that we're keeping and placing into storage. A trash can holds the discards.

I know, I know. I can just hear Merikay now, shaming me for not following her example--getting rid of EVERYTHING. What can I say, Merikay? We're weak. I fully envision our returning to the storage unit many times to get rid of more of the stuff we're keeping needlessly at the moment. In fact, I would bet on it.

I readily agree that getting rid of everything would be much easier; there would be no decisions to make as to what would be worth keeping. Our problem is that we know fulltiming will be temporary and that our exit strategy will include acquiring another house of some kind. And, if we're keeping a few things until then, why not a few more? The first things that make the "keep" list are unique and hard-to-find items. If something works well for us and is not readily available in stores, you can bet it will be kept. Photos that are not digitized will also be kept, along with too many mementos. Being sentimental is definitely a hindrance to this process, but we are what we are, I guess.

Day seven has largely been devoted to cleaning out the study, an area from which all of the triage containers were filled more than once. This, of course, creates mayhem, and the study looks like this:

Sandy spent the day going through hundreds of records in the file cabinet below the window in the photo above. While most of these papers were trashed, many with sensitive account numbers had to be shredded. At the end of the day, the shredder was smoking a little, so she took a much needed break.

One bright spot about going through our stuff is that we invariably run across photos that were long forgotten, causing us to pause and reflect on those memories. Finding old photos also affords a mischievous blogger a chance to embarrass someone like, well, Sandy, who seems delighted here as she kicks back in a washtub at age three:

Little did she know what this would portend for the future; she still likes a long, relaxing shower, although these have shortened quite a bit out of necessity in the RV world. The photos we found today are only a tiny fraction of the rest; we haven't even gotten to the attic yet. There are thousands more up there, I'm afraid.

Outside, the bent gutter is fixed, and the painters will be finished tomorrow touching up the inside. Even so, I still don't know when this place might be ready to show.

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

Oh, the Places We've Seen!

At Mill Creek Ranch RV Resort, Canton, Texas...

Those who recognize the location above will know its status as the home of the vast east Texas flea market of nationwide fame. I guess there may be a larger one somewhere, but it's hard to imagine where it could be and what it must be like.  

Sandy, Mindy and their gal pal LouAnn are ravaging the countless pavilions of vendors in a quest to see everything in three days. (It's not possible.) While they are attempting this quixotic quest, the three husbands are in a quest to see none of it in three days. (We usually succeed.)

We grilled hot dogs on the Weber Q, and the menfolk took a nap during the girls' absence, unapologetic for our indolence. Left to my own devices for a while, it occurred to me that I could use this time to review some of my favorite photos from our travels. There are so very many, it was hard to choose the best ones, but here's a good sampling, in chronological order:

Garvan Gardens, Hot Springs, Arkansas

Garvan Gardens, Hot Springs, Arkansas

Iconic Musical "Texas" at Palo Duro Canyon, Canyon, Texas

The Window, Big Bend National Park, Texas

Santa Elena Canyon, Big Bend National Park, Texas

Flowers by the sidewalk in Bar Harbor, Maine

Graves of Titanic Passengers, Halifax, Nova Scotia

Quebec City, Canada

Monument Valley, Utah

Monument Valley, Utah

Monument Valley, Utah

Monument Valley, Utah

Japanese Gardens, Fort Worth, Texas

Basilica San Juan del Valle, McAllen, Texas

So many good friends we've made in the RV world

A Unique Mariachi Mass at Basilica San Juan, McAllen, Texas

Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs, Colorado

Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado

The Stanley Hotel, Estes Park, Colorado

Sunset in Estes Park, Colorado

The Portal, Moab, Utah

Arches National Park, Utah

Arches National Park, Utah

Canyonlands National Park, Utah

Monument Valley, Utah

Smoky Mountains, Gatlinburg, Tennessee

Biltmore Mansion in Asheville, North Carolina

Chattanooga, Tennessee

Sunset at Port Isabel, Texas

Sunset at South Padre Island, Texas

Thunderhead at South Padre Island, Texas

Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra, Salt Lake City, Utah

Empire Pass, near Park City, Utah

Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming

Old Faithful, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

Columbia River Gorge near Portland, Oregon

Sawyer Glacier, Alaska

More good friends at Port Orford Bay, Oregon

Crater Lake, Oregon

Rogue River, Oregon

Sequoia National Park, California

Port of Galveston, Texas

As I look at these and remember our experiences on these great RV trips, I cannot help but think how blessed we are to have this luxury here in the greatest nation on earth--in spite of our leaders' attempts to wreck it. Sometimes I have to pinch myself when I consider the beauties of God's creation that we've seen with our own eyes; And to think, there is still so much left that we haven't seen yet!

I also think how fortunate was my inclination to begin this blog at the very start of our RV travels. These memories, at some point, will be all we have when we are forced to hang up the keys.

I'm also grateful that I decided to retire when I did--when I didn't have to--because I wanted to spend quality time with family and friends and travel wherever and whenever I wanted. Most of all, I wanted to have no regrets; I never wanted to be carried from my office with a sheet covering my head.

If you find yourself wondering whether it's time to pull the plug and finally follow your dreams, my advice is to do it if it's even remotely feasible. After all, there will be no sightseeing and no armored car following your hearse to the graveyard.

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