Moving Day is Finally Here!

After one long year, moving day has finally arrived. Tomorrow morning at 8:00 a.m., two men and a truck will arrive to whisk us away to our new house.

If you've been following this blog, you know that on March 29, 2013, OG and I set out on our grand adventure--moving from the Twin Cities in Minnesota to Carmel on the central California coast. We bought an uninhabitable wreck of a house with glorious views, moved into our vacation condo, and commenced work. Now, nearly one year later, we're finally ready to move in. We've sold our condo and are happy to be turning it over to a young, single woman (first time buyer), to begin her adult life as a homeowner. She's thrilled, and we hope she enjoys it as much as we have.

The house turned out to be a much bigger project than we initially anticipated. If I had it to do over, I'm not sure I would. Due to vermin, dry rot, and asbestos, we had to strip it to the foundation and studs and start from scratch. The upside is that we have a completely new house. The downside is that we had to pay for a completely new house. 

"Before"

As with any new house, there were hundreds of decisions to make, both large and small, and we didn't always make the right ones. For example: neither we, the designer, nor the contractor properly envisioned the laundry room door until it was hung and blocked half the cabinets. They were able to re-hang it to swing to the right instead of the left, but now it blocks the utility closet door. If we'd been thinking, we would have asked for a pocket door instead. As it is, OG will probably take it down and store it in the garage. Also, the master shower is enormous. We could have added a foot to the toilet room on one side and the linen closet on the other and still have had a plenty large shower. OG thinks the fireplace is out of proportion to the living room and we should have switched the locations of the guest bath and the laundry.

"After"

Oh well, live and learn. I'm sure we'll adjust to most of these things over time. The others will undoubtedly be changed (at great additional expense). However, I plan to concentrate on what we do have--a lovely, new home in a great location with a fabulous view. I'm excited to learn how to garden in this very different environment. Due to the daunting size of the project, I hired a landscaper to install the paths, irrigation, and basic plants, but I'm looking forward to adding things and tweaking the design over time. The deer came in the first night and stripped eight of the allegedly deer-resistant plants, so my first task will be replacing them with something less appetizing. 

Finished Back

The plants look tiny in the photos, but with the near-constant sunshine and twelve-month growing season here, they'll grow fast. I plan to post pictures of my progress, so stop back by from time to time and catch up!

A Week of "Lasts"

Our time in Minnesota is winding down. We've reached the point where many things we do are for the last time, and I have mixed feelings. Last Saturday I had my hair done for the last time by my stylist of 16+ years. Nolan is an absolute dear and knows how to get my hair the perfect color every time. If you've ever had a bad color job, you can appreciate the value of his talent. The right hair color is truly priceless. Over the years, he has also listened to the ups and downs of my life and was one of the first people to read my first book when it came out. (His comment was that my hero was "extremely patient".) I'll miss Nolan, but our time together was limited. He's well into his seventies and finally admitted he's considering retirement. I'll never understand how anyone can do a job requiring you to be on your feet several hours a day for fifty years, but he has always been cheerful and uncomplaining. As a parting gift, he wrote down the formula for my haircolor and gave me earnest instructions to give my new stylist in California. 

It's funny how men are different. OG has been going to the same barber for more than 20 years and hasn't even mentioned our move. He says he'll tell Steve on his next (and last) visit, two days before we leave. OG jokingly claims he doesn't want to give the barber and excuse to give him a bad haircut, but I know it will be hard for him to say goodbye.

Barring any emergencies, we've also seen our beloved dentist for the last time. Dr. Branham is one of the sweetest men I know. He taught our needle-phobic daughter not to fear going to the dentist. He's gentle, highly skilled, and never tries to talk his patients into unnecessary procedures regardless of their profit to him. He's also a passionate collector of vinyl records. OG had a sizeable collection that he decided not to move, so Dr. Branham came over and took all six boxes. We know they're going to a good home.

Saturday was my last meeting with my RWA chapter, Midwest Fiction Writers. I'm continuing as a long-distance member, but I don't know when I'll see any of these remarkable women again--perhaps at a future National convention. For many years we've grown as writers together, cheering each other's successes and commiserating with each setback. I'll miss them, but thanks to modern technology, we're never farther than a click apart.

That really only leaves the office. I sold my car today to a former co-worker, a nice young man who is looking forward to enjoying the bells and whistles of my 10-year-old, shockingly low mileage Infiniti. It was the first time I've seen anyone from work since I left more than two months ago. I wondered how it would feel, and it was fine--no twinges of discomfort at all. I'm meeting three friends from the office for lunch today, and I'm really looking forward to it. I take that as a sign of how much I've healed.

It's time to go. I'm ready.

The Value of Lists

In the last week my life has become all about lists. 

If you've been following this blog, you know OG and I are moving to Carmel, California soon. To our immense surprise, our Minnesota house sold before officially going on the market, but the closing date of April 15th seemed doable. I thought we'd given ourselves enough time to manage all the details until the ladies who will be running our estate/moving sale told me they need two weeks to set up, price, and advertise. Then they need another week to hold the sale and clean up before the new owners take possession. Somehow, I'd completely failed to consider all that. Now we have to be out of the house and on our way by the end of March.

Eeeek!!!

Our first task was to contact the movers. Next, we stormed through the house separating everything we plan to take from everything going in the sale. That required a daunting number of decisions in a very short time, but we got it done. In order to help segregate the items, we also packed numerous cartons of books and miscellaneous items, leaving the breakables for the packers.

Whew! Now I can take a breath and move on to my list-making. I used the checklist provided by the moving company as a basis for my "to-do in Minnesota" list, and I've started checking things off. In the next few days, I also have to put together a "to-do in California" list. Since our moving time frame has been shortened so drastically, I'll be going out to Carmel alone for a couple of weeks to get things ready while OG stays in Minnesota managing things on this end. One of my tasks is to meet with the contractor who will be handling our massive remodeling project on the new house, so that will require an additional list. I'll then fly home just in time to supervise the packing and the loading of the truck before we set off on a five-day driving adventure across the American West. (More on that to follow.)

I make lists because I have to, and it's not simply a function of advancing age. Lists have always comforted me. As a writer I may spend my time wrapped up in words, but I'm largely a visual creature. I like/need to see jobs spelled out, and I take satisfaction from every item I'm able to cross off a list. Hopefully, with the help of my lists, we'll arrive safely at our destination with everything we intended to bring, including our sanity, intact.

What about you? Do you try to juggle everything in your brain, or are you a list-maker, too?

So Much Stuff

You probably know by now that OG and I are moving in the next few months. Technically, we aren’t downsizing. When the renovations to our new house in Carmel are complete, it will be just about the same size as the one we’re leaving in Minnesota. However, there are a few problems. One is the lack of basements in California. If you have a basement, think about everything you have stored in it.  Then think about what you would do with all that stuff if you didn’t have one. Next, we already have a condo out there, fully furnished with new furniture I chose specifically for California. It’s more casual and rustic—a completely different look from our traditional home in Minnesota. Lastly, it’s expensive to move and store stuff we don’t need.

And we have lots of stuff we don’t need. In thirty years of marriage, OG and I have owned ten homes, so we’ve moved many times. Some of those moves were only a few blocks, and some were several states away. However, we were always moving to an equal or larger-sized place, and on occasion the company was paying for it. This time we’re on our own.

The decisions about what to jettison are easier for me than for OG. Because of the traumatic way my job ended, I’ve embraced BIG CHANGES. I’m excited to be leaving for a new life in a new place. OG is more cautious about giving up his familiar life with its familiar trappings. Don’t get me wrong, he’s looking forward to escaping Minnesota winters, but in many ways, this has been a good place to live. Because I know how challenging this is for him, I don’t want to push too hard about what we leave behind. I don’t want to abandon things with genuine sentimental value, but I really don’t want to haul a bunch of stuff half-way across the country because we MIGHT need it some day.

I suspect the next few weeks will involve significant compromise. I also suspect we’ll end up taking far too much stuff. Our realtor tells me everyone does this. Perhaps it’s a necessary part of the transition process.

Have you made a big move? Do you regret any of the choices you made in the process?

Is There a Move in Your Second Half?

It’s official; we’re moving to Carmel.

We might be crazy to add the stress of a cross-country move on top of all the other changes of the past several months, but as I sit here watching it snow (again) in Minnesota, I know we’re doing the right thing.

OG and I have been vacationing in Carmel (on the central California coast two hours south of San Francisco) for the past five years. About a year and a half ago, we splurged and bought a vacation condo in a wonderful location with a view of the mountains and only a few blocks from the beach, thinking it would be the perfect getaway for the five years before I retired. If you follow this blog, you know fate threw a monkey wrench into my retirement plans last summer, turning years into months, and we began to evaluate every aspect of our Second Half. What exactly do we want to do with our time, and where do we want to do it?

For years, the Monterey Peninsula has drawn me like a magnet. For a lifelong Midwesterner (and flatlander), the combination of sea, rocky shoreline, sandy beaches, and mountains is magical. I marvel at the softness of the air and the unfamiliar vegetation. I even love the fog. We rarely have fog in the plains, and when we do it’s thick, solid ground fog—nothing like the mysterious floating fingers of coastal fog that glide above the highway and through the pine-covered hills.

OG has always been a winter-hater at heart, and in Minnesota he’s housebound for several months a year except to shovel snow and run essential errands. The first few weeks of retirement gave me a taste of what that’s like, and I hated it, too. I want so much more for our Second Half. I want to go for walks and work in the garden. I want OG to be able to play golf and take sailing lessons if he chooses.

It’s scary to think of leaving the familiarity of the place we’ve lived for twenty-three years, the place we raised our daughter. OG worries about finding a new barber who will cut his hair perfectly every time. We know we’ll never be able to replace our wonderful dentist, and at our age that’s a serious concern! But there’s more to life than barbers and dentists. With the demise of my job, we no longer have any real ties to Minnesota. Our daughter only comes home a couple of times a year, and we have no family here. It’s time to suit ourselves and move on.

We began house hunting in Carmel last November and settled on a house during our trip last week. We chose a modest ranch house in Carmel Valley a few miles inland from the coast with a glorious view of the mountains. The house is in dismal condition, so fixing it up will be a several-month project. I’ll post updates as we move along. Who ever said the Second Half would be dull?