Treasures

The table was almost full tonight at dinner. Our daughter-in-law, Coco, stayed home to get some much needed time to herself. She sent me a photo of her walk along the river with their dog. The rest of the family had converged on our new old gentle house in South Hadley Falls. Coco’s day was quiet and peaceful. Our day was delightfully raucous and filled with adventure.

The grandkids had to explore the house.

The went up to the attic first thing. As they had driven up and parked at the house, one of the kids exclaimed, “You didn’t tell us they lived in a 3 story house!” They have an attic in their house, but this house just looks really tall. After running around in circles in the one semi-finished attic room, they explored the basement, then the first and second floor.

Then they discovered the playhouse. We now know the playhouse was built by Ralph, husband of Tammy, whose names were carved into the chimney in the attic in 1990. Ralph was a carpenter and the little playhouse is sturdy. It even has its own attic. What could be more exciting to our grandkids than to explore the attic in a playhouse!

Lucien was the first to go up, lifted up by his Papa. Whoa… there were all kinds of things up there. By the time they were done exploring, they had found two boxes filled with old dusty Playmobil castle sets and pirate sets with almost all the pieces there and all in good condition, a skateboard, a snowboard, a razor scooter, and an original Kettcar pedal go-cart. Oh, and a nerf gun. How could I forget the nerf gun.

All this kept them occupied until lunch. Then we took off and explored the neighborhood. We found a library (closed till Monday) and a park (closed till May). We found lots of snow with crusty ice which was almost as good as ice skating, which is to say it was just as slippery and we each fell at least once. We also found the Falls.

At home, the kids were out on the front sidewalk with the Kettcar. Our neighbor, Richard, came over with some sleds for them, explaining that his grandchildren are skiing now, so they’re not into sledding anymore.

It was a day of treasures for everyone. Patrick and Tamara explored the city. Emma had a lovely visit and lunch with Morgan, her classmate from elementary school. John was able to treasure some time with the children all playing happily with no tears or fighting.

And with everyone here, our new house really feels like our home. That’s the best treasure of all!

Notes from the Road

If you have a flat tire on the highway, Iowa is the place to do it. From what I hear, Iowa is filled with Good Guys who are never happier than when they are rescuing drivers in distress. Being rescued by an Iowa Good Guy is much easier than trying to explain to the AAA dispatcher where exactly you are.

I-80 is not Route 66. Route 66 is about novels and legends and TV shows from the 60’s. I-80 is about corn fields and playing “Name that Road Kill”. It’s all beautiful, in its own way, it just doesn’t change… for days.

Rest stops, once you get to Ohio, turn into Service Stops. These are high class rest stops where you can not only use the bathroom and buy something from a vending machine, you can also have lunch and do a little shopping, all in a building almost as nice as Cherry Creek Mall - at least it seems so after traveling for several days. Ahh, Nebraska, Iowa, and the rest of the states along I-80 could use some of these.

There are also “Text Stops”, basically small parking areas with decent phone reception.

We stayed at AirBnb homes for the first nights after we left home. The last two nights, however, we stayed in hotels. We paid a little extra to have the dogs with us, but then, we got a good free breakfast in the morning. This made traveling much easier.

If I ever run an AirBnb, I will make sure there is breakfast food available. I haven’t figured out why every AirBnb doesn’t do this. BnB = bread and breakfast, doesn’t it? Some of the homes had neat amenities (means cool stuff) like a pool table, a jacuzzi, exercise machines, a backyard grill and patio. Not one had any food available for guests for breakfast. Not that we expected a big meal fixed for us, but hey, some cold cereal and milk? Maybe a toaster and some bread and butter?

We brought two of our adult kids along. This has been great except I think Patrick’s getting the short end of the stick when it comes to beds. Places would list beds: 1 queen, 1 full, and 1 couch. Patrick would offer to take the couch. Fine.

We gave away about half our possessions, though it may not seem like it when the two pods arrive on Monday. The previous owner to this house left a whole bunch of stuff here. For the most part, it’s really cool! There’s a beautiful dining room set with a large china closet (big enough for all our fine dishes and Chris’ pipes), a glider rocker and footstool, a bookcase, a coffee table with storage drawers that’s bigger than our closet, a large TV cabinet, two wall clocks, a picture of the beach and a lighthouse, plants and plant stands, artificial plants (several), a queen sized bed, two pellet stoves, a recliner, a small chest freezer, a grill, a snowblower, a lawn mower, many keys that don’t seem to fit anything, two ironing boards, and a cement mixer.

We’ve really appreciated the bed and the dining room set. We also love the glider rocker. I’m sure we’ll appreciate some of the rest of the stuff, too, but not all. When the pods arrive, we’ll have to decide what stays with the house and what goes into the next giveaway.

Update on Monday… We now have internet, though some of the wires will have to be updated before we can do too much. There seems to be a lot of reversals in the way things were wired. We definitely need an electrician out soon anyway. There’s still some knob and tube wiring in the attic that must come out. We also had locks re-keyed, opened bank accounts, and started emptying the pods. One pod won’t open. The driver tried and tried, felt all around to see if something had fallen against the door, and finally suggested we cut the door open. Uh, I want some confirmation on that one. In writing, please.

As we wait to hear how to open the blasted pod - the one where our bed is stowed, we have been moving furniture and boxes and more furniture and more boxes. Thank goodness Patrick came along to help. I’m quite impressed with his ability to lift large boxes of books. We have a lot of them. We still have a little to empty out of the first pod and lots of boxes need to be emptied and places found for the contents.

I suspect we’ll keep busy enough indoors tomorrow while it snows. We’ll have plenty of books to read.

Sailing into the Future

A leap of faith? a calculated risk? or an impulsive act of naivete?

For the sake of sounding more mature, we’ll pretend this wasn’t an impulsive act of naivete. Someone recently asked a question on r/Parkinsons (on Reddit) regarding the move they were about to make. What do you look for in a Parkinson’s friendly home? They got a lot of very good answers. None of which we followed as we chose our next home. We’ll have stairs all over the place. I say my incentive to staying in shape is having a 3rd floor writing nook in the attic. My family may have to outfit me with cushions and a helmet for sliding (bumping) down the stairs on my bottom, if I don’t stay in shape.

First we need to get there. The furniture and most of our belongings were packed into moving PODs by the wonderful crew from Angelica Village. The rest of the stuff: what we absolutely needed on the trip as well as the odd things that didn’t get put on the POD for some reason and, while we could have left them behind, we really didn’t want to. This included some papers I didn’t get around to shredding, down blankets (in case we run into another arctic blast), dog beds and dog toys (not to mention the two dogs), a violin, a ukulele, a dulcimer, and a hand carved replica of the Mayflower.

Something would have to give or we wouldn’t have room for us.

I set it on the bird bath while looking for any way at all to fit it in with everything else in the car. In the end, Chris held it on his lap all the way to our AirBnb across town. We are in town a few more nights to tie up loose ends and see as much of the extended family as we can. Once we arrived at our temporary home, we unloaded everything and repacked, this time a little more efficiently. We’ll see how it works when Patrick puts his things in, but for now, the Mayflower is wedged between duffle bags, its sails high above the seat.

The dogs are nervous about being in the car and nervous about the AirBnb. We didn’t sleep well the first night. It didn’t help that the lawyer in Massachusetts (each party has to have a lawyer to close in MA) couldn’t find the POA paper I overnighted to her a week ago. Could I do it again? I swore a lot, then found a place where we could get the form printed from my email, then to the bank to get it notorized.

Fifteen minutes after spending $38 to overnight the form once again, I got the message. Yup, they found it. This is when frustration turned to ludicrousy and there was nothing left to do but laugh.

Our mortgage in Wheat Ridge is paid in full. The money for the new house is safe and sound just where it’s supposed to be and ready for the closing on Monday via POA. When we arrive, we’ll simply pick up the keys from our realtor or the lawyer. It seems so easy!

It took a village to sell this house. We can only look back at amazement at how so many people rallied to our cause. The seller in Massachusetts took the house off the market for 90 days to give us time to sell. Our neighbor, Deb, let us use her house as our landing place whenever we had showings or inspections. My old high school classmate, Marianne, came one day with food and window washing supplies. She washed our windows for us. My sister-in-law, Steph, swept the porch cleaner than it had ever been. Our realtor, Paddy, was oh, so patient. Her son, Mac, came over to look at our computer after the inspector fried it. Paddy’s husband, Kevin, arranged for the sewer to be cleaned. Uncle Doug came to our rescue the last week, and the Angelica Village crew came out and filled pods twice.

Joanne, our neighbor, brought us freshly baked biscotti for the trip and numerous people have offered to let us stay with them when we come back to visit. We will come back to visit, too. When one friend asked if all our treasures were packed and ready to go, I couldn’t help but realize how many treasures we are leaving behind. Friends and family will make sure we never forget our root here in Colorado.

In other words, we were reminded of how deep and how wide our roots go here in Colorado. It’s hard to leave. At times, leaving feels like a betrayal of our community who has loved us and supported us, often when we didn’t realize how much we needed their support. How can we leave our community? We had sad goodbyes this week. Tomorrow morning, bright and early, we start on our way across the country to our new home in Massachusetts. Our ship sets sail!

We’re going on an adventure. The Mayflower is going back home.