Logistics of the final days…

Posted by worldwide-admin on September 23, 2012 with 0 Comment

Our estate sale will occur from Thursday, October 25th through Sunday, October 28th. Our estate sale guy, Jim Anderson of Caring Estate Sales explained that we must be gone for those four days.

He’ll start pricing items a week before the sale officially begins. At that point, we must have all of our personal effects and items we want to keep, out of the cabinets, drawers, cabinets and off of the walls and a week later, out of the house.

In regard to most estate sales the homeowner is dead, obviously not around, pestering with comments such as, “Oh, that’s not enough money for that!” We must be out of the house the entire four days of the sale.

Dilemma #1: Where will I go for those four days with no car (mine will have been sold)? Tom will be at work during the hours of the sale.

When the sale is complete on Sunday, October 28th, Tom has to go to work three more days, planning to be done by 9 am on Wednesday, the 31st where he’ll go to work only to receive his “retirement cake” a tradition at the railroad for all retirees. (I guess he’ll eat gluten that day. Oh, well. After 42 years he deserves to eat cake).

End result, we need to stop using our house as we’ve known it around October 18th. We’ll be able to use the built in appliances to cook and a few old pans, plates and flatware that we don’t plan to sell, tossing them when we’re done.

Dilemma #2: Do we stay in the house (after I find somewhere to go for the four days) until the 31st when Tom’s work ends, at which point we sign the papers on the house and begin the drive in Tom’s car to Scottsdale? Do we live in the house after everything is gone, TVs, our two comfy chairs, sofas, bar stools at the huge island in the kitchen? How will it feel to watch everything we’ve loved and enjoyed dwindle down to a bed in which we’ll fitfully sleep until we leave?

Our dear neighbor Jamie kindly suggested I hang out at her house for those four days. (Our three adult kids have cats to which I am allergic. I can’t spend more than an hour in their homes plus I won’t have transportation). How will I feel watching the cars driving down our narrow road toward our home, later driving away with our belongings in their cars, trucks, and SUVs? Yikes!

Yesterday morning, thinking aloud to one another, we considered the following realities:

I won’t have transportation
The four days of the estate sale, we’ll have to be out of the house by 7 am each morning, most difficult on the weekend when we are both here. What will we do all weekend from 7 am to 5 pm?
How will we live in our house, stripped of all its accouterments, with only a bed for several days, no chair, no sofa, no table?

After multiple possible scenarios we narrowed it down to this: We must entirely move out of the house beginning Wednesday, October 24th, coming back to inspect the status, make decisions on remaining items and collect our money.

The estate sale guy will remove all refuse, haul items to be donated to various organizations and our dear long term house cleaner, Teresa, will do the final cleaning. We’ll pay fees for this additional support, but have determined it will be well worth the cost, reducing our stress at such a crucial time.

Sure, we could stay in a hotel for a week. Used to the reasonable cost of vacation rentals, I cringed at the price of a decent hotel, a car rental (or I’d be trapped in a hotel room for a week) and meals for a week at a total cost of around $1500, a cost for which I hadn’t budgeted.

One of my closest friends has offered that we stay at her beautiful and spacious home, a mere 15 minutes away, an offer made with the utmost of sincerity. Tom and I adore her and her two sons and have been to their home many times, as they have ours. It will feel comfortable. They eat the same healthful diet as we do. I can prepare dinner for all of us each day.

Alone at her home during the days, I will work out when Tom returns when we go to see the house in the evenings during the sale. My laptop on hand, I’ll continue to write here, do additional research for our travels and fine tune our spreadsheets. It will be fine. Thank you, dear friend.

On Saturday afternoon the 27th, we’ll head out for the hour’s drive to Tom’s retirement party for his co-workers and family members, close to his work at a large hall. Youngest of 11 children, his family alone will account for over 100 guests. Add 42 years of co-worker/friends, we could be looking at 100’s. Oh.

Busy planning the food, the invitations, the cake and other necessities of party planning, need I say, life is busy. It’s no doubt, that we’ll need a multi-year vacation!

Life is never risk free..

Posted by worldwide-admin on August 2, 2012 with 2 Comments

What were our motives for starting a blog about “leaving” seven months before we are actually “leaving?” In my mind the intent has been simple, document the process as a means of lessening the emotional blow.

Almost to the day, a year prior to starting this blog, I wrote my first blog, an accounting of the last days of the life of our precious little dog, WorldWideWillie, written from his perspective, followed by me, after he passed.

Much to my surprise, we had over 500 followers with no marketing, no advertising, no promotion, other than by my own comment to a few friends and a few references in own poorly maintained meager Facebook account.

Somehow, people were reading it across the seas. Perhaps, key words. Perhaps, one person in the US, sent the link across the world to a grieving relative having recently lost their own beloved pet.

What did this accomplish for us? Lots of tears each day as I read aloud to Tom, “what Willie wrote” as he sat at our side, nose touching my leg, tilting his little head each time he heard familiar words of which he knew so many.

But, most of all, it was a vital part of the healing process. I love dogs. I love dogs too much, too deep, the same as with people. In time, through the words, the healing entered our hearts as we began to talk about him without crying (still do sometimes). And, I stopped counting on my fingers how many days, weeks and months had passed since he left us.

And now, this time, this blog, 1000’s, not 100’s of readers, all over the world are sharing this experience with us. Thank you, readers. Thank you so much for coming on this journey with us, even now at this early date, three months away.

Most of you silently observe, some with disdain, some vicariously, some with curiosity and some, like me when reading other’s blogs, hoping to glean a tiny morsel that will somehow change our lives.

This is not just a blog about two crazy retirees traveling the world for what may prove to be many years. It is also about leaving everyone we love, everything we have loved, the familiarity of a comfortable life and all of our worldly possessions, not contained in four over-stuffed suitcases and two carry on bags.

Writing this blog has the same powerful healing effect that we encountered when writing about Willie. Plus, it serves as a powerful reminder of that which we have learned along the way, to reference the multitude of tasks to do now and into the future.

We “heard” through the grapevine that some people think we have no idea of what we are doing and that “we are in for some big surprises.” Yes, we surely are!

Did the senior know what he was doing when he jumped out of an airplane for the first time on his 90th birthday? No. He took the risk for the adventure.

After 100’s of hours of research we both feel we know the risks: death due to injury; crime or illness; illness or injury requiring an expensive (although insured) trip back to US; being a victim of a crime; theft of our belongings (which will also be insured); theft of our deposit or the property not being as expected or represented; unable to obtain a visa or gain entrance into a country; being stuck in airport or on the tarmac for days; cancellation of a cruise at the last minute due to maintenance issues of bomb threat; a cruise ship tipping over; false imprisonment (we won’t knowingly commit a crime!) and more.

What if a warthog cuts us with his sharp tusks? Or we step on a snake resulting in a life threatening bite? Or a creepy worm makes its way into the bottom of our foot to travel to our brain? Yuck!

When we read the newspaper or watch the news each day, all of these risks occur throughout the world and also, here in the US. Seniors fall down a flight of stairs in their own homes, resulting in horrible injury or death. Food poisoning occurs in our local restaurants. Pins are found in a sandwich on a domestic flight. Citizens are shot and killed in their own homes, as an unintended victim of violence.

Good grief! We could spend our lives immobilized by fears, a slave to our own environment. Or, we can venture out performing everyday tasks, enjoying our families, our friends, Mother Nature, our work and our hobbies, all of which are laden with a certain degree of risk.

Life is not without risk. Do we “prepare for the worst and expect the best?”

No. We choose to be as educated as we possibly can about the risks, proceed with caution along the way, avoid risk and pray for a little good luck. And, as life has its ups and downs along the way, as it surely will, we will holster our usual optimism hopefully discovering a logical solution together.

We’ve never done this before. This is not the same as traveling for a month or two, returning “home” to repack, paying the bills, reading the mail and visiting with our family and friends. There will be no “home” to return to.

The message is clear in the old adage, “home is where the heart is”. This will become our motto. After all, we are taking our “home” with us not only in our hearts and minds, but also in each other.

Who are we kidding?… We’re not unique!…

Posted by worldwide-admin on April 18, 2012 with 0 Comment

Had it not been for my dear husband Tom’s 42 years of hard work, this dream would have been but a dream, along with all the “would have,” “could have,” and “should have” that we all carry in the emotional baggage we haul around throughout our lives. We think we are unique, but we’re not.

In my 40’s, I gave up the dream that I’d ever find the perfect mate after two failed marriages, and then Tom miraculously appeared. At 50, I let go of the dream of a hugely successful business that would provide a lifetime of financial security, a fancy lifestyle and accepted the reality of being middle class.

At 62, I threw in the towel and retired, after 45 years of hard work, grateful for the experiences, grateful for a fabulous marriage, grateful for family and friends, and grateful for endless stories we will tell our grandchildren of the lessons we’ve learned along the way. That’s quite typical!

We were anticipating the “usual” retirement; living in a condo in a warm climate, visiting family for holidays, summers, and special occasions, playing bridge with new friends, preparing for a neighborhood dinner party, and acquiring a newly found affinity for “The Price is Right.” This works for most retirees. This would have worked for us. Hardly unusual!

We are a cheerful, animated, and upbeat couple that over these past 21 years together have managed life’s challenges, myriad health issues, and the loss of loved ones, unfailingly supporting one another with love, compassion, dignity, and grace. This is what most people do. Nothing special here!

We have accepted the physical changes most of us experience as we age; sagging skin, hairy ears (Tom, not me), bushy brows (Tom, not me!) wrinkles, creaking joints, aching backs (mostly me), and middle of the night potty breaks (me, not Tom) resulting in poor sleep. That happens to many of us!

Over the years we’ve adopted a healthy lifestyle, enjoying homemade, organic low carb meals, grass-fed meats, fistfuls of supplements, exercising (mostly me), low alcohol consumption, and Tom’s continuing effort to quit smoking.

But old age keeps coming’ at us no matter how hard we try to avoid it. We aren’t exempt. We each have our few prescriptions that once a month I put into our own little pill cases, another sign of advancing age.

Last night, as we sat in our respective comfy fat-stuffed chairs, computers on our laps; Tom, working on his ancestry stuff, me, working on travel information, I looked at him and smiled, thinking, “I can’t believe he’s willing to do this.” He turned his head toward me asking, “What are you looking at?” his voice, playful and obviously fishing for a compliment. That’s to be expected!

“Oh, I’m just thinking about how much I love you and that we have so much to look forward to,” I said, as a warm wave rolled over me.

“Same here, Sweetie and yes, we do,” he said while his bright blue eyes wandered back to his laptop. In seconds, he was entrenched in the census’s recently posted on ancestry.com totally tuning me out. I smiled to myself and turned back to my laptop. How typical is that?