Sea Change

Jun 06, 2010 14:34

Thanks to catsdownunder  for introducing the term sea change to me.

I've been in the process of moving all my online photos to my flickr account since I'm unhappy with what photobucket does to the quality of linked photos and I've apparently used up all my LJ scrapbook allotment.  Needless to say this is both time consuming and mind numbing, not a great combination.  As such, I'm taking a bit of a hiatus from scene_again  (from posting, not from commenting).

Now for the sea change bit, which I'll be putting under a cut because it's likely to be long winded.

So, we've been plodding along on the assumption that Mr. Mav will be retiring in a bit less than 3 years which is when his agency's mandatory retirement (at age 57) occurs.  Between his time in the military and his current job, he has been working for the US government for close to 3 decades and fully qualified to draw his retirement sometime last year.  Lately it has been getting more and more difficult to make him go to work.  I've never seen him so ambivalent about going to work.  It's been obvious he hasn't been enjoying doing his job.

I'm not sure if I've ever been explicit about this, but I am medically retired with a specific injury and a chronic pain syndrome.  When we moved up here 8 years ago, we both hoped that the humidity wouldn't aggravate my conditions too severely.  That was foolish of us, the humidity has been a definite factor in my pain and it's recent increase is absolutely due to the high humidity we've been experiencing.

Now, back to our retirement plan.  We decided a few years ago that when we retire, we'd be moving back to Texas.  We really  were hoping to move to the Dallas/Ft. Worth area because I grew up there, my family is there and, frankly, it would be dead easy to go to Mavericks games.  But, realistically, it would mean living very meanly due to the cost of living in that particular urban area.

So, are you still with me?  I have pain exacerbated by humidity...Mr. Mav HAS to retire in less than 3 years...we want to move to Texas, preferably in Dallas or Ft. Worth (which is where my daughter teaches high school Geography).

Anyhoo...earlier this week we are sitting at the kitchen table, watching the dogs and Mr. Mav says, "Hey, other than your crazy cousin, do you still know people in Abilene?"  Let me explain, Abilene is a smallish (but not too small) town in Texas about 185 miles from Dallas.  It is also where I was born and where my Grandparents lived my whole life.  So, I'm thinking to myself, where the heck did that come from?  Then I asked him, "Where the heck did that come from?"  And he expounds.  He has always liked Abilene when we went there to visit my family (which is where they usually congregated at my grandparents).  It is also where all my 'dead people' are buried (both sets of grandparents and my mother).  Mr. Mav continues to tell me that he's been thinking, for some time, about possibly retiring in Abilene.  I think about this for a second or two and the idea catches fire with me.  Yes, Abilene, fantastic idea.  It's close, but not too close, to my family in the Dallas area.  I don't mind driving into Dallas for family stuff, we've made the Abilene-Dallas trip countless times.  And economically it would be fantastic for us.  Not to mention it is quite arid.

Alright, I'm on board with this idea.  Then he continues, let's do this in the next year to year and a half.  Alrighty then, we're cutting our time to retirement in HALF!  Nice.  So then we start going through the things which need to be accomplished between now and when we put the house on the market (our goal is to have it on the market by June 2011).  Mr. Mav likes to plan, he's very keen on having things laid out for him in an organized manner.

The conversation goes something like,
Him: Household repairs done.
Me: Check
Him: Forget doing some of the projects you are planning to do with the house.
Me: Yep, got it.
Him: Sell some furniture (including the game table which we waited months to be delivered).
Me: Right
Him: Pack up our good stove and move the small stove from the scullery into the kitchen and cook on that.
Me: Certainly.
Him: Since I'll still be here for a bit, you may have to do some substitute teaching until I can get a job and perhaps my certification (or whatever it's called) to be a Texas peace officer.
Me: Yeah, that'll be fun.
Him:  We can't really move Jerry (our oldest and most frail cat who we have dragged from Texas to California and from there to Washington) again because he is such a bad traveler (and he is, he gets ill and expels all manner of bodily excretions every time he gets in the car).
Me: That' s true, it wouldn't be fair to him. (Holy cow, we just decided to euthanize our oldest pet - YIKES!)
Him:  And we really need to have the house without him for six months before we put the house on the market.
Me: Um, okay (oh dear, we've gone from deciding to do it, to doing it fairly soon - Double Yikes!)
Him: Since I'm going to be working still, when we sell this house, you need to go to Abilene and pick out our new house...by yourself..
Me: No Problem.
Him: We need to pack up a lot of stuff and put them in those storage things they deliver to the house and take away then deliver to the new house.
Me: Makes sense.
Him: Including 2/3 of the books.
Me.  Wait...what?  Pack up the books?  Are you serious?

He was serious.  Now I've got to figure out what books to keep with us and which ones I can do without for possibly up to a year.  That's just mean, isn't it?

Mr. Mav is still wanting to make lists pertinent to the retirement move, but I had to remind him that his entire family is going to be here for the 4th of July and we should probably concentrate on that first.

So between the new puppy, the drastic change in our retirement plans and the whole family coming to visit within a month, it's a good thing I haven't lost my mind.

How was that for a complete waste of your time?

catching up

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