When I took Rufus for a walk this morning, we walked past the house... he stopped and looked at it, with a questioning look on his face. He didn't pull on the leash to go that way. Once again, I told him, "That isn't our house anymore, buddy - we'll be living in the motorhome for a few weeks until we can start moving into the new house." He seemed OK with that. More so than our first night back in the motorhome.
I was telling Joan about that when Rufus and I got back to the coach, and she asked me, "How are you dealing with it?"
It's been a great house - there are aspects of it that I will really miss. I loved having a waterfront home. And that little house suited us - it made a fine home base since we retired in 2006. Since that time, we have spent about half the year in the house, the rest of the time living on a boat or in an RV. It was always nice to "come back home" after a trip. In spite of the humidity, I like the climate here. I like the island we live on and the community here. Everything about it has had a "resort" feel to it.
It will be a big change for us to be living in... a neighborhood. It is all new houses there, so it will likely take some time until there is a sense of community. I feel that Joan and I are ready for this change, and Rufus will adapt... although cats like their routine; we will do as much as possible to make it feel routine for him. He already knows life in the motorhome.
We made a trip to the grocery store for stuff we'll need along the way; I gassed up the Equinox while Joan did the shopping. Joan has a list of last minute things we need to do before we pull out in the morning. We're going to have lunch today with Scottie and Donita, and then Joan will do the last of the "tech install and training" with them.
Our neighbors and friends, Susan and David, came to the motorhome to wish us well and gave us an almond cake loaf as a treat while on the road. Susan bakes a lot, and we have been beneficiaries of that from time to time. It is their dog Tessa that is friends with Rufus, and those two got the chance to say good-bye to each other, as well. (I may be reading more into that, but they are cute together.)
We plan to head out early in the morning, so we'll dump tanks and put away sewer and water stuff before we turn in for the night.
We're ready.
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Spectrum (the cable TV and high speed internet service in the house) threw us a curve ball. After lunch with the new owners, we came back to the house so Joan could load the last couple smart devices on their iPads. The internet was non-functional and the sign-in was a mix of our information and theirs. A mess. Joan tried doing an on-line chat with them, but it was all "canned" answers to specific questions, none of which applied to our situation.
I called Spectrum, got to a real live person, then turned it back to Joan. In the end, after talking with 3 different people (getting moved up the food chain each time), it was determined that no one at Spectrum knew what to do to change the user name. They wanted to delete our account and have the new owners start from scratch with a new account AND having to add smart devices. They have no experience with loading an app, much less how to set up a new device. They are very nice people, but tech is not their forte'. It took hours (mostly waiting on hold for someone from Spectrum to try to address the situation, which they could never accomplish), but Joan got their devices on-line and functioning (which they were all doing yesterday, until someone at Spectrum decided to mess with their internet service today).
It took all afternoon and into the early evening, but it's done. That let us go back to the coach and do what we needed to get done to be able to head out first thing tomorrow morning. One of the last things was putting a couple guitars into their undisclosed conveyance, taking it out of the cockpit of the motorhome...
The way the case is sitting, the names are upside down - two of the bands I used to play for (The Flippers and Stinger). Inside that case is my oldest guitar: I got that when I was 13. It fed our young family when I was a whippersnapper. It has been living in its case most of our time in Texas; Joan is thinking it will get to be displayed on the wall in Arizona. We'll see how that plays out.
This seems like it has been a long time coming, but we roll tomorrow. We're ready.
2 comments:
Bon voyage and via con dios!
Merci y gracias!
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