Boxes are Disappearing and It's Beginning to Look Like Home

Our three pods of possessions arrived on a flatbed truck just short of two weeks after we left Maryland, allowing us enough time to get fed up with sleeping on an air mattress. The truck driver operated as accurately as a robot as he manipulated the fork lift like it was an extension of his body. While keeping an eye out for people and cars in the street, he quickly maneuvered the pods into their precise spots even though he couldn't see around them.

The unstoppable rain gods decided that since it poured with rain as Steve and the movers loaded our things into the truck, our move wouldn't be complete without them also unloading them in the bucketing rain. Two "young hunks" aka, the movers, arrived at 8am just as we were in the middle of an immense thunderstorm (dark menacing clouds, thunder and lightning along with sheets of rain) that lasted most of the morning. Guess the rain gods are happy now that they gave us a liberally soaked sendoff combined with an equally liberally soaked welcome. We haven't seen any rain since!

We are struggling to fit everything into a slightly smaller space and have almost succeeded, although there are still some boxes in the garage that we haven't opened yet. I'm very tempted to leave them unopened because if we don't miss "whatever" is in them within a few months, we obviously didn't need the mystery missing items. I am missing my Buddha head statue so I may have to open some boxes to find that, but that's about all that I think I'm missing. I love it when I ask Steve if he knows where something is, and he'll reply, "it's in a box somewhere".

Right now, our balcony furniture is sitting in the middle of our living room because the outside of our building is being "freshened up" by being painted. By coincidence, they are painting it a grey similar to our house we just left, so our balcony furniture matches the new paint. I moved chairs and tables in (Steve was in California) because I noticed workers were feverishly moving a spray paint machine back and forth outside the balcony. Painting the top half was a speedy process, but then they left with it only half done. I’m not sure when they are coming back to finish off the more detailed work since they’ve moved to the other side of the building the last few days. I'm undecided on whether I should move the furniture back out or leave it in the middle of our living room.

So far most of the exploration of our immediate area has been practical excursions such as trips to Bed, Bath and Beyond, Home Depot and HEB, our local grocery store. I'm especially excited about the grocery store as the entrance seems to be similar to Whole Foods with a huge produce section, almost all of which is locally grown. It also includes all sorts of products such as clothes, automotive products, electronics, etc., pretty much anything that you can want – or couldn't imagine that you would ever want. One of the things that I love is that you can weigh your produce as you select it and put your price label on the plastic bags. We used to buy our produce this way in the supermarché in France, and I could never understand why UK and American stores don't offer this feature.  You immediately know what your fruit or vegetables cost and it saves time at checkout.

An unexpected adventure took up a half day as we had to find a veterinary clinic much sooner than we anticipated. On awakening on Sunday, we realized that Sadie was sick, so we hurried off to a nearby emergency vet clinic to sit the whole morning in air conditioning that was turned to sub-zero temperatures. I'm sure there's probably a good reason for the frigid temperatures, but after 3 hours, we were both chilled to the bone. Sadie received a shot, and we were sent out into the San Antonio sunshine to thaw our bodies. The next morning, I searched the Internet for a local regular veterinary clinic so that I could take her in to meet yet another vet. In addition to being ill, she was beginning to feel victimized but I still got her into her carrier without too much of a fight. My battle was with the zippers on her carrier because I couldn't zip up the sides before she jumped out and hid under the bed. I had to drag her out while she was crying a very pitiful meow. Ali bolted for the nearest hiding place convinced that he was next! In the end, hopefully Sadie will be back to her feisty self in a few days.

Not all of our discoveries have been boring or related to getting us settled. We found a local Tex-Mex restaurant just around the corner that has fresh "to-die-for" guacamole and margaritas! Two visits later we are convinced that's our "go-to" happy hour place! We've also discovered an excellent Vietnamese restaurant which will be a pleasant respite from all the Tex-Mex food that is readily available.

My next project will be to get my car registered and then get my Texas driving license. This TX license will be my 8th one in different US states. I've also had one issued in Welsh while living in the UK and had (and still have) my European driving license. You would think taking all these driving tests would make me a better driver but according to my driving instructor in the UK, it hasn't stopped me from picking up bad habits – like driving too fast. She was convinced that I'd never pass my test. Fooled her – passed it first time!

"driving at the speed limit--hideous thought."
― Stephenie Meyer

I’ve included some of our moving pictures within this blog. You can see more of the before and after photos by cut and pasting the following link into your browser. Once you are in the photo album, click on the first photo and then click on slideshow at the top of your screen. The photos will be larger (for those of us who need that) and you can see the captions. When finished, press Esc.

https://picasaweb.google.com/102840684536112573599/MoveIn02?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCN65h5uDp-6WFA&feat=directlink

Goodbye Maryland - Hello Texas

Walking trail in Maryland

Goodbye lush, green Kent Island, Maryland, surrounded by the Chesapeake Bay, and hello huge, sprawling San Antonio. Steve and I arrived in Texas four days ago after driving our two car caravan 1,700 miles, passing through Washington, DC (in Friday afternoon rush-hour traffic and pouring rain!), Virginia, Tennessee and Arkansas and then most of the length of Texas. I'd love to say that we quickly and comfortably settled in but thanks to multiple teething problems, we are still living with what we could fit in our cars. That means we are living incredibly lean. Since Steve made the drive with the two cats in his car, we couldn't pack as much as we wanted to bring with us.

Our apartment had become available a month before we were originally planning to move, so we had to put all our plans into fast motion. Both of us were traveling for work during the first week of June so we created and worked to detailed checklists to make sure that everything would be ready to go on our new scheduled date.

Two days before we set off I returned from two back-to-back conferences, first one in New York and the second one in Long Beach, CA. Because I was still living in Delaware during May, I spent the two weekends before leaving for my conferences driving back to Maryland to pack everything that I possibly could while still leaving our house livable for Steve.  He had the bigger job of packing everything else the week before the move.

Our overall big challenge is moving to a smaller apartment, but it has been a fantastic exercise in going through everything you own. Once you're forced to pack all your possessions into a much smaller space, it becomes very clear what's important to you and what you care about. It was pretty obvious that books were important to both of us because although we'd had a clear out a few months before, we had to be totally ruthless in getting ready for this move. Now that we both read almost everything on-line, it's not practical to keep books that we've already read so boxes and boxes of books went to a local charity shop. Other decisions included getting rid of our teak deck and patio furniture, our grill and all our plants. These went to one of our daughters, although we kept our small table and two chairs for our balcony in the hopes that we can use them before it gets too hot and humid.

Loading furniture in rain

Except for the torrential rain while Steve and the movers were moving the furniture out of the house and loading it into the pods, everything else went fairly smoothly.  We stretched our drive out over two full days, and two half days since that was all the cats were willing to tolerate. They did manage the trip a thousand times better than we anticipated, but then drugs applied every 8 to 12 hours helped.



Our challenges the past few days have consisted of pretty typical problems that occur when moving. We still don’t have our washer and dryer, although we ordered them a month ago, and I'm now getting desperate as I've been living out of a suitcase for almost a month. Steve had ordered the cable modem before we left Maryland, and it was supposed to be delivered to the complex office to await our arrival. It was delivered three days before we arrived, but no one could find it until mid-day on our second day here. Our missing cable box meant that the technician couldn't come out to hook up our Internet connection until the night of the second day. Once he was here, he found that the wiring had been previously mixed up, so it took him 4 hours to rewire and get us connected. Wanting to continue with the same satellite TV service that we had in Maryland, the technicians were scheduled for our third day. When they came to install our dish, they gave us the bad news that we were facing the wrong direction so we couldn't continue on with the same company. This was only the first part of the bad news because the company then held us to a hefty cancellation fee even though it wasn't our decision to cancel. Steve managed to get another company to come out quite quickly so we now have cable TV and Internet. What more could we want? Well – our furniture, dishes, pots and pans plus washer and dryer would be nice!

Anyone who's ever moved to a new area knows what it means to have to start fresh with a new home, connecting to new services and learning new roads and traffic patterns – almost everything is new and unfamiliar. Dealing with all of these strange unknowns can leave you feeling vulnerable, but then this isn't necessarily a bad thing. It just means that you aren't playing it safe in your comfort zone anymore, and you have to open up to new situations, new people and new places. At least this move was more simple because we have a credit history. When we moved from the UK, it was as if we didn't exist.

The challenges that we've experienced so far are probably just the tip of the “moving experience” iceberg since we have things such as bank accounts, registering cars and getting new driving licenses coming up very soon. And these are only the ones that we know about.

Can we have our cat tree and all our toys back?

Stay tuned for my next blog to learn how we'll try to fit the furniture that we kept into a smaller space.

Challenging My Aging Brain



Right -- 25 steps are intuitive?

You know that feeling of exhilaration when you've challenged your brain, and you think you'll never learn a new task but then all of a sudden, you think – I've got it! It makes you feel on top of the world, at least for a little while. Well, in the past couple of weeks, I've stretched my aging brain with learning new databases – not just one but multiple very complex ones while at the same time learning hundreds and hundreds of bits of information about four, new to me, conferences and dealing with multiple complex spreadsheets. By the end of this past week, I could (almost) easily breeze through the databases and do pretty much anything that delegates were throwing at me over the phone.

Chef's demo - not mine!

To top off my week, on Friday afternoon after work, I drove from Delaware back to Maryland to take a 3-hour knife skills class – Knife Skills 101. Being a self-taught cook, a proper “Knife Skills” class is something that I've wanted to do for a long time and have signed up to classes three previous times, but classes were cancelled due to lack of interest. I've been determined to learn how to properly handle a knife like a chef. There's no particular reason for this; it's just been on my bucket list for a while. I even wanted to buy a Japanese chef knife while Steve and I were in Japan, but he told me to wait until I'd had a class first because I needed to find out what I needed. Good move! I found out that I need to find a knife that suits me.

I was a bit worried before the class because I have a phobia about touching raw meat, and I was concerned that I might have to cut meat during the lesson. Thank goodness, the class was only covering vegetables, so I heaved a big sigh when I saw the stacked bins of fresh veggies ready for our attack.



This was my choice

The class was excellent because in just a few hours we covered the A to Z of knives from different types of knives and their purpose to the care of them and then we had a demonstration of the various ways of cutting the basic vegetables before we were turned loose to select our own knife. I was concentrating and wanted to be sure that I was doing the procedure right – rocking motion using arm and shoulder, standing over whatever I was cutting and keeping the cuts the same size. After Chef had showed us two ways of properly holding a knife we tried out different sizes of knives to see with which we felt comfortable. This “hands on demonstration” was definitely an added benefit.  I found that a 6 inch Japanese chefs' knife felt just right.

We also had the chance to have a one on one with the Chef so she could advise us on our posture, proper use of a knife, i.e. instead of cutting straight down, run the knife through the vegetable by sliding the knife away from you and use your arm and shoulder to follow through. She also gave her critique on the conformity of the pieces that we were cutting. I've never in my life diced anything so fine, julienned such perfect carrots or peppers, nor cut potatoes in so many different ways.



Correct finger position-my biggest challenge

After learning to hold the knife in a "choke hold" with my thumb and forefinger on the blade of the knife; my biggest challenge was the way that I need to hold my other hand that is holding the food. I need to curl my fingers under so that my knuckles are closest to my knife. It's a method that is counter intuitive because I want to hold the vegetable with my fingers sticking out. This could lead to lots of cuts or if the knife is sharp enough, missing fingertips. I finally remembered each time to curl my fingers under, and although it felt awkward, I thought – yes, I did it! I guess it will take my years of practice to undo all of my incorrect habits and learn new ones but I now have a strong foundation to build on. Next step is practice, practice, practice!

I can't say that the evening would be classified as  "fun" for most people, but I had a great time and learned so much. The three hours flew by and I'm committed to signing up for Knife Skills II that will take place in three weeks. I'll let you know if I have all ten fingers at the end of that class! The first thing that my husband asked when I returned home was “do you still have all ten of your fingers?”. I do have and intend to still have them at the end of Knife Skills II!

I love challenging my brain and doing something totally different. It sparks an interest in life. Being self-taught in both using computers and in the kitchen, I still get a buzz when I learn how to do new things. Both my current work contract which requires me to learn new software and all of the ins and outs of new conferences plus trying something new with my cooking have checked the boxes for now. Another mission checked off of my bucket list so now on to my next one!

I’m still continuing with my Spanish as well so my brain is fully taxed while I’ll be deciding what my next bucket list mission will be.

I love the quote below by Margaret Thatcher, one of my favorite people. Now she was a lady who was constantly challenging herself!

"Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It’s not

a day when you lounge around doing nothing,

it’s when you’ve had everything to do and you’ve done it."

Margaret Thatcher

 

Snow at the Beach

Won't be lounging in the sun!

Do you associate 6 inches of snow with living at the beach? My welcome to Delaware has been a cold and white one. Fortunately, I’d moved into the condo (my home away from home for the next 3 months) before the winter storm began. And I’d made a trip to the supermarket, so I was ready for whatever the end of our crazy East Coast winter brought.

When most people think of the beach, they think of playing in brisk ocean waves on a hot sunny day. They also dream of stretching out and lounging on the beach with smells of coconut suntan oil surrounding them while soaking up the sun; then eating pizza or burgers and fries and drinking beer.

Hello Delaware!

As my first night progressed, winter snow and strong winds welcomed me to Delaware with a fury and this morning I was gifted with a whole “snow day” of solitude. I wasn’t planning on going out because the snow continued throughout today, but the owner of the condo came by to shovel off the steps up to my condo (who in this day and age is that nice?!?) – and he suggested that I go for a walk on the beach in the snow. My initial thought was OMG NO; it’s too cold! But then I thought – I’ve never done that before so why not?

 

A freezing beach walk

Now that I’m back from a totally wind-blown, freezing and probably the shortest walk on the beach in all of history, I realize that my initial thought was correct. If the snow hadn’t been so deep that I couldn’t run, I’d have sprinted back to the warm, welcoming condo. OK, I’ve now been there and done that, and I don’t need to repeat that experience!

It’s still snowing and I have to admit that it’s really beautiful and because there’s no one else who’s crazy enough to live at the beach in the winter, the pristine and undisturbed beauty of the snow covering everything is extremely breathtaking and peaceful. It’s like living in your own little bubble, at least for one “snow day”.

 

Perfect, peaceful and quiet

The Only Constant Factor in Life is Change

We can all relate!

Have you ever taken one of those life stress tests to tell you how much stress life experiences are giving you? Well, this month, I feel as if I’m in the middle of a challenge to see how many of those I can handle and still stay sane (or as sane as I’ve ever been). 

Steve had done some major renovations on our house this past autumn such as extending our deck, upgrading the countertops in the kitchen and installing an additional cupboard and finishing off the garage. These were in addition to installing an under deck roofing so that the patio and surrounding area stays dry during rain (nice for barbequing in the rain), a fan over the patio and removing some overgrown bushes.

My new motto

It was now my turn. One of my first stressors is getting our house ready to put on the market. Have you ever had to “stage” a house for showing to prospective buyers? The priority as been to de-clutter. I thought that I was the de-clutter queen, but I took on the idea that we would be downsizing considerably in our next move, especially our move to Mexico. Not that we are, but it’s always good to work on that premise. So, in the last two weeks, I’ve been through every closet, drawer, kitchen cupboard, desk drawers, filing cabinets – you name it and it has been cleared of almost everything. There have been lots of trips to charity shops.

My life this month

My next project was to figure out what needs to be done to “enhance” the rooms. I’ve been through each of the rooms with a detailed list to determine what needs to be done. Of course, the first thing is to clear all counter tops, tables, desks – basically, any level surface of almost everything. Next is to make sure that there’s nothing on the floors except for furniture and a rug. This even applies to closets, laundry room and every other room in the house. Closets and cupboards have to be cleared to make it look as if there’s tons of space. The cats have been disrupted by their litter box and feeding stations being moved, but they’ve adapted very well.

The lemons are on my counter

The staging is an interesting concept because while you have to make it look like a “dream show home”, at the same time, you have to make it look “homey”. It’s a fine balance between being squeaky clean and sterile while still lived in, well cared for and loved. That’s where I’ve excelled with list upon list upon list. I’ve been reading loads of e-books, web sites and other materials about staging so Steve has left this up to me.

Because this transition hasn’t been enough of a stressor in my life, I ordered a new SmartPhone so I'm trying to get used to it while having to use it a lot; I’m in the middle of 3 classes, two in nutrition and a Spanish class, and have added various workshops on top of those.

Probably the biggest stressor this past week was that my car’s engine blew up as I was driving back from Baltimore. Black smoke was pouring out from under the hood, and it completely died in the middle of the road. Fortunately, I sensed something was wrong with it just before the black smoke so I had pulled off at the nearest exit, and it died in the middle of the exit ramp. It was fortunate because the motorway is a nightmare of speeding demons who tailgate within a couple of inches. A very nice man stopped and helped me push it off the road and roadside assistance came to my rescue an hour later. It didn’t help that it was below freezing outside so while my car was overheating, my body was completely frozen. Needless to say – the car is totally dead so Steve and I are sharing a car until we can get a second car sourced. 

My Miata looks great - just doesn't run!!

The weather hasn’t helped either. The snow and ice have made it difficult to get around and keep up with appointments and work.

It’s only mid-way through February, and I’m wondering what the next couple of weeks can bring. The house is under “staging” processes, my car has died, Steve’s father in the UK is critically ill and Steve who has been overwhelmed with work is getting over his cold. Oh, and there’s the search for a new temporary home in Texas. And did I mention that I’m getting ready to move to Delaware for work starting next month? Has to get better, right?

I did have a bit of fun last night while taking a flower arranging workshop at Whole Foods. Here’s my completed Valentine’s bouquet that will cheer me up while everything else is in chaos!
 

My Valentine creation