Oh, We’ll Certainly Go Aroving

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

This morning I woke up with a poem by Byron in my head. Which when recited aloud as my husband woke up caused him to say “That is not Shakespeare. Are you all right?”

Well, yeah, I think I’m all right. I just feel suddenly very old. But honestly, that might be me being mawkish because what we just did would have beat the living tar out of me even at 30. In fact, it did. And what I propose to do would have been insane, even then. And yet it must be done, and I am not willing to indulge my body in its crotchets.

To be clear, house-hunting is a difficult thing, and it tires you out beyond all reasonable expectation. (And I’m not even sure why, honestly.) I found out on our last bout that 3 houses wiped me out for a couple of days. No, I do not understand why. Yes, I’d be amenable to guesses or explanations. I’ve talked to other people and the tiring seems to be universal, but no one tells me why. House hunting after a couple of days drive, and then driving all over between far flung locations, and seeing a minimum of 5 houses a day while sleeping on a strange mattress was…. uh.

The weird thing is I didn’t feel the tiredness while it was happening. I realized I was tired on the way up. I was not doing my share of driving, because my glasses hadn’t come in, and seriously, my depth perception was terrible. So I had no idea where I was on the road. So, I’d planned to give a friend a detailed critique I’d promised her. And I found I couldn’t read or think, so I ended up working on a crochet curtain, which only involved counting.

Now we’re facing getting this house ready to go up by July 1st but realistically, more like June 20th. And there’s so much to do, and the last two days have been consumed with things like “Wow the house is a nineties time capsule and I never even thought about it, because, who cares, but…”

BUT I still have my real work to do, including the now overdue next Barbarella script. And during the drive up I finally figured out who done it in the cursed book, which is good, because I’d been interrupted so much I lost the thread, and you can’t do that in a mystery, even an sf one. So I need to close that off finally.

So, let’s say falling asleep on my face at around 12 pm is not helping. And then I turn mawkish and go “I am getting old”.

But again, I’m not even sure that’s true. You know, the last interstate move wiped me out for three months, and I was then but 30 years old.

Hey, at least now, I have a full grown son, for now still with us, who is willing to help with the massive task of culling, sorting and getting things painted and staged. For a change, this is the hyper organized son, so he has lists and is driving this. I am, as always, the creative and “let’s tell a story with staging” person.

Thinking about that there is a symmetry to this, under the idea (innate to all writers) that my life is a book the Author is writing. We lived in another state before having children, moved to Colorado to be parents and raise the boys. And we’re now moving away to the next phase of our lives. For now with a son, (We moved to CO with a son too) but expecting him to fly in free in tops three years (yes, there are reasons. No. No one’s business.)

And what comes next? Well, I know what my upbringing and culture tell me to expect next. I remember very quiet houses, where people slowly faded away, livened only by occasional visits from the outside.

I don’t think that’s what’s ahead for us.

Why not? Well, mostly because our work, what we are for isn’t done. And I’m not saying this because I feel we’re either of us terribly important, more like we always felt we were here to do some things. In my case, write books (the blog was mission creep. I don’t know why. But I was obviously given it as a task.) In Dan’s case writing and music, and who knows what the mission creep will be.

Well, with one thing and another, mostly two things — the sons — we have barely started. So we’re not going to hide in a corner and fade away.

Yes, I do realize that our vigor/health is likely to continue decaying, but I intend to walk a lot, and go back on the diet again, because this weight is not acceptable. And slow the decaying. At any rate, my health has always been such a mess that old age holds few terrors. And the auto-immune seems to slow down at low altitude.

Today it occurred to me that I don’t — literally — know what comes next on the personal end. Oh, we’ll have the kids. We intend to drive the (mumble) hours from the new place and kidnap son and dil for dinner once a month or so. And for now younger son is with us, but should he move away, we fully intend to inflict ourselves on him often enough to enjoy his company, while hopefully not making him feel he can’t fly free. And we have a ton of friends, but they’re on line, mostly.

I mean, we had a group of friends when we were childless, which faded away before we moved. Then we had friends as parents. Our group in Colorado has dwindled and our lives rarely allow us to see them.

Will there be friends in the new place? Or will we be the old people who die in the house and get eaten by cats without anyone knowing? Yes, that does worry me somewhat.

On the other hand–

On the other hand, for a little while at least, we’ll be the old people writing madly and (in my case. At least until husband has knee replacement which the lockdown stopped) taking walks all over, and driving off to explore little museums and such.

It’s a new beginning. A beginning for what I don’t know, but a new one.

Right now, I have a cursed book — and a script — to finish today. And then a lot of time of packing and culling and….

Oh, and Byron’s poem that started this is below, but read past it, because there’s something a lot of you need at the end.

So, we’ll go no more a roving
   So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
   And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,
   And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
   And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
   And the day returns too soon,
Yet we’ll go no more a roving
   By the light of the moon.

NOW ON A DIFFERENT NOTE, Y’ALL NEED THIS. DEAR LORD, Y’ALL NEED THIS.

M. C. A. Hogarth, a frequent commenter here, dropped something about how she loved blurbs, and I asked her for a guest post, because mine SUCK. And yours (I have read them on promo posts, remember?) might at times manage to be worse. Which is REALLY hard.

In fairness to all of us, traditional publishing is also horrendous at this.

Anyway, Jaguar (M. C. A. Hogarth) wrote me a guest post. Which made me realize how I’m even worse than I thought at blurbs. But also gave me hope, because she gives a formula, which makes it easier. I’ll confess my problems with blurbs come in part from dad’s family culture of “We’re too upscale to sell anything” and partly because it feels like bragging, which is a cardinal sin for the culture I was raised in.

Yes, I’m aware it’s stupid.

Anyway, I put the post in MGC where it’s center-mass for the readers, but I know many of you NEED THIS. So you should head over and do it.
And my task list just grew a “write new blurbs for everything.” subheading.

An excerpt below:

I love blurb writing.

I know, it sounds crazy. But blurbs, like movie trailers with those fantastic voiceovers, are a mini-genre of their own, one short enough that you can practice and improve quickly. The dividends of these efforts are great… a good blurb attracts the right kind of readers to your book (the primary reason, certainly). But learning to blurb also makes you sensitive to what makes your story special, and it’s fun… a chance to make your art sound as exciting to strangers as you feel it is to yourself. Since so many of you here are writers, I thought I’d offer some thoughts on how to tackle this marketing mini-genre.

GO READ THE WHOLE THING. GO. NOW.

205 thoughts on “Oh, We’ll Certainly Go Aroving”

  2. I feel very tired at the moment, because it is the end of the academic year, with all the last-minute chaos that entails (“What do you mean the system will go down on the day of the deadline?!?”). Chaos wears, expectations unmet wear, and the free-flowing tension in the air doesn’t help.

    1. Oh, my. I know the feeling – even though I’m “on the outside looking in.” $SPOUSE$ has her last IEP meeting today (actually, probably wrapping up as I type), and a parent absolutely sure that she’ll get what she wants. Nope.

      Sigh… Two more days. At least only one day that I’ll need to go help with organizing the classroom again, as she’s had no kids the entire year.

      1. Yes. I just finished grading Beginning Latin final exams. Most students couldn’t find a grammatical case with both hands on the dictionary. Makes for “inventive” translations, indeed. And I spent all semester drilling on it. Sigh. Meanwhile the wife and I have to finish up readying things for our cross-country move next month. We have movers to do the actual move, but all the stuff we don’t want to move has to be gotten rid of, and after almost 30 years living together in California there is soooo much of that. Plus the county is just about to declare a drought emergency, which will probably mean that what is left of the lawn will die, which will make the house just so appealing to sell. But on the bright side, we are getting out of a blue state and will be moving close to our grandkid. (New house already bought.) So on balance, things are looking up. And no more Latin class.

  3. It’s strange how some aspects of getting old will flat-out gutpunch you.

    In one discussion, the whole “how far were we allowed to range from home as children?” question came up, so I looked at Google Maps, and found out that the loooong walk from my home to my elementary school was only about six tenths of a mile. Not really a problem, there.

    On top of that, I realized that I didn’t actually have that many honest memories of the seven years I spent in that school. No more than a dozen events I could clearly recall, out of all of those years.

    The gutpunch was looking at the aerial view and seeing that it wasn’t even the same school. As in “they tore the whole place down and built a new one with the same name.”

    1. The looooong bike ride to my best friend’s house turns out to be all of three miles. One’s concept of scale depends on where one lives, and Anchorage is a city, but it’s a small city. My dad was complaining that the care home we were moving him to was way the hell out of town, and I was like “it’s six whole miles from here, I commute further than that every day”.

      2. *grins* Someday, if we’re ever in a less public channel, I want to play the “who do you know that I know” game. Given that we were both likely in the Anchorage/Matsu Valley goth/theater/3 Barons crowd, I’m betting there’s 0-1 degrees of separation, but who knows?

        Alaska played havoc with my sense of scale, because “It’s within 10 miles, I drive. Further than Birchwood, and I’m flying.”

        1. When I was in high school, “punk” was a vague rumor emanating from London and NYC via occasional news magazines, and when I moved away for good in the late ’80s, “goth” was pretty much the same. Unless you went to East High, or were in high school drama/debate, I probably didn’t know any of the same people.

          I am two degrees away from Sarah Palin via girls I knew on the basketball team who played against her team. I’m also three degrees away from every President since LBJ, because back in the early ’60s my dad’s attorney was Ted Stevens. 😀

    2. Had me look at that myself – huh. Also six tenths of a mile. (Now, my house was on top of the hill, and the school down in the valley, so there was a rather steep and hot slog in the afternoons this time of year.)

      1. I had to go look up my elementary school as well. The route I walked was only half a mile though it had a couple of steep hills which got slippery in the New England winter when it snowed. The original two-story red brick building dates back to at least 1902, but had side buildings added before I attended. The complex has been converted into an award-winning Senior Assisted Living Center. Now I will crawl back out of the rabbit hole and continue reading comments. 😉

          1. I rode my bicycle the six city blocks to elementary school (about a half mile I think). Mildly downhill to school, mildly uphill from school. Although if Google Maps had existed it would have had me go up the REALLY steep half block hill at the end of our alley, so as to go down the pretty steep one block hill at the next street, instead of continuing down the relatively flat alley.

            I also held a book open between my left thumb and handlebars (riser bars with a banana seat and now you know roughly how old I am) so that I wouldn’t have to stop reading while I rode. On occasion that caused me to meet parked cars but thankfully reading while riding means that both are relatively slow.

          2. I went to elementary school, for a few years anyways, in Detroit. Walked with my big brother, not too far. I didn’t understand the day we were an hour late getting home because we stopped for a snowball fight, why my mother was so upset and crying, and beat the tar out of us. The year was 1968.

        2. The part of New Hampshire that I lived in – in my early 20s, not as a child – taught this Arizona native that “uphill both ways through the snow” could be a valid claim. Also that downhill could be just as bad as uphill.

  4. It’s a song, too, because Byron was filking an existing set of folksong lyrics that were about womanizing. With a chorus as the fifth line of the stanzas.

    They’re jolly lyrics and it’s a jolly tune, so it’s pretty hilarious to sing Byron’s filk that way.

    There’s a Leonard Cohen cover too, which is freakin’ hilarious for its non-jollity and his use of Joan Baez’s cover, and which is a cover of Richard Dyer-Bennet’s art song original tune, all of which are vastly inferior to the real tune. Heh!

    1. Here’s the original original, “The Jolly Beggar” or “The Jolly Beggarman,” which is part of a whole group of rascally beggarman songs in Scottish and English folk music, and which bleed into songs about jolly handsome gypsies, jolly tinkers, and so forth. This version is by Planxty, which was an influential Irish group that probably was the source for a lot of the people I’ve heard singing this song….

      Anyway, it’s possible that Byron knew another song with the same chorus and tune, because there’s been cases when different songs circulated with the same chorus. But… I’m betting that Byron jumped on the beautiful chorus and made it into a song idea.

      1. Archie Fisher, the same guy who wrote “Witch of the West-Mer-Lands,” also wrote a bandit filk of “Jolly Beggarman” that’s repurposing the chorus. It’s called “Mosstrooper’s Lament,” and it’s a good one (albeit reallllly longggggg, but that’s Fisher, and it goes quickly at that fast pace).

  5. Sarah, I hate moving.
    Yes, three years ago, after my wife died, I readied the house for that purpose; I even listed it with three services. Then.
    Then I realised that after living her for (then) 25 years, I didn’t want to move.
    My wife and I had discussed it at length: Which ever was left would ready the house to sell, do so, then use the proceeds to offset living expenses elsewhere.
    But when faced with the actuality, I chose my home. I spent a quarter century living here, raised my kids – and had all grand kids here at one time or another. Lost my wife here.
    And here I stay. Here I die. and when I do I’m deeding it to my kids. If they want to keep it, good for them. Hopefully by the time I cross the bar it’ll be paid off.
    I understand your desire to find a place less chancy; this was a fine communty when we moved here, and largely still is.
    You and Dan need to find your place, your stand. No matter the efforts involved, we all want that same thing.
    I’ll be praying for your success, and cheering you on. Hope your new place is closer to Texas, but that’s your choice.
    I was telling my younger daughter last week about a poem I cherish; a little one by Robert L. Stevenson. In the hills of Samoa, it adorns his grave marker.

    Requiem
    Under the wide and starry sky,
    Dig the grave and let me lie.
    Glad did I live and gladly die,
    And I laid me down with a will

    This be the verse you grave for me:
    Here he lies where he longed to be;
    Home is the sailor, home from sea,
    And the hunter home from the hill.

    I hope my kids will do the same for me. If I can’t have the stars, I’ll have journey’s End.

    1. These lines appear another place — scrawled on a shipping tag torn from a compressed-air container, and pinned to the ground with a knife.

      Can’t ever see that and not think of Delos D. Harriman’s grave on the Moon.

      2. So it’s not at all coincidental that it reminds of of The Green Hills of Earth, then. Good to know.

      3. I can’t find a cite for this, but if it’s not true it should be. As I understand it, RAH’s ashes were scattered at sea. One of the Apollo astronauts took a small container of seawater to the Moon as part of his personal weight allowance, and left it on the surface, marked with a shipping label, figuring a few of RAH’s atoms would be in the seawater.

        1. It would be fitting but can’t possibly be true. RAH died in 1988, long after the last astronaut visited the Moon.

          2. Well color me embarrassed. never checked, We definitely need to do it

  6. I was feeling the shock of time passing yesterday when it finally dawned on me that my older child will graduate from high school tomorrow! Tempus fugit! For some reason (writing invitations to the graduation party I suppose) my mind went back to seeing my first cousin’s daughter as a babe-in-arms right at my going away party before I went to basic training; she turned twenty-eight last year!!

  7. I have to admit that I’ve always liked the “He’s a ____ who _____. She’s a ________ who _______. Together they _________!” format for blurbs.

    Ending it with a question makes a lot of sense, too.

      1. Remote controllable snakes with head cams.
        Remote controllable lizards.
        Venom-based knockout darts, venom-based truth serum. Venom-based amnesiacs.
        Komodo dragon watch lizards.

        Unfortunately, the scaled critter lovers seem to tend toward the bad guy side of society.

        1. The problem is that your scaley watch lizards tend to get sluggish when the sun goes down, and the temperature drops.

            1. And no one will take seriously a dear sweet thing who knits sweaters for snakes and lizards. “Crazy but harmless,” and a kind sigh, ignoring the oh-so-faint aura of a shield around the sweet thing . . .

              1. OMG….. Alma, I haven’t kept up with Familiars (Not your fault. You know what life has been) and can’t remember if you’ve used this. But if you didn’t I’ll have to.

            2. “He’s a cold-natured critter.
              Yeah, I cut the toe out of an old sock one time, made him a little sweater.
              Didn’t work, though, he just kept crawlin’ out of it.
              He ain’t hardly got no shoulders at all, you know.
              But lord what a neck.
              Got more neck than Audrey Hepburn.”

              — Ray Stevens, “The Ballad of Cactus Pete… and Lefty”

        2. “I’ve got a purse that goes rattle, hiss, and slither,
          As I walk so meekly down the street,
          And I hope some punky-boy will snatch it,
          And I smile when I think of what he’ll meet!”

          Leslie Fish

    2. Oh dear. Now you’ve done it. Enter random word generators and here’s the blurb.

      He’s a loan officer who helps. She’s a microbiologist who wobbles. Together they tire.

    3. Depends on how soon they meet.

      “He’s a soldier who was cursed! She’s a wizard who refuses to abandon a comrade! Together they fight to survive!” — a functional blurb for Winter’s Curse.

      “He’s a middle son who ascended the throne! She’s a princess who ran away from home! Together they fight the ladies’ enchantments!” — not so much for A Princess Seeks Her Fortune He doesn’t even appear for several chapters. Plus, there have been many middle sons who became kings — provided you’re out of fairy tales, and I made no mention of that.

      1. And then there’s The Witch-Child and the Scarlet Fleet where no female characters have so much as a line of dialog.

  8. I don’t recall house-viewing (perhaps not full on hunting?) as tiring, but it was all within one rather town.

    I do recall feeling drained after travel, until I realized what was happening was dehydration, and started drinking more water on trips of non-trivial length. Added stops to deal with… the water cycle… but getting out of a vehicle now and then was also beneficial.

    1. What I now know as pre-diabetes made for a lot of P-breaks on a few road trips. Once that got under control, it was a tradeoff between state of the bladder and the state of the fuel tank. My last long road trip used a vehicle that went 300 miles between gas stations, so there was a fair balance between the two types of stops.

      Had to do a marathon house-hunting day when my agent had an open house and told me to disappear. Saw something like a dozen houses, and ended up buying the last one, seen just as that agent was stopping his open house.

      We did two trips for the current house selection. The final trip entailed 3.5 houses (0.5 was “it’s nice, but totally not what we were wanting”, so didn’t go in). The two other houses evaluated as “if the house is taken away and the price dropped by 30%, the land might be worth it” and “we liked the other one better, and still hated it”. We had a long weekend to do that trip, so it wasn’t much of a strain. That was reserved for the scramble of a move.

      1. My epic house hunt took place one afternoon when my then-wife and daughter were visiting family out of state. I made a spreadsheet of every house in Seattle or immediately adjacent for less than $250K (it was 2009 at the bottom of the market) and at least drove past all 28 of them. I ended up ruling out all but three or four — most were in neighborhoods where I didn’t even feel safe slowing down, much less getting out of the car — and then we ended up buying a house that popped up on Zillow a few days later.

          1. Actually, I live about four blocks north of White Center inside Seattle city limits. The middle of White Center was still pretty sketchy back in 2009 but once you got away from the main drag it was “diverse” but pretty peaceful, and it’s gentrified a lot since then.

            It was the neighborhoods up the west side of Lake Washington that were the really scary ones.

            1. I shall have to get down there for a re-look one of the days. It sounds less violent than I remember.

              The west side of the Lake is still a disaster, isn’t it? I was trying to get north a few years ago by driving along the Lake and avoiding the 5. Yeah, that was a mistake.

              1. There used to be shootings about once a year, but now if you go down the main drag at night you’re more likely to see hipsters coming in and out of the BBQ place or the 1000-varieties beer bar.

                As far as I can tell what made the area violent was the introduction of lots of small ethnic groups into what had been a mostly black neighborhood (at least in the later 20th century — it used to be White Center). I think the Cambodians/Hondurans/Colombians/Vietnamese/WhatHaveYou have either moved up and out or else the first set of hot-blooded young men have grown up. There’s still a lot of pho places and taco trucks and Asian groceries and latino hair salons, but it’s been a lot more peaceful in the last five years.

                (Barring the occasional “guy gets out of jail, guy steals car, guy crashes car, guy gets shot by police” incident, but you get that kind of thing once in a while everywhere, right? 🙂

                1. Man. The White Center you just described is completely foreign to me. In a great way!

  9. Next on House Hunters, shes a well-known author and he’s a music person and they’re looking for a home somewhere that hasn’t been infected with the blue-flu yet on a modest budget! 😉

    In all seriousness, I think house-hunting takes it out of you, regardless of how far from your current residence you’re going, because of the uncertainty. You’re trying to cram in looking at a house, trying to think of all the possible problems, trying to figure out from a couple quick looks and maybe some internet searches if the neighborhood is good, bad, and which way is it trending. You’re staring down a LARGE purchase and in your case trying to get your existing house sale-ready.

    It’s a stressful experience and stress like that tends to lead to being wiped out physically from it.

    As for the staging, I’d say your method of “telling a story,” might help with selling the house. Make them “short stories,” and something that perhaps gives something of a “this is what can be done here” vibe. Or am I preaching to the choir and you were already doing that?

    From what I’ve picked up about you and your personality here, though, you do NOT strike me as the “go quietly into the night” sort.

    I’d say enjoy the move, but moving is never fun, even when it’s over. Enjoy the new house and area, all the best to you and yours.

    1. we invent a family that would appeal to the buyer, then stage acccordingly. we’ve sold within a week of staging every time. (but normally take months to get the house ready. This time we can’t. Then again, we normally take months to house hunt too.)
      The weird part is that three times we sold to people like the family we invented, down to professions.

      1. I don’t know that I’d call it weird. With the staging, a family such as what you staged it for comes in, looks at the house, and because of the staging doesn’t have to expend any mental effort to see themselves living there. Which simplifies their decision for them.

      2. Yes, that’s not weird, that’s the desired result.

        The reason it works for you, where many lesser folk have faltered, is that you seem (from your descriptions) to have a good sense of the kind of person looking for a house like the one you’re selling, and the ability to figure out how that person would live.

        1. Yes, but it’s oddly specific. Like our last house we “created” a daughter who was applying to medschool and was an artist.
          …. so the couple who bought the house….

    2. Yes, that’s exactly why house hunting is exhausting. Trying to figure out if your life would work there, what it would change like there, if the house is physically good, if the neighbors are good for you, and with cross country moves, is it a good city or is being one lot over in the county the right choice?

      Lots of mental and emotional work, and if you’re at all sensitive to that sort of thing, spidey sense work.

      1. Well, that just means that you invent a great deal of verisimilitude. And that you have foresight flashes too.

        I mean, I guess it’s possible that you might have seen those families somewhere, and integrated them into your imagination, but that seems more farfetched than “has a charism of prophecy.”

        Of course, it’s also possible that a fair number of angels and saints follow your career with interest, or that your individual guardian angels really really believe in networking.

          1. The horrified amusement can be saved for some of the houses you’re looking at, like the one that we saw with fifty-‘leven different levels, all in tiny little platforms that could barely be called stair landings, and with the carpet detaching from the stairs so that we had to go up and down them super-carefully. (They also had some of those heavily-encrusted ceramic rose chandeliers. Our agent was also amused at the train wreck.)

            1. Heck, maybe those families’ guardian angels are the ones dropping _you_ subsconscious messages. I mean, why not work smarter instead of harder, to get their families settled?

              1. This house wasn’t three levels. It was the equivalent of a two-story house broken up into three—but not like a split level. Like a rendering blip. You had to go up and down in order to get from one side of the house to the other, for no apparent reason.

            3. “The first step in staging this house for sale should have involved a bulldozer.”

  10. And for me A Roving brings up this for me

    As for why it disturbs some of us maybe some of us have a little more Homo Florensis than others, and no Hobbit really likes to leave home…

    The Road goes ever on and on
    Down from the door where it began.
    Now far ahead the Road has gone,
    And I must follow, if I can,
    Pursuing it with weary feet,
    Until it joins some larger way,
    Where many paths and errands meet.
    And whither then? I cannot say.

  11. I made us move more than three years ago after we’d lived in a house for 20 years. That house had begun to feel “small” with the five of us when our kids had reached adulthood. Of course, the older two were already off in college and there was no reason to think that they would spend any extended time with us, but I wasn’t sure how it would feel when they and their spouses (yes, I assumed that there would be spouses in due course) visited. And I was feeling like I needed something new too, that as a mom who’d homeschooled, contemplating spending time alone in the house that I’d raised our family in was actually a little depressing. Yes, we raised our family there, but we’d done a ton of work on it over the years, so it had changed as they’d grown. Memories weren’t valuable enough to spend the future there — we were never going to get their childhoods and our youth back. We have pictures.

    But moving. Oh. My. Goodness. So exhausted. For several weeks afterwards.

    Fortunately we had two of the kids to help, but we couldn’t do much culling prior to moving. I said to my husband, “We’re going to pay to move stuff that we throw away.” We still have boxes in the living room and outside my office. And we’ve had perpetual projects to get this house ready to live in for the rest of our lives (I have no plans to move, but who knows), and life events (graduations and a marriage) that have all gotten in the way of my best intentions to unpack and declutter fully.

    I have gotten my energy back and lost it again, so I know that roller coaster well. Here’s to hoping that you recover your energy, slow the decaying, and write as your calling dictates and whatever the mission creep.

    1. In my case it’s mostly that over trips to visit family I relaized the eczema goes in remission at low altitude (and that’s a big thing, do you know how much it drains you to be in constant pain, particularly tied to moving your hands?) AND that my brain fog clears.
      So, it’s worth it.

      1. It’s good to find something to ameliorate the eczema. Two of my kids have had it plague them. My daughter got it on her scalp, around her mouth (I thought it was chapped lips for a long time, but then realized one summer that it must be eczema), and in her eyes. My son often had a bit on his forearms when younger, but the summer we sent him to music camp in Maine and then drove up three weeks later for family day, it was so bad on his hands and arms it looked like he had a contagious disease (and I’d made sure to send the nurse some cream for him). I think his is diet related. I can’t eat gluten (I know, that sounds like a trendy hypochondriac’s problem, but I’m dead certain), so I suspect that his is related to a gluten intolerance as well (at home we eat gluten free, but at camp he would have had copious amounts of all the gluten things). I recently ordered him some cream called GladSkin that seemed to help. I’ve read that omega 3 fatty acids can help play a role in preventing flareups, but my son isn’t big on eat fish.

        Also, I know brain fog (mine is gluten caused). It may not help you, but I find SAMe really helps me. I take one a day, two if I’ve been “glutened” for about 4-5 days after.

        1. I can’t eat gluten (I know, that sounds like a trendy hypochondriac’s problem, but I’m dead certain

          Since you did the troubleshooting on yourself, you’ll probably be amused by this little story.

          Knew a lady who was sure she was allergic to beef.

          When she accidentally ate some, and didn’t realize it until later– mom got worried and asked, because she hadn’t realized the lady HAD eaten what she’d assumed was ground turkey, just thought it was the best ground turkey she’d ever had– the lady became sure she was allergic to gluten or wheat, because it only happened when she had a hamburger.

          To shorten things slightly….

          ….she’s allergic to sesame seeds.

          Turns out she wasn’t ever allergic to MSG at all (along with every third person in the 80s!) she was having a reaction to sesame oil in the Chinese cooking, her hamburger buns always had sesame seeds on them. 😀

          1. I’m not sure amused is quite the right word, though I guess I’d rather go with humor than unhappiness. Food issues can be the devil to figure out, and who wants to be *that* person? It’s taken years and lots of experimenting (I should have started with a modified BRAT — banana, rice, applesauce, tea — diet and added back in one common allergen at a time) only to end up a social outcast. Last fall I wasn’t careful and ate the wrong thing at my daughter’s rehearsal dinner. I was miserable and barely functional at her wedding.

            Beyond social issues, it’s a problem for me as a Catholic. I persist in taking the low-gluten Host (there is .001% gluten), but then I spend most of the week exhausted and in a daze among other unpleasant effects. I’m kinda assuming this will be my lot for the rest of my life. It’s another reason though that I don’t plan to move. My kitchen has been set up for me.

            1. It’s not like “hahahah that’s funny!” amused, it’s more like when someone shares the story of the time they finished washing the carpets after cleaning the bathroom to an “is it a hospital room?” level, were in the kitchen cleaning when the kids came in the back door, across the damp carpet, and washed off the mud they’d literally rolled in in the bathroom sink. “Oh, man, I can feel that, but it’s fixed so now we can laugh.”

              Crossovercreativechaos has a couple of posts– she has a lot of food and stuff-folks-don’t-notice like strong cleaner scents– about this kind of stuff. The comments are solid gold, if you’re ever feeling isolated.

              *perks up* Catholic?
              ….has your priest or other advisor informed you that receiving in only one species is completely valid? It’s not like you’re getting half of Jesus. If you can get the drop of the wine that is his blood, you don’t *have* to take the bread that is his body.

              This is actually a really strongly worked out area, because of some of the folks in hospice whose bodies absolutely reject solids.

              I know with health restrictions a lot of places aren’t offering right now, but…..

              1. Sometimes black humor helps one stay relatively sane and functional in difficult circumstances.

                And weird food issues can be a little bit difficult.

                Raw or swollen all the time is not of the incredibly fun or the incredibly functional.

              2. > like strong cleaner scents

                I’ve walked into office buildings, spun around and walked right back out with my eyes tearing. In each case it was a new building, with new carpet. I always blamed the carpet, but it could have been some kind of cleaner. Might as well have been ‘chemical mace’ for me, though.

                Then there are the perfumes… there are some people out there who could give Foul Old Ron a run for his money. Most of them insist on sitting near us in restaurants. It’s not like we can even call for a box and finish our meal at home; the fug is so thick it contaminates the food.

                1. The Walmart near where my parents live switched floor cleaners to something “Environmentally friendly” for COVID related-cleaning, and being in its presence sends my mother into a day long depression.

                  It took her a while to figure out what was happening, but they don’t shop at that Walmart anymore.

                  1. Soy. It’s used as a filler in everything so it’s hard to avoid without cooking everything from scratch. And I LOVE scented candles, but have to be very careful to avoid the ones made out of soy wax. Burning, stinging eyes and sinuses are not of the good.

                    1. Good. I’m not the only one. Strong scents, perfumes, cleaners, can send me into instant migraine. But don’t have a problem with burning scented candles at home. Walking into a candle store is a problem, however. Walking by a Bed Bath & Beyond, or nail salon, in a mall, is almost impossible.

                      Started me sneezing, which was better than a migraine, I could tell when a fresh cut load of alder was coming in, or driving by (sample scaled), the scale ramp, before it was visible.

                    2. My sister hates “NEW! Improved!” because it means the food stuff was reformulated with soy, and she can’t eat it.

            2. Note: if you … argh, I’ll go with FEEL, but that kind of bone deep “I need to do this” one, not like wishy washy… that you NEED the Host, this does not mean you cannot just because there’s an option; you are “allowed” to listen to that still, small voice and still sigh and go “but, but, this makes things harder for me!”– if you KNOW it’s the right thing to do, or are pretty dang sure, that’s important.

              1. I do know that I can receive only the Precious Blood but apparently not everyone who should does. Funny-not-funny story: I’m not a lifelong Catholic (converted during my first year of marriage), and I recalled that my husband told me that Jesus is fully present in both the bread and the wine, so I went up to receive the cup without receiving the Host. The eucharistic minister stopped me and quizzed me! I spoke to our sister about it afterwards, and she knew exactly whom I was talking about and reassured me. Regardless, I’d felt like I’d done the most horrible thing in front of everyone. The parish staff and ministers as a whole didn’t really know about low-gluten Hosts or how to handle them until I came along.

                We’re not currently receiving the cup at Mass, but I suspect that my priest would accommodate me if I asked. It’s taken me a long time to realize that I can’t even tolerate the low-gluten Host. First I thought it was cross-contamination (from handling regular hosts). Practices stemming from Covid actually helped in that area. Then I thought I could take an enzyme to help (like Lactaid for lactose intolerance) but sadly, no.

                1. A belated welcome home!

                  Ah, preventing scandal. ❤ Not sure if it will help, but informing the ignorant is also a thing, though sometimes it's more a temptation to sin than an obligation… when the EM was obviously acting out of love, that makes things harder, too.

                  I know it's really …. k, bad word for it, work with me please, but discomforting, feels like you're making a problem for folks… but if you *can* get the folks to be cool with "bow to the Host, receive the Blood" (for an example I've seen to deal with folks who aren't eligible for the Host) then you'll be helping folks who are really trying to do their best.

                  I'm glad you've been able to find a silver lining in the recent troubles.

                  Just this Sunday, we were able to go back to Mass for the first time since our Bishop required masks. Packed house. A few folks had masks, a few more had obviously brought them in case folks needed to see them to feel safe, but the basement/crying room was empty (a safe, easy to space area with video for those who need it) and most didn't.

                  We also got dang near mobbed by grandparent types who hadn't been able to see kids for ages, because you're not keeping a two year old socially distanced and in a mask for an hour and change, plus I can't wear masks (short version, if anything goes wrong, there is a very good chance I will blank out and flip out, violently, which I can not do as a an adult taking care of children) and several of the self-appointed enforcers do not care for the type of technically allowable masks that our sons *can* handle, nor various hat based work-arounds.
                  (Yes, they all mean well. Which has actually really helped over the last year.)

                2. Well, that’s annoying/mortifying to be quizzed, but at least word probably got around! Some parishes have organized to have “this is where we deal with the gluten-free folks,” which avoids a lot of problems if you can just find out that’s what’s going on.

                  Not being able to choose one’s form of asceticism is one of the most annoying things about having illnesses or conditions. But given how many people receive unworthily, without discerning the Body, I think there’s something to be said for doing prayers of reparations for everybody, when one is unable to receive, or cannot receive one species. I mean, it’s not like you can solve the problem, so being able to offer stuff up makes it constructive.

                3. My husband is a revert– his Godmother lost faith, so he didn’t really get….well, anything.

                  So I try to share as much information as I can, and found out that way that a LOT of my “actually taught CCD” relatives had gaps in their knowledge, too.

                  So please don’t take it amiss if I dump WAAAAAY too much information you already know at you, I think this stuff is cool. 😀

                  1. I learned a ton when my husband and I got tapped to teach our son’s 8th grade religious education class (used to be called CCD around here and now CFF — Catholic Faith Formation). But I’m always happy to learn more.

                    Yes, I guess I see what you’re saying about how I can be helpful on this subject, both for those serving and for other parishioners with the same issue. It’s just that even after all this time, I still feel something of an outsider. Plus, I’m not so good at making waves or attracting notice. I certainly didn’t want to suggest any particular method for handling low-gluten Communion, especially as I didn’t fully understand the issue. Now that they’ve figured it out, though, I’m going to throw in another twist (to receive the cup, I’ll actually need to have my own; but my son, who used to be an altar server, is the one who told me that another parishioner receives only the Blood, so I won’t be breaking ground that way).

                    1. Not sure if it will help any, but I was baptized like hours after mom was allowed out of the hospital (not an emergency, just the godparents were much loved so Stuff Happened) and I not only sometimes feel like I’m outside of this…this huge pile of awesome and history and knowledge, sometimes I feel like I was abandoned by not being taught EVERYTHING about it, even while I marvel that you *can’t* possibly do so.

                      You’re clearly taking it seriously, so I have faith that you’ll do the thing that is right, exactly because you’ll take it seriously. It’s not just possible that you’re in position to pick up stuff that even if I were standing by you, I’d miss, it’s LIKELY. So if you have a “feeling” that something is a bad idea for some reason– then there’s a good chance that it is.

                      All my comments are offered in the spirit of “hey I have no idea why your car is making Funny Noises, did you check XXXX?” (Turn it off and turn it on again, but for more complex systems.)

                      That the sister knew who you were talking about suggests both a strong parish and an existing possible problem, not sure which. ❤
                      (Goodness, that there IS a sister is kinda impressive, I never saw a nun in person until I was 21. Very rural.)

                  2. The nonbeliever in the audience finds it very interesting, and now wonders exactly what are the requirements for the wafer that becomes the Body? does it have to be made out of anything in particular, and if so, why?

                    2. It does! The fancy word for it is that you have to use “valid matter”– no Wonderbread and grape juice– it has to have fine wheat flour, mixed with water and baked. The low gluten hosts are made with mostly wheat starch.

                      The offering has to be good quality, and has to be similar to what Christ would have offered when he said “do this in memory of me.”

                  1. Well, kind of. The state still has some restrictions, etc. (not as much as CO) BUT the church said “you know what? You want to distance, you go to this chapel. And if you want to wear a mask, do it, but we’re NOT.”

                3. We’re not normal yet, but I’m in a state where many parishioners didn’t come to Mass until in past six weeks or so. Churches have been open with restrictions for the past year. Our church added an expensive A/V system to simulcast one Mass to local public access TV and to FM radio in the parking lot, and Communion was distributed outside. But one of our priests has trouble standing (something neurological), so there has been a Eucharistic Minister to help distribute Communion for the past few months. Hoping after this weekend to be back to normal.

          2. Hm. Son of a friend of mine was allergic to beef. He threw it up every time. Then they were given some grass finished rather than grain finished beef and he was able to keep it down without a problem. Turns out he was allergic to the grains used in the “finishing.” Same with pork, to a lesser extent. They still don’t eat much beef, but when they do they buy grass finished and he’s fine.

            1. How someone figures out that it’s the grains and not the beef is incredible, though beef allergies are rare (apparently you can develop it from getting bitten by a Lyme-infested tick).

      2. I do know– not eczema– but my joint pains and most of my pains (including lungs) are better in low altitudes than high altitudes. When I moved from Carson City to LV, my health improved.

        1. Higher partial pressure of oxygen at lower altitude, so your body doesn’t have to work as hard to extract enough O2 from the air. A change of a couple thousand feet is significant.

          1. What amazes me is how much a couple hundred feet does in terms of pressure.

            Or from the other direction; how sensitive to pressure changes the ears are.

            1. Supposedly the Heinleins moved away from Colorado Springs (6,000′) because Virginia had trouble with the altitude.

              1. Huh. In ‘Farmer In The Sky’ the main character’s little sister has to live in a pressure chamber because she can’t handle the thin atmosphere on Ganymede. Doesn’t bother most folks, but a few just can’t live there.

                The atmosphere is thin because they’re still early in the terraforming process.

  12. I’ve been reading Habakkuk 3 lately. The prayer commitment at the end lays claim to how I feel:

    “Though the fig tree should not blossom,
    nor fruit be on the vines,
    the produce of the olive fail
    and the fields yield no food,
    the flock be cut off from the fold
    and there be no herd in the stalls,
    yet I will rejoice in the LORD;
    I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
    GOD, the Lord, is my strength;
    he makes my feet like the deer’s;
    he makes me tread on my high places.

    To the choirmaster: with stringed instruments.”

    My answer to Sarah’s fatigue is spiritual warfare: the demons of hell know your power and wish to crush it.

  13. I’ve lived in 4 states (and several states of mind) and did the moving and selling pretty much on my own. It’s never without stress. My last move almost crushed me.
    I had to find a house a little over 500 miles away, arrange the financing, sell the house we were moving from, cull, pack and move everything (which included 2 extra cars), again pretty much on my own. My grandson was only 10, my son was/is bipolar, and my wife was in the midst of Alzheimer’s. I was stressed to the point where I couldn’t sleep more than 3 or 4 hours a night. Got pills from the doc to solve that!
    Been in the latest house for 3 years now and trying to treat life as a brand new canvas full of space and some surprises!

  14. I still like to go a roving but refuse to wear a mask unless I’m going a reaving as well.

    Hence, as you WILL mask if you wanna fly (-or drive through Canada, which is even worse.), I’m pretty much, for now, limited to roving Alaska, which, from shining to frozen sea contains more than enough wiggle room.

    I do gently chide you folks suggesting that getting old sucks. Once you accept pain is natures way of telling you you’re still alive, that the occasional stumble and fall gives you a chance to view the world from a new angle, that maybe, that, perhaps, anymore, you can’t clear a quarter acre in an afternoon but you can still cut, buck a couple of trees every day or so, getting old’s a heck of a lot of fun!

    Your 48 year old son still lives at home? No, that’s a family I know in Japan, and it suits them quite well and works for them quite well, and their all delightfully happy, thank you very much.

    Bottom line, young, old, highs, lows, laughs, sobs make a life. Without those to flavor it you’ve nothing but a flat, tasteless bowl of mush.

    &, closing, tongue in cheek, a few more lines from Lord Byron;
    But, to return, Sir, to your play;
    Sorry, Sir, but I cannot deal,
    Unless ’twere acted by O’Neill.

    Regards; Jim O’Neil

    1. I hope by 48 (I’ve only been married 35 year5s, and there were six years of infertility, so neither is that age) younger son has moved on. Or it will be a waste.

        1. I think that for all of us here who are parents – what we want is for the children to be as happy and fulfilled as they can be. For most of us in this culture (Western, not just US), that means moving out to at least semi-complete independence. That varies by person – some want to be next door, some would be happiest with Pluto or maybe an Oort Cloud object… (I was good with a two hour drive to see my Mom. $SPOUSE$ was much happier with a six hour plane trip to see hers.)

          What does get frustrating is when that move becomes very difficult due to external circumstance. I would most likely only have one left here – except for twenty twenty won, as Sarah calls it. (Actually, I do have one gone, for certain values of “gone,” through end of the year – long TDY in San Diego; so we are really just a storage facility for him right now. Obviously no sense in paying a lease anywhere, as he has base accommodation.)

          1. Yes. Son is lingering partly because of twenty twenty one. Partly– Well. He says he doesn’t accept “excuses” but let’s say there are reasons.
            That said, two to three years should be a sufficiency for him to get oriented and fly.
            Particularly if he finds a nice girl 😉

            1. Worked with the first one, didn’t it? I’d say to send any extra my way, but mine is rather up in the air right now – this time last year, he was serious contemplating going active and career. Now, he’s probably not going to re-up USMCR when his commitment is done after this TDY. (Dang it. Two more promotions, and I could call him “Gunny” to be annoying.)

            2. He says he doesn’t accept “excuses”

              I’m divided between wanting to grin, or slap him. 😀

              Particularly if he finds a nice girl

              Go to the nice girl store?

              1. Particularly if he finds a nice girl

                Go to the nice girl store?

                –
                They’re always out of stock when I go looking.

              2. I REALLY want to slap him. I mean the issues were er… partly physical, partly political. There’s no doubt about that. But he wants to wallow in “no, it’s all my fault.”

                1. Those issues sound familiar to me.

                  I’ve wallowed in “it is all my fault”, not “accepting excuses”.

                  I’ve needed a certain tenacity of personality not to have given up along the way.

                  But I’ve eventually been forced by circumstances to admit, at least in hindsight, that there were things I couldn’t have addressed without information I lacked about medical situations. It often becomes clear that “No, I wasn’t lacking in character and simply needing to find the willpower to go do it.”

                  Anyway, ATM, things are fitting some of the more difficult patterns in my history. Having this pattern of behavior brought to the front of my attention has reminded me to work on allergy meds. Maybe I can get something done today.

                2. It would be too easy for me to heap blame on everyone else.

                  If I’m going to miss the precise level of guilt, better to do it in the way that allows improvement.

                3. Much easier to deal with “it’s all my fault” then the ones who say “it’s not MY fault”. Just says you raised him right, and he will figure it out.

      2. I respectfully remind you of Robert A. Heinlein’s, “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”, and of clan marriages, and line marriages. And family arrangement that raises kids to be moral, responsible, and able to pay their own way is valid.

        1. I’d say it more in terms of respecting the children as humans to whom the parents have a duty.

          Both can be abused via redefinition, of course.

  15. , and who knows what the mission creep will be.

    God willing and the creeks do not rise: grand-mothering and -fathering. The virtues grandparents (and the graunties and gruncles who step up when granda or grandma can’t or won’t be present) bring in the raising of the next generation are many, and sorely needed. Even when it is not as hands on as everyone would like.

    And on an odd bit of serendipity, that of M.C.A.Hogarth coming up just now. She has brought to light a serious problem for me (and I suspect for others not too different from me) As usual, no-one to talk to about it but God. So if you are of a praying sort, pray for wisdom and charity. I was very blithe about having this one sorted, and I clearly do not.

    2. I am glad I helped, a little, and hope you find what you’re looking for…!

  16. CINCHOUSE had been making noises about moving (mostly due to the stairs and her knees); but, especially in today’s market, there’s no place we can afford that wouldn’t be a major step down in quality.

    Yes, we could sell for a pretty penny, but then could not afford to buy anything we would both be happy with. (I want rural and enough land for at least a 50YD range and plenty of room for antenna towers, she wants suburbs and everything on one level)

    Of course I gave up hope of ever moving to my desired zone (West of the Mississippi, East of the Sierra Nevadas) decades ago, as this is where CINCHOUSE’s parents and comfort zone are.

    We moved a lot (every 2-3 years) early in our marriage, courtesy of the USAF (and their contract moving companies). Now, after living here for 27 years without the periodic purges moving entails. And doing it on our own dime and what little muscle I can muster these days… ugh!

    So Sympathies and good luck!

    1. We are in the same boat. Our current home of 32 years, we can just live on the main floor. Stairs got to family room over garage. Nice, but we could just not use the stairs.

      We too could sell for a pretty penny. But can we sell for enough to get the type of house we want, where we want, and pay for the move, or at least most of it? Then too the likely situation quadruples our property taxes. Not that we can’t afford the last, it is the principle. Right now it is kind of nice that we have a hand in strangling some of the liberal tendencies locally due to lack of financial support.

      Waggles hand.

      Complicated by we don’t know where we want to go. We know were we don’t want to go. But not where to go.

      1. If you knew everywhere you don’t want to go, you’d know where to go! 😛

      2. We were looking for something still rural(ish) but closer to the city for a few reasons, largely medical. (The ambulance ride with the blown-out knee was 45 miles, and the ‘bus had to drive 25 to get to our place.)

        Looked a bit in 2019, while we were considering land and building a place. Looked at the project management issues and the then-current contractor shortage and said nope. Looked more during 2020, but what was out there wasn’t suited for our needs, or got sucked off the market quickly. With people outside of the Left Coastal cities thinking our area is perfect for a CalExit, prices went crazy. Not as crazy as our governor, who is trying to ensure that nobody except the Woke Karens will want to be in Oregon. Still, we’re hoping we’ll outlast her. Aristo, aristo a la lanterne!

        Meanwhile, the neighboring houses got new people in (for a couple of years, three of the 4 neighboring houses had a total of one person living there), and by a happy chance, these are people we get along with, and even like.

        The current house was selected to be single story, though I have a mezzanine above a workroom in the barn that’s accessible by ladder. I’m trying to reset that so that only non-critical storage is up there. Most of my non-fiction is there, which is one reason I’m starting to commence to prepare to cull my fiction in the house. 🙂

        So, we’re staying, long trip to medical care or not. We’re doing the work to make the place as suitable for our needs as possible. No moat, but the area is fairly defensible.

          1. No need for crocodiles, though I suppose we could get some rattlesnakes from the hills.

        2. Looked at the project management issues and the then-current contractor shortage and said nope.

          –
          Yes. This is a problem locally too. Good time to be in the trades if you can avoid pissing off people who can’t engage your services, in a reasonable time frame, and have a long memory.

  17. “Though much is taken, much abides; and though
    We are not now that strength which in old days
    Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,
    One equal temper of heroic hearts,
    Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
    To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

    Ulysses, Lord Tennyson

  18. For me the hunting was the easiest part. The near 20 drive to and fro was the drag. Had 4 places I wanted to look at, one was a owner pull from market, one was under contract the friday before I left, so the first was up the road a ways, had flooding in the basement, the second I live in but I had to put in a bid and wait for HUD. Needed a place in the meantime, Tuesday saw a rental pop up on Craig’s List, Wed appoint spent day trying to find storage (HA!). . . First person didn’t bite so I took it (was for sale and I considered but company assisted lending would not lend that little so was month to month) Rental folks owned storage, unlisted number, and they were full. Late Thursday ge call. HUD took my bid (should have tried lower, but needed a place dammit) so dash to Bank in Green Bay for Cheque to pay in full and fill papers Friday (day I was supposed to drive back to TX). Drive home and start the pack-up. Mahoosive U=Haul, Trailer for Truck, everything loaded to the gills.

    2. I loved Star Trek showing Kirk as a ring-knocker. Traitorous starship captain says of Kirk: “He’s a Star Fleet Academy graduate.”

  21. I hate moving. I’ve only done it four times in my adult life, and I’m faced with it again, pretty much in the same time frame you’re looking at.

    But we lucked out. We found a condo in the same community where our rental unit is (where we lived before we lived here) and are negotiating a private sale with the resident, who wants to move closer to her mother (probably in with her mother, is what we’re hearing).

    The only problem is, three bedrooms or not, the condo is 2/3 the size of this house, with less storage space. So the downsizing has commenced.

    I look at it as less junk the kids will have to deal with when we’re gone…or, G-d forbid, if we have to move again.

    Good luck to you and Dan, and please, both of you stay well.

  22. I am so tired. I barely managed the last move. Sending you good thoughts. Anyway, I can’t wait to hear where you landed.

  23. We did most of our looking online. Drove six hours to check out one place and made an offer; closing on 30 June. Getting the one here ready to sell, which is harder. Throwing out a LOT, but still looking at a semi for the move, which is crazy expensive. Hopefully, the Denver house will close in August, so nothing sits empty too long. Can’t really plan much of anything until we have that date. Meanwhile, junk men (today), sprinkler repair (today), appliances (Tuesday), electrical work (sometime next week), a window repair (tbd), some painting (next week), photos (7 Jun), staging (23 Jun), showing (25-27 Jun), and picking an offer (28 Jun) – then driving six hours for the other closing.

    BUYING is the easy part!

    1. We did most of our looking on line, but when we got there most of what we wanted had sold.
      So…>
      House outside Denver….. should sell quickish once it’s up. Our suburb is going like crazy. We’re cleaning fixing, etc. Window will have to be unfixed. But to be fair it was like this when we bought.

  24. One could say it was the almost 11 hour dash from W. Yellowstone to Eugene that wiped me out. Nope. Was exhausted before we left W. Yellowstone. Fatigue of the trip started late Tuesday. Sleeping fine, even if on a strange smaller mattress (Queen, not King). Only took one hike, it was relatively flat and not that steep, at least main part, and that wasn’t until Thursday (landing on my ass on a a rock didn’t help, but not the cause). The problem is. We. Don’t. Stop. Going. Until we get home.

    2. Try from the KOA outside the west entrance of Yellowstone to San Diego in one shot.

      On a motorcycle. Granted, a big, comfortable one.

      About 22 hours.

      1. You people are insane. I love you, but that’s just crazy. If you’re spending more than eight hours on the road in a day, it’s too far for a day or you’re not driving fast enough. 🙂

        1. I’d traveled about 8,500 miles in three weeks. Woke up that morning, said “F-k this, I’m ready to go home.”

          And did.

          1. Done that. On a NY to Anchorage to San Diego trip got to Colorado springs and decided to boogie home. Left CS at noon, drove straight through to Terra Haut IN in one push, then home to Rochester after one sleep. Iron butt award indeed. GS750 Was young and stupid, or stubborn. Could not do that today.

        2. *Driving fast enough. But agree, 8 hours on the road is more than enough. If I’m driving, not that long, because I have to take longer breaks every 60 to 120 minutes.

          * Hubby hit 100+ on one stretch, passing two semis, so only short period. But he was hitting 90+ on I-84 with cruise control.

          Which reminds me. I have to log onto insurance and “I was NOT driving” delete trip process. Or un-enroll in the process.

        3. *laughs in 12 hours is a short day*

          …in my defense, with kids and a camper, 16 hours “on the road” is about right; you drive four hours, stop and run around for two while you do breakfast; drive four hours, stop and run around for two with lunch; drive four hours, stop and run the kids while you set up “camp” and do dinner.

          So it’s 12 and not counting hotel junk time, which is quite different.

          1. We did “Start out early in the morning, like 6 AM, and then drive drive drive to get out of rush hour range, and then stop for early lunch, and then drive drive drive during lunch, and then stop in the afternoon, and then get to the motel by about 4 PM.” This also included “Stop the car at desired historical sites for the sake of Dad, and for us kids to run around like maniacs and learn something” and “Dad decides to get off the road and go shunpiking.”

            Every time we drove until evening rush hour, my dad would be exhausted and torqued off at traffic.

            1. The big thing is for driving to be in service of trip, not an end in itself.

              …sometimes our “two hour stops” are oddly placed. And more than two. 😉

              1. I’d disagree when it comes to motorcycling. The ride, interspersed with camping and rum, can easily be the trip. If you are driving, well, poor life choices. 😎

                1. If you’re traveling on a motorcycle, you’re aready crazy. *big grin* Just not quite as crazy as the bicyclists….. *even bigger grin, hides in the armored van*

              2. I did a lot of road trips to visit family in the Midwest over the years. Looking at logs of a couple of trips, many of the legs ran from 750 to 900 miles. The only time I found the longer distance brutal was because a) the no-name motel in Salt Lake City had a thoroughly used-up bed, so I started around 4:30 AM, and b) the never-to-be-sufficiently-damned 55 mile an hour edict was in place, and enforced in enough places that it took many more hours than later trips needed. (I was amused/bemused to see an 80 MPH speed limit on I-80 in western Utah. “Curves? You expect this road to have curves?”. Got passed by a Smart car driven by Deathwish O’Riley. The Forester did OK–no wind there.)

      2. No thanks. Eugene to San Diego to Bend. Or Longview to San Diego, only this time we actually took the to Disneyland, then on up 101 through Redwoods, and up Oregon 101 to Longview WA. Just the first stretch down to San Diego was enough to ensure I was sick last half of the trip. Bad enough that 14 years later when taking our 4 year old from Eugene to Disneyland, and San Diego (to meed SIL & kids), I put my foot down. We flew to LAX.

          1. I’ve sworn off long road trips. The last time I did a Costco/Trader Joes run, I stayed overnight. 220 miles plus shopping is more than I’m now willing to do in a single day. The road trips to visit family? Not any more. Not at 2000 miles each way.

      3. Nice. My record is Albuquerque to Twin Falls, ID on Road King in one day. Not as far but to be fair, well over 100° during the day.

        1. I once made the mistake of riding down I-15 in the daytime.

          In July.

          When I got home, they said on the news that it hit 122° in Baker that day at about the time I was there.

          If it’s hot enough, wind does not provide cooling. I stopped and drank about a quart of water at every rest stop and didn’t need to piss once.

  25. All I can say is, “I hope you are coming to Florida! Rules are different here.” However, I know you are not, because it is too far away, even the pan-handle where I live, but maybe someday. (Don’t ever go to South Florida.)

    1. Or the Keys, where time stops and criminal drug runners are heroes. 🙂

      South Florida is just hot, with no breeze. The Keys are hot, breezy, and a complete disaster in a hurricane. Also, flat. Very, very flat.

    2. Not this time. For various reasons. One of them being that it’s too far from son and where other son wants to be. The other that it’s too far to drive, and we’re not flying this time. (Because Masks.)
      The other because I hesitate because I have lived most of my life in the west, and going east feels wrong at this point.
      OTOH who knows? We’re both fairly sure we’ll move again in 5 to 7 years, so….

      1. Wouldn’t you love to be like Davy Crockett and tell Congress (and even that lovely Colorado Governor), “You may all go to hell and I will go to Texas”?

        Well, sure it gets warm down here. That’s why we have two types of iced tea and several varieties of lemonade.

        1. Cold. We’ll have highs of 70 or lower for the next week (after today). We got down to -11 F with a windchill of “don’t use that language in polite company”. What is this “warm” of which you speak?

          1. We got lucky this winter. As best as I can tell, we stayed above zero for all the winter. (OTOH, our personal record was -28F.) Yesterday was a bit extreme. The low was 26F, with a high of 75. Normally, the daily temp swing is below 40 degrees. I have to get the frostcloth and the freeze cover plastic for the sole raised bed we’re doing outside of the greenhouse this year. We gave the summer squash seeds away when it was clear that I wouldn’t be able to do much to get the garden ready, but we’re putting in some store-bought seedlings next week. Tuesday’s forecast is for the low 90s. High country dry land tends to have interesting weather patterns.

            FWIW, we use “You gotta be kidding” for the relevant windchill numbers in winter.

  26. House hunting is tiring because of the stress of the big choice you are making in picking your new home.
    On diet, Sarah, have you looked into carnivore? It’s not a weight loss diet, it’s a health gain way of eating.

    1. Actually, a lot of us, especially women, are what used to be called “endomorphs,” where we have super-efficient metabolisms. So you end up doing stuff like one day meat, one day other stuff, one day cheat, to confuse the metabolism into losing weight and working better for non-starvation times.

      Unfortunately, Sarah can’t eat carbs already… they make her sick. So I’m not sure how people confuse their metabolisms in that situation. Weird intermittent fasting, maybe.

      1. Some people could get the idea that moving is your main hobby…

        I do hope Fort Hoyt has a moat. Or at the very least a nice fence, with spikes for the heads of your enemies. So few people want to keep up the old traditions nowadays…

        1. it has a very nice fence.
          …. well, it’s weird. We don’t like moving, but we do ever five to seven years, on average. Each move has a reason, but….

  27. Good luck with everything from me and the kitties! I’m looking at a move too and since it’s not something I have much experience with it’s pretty overwhelming. On the good side, it’s just me and the cats and we don’t require much space but getting enough money out of both selling the stuff of decent value I won’t be taking with me and the place itself, which is rather modest? That’s one of many, many things I’m trying to wrap my head around. Hopefully all of us looking to relocate can do so successfully and if any trouble comes it’ll be minimal!

  28. What do you hunt houses with? I can’t find anyone who manufactures punt guns for retail sale.

    1. Well, a +3 arrow is useless against smaller game like a gazebo, so you’ll definitely need something larger.

    2. These days, you hunt houses with a fat checkbook. Supply is low and demand is high.

      A good buyer’s agent who knows your very local market is also invaluable, but there’s only so much even the best can do when every house gets five offers in the first week, and the eye candy gets 10 the first day.

    4. “What do you hunt houses with?”
      You use a bungalow gun, of course.

      Punt guns are for hunting boats.

  30. You are not bad at blurbing! But you probably hate doing it, which makes it easier to be critical of your work and not see its good points. I’m glad the article helped. 🙂

  31. Part of the ‘tiredness’ is the mental stress of trying to make a decision(s). What will fit where, how will I, etc. etc. PLUS the basic determinations of condition, neighborhood, etc.

  34. “blurbs, like movie trailers with those fantastic voiceovers, are a mini-genre of their own,”

    Heh. During the half dozen or so years I had the part time job at a movie theatre I grew to greatly appreciate a good trailer. The odd thing about trailers is there is often little relationship between the quality of movie and trailer. We all know of great movies — Galaxy Quest, Silverado — that had mediocre trailers, and great trailers that promoted terrible movies, trailers which, in a mere two-and-a-half minutes offered up every joke or bit of excitement contained in the movie and a few which did not make the final cut.)

    Which is why I always make every effort to be in my seat well before the movie starts, to witness ad appraise the Coming Attractions and speculate on whether the accompanying movie will be any good as well as how the trailer might be misleading.
    ~

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