Category: Uncategorized

Posted on

Pain

I had no idea it would be this painful.
We’re in the home stretch now. The packers are coming tomorrow. The movers are coming on Wednesday. And I am having an emotional breakdown. Help!
Church farewells
Yesterday Lexie and I went to Evergreen Lutheran Church for the last time. I was doing the readings and Pastor Vera and the congregation were giving us a blessing for safe travels.
As soon as we walked into the Narthex, people kept coming up to hug us, wish us luck, ask about our adventure, and say goodbye. By the time we got to our seat in the second row, I already had a huge lump in my throat. When it came time to read, I could barely speak for the swell of unexpected emotion constricting my voice. I went up onto the altar and took a deep breath.
“I’m sorry, this is very difficult,” I shared shakily from the pulpit. “This is our last time attending this church, and I’m suddenly feeling very emotional. This is a wonderful place and I really love all of you.” Then I took a deep breath, Pastor Vera smiled, and I began.
Her sermon was about answering God’s call and embarking on the journey even if you don’t know the outcome, trusting God and saying yes. From God’s lips to our ears!
More hugs and tears afterward, and the Piecemakers, a woman’s group that makes quilts for people in needs, gave us a quilt as a parting gift, which Lexie claimed for her own.
Aryk’s room
We got home and I attacked Aryk’s room. I took down the pictures on the walls, cleared out the closet, and transformed it from a cheerful bedroom that was my child’s home for four years to a sterile space of boxes and furniture.
That’s when the wave of grief really hit me. I suddenly felt horrible to be doing this to Aryk, and to Lexie – taking away their happy home, leaving them in a place of uncertainty.
Everything we have sorted and purged, every childhood pony drawing and too-small top and old Barbie video game that has landed in the trash or donation pile, has felt like a piece of my soul being stripped away.  The cheerful painted masks from around the world have come off the dining room wall and been imprisoned in a box, and those memories feel boxed up with them. Same with the colorful montage of family photos in the hallway. The old Halloween costumes. The boxes of unwanted books. Traces of our family history, pulled away like a scab and carelessly discarded.
The pain in my stomach is real. The deep exhaustion I feel comes from so much more than hours upon hours of packing. It’s a psychic wringing out. I wish there was someone I could talk to about this, but I know no one on this planet who has made this kind of life-changing decision and told the story.
Bob
Except my husband, my partner in life, who confessed to me that he sometimes also stops and says, what the hell are we doing?

And that, somehow, makes me feel a little better.
Posted on

The Purge (Part 3)

BOB

The first thing that comes to mind when you think of The Purge is all of the decisions that have to be made about what to keep and what to get rid of. I think that is the easy part. For me, the hard, and more time-consuming, part is actually getting rid of the things you decide not to keep.

Classifying stuff

We’ve been separating things we want to get rid of into categories.
Category 1: Sell

The first category is items which we think have some value and would be relatively easy to sell. For us, this includes things such as a pop-up trailer, piano, truck cargo bed cover, and stamp and coin collections. This sounds easy, but to do this we’ve had to find stamp and coin collectors willing to buy what we’ve had. We’ve had to find someone who specializes in eBay consignments and we’ve had to actively market items on Facebook, NextDoor and Craigslist. It has taken an immense amount of work to get rid of those items.
Category 2: Donate

The second category is items that have some value, but we really can’t, or don’t, have the time to sell. Examples include my former Felt racing bike, a nice table and set of chairs, clothing, books and old electronics. Once again, we’ve had to dole these things out to multiple places.

Today’s ARC run

We started out by donating a truckload of items to Lisa’s church’s annual yard sale. We had 15 boxes of books picked up by 50/50 Bookstore, a pay-as-you-go community bookstore in Denver. We’ve taken multiple (three and counting) truckloads of stuff to donate to our local ARC Thrift Store. We gave a coffee table to a local girl looking to furnish her first college apartment,  a scooter to a neighbor kid, a box of cereal bars to a homeless man.

Along the way, we’ve discovered items that we’ve borrowed from various people that now need to (finally) be returned.

Category 3: True Trash
The final category is items that no longer have value to anyone. It’s not quite as simple as putting them out with the trash, because we don’t want to fill landfills unnecessarily. So we separate our items. Electronics (the outdated stereo system, old computer monitors, cords and useless remotes) go to Best Buy for recycling. Paper, metal and plastic get recycled. Even so, there are items that we have to put out with the trash.
I’m looking forward to the point in time where we’ve rid the house of the things we no longer want to keep, so we can focus on boxing everything else up.

(To be continued)

We had to pare this down
The pile in the garage was astronomical

Burning up old checkbooks and bank statements
What to do with a moth-eaten old Boy Scout headdress?
ARC got many carloads of stuff
Posted on

Ellie Smoit, the Adventure Cat, Part 3: The Collar

The new jingly thing around my neck

ELLIE SMOIT

Jingle jingle. Scratch. Why won’t this thing come off?
I was sitting on some pillows glaring at Kaylee when Grandma came into the room and stuck a red thing on my neck. It has a bell. It won’t come off.
I sound like a damn dog! I can’t sneak up on Kaylee and jump her anymore. True tragedy. (Well, actually, I can still jump her. I just can’t be sneaky about it.) 
I made my displeasure known, and the bell was removed — but it was replaced by an almost-as-jingly plate. That, however, is better, because it can fit in my mouth. Chomp. I’m leaving my mark on the thing with my sharp teeth.

(P.S. I think I saw my name on the plate before I started chomping. And maybe a phone number. And I see that Kaylee has a turquoise one and Noxie has a blue striped one. So perhaps they just don’t want to lose me.)

Ellie Smoit, the Adventure Cat, is chronicling her journey from her house in Colorado across the United States and to Mexico, with a little help from her owner, Lexie Greenawalt.

I actually love Lexie despite the tag

Showing off my teeth and tongue simultaneously

See my name on the tag?
Posted on

Ellie Smoit, the Adventure Cat, Part 2: Kitty Anxiety

Anxiety

ELLIE SMOIT
I am the only cat in the house with all of my teeth. Which is good, because I need my teeth for my two favorite activities: eating and murder.
When I get stressed, I like to use those teeth on Kaylee and Noxie when they come close to me. And I also yawn, which is really, really cute, apparently. And I can show all of my teeth.
This morning I chased Kaylee all around the living room and I think we knocked some stuff over but I really don’t care.
And then I jumped Noxie, and I jumped on him and wrapped my claws around him, and then I got shoved away by my mommy’s big foot.

But what am I supposed to do? All these boxes and paper and everything moving around and mess everywhere is making me really anxious.
And I like to relieve my anxiety with murder. 


I lick

Look at my shiny teeth

My trophy from Kaylee

Ellie Smoit, the Adventure Cat, is chronicling her journey from her house in Colorado across the United States and to Mexico, with a little help from her owner, Lexie Greenawalt.

Posted on

The Purge (Part 2)

BOB
I’ve read about people jettisoning everything they own and moving to Mexico with just a couple of suitcases and a dream.
Other people pack all their things up and have professional movers transport them to their new, permanent home south of the border.
We belong to a third category, one we are inventing.  
The Third Category
We love our house and its location in Colorado. We also realize that we won’t be able to travel forever, and its one-level, ranch-style living will be perfect for aging in place someday. Therefore, we plan to come back at some point. In addition, our kids aren’t out of college yet, and they will want their things when it comes time to move into their own places. So we are keeping the house and renting it out to friends. This decision means that we don’t have to get rid of everything. However, it does complicate things by forcing us to decide what we’re going to take with us and what we’re going to store for an extended period of time.
This is where our stuff will live
Filling a Truck
Since we have a truck, we decided to purchase a topper for it so we can take more with us, particularly since we’re also traveling with three cats and Lexie for the first year. At this point, we’re hoping we can get everything we want to take into the truck. (More on how that goes when the time comes.)
Storing the Rest

In the meantime, we’re left with deciding what to put into storage. That’s been difficult for several reasons. First, both and Lisa and I “collect” things. Not necessarily formally collect things, although I do have some stamps and coins that I collected when I was a kid, but more along the lines of accumulating things and keeping them on the off chance we may want them later. We had accumulated so much stuff that when we built the garage at our current house, we had to make it extra big so we could store all of this stuff.

Purging
We fit all our stuff in 3 of these. We are trying to cut down to 2.
Knowing that the more we store, the more a larger storage space will cost each month, which could produce a very large bill over many years, we realized we need to undertake a purge. Actually, it is more like a pare-down. It is my goal to pare down by one-third. I have a decent idea of what that looks like, since when we moved to Colorado in 2009 we moved everything in three 8’ x 8’ x 16’ PODS. Therefore, I’d like to reduce what we store by the equivalent of one POD, or 1,024 cubic feet.
Working backward from that number would require us to rent a 2,024 cubic foot storage unit. We’ve rented a 10’ x 20’ x 11’ (2,200 cubic feet) unit so the math works out. All that leaves is the pare-down. More on that later.

To be continued …
Posted on

Ellie Smoit, The Adventure Cat, Part 1: Boxes

Boxes

ELLIE SMOIT

I love boxes. 

I can fit in them. I can fit in all sizes of boxes. It doesn’t matter if I can’t technically fit in the box. 
I love boxes.
More boxes have been coming into the house. Some have crinkly brown stuff in them. It makes fun noises when I jump into it and play with it.
Sometimes Noxie and Kaylee want to come into my boxes. But no! They are MY boxes! I will kill them if they try.
I love boxes.

Inspecting

Well, I also like bags

Bubble wrap is fun, too

I’m keen on books

I really love books

I don’t care how small they are

Ellie Smoit, the Adventure Cat, is chronicling her journey from her house in Colorado across the United States and to Mexico, with a little help from her owner, Lexie Greenawalt.
Posted on

Falling into Place

LISA

Today everything fell into place for Phase 1 of the Mexico adventure. We sat down and planned it out, and then we took action!

Step 1: Figure out our dates
First we looked at the calendar and Google Maps and figured out how long it will take us to drive to Guadalajara, Mexico, from Harrisburg, PA, where we will be visiting Grandma for the Christmas holidays before embarking on our adventure. We argued a little about whether the Mexican portion, after we cross the border at Laredo or McAllen, TX, should be done in one day or two, and finally decided to wait and see how the traveling went. (but we found a cat-friendly midway hotel just in case.)

The arrival date will be Jan. 10 or 11, 2019.

Step 2: Sign up for Spanish immersion classes
First I booked us for two months of four-hours-a-day Spanish immersion classes at the Guadalajara Language Center. They teach from 8:45 AM-1:30 PM, Monday through Friday, with a half hour off for lunch. Only $680 a month! They also have excursions to show you the area and give you a chance to study your Spanish, as well as opportunities to volunteer in the community.

Step 3: find a place to live

House La Holandesa

Next, I booked us for three months in a four-bedroom house in Tlaquepaque, in the southern suburbs of Guadalajara, Mexico’s biggest city, for a ridiculously low $850 a month. (that was through the foreign language school. the same property is $137 a night on Trip Advisor!) So lesson #1: Book local.

It’s called House La Holandesa. It’s in a gated community. The house has plenty of room for us all to spread out, even when Aryk comes home on Easter Break from University. It has a nice looking kitchen with granite countertops and stainless steel appliances, and a guest room! The most important amenities, though, are a parking space, and cat-friendly.

The house is about a ten-minute walk from the center of Tlaquepaque and 15 from the language school.

So we have a language school, we have a home. We have a plan. Now we are really getting excited!

Posted on

The Purge (Part 1)

LISA

Right now it seems like half my possessions are in the recycle bin out by the road, in an overflowing box in my office ready to go out to the recycle bin, in a trash can, in the living room of a local college student’s first apartment, or for sale at a local thrift store.

Going, going, gone
We plan to rent out the house while we’re traveling. That means our stuff will go into storage. A 10-by-20 storage facility costs $160 a month to rent. And it will probably go up every year. So do the math: If we are going to be gone 10 years, it will cost more than $20,000 to store our possessions. If a 10-by-25 costs 20% more per month, that’s $4,000 more to store our possessions.
Tens of thousands of dollars for stuff to sit in a dark, climate-controlled concrete cave for who knows how long.
So logically, of course, it makes sense to pare down, to take stock and keep only what we really need or want, and jettison the rest. It’s only stuff, right? We are going to learn to live without all these things around us and travel light for our adventurous life.
We made a lot of great memories in this pop-up
We have entered the Purge Phase.
The trash men
I know the trash men really hate us. Our purging creates giant piles of trash every Friday morning. They’ve stopped bringing the trash can and recycle bins back up to the garage and are just dumping them sideways in the driveway now, clearly disgusted by our garbage excess.
Giving it away
A college student at CU Boulder moving into her first apartment now has one of our coffee tables. The Grove Sale, a huge annual church yard sale for charity, got the wood-and-tile table and chairs, extra performance bike, office chair and more. ARC, the Thrift Store on Colfax, is getting tons of clothes. A charity bookstore has been the grateful recipient of 15 boxes of books.
Sad to say goodbye to this Wurlitzer
Next Door, Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace are my new best friends. Even a cat-clawed living room chair can find a grateful home if it’s free.
But oh, the pain
But when you’re getting rid of it, that’s when you realize how much meaning your stuff has, and how painful it can be to let it go.
Keeping: The gray cat mask Lexie made in art class in 4th grade. I can’t get rid of it, even though she thinks it’s really ugly. The bust Aryk crafted in art class in high school. The Boparder Hamm wine bottle from Germany. 

Ditching: The arts and craft stuff. The giant L-shaped couch. The glass-topped dining room table from Bob’s life before me. The piano I bought from a pastor friend that used to live in a church I loved – pianos don’t keep well in storage. But damned if it doesn’t hurt to think of the hours our oldest child Aryk spent learning to sing while their teacher BJ played that piano in my living room.
But I will NOT miss this dining table!
My youngest daughter Lexie is better at this purging stuff. She had a huge smile on her face as she filled five boxes with kid and young adult books for a local nonprofit bookstore’s donation pickup. Bob also shoves books aside with nary a sigh. But I stroke each one lovingly, reminisce about the feelings evoked by the story within, and then sadly place it into the recycling box.
Sigh
So the bookshelves are mostly bare.  The travel maps and books from all the journeys I’ve taken, both with Bob and before Bob are gone. The articles I wrote for a church where I worked 10 years ago have been recycled. The popup where we camped as a family all over Colorado was sold to happy family who are ready to start their own camping traditions.
The good news is the regret is gone within a day, and now I feel lighter. And really, we are doing our kids a favor. They won’t have to sort through a lifetime worth of junk when we die, because we’ve done a lot of the work for them already. OK, it’s a morbid thought, but a practical one.
So purge on!

To be continued …

Posted on

Loss

LISA

I just left my office at Evergreen Park and Rec District for the last for the last time. I feel really sad. There’s a pain in my stomach. 


I’ve never before left a job that I still loved.

Last night there was a farewell party for me. I had to get a picture with everyone I cared about – Liz and Laura and Marissa and Ann Marie and Heart and Heather and Jason and more. Before I left today,  I printed out some of the pictures, wrote personal notes, and left them on their desks — just saying thanks for making work here such a wonderful experience. I hope I will be remembered with affection!

Then I drove (choking back tears) out of lovely Evergreen, with its elk and its mountains, its iconic lake and its charming old west downtown, and hundreds of familiar faces, many of which I will never see again.

I know I’m going forward to the next adventure, and the next phase of my life. But wow. I have to get through all this emotion first.

There’s no getting out of it. I just have to feel it.

The building where I worked for 6 1/2 years

My office

The Lunch Bunch

Laura and me

Ann Marie and me

Posted on

The Birth of the Idea

BOB

We’re about to start an adventure. We don’t know where it will lead. It actually took a fairly extensive conversation just a few days ago to even reconstruct the evolution of how we got to where we are now.



I remember first starting to think about what it would look like when our kids graduated high school nearly 12 years ago when we lived in Mamaroneck, NY, just outside New York City. At the time, we lived in a 2400 sq ft house which, even then, had yearly taxes of $15,000. We saw the school district continue to raise taxes and saw that this forced some lifelong Mamaroneck residents from their homes as they could no longer afford the taxes. We realized then that we couldn’t afford to live there once we stopped working so began thinking about what we might do when that time in our life arrived.

Our Lake House in central Vermont
At first, our plan was to go live in our vacation home in Vermont. However, after thinking about that for a few years, we both came to the realization that we wanted more than that, and living in rural Vermont would be pretty boring, and colder than we would want at that stage in our lives during the winter.

By the time we moved to Colorado 8 ½ years ago we had already begun thinking about “hitting the road” in retirement. We began talking about buying a big RV and a big truck to haul it. We talked about traveling the country, exploring and seeing many of the great places that exist in this country. We talked about spending up to a couple weeks at each location, being in the south in the winter and north in the summer. We talked with people about what it would be like to spend the summer in one location and be camp hosts. We even talked about being seasonal Amazon workers. We looked at RVs at RV shows and found some that would work for us.


This book changed everything.
I was excited about that plan. I had a goal of visiting every national park and hiking and exploring every day. I thought we were set. All we needed was for Lexie to graduate from High School, go off to college and we would be off too.


A book changed our direction

That all changed a year and a half ago when Lisa went to the library to get some travel books for an upcoming trip to Belize. She came back with the book “The International Living Guide to Retiring Overseas on A Budget.” During the exceptionally rainy vacation in Belize, I read the book and immediately told her she needed to read it too. 

From that moment our “set” plans changed. We realized that we could expand the traveling and exploration we had planned for the US to the world. We realized that we could really get to know parts of the world that people usually rush through in a few days and we realized that there were just so many places that we wanted to experience. We also realized that if we explored the world while we were still young, we could still come back to the US and explore it in our RV.

The new plan was set!

Tips:

Other great books we have also read include:


How to Retire Overseas: Everything You Need to Know to Live Well (for Less) Abroad


A Better Life for Half the Price: How to prosper on less money in the cheapest places to live
Proudly powered by WordPress
Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial
Facebook
Instagram
YouTube
Twitter
Pinterest