Almost There

I see that I haven't posted since I retired, last November.

There are two reasons for that. One is that I've been terribly busy since then. The other is that I generally prefer to post upbeat things, but the stuff that's been keeping me busy mostly hasn't been fun.

Retirement sounds great: a day off from work, in perpetuity. Now I can do whatever I want with my time! Turns out, it's not like that, at least so far. In my darker moments, I worry that it may never be like that.

Retirement means I can't afford to live in Silicon Valley any more. No problem, we'll move to Oregon, a step we've been thinking about for years anyway. But when I retired, we realized that we had to move immediately, or as close to immediately as we could manage. We were instantly embroiled in complex plans to find a new home, put ours on the market, and rearrange our nest eggs appropriately.

But it was mid-November then: the start of the holiday season. That slowed things down quite a bit, while doing nothing to relieve the pressure. Then in January, we realized that Helen's knee surgery could not be put off until after we'd moved, which slowed things down even further while adding more pressure. (Now I sound all whiney. See, this is why I usually only post upbeat things.)

Helen deserves a medal of some kind: she's persevered through all this, often through great pain, and with great success. I do my best to be helpful, but she's the one in charge, and she's amazingly good at it. As I write, we are (in theory, at least) less than 24 hours away from taking possession of our new Oregon home, and everything looks to be on rails—although we'll be watching intently for any signs of last-minute trouble.

So! Are we done now and can I have some free time at last?

No, of course not. We haven't moved out of San Jose yet; we haven't moved into the Oregon house yet. There will be months (at least!) of unpacking, furniture rearranging, and furniture shopping, not to mention home improvements: paint this, fix that, replace those appliances, remodel this room. Ugh. (Sorry, more whininess there.)

Still, I think there's light at the end of the tunnel and cause for optimism. Oregon seems like a great place, and the house does not really need too much spiffing up. Eventually there'll be time to relax. I'm looking forward to that.

But first, we've gotta move the cats 600 miles. Augh!