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Happy Trails, Part 66

COLLIN COUNTY, Texas — It appears that my wife and I have quite possibly narrowed our field of choices where we intend to relocate … after we sell our house in Amarillo.

We did something this morning that proved to be quite fruitful.

We awoke today, ate a light breakfast and then headed south from the RV park where we’ve hauled our fifth wheel RV. We left the RV behind and took off on a tour of small towns between Sherman and Allen in North Texas.

We wound our way through Howe, Anna, Melissa, Princeton, Lowry’s Crossing, scouting out neighborhoods and looking for the type of house we might consider purchasing were it to become available while we are available to buy it.

Then we ended up in Wylie, Murphy and Parker.

You know what happened then? We ended up thinking that the Wylie-Murphy corridor is most suitable for us. It’s a fascinating thought, when I think about it.

We went to Wylie some time back, actually before we even thought too much about retirement. We liked what we saw then. We liked it again today. Perhaps even more than we did the first time we laid eyes on the city of 41,500 residents.

(My wife, incidentally, believes the next census in 2020 is going to record a substantial population growth for Wylie since the most recent census in 2010. I think she’s on to something.)

Now I say all this understanding that nothing is cast is stone. It all could change if we find a specific piece of property that bowls us over in an entirely different community.

Wylie and Murphy, taken together, represent a modern, well-manicured greater community where we could get quite comfortable in reasonably short order.

This retirement journey, of course, has some more distance to travel. We’ll make the most of it, but our destination appears to be taking shape. I am not yet comfortable declaring we’ve found it just yet. We have just moved a little closer to that declaration.

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Happy Trails, Part 65

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SHERMAN, Texas — Our retirement journey has entered a new phase.

It’s in a place they call “North Texas.” Why is that, given that Amarillo and the Texas Panhandle are much farther north than this community about 38 miles north of the reason we intend to move to this part of Texas permanently? I refer, of course, to our lovely granddaughter Emma.

That’s another blog post.

This time I want to comment briefly on our intentions relating to Sherman.

We pulled our fifth wheel here from Amarillo. We’re going to spend a few days here visiting with Emma, her brothers, her parents, and we hope other members of our extended in-law family.

The house we have vacated back in Amarillo is undergoing an extreme interior makeover at the moment. The fellows who are performing that makeover have told us “The house will look so good you won’t want to leave.” Umm. No chance of that, pal.

Among the tasks we’ll complete while visiting North Texas will be to do a little recon of some of the communities scattered between Sherman and the north Dallas suburbs. We have identified some of them already. We now intend to take a closer look at them to see which of them are the most physically attractive, offer the most potential real estate opportunities, provide the most amenities.

Our house in Amarillo will be finished upon our return in a few days.

Then … we hope for the best. And the “best” means we sell the place and then relocate to North Texas to continue our search in earnest for the place where we continue our last, great adventure.

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Puppy Tales, Part 44

We’ve all come down with a case of it. We deal with it by going outside, enjoying ourselves, taking in the wide open spaces.

Right? OK. Can a high-energy dog do it whenever he feels the need to blow off some energy?

Not exactly. Toby the Puppy has become afflicted with a case of acute cabin fever. I cannot stress the word “acute” enough. He has gone stir crazy.

Here’s the problem. We’re all — my wife, Toby and yours truly — are now living in our fifth wheel RV. We’re parked at an RV park in Amarillo. The place has rules regarding dogs: leash ’em up, clean up after they do their business. Got it. Enough said.

The park has a nice dog park: two fenced-in yards with plenty of poop bags available just in case.

However, it’s been cold here on the Texas Tundra. We can’t just let Toby out to play in the dog park. We can’t leash him up at our RV site and leave him out there! He gets cold, man! Just like his mother and I get cold.

The adjustment for my much better half and me has been to get used to living in close quarters. We still like each other, which is a blessing — even though I like her more than she likes me. We’re coping, though, just fine.

Toby is having a bit of time of it. Back when we lived in an actual house with walls, a roof, a back door and a fenced-in back yard, he could come and go as he pleased. That cannot be the case in our RV.

He’s a captive audience of one.

I’m sure other puppy parents know of what I speak. I am not asking for advice. We’ve simply learned to take him out, walk him for a few minutes and bring him back. We do this many times during any given day.

We do understand that this became part of the deal more than three years ago when Toby joined our family.

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Who needs Christmas ‘trappings’?

I have made another discovery, so I’ll share it with you here.

The discovery is that Christmas does not require one to become enveloped in all the festive trappings associated with this joyous and holy holiday.

How do I know this? Because we are living it in 2017.

We have no tree. We have wrapped a few presents, which we’ll exchange with family members in the next couple of days. We’re holed up in our recreational vehicle, getting ready to hit the road very soon.

Lights outside? Nope. Stockings for Santa to fill? Nada.

We are enjoying the spirit of the season.

My wife grew up in a family that celebrated Christmas on the eve of the big day. They sat around the tree, opened gifts, laughed and carried on, then went to church to celebrate the season’s actual significance to us Christians.

My family celebrated the big day the morning after Santa arrived. We, too, would gather around the tree after rousting Mom and Dad out of bed. We’d carry on and laugh as we opened our gifts. We would decorate our house with plenty of lights, a task which yours truly inherited as I grew old enough to climb onto the roof.

Oh, and we would leave milk and cookies for Santa. We awoke Christmas morning to find a half-eaten cookie and a partially consumed glass of milk … along with a thank-you note from Santa for the snack. And we didn’t put together the coincidence that Santa’s handwriting matched Mom’s impeccable penmanship. Who knew?

This year the holiday brings an entirely different meaning for my wife and me. We will attend a Christmas Eve service tonight at our church. Then the next day we’ll share a Christmas dinner in our RV with one of our sons and we’ll swap gifts with him.

Before that, we’re going to strap on aprons at the Salvation Army and serve homeless Amarillo residents. It’s something we thought would imbue some additional actual Christmas spirit into our hearts.

So it will be for us.

I’ve told you already about a memorable Christmas we spent as we moved into a newly built house in Amarillo. That was then. I am utterly certain this year’s holiday is going to produce even more indelible memories.

Even without all the trappings.

Merry Christmas.

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Season of joy … and big change

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I posted this picture a year ago on Facebook, and the site reminded me of it today as a look back.

Initially, I was reluctant to re-post this image. It made me mildly sad this morning when I saw the Facebook “memory.”

This picture depicts the final Christmas in the house we called a home for 21 years. It’s dark this year. We’re no longer living there. We have moved on — more or less. Our “home” these days is a 28-foot fifth wheel recreational vehicle. It’s parked in a location on the other end of Amarillo. The house? It’s heading for the market, folks.

This is a season of joy for us. It’s also a season of big change that awaits us just down the road. We don’t quite yet know precisely where the road will take us.

Don’t misunderstand. We have a general idea where we’re going to resettle. It will be somewhere near our granddaughter, who’s now 4 years of age. Every friend we’ve told of our plans — and the reason for our move — has expressed total understanding and support for us. “That’s the best reason I can think of,” I’ve heard from many of our friends.

However, as I look at the picture attached to this blog post, I am reminded of one of the precious memories this house brought us.

***

It was Dec. 22, 1996. We had just taken possession of this house, which we had built. We had lived in a one-bedroom apartment since early 1995. Our furniture was stashed away in a storage compartment.

We closed on the house. We called the mover, who then delivered our goods. We unpacked them.

Our Christmas tree that year was a potted live Norfolk pine we brought with us from Beaumont. It stood about 4 feet tall. We found some Christmas lights, strung them around the tree.

We commenced opening our packed boxes and rediscovered the possessions we hadn’t seen in nearly two years.

It was — hands down — a glorious Christmas indeed in this structure that was filled with that “new house smell.”

That, too, was a season of change. To that end, the season has come full circle. We are anxious — and we are ready for whatever awaits.

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Happy Trails, Part 63

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I am going to miss many aspects about living in West Texas.

My friends; the big sky and the fabulous sunrises and sunsets; Palo Duro Canyon; the distinctly different seasons of the year.

I won’t miss one aspect of life on the High Plains: the distance one must travel to get anywhere.

Our 23 years on the High Plains has acclimated my wife and me to this reality. It is that you don’t measure travel in miles; you measure it in the time it takes you to get somewhere. If it’s only an hour’s drive, no sweat. Even a two-hour drive is tolerable. Three hours? Eh, it’s still doable.

It took me a while to get used to that element of West Texas life. But I did. It’s no longer a big deal for either of us — and I’m presuming this of my wife — to “commute” 30 or 40 miles in a morning. Hey, it’s still less than an hour behind the wheel!

We moved to the High Plains from the Golden Triangle, where any destination of note was much closer to home. Ninety minutes to Houston; four hours to New Orleans; five hours to Dallas-Fort Worth; 30 minutes to the beach.

Soon (I hope) we’ll be relocating to points southeast of the High Plains. We’ll be settling somewhere in the Metroplex. Our precise destination is yet to be determined.

I’m not yet sure how long it will take me to re-acclimate to travel in a region where destinations aren’t spread so far apart. I suspect it won’t take long. I figure it’s always easier to fall back on what we once knew than to venture into a strange — and largely unknown — way of life.

If only we could take our friends, the canyon and that gorgeous sky with us.

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Puppy Tales, Part 43

My wife and I have been catering to Toby the Puppy for a little more than three years. We’ve grown used to spoiling our newest family addition.

Our lives have changed since we moved full time into our fifth wheel. I mean to say “all” of our lives: mine, my much better half’s and Toby the Puppy.

Here’s the deal. When we were living like a “normal” family in a house with walls and doors, all the puppy had to do was traipse outside whenever he felt like it. That presumes, of course, that the weather would allow us to keep the back door open for him to take care of his, um, business. If not, well, we were at his disposal.

The fifth wheel presents another set of concerns for us.

Puppy cannot just go outside. The RV park in Amarillo — just like every RV park where we’ve stayed — mandates dogs must be on a leash. He cannot run around on his own.

No sweat. We get the rule.

My wife and I do spend a lot of time during the course of a day leashing Toby up and taking him outside.

How do we know when it’s time? He “tells” us, more or less.

Since the puppy doesn’t speak English (even though he understands it as well as most human beings I know), he speaks to us with body language and a most expressive face.

He might walk over to either my wife or myself. He’ll start to scratch our leg. We’ll ask, “Do you have to go outside?” Then he’ll shoot a glance usually to the other parent whose leg he isn’t scratching.

We leash him up, take him outside, follow him around the neighborhood, wait for him to, um, “mark” every bit of territory he feels like marking and then we return to our RV. If he has some serious “business” to complete outside, well, he does that, too.

We’re getting used to this increased level of catering Toby the Puppy demands of us. When we resettle eventually in a permanent location, then we’ll have to re-learn how to merely let him have his complete run of the place.

We’ll figure it out … quickly.

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Happy Trails, Part 62

I anticipated that the pace of transition would quicken as we prepare to relocate from Amarillo to somewhere near our granddaughter, her parents and her brothers.

I didn’t quite expect the feeling of anxiety that would come with the speeding up of that transition.

Most of our belongings are stored away in Amarillo; the rest of them are stuffed into our recreational vehicle.

And today, the painters went to work refreshing the interior of the house we used to call “home.” We don’t yet have a timeline on when to expect them to finish. The lead painter vowed to work extra hard to get it done before Christmas. I am in no position to question whether he can get it done.

Anxiety? It’s not serious. It’s just a bit overwhelming — at least it is for me — to watch these men I’ve never seen before scurrying around our house taping windows, masking kitchen cabinets and laying butcher paper over every square inch of our floor.

It seems like just yesterday that the house was where my wife and I hung our hats, where we relaxed with the joy of knowing the property was all ours.

It’s still ours, but we now are calling another place “home” while we prepare for this next big challenge in our life together.

Get a load of this, though: The painters tell us the house is going to look “so good, you won’t want to leave.”

Uh, let me ponder that one.

OK. I just did.

Not a chance. Get to work, fellas.

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Happy Trails, Part 61

Now, wait just a doggone minute!

My wife, Toby and Puppy and I are holed up at an RV park on what I have described as the Texas Tundra, where it’s plenty cold.

Wait! I awoke this morning to learn that snow is falling down yonder in that so-called “warm climate” area of Texas. Corpus Christi? Snow. The Golden Triangle (where my wife and I raised our sons)? Same thing.

One of our dear friends in Beaumont has referred to it all as the meteorological “weirdometer.” It’s snowing where it ain’t supposed to snow, but it’s still dry where it does snow, she says.

Yeah, that’s weird, kid.

Climate change? Is it really and truly changing? Aww, I won’t go there … this time.

Our retirement journey has taken a strange turn. Our intention is to spend much of the winter pulling our fifth-wheel RV to “sunny and warm” climes relatively close to home while we try to sell the house where we lived for 21 years.

Maybe we’ll make it happen. Eventually. It’s just a good thing we have no immediate plans to hit the road for points south.

We have to wait for the snow to clear out.

Good grief! Weird!

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Happy Trails, Part 60

I have known this all along, but we’re about to realize it in the moment. In real time.

When we vacated our house and moved full time into our fifth wheel recreational vehicle, we knew we could take our “home” with us whenever we felt like it.

For the first time in both of our lives, my wife and I are totally mobile.

Most of our worldly possessions are stored away safely. The mover took care of it. We have more of them with us in our RV. We’re packed pretty tightly into our vehicle, although we’re mindful about avoiding carrying too much weight behind our big ol’ pickup that we have named Big Jake.

We got some news recently about the RV park where we’ve lived for about a month: our rates are going up soon.

Our reaction? We’re going to move. We believe we’ve found a second site to park our vehicle. We’ll make the move in due course.

But first, we’re planning to spend some more time in our current location. Then we’ll clear the deck around our RV, unhook it from the utilities, back the truck up under the RV hitch, hook ‘er up and then we’ll hit the road.

This mobility mode takes some getting used to, I’ll have to admit. My wife and I both have been tethered to houses attached to terra firma.

For the time being, we’re on the move.