I live with two men.\u00a0 One is my husband\u2014the other is our \u201cguy.\u201d\u00a0 Tinus is our property manager\u2014keeping track of the various problems and projects that arise at one end of the road or the other.\u00a0 He has our list of workmen on his phone, and when something goes haywire, he\u2019s the one who calls to get things fixed, moved, or otherwise handled.\u00a0 He drives a mini-van loaded with whatever won\u2019t fit in the car.<\/p>\n
Tinus is beyond organized.\u00a0 On the day we arrive at one end or the other, he wants to know which day we\u2019ll be leaving so he can sort out mail forwarding, newspaper deliveries, and anything else that has to be handled before closing up a house.\u00a0 The week before any scheduled departure, he wants to have the mini-van totally organized and somewhat packed.<\/p>\n
Bill worries about leaving.\u00a0 Part of the problem is that some of his job of \u201cwriting the checks\u201d involves moving his office\u2014the papers and his trusty computer\u2014in a way that he can access it as needed up to and including the last minute.\u00a0 So he worries and pre-packs.<\/p>\n
By now you\u2019re probably seeing where this is going.\u00a0 My way of dealing with leaving is to cling to wherever I am up to and including the last minute.\u00a0 Which explains why, while they\u2019re both hustling around putting stuff in places, filling gas tanks, organizing the doggy-bed back seat, and making lists, I\u2019m sitting in the living room in my robe, computer on my lap, listening to music from the forties and fifties, writing the blog, and being HERE until it\u2019s time to be elsewhere.\u00a0 I pack when I have to pack, and not a minute before.<\/p>\n
By Sunday, all three of these wildly divergent styles of packing and going will have somehow coalesced into a single departure time, and we\u2019ll be on the road again, headed north, just moments before it would otherwise be necessary to turn on the AC.<\/p>\n
We came to Tucson in January with a massive \u201choney-do\u201d list.\u00a0 First and foremost was to finish writing the book.\u00a0 Check.\u00a0 Fix the well which had gone on the blink sometime in October.\u00a0 Check.\u00a0 Clean up the back backyard which was a tangled desert jungle made up of low-hanging mesquite and palo-verde branches.\u00a0 It was also an uneven ankle-turning tract of rocks, creosote, weeds, and gopher holes.\u00a0 It took two men working two days a week for six weeks to turn it into a park-like setting\u2014a dirt cactus garden made up of level winding gravel paths lined with river rock and with no unexpected branches lying in wait to knock you senseless.\u00a0 Now that we can see what\u2019s out there and actually spend time out there, we know we need more cactus, but installing more plants will have to wait until we return.\u00a0 In other words, as far as backyard improvements are concerned, we qualify for only a check and a half.<\/p>\n
When we bought the house in Tucson, it was a tear-down waiting to happen.\u00a0 The movie The Money Pit comes to mind.\u00a0 The problem was, when we returned from a European holiday, the house in Seattle was undergoing a kitchen remodel that had fallen hopelessly behind.\u00a0 My thought was, \u201cHow bad can it be?\u00a0 Can\u2019t we just live in the \u2018other\u2019 half of the house?\u2019\u00a0 Turns out the answer was no, we could not.\u00a0 Things were so bad that we couldn\u2019t even get our dogs out of the kennel.\u00a0 So we grabbed the dogs and came to an empty house in Tucson with some bedding and some clothing, and that was about it.\u00a0 We bought a bed the first day we arrived in town and put it in the library.\u00a0 Why the library?\u00a0 Because it was the only room in the house with reasonably clean parquet floors.\u00a0 The other rooms were covered with filthy shag carpets from eras long in the past.\u00a0 We replaced the carpets the next week and bought a patio table and four chairs from Costco.\u00a0 While we set about doing the immediate must-do repairs\u2014installing carpet, fixing the ACs, getting the bathrooms functional, and cleaning out the duct work\u2014that was the furniture we had\u2014one bed, one table, and four chairs.<\/p>\n
Eventually, with work either scheduled or underway, we needed to be able to live and cook here.\u00a0 One Sunday morning, we left the dogs at home and went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond.\u00a0 Soon after our arrival, a young woman named Jessica approached us in the kitchen implement aisle and asked us if we were finding everything we needed.\u00a0 \u201cWell,\u201d Bill replied, \u201cwe need everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
She took us at our word and stayed with us throughout the next two hours while we bought dishes, pots and pans, towels and washcloths, glassware, silverware, a coffee pot, and all that other stuff that isn\u2019t necessarily essential until you need it\u2014like can-openers for instance.\u00a0 When you need a can-opener, you REALLY need a can-opener. \u00a0At the end of the shopping trip, we had 13 carts parked in a waiting area near the check-out area.\u00a0 When we started checking out, we learned that the Bed, Bath, and Beyond cash-registers blow a gasket if you run over a certain amount of merchandise in a single transaction.\u00a0 Eventually our Suburban load required being broken down into three separate orders. (When I say Suburban load, I mean it.\u00a0 The last of the stuff that wouldn\u2019t fit in the back had to ride in my lap!)\u00a0 That single shopping trip also explains why for the next year or so, whenever Bill showed up at that particular B, B, and B, they rolled out the red carpet for him.<\/p>\n
My philosophy is one of living completely wherever I happen to be.\u00a0 That means that once we get where we\u2019re going, I want to be fully there, too.\u00a0 As soon as the new AC was up and running and the new carpet was installed, we bought more beds and bedding and invited guests for the following weekend.\u00a0 We were fine for bedding\u2014we\u2019d already done out B, B, and B excursion\u2014but we were not fine for furniture.<\/p>\n
So on a Saturday morning, with guests due about four that afternoon, I went shopping.\u00a0 I visited a place called \u201cConsign and Design.\u201d\u00a0 After first ascertaining that anything I bought could be delivered that very day, I went shopping\u2014and shopped \u2019til I dropped.\u00a0 We still have most of that furniture\u2014end tables, coffee tables, a sofa table, lamps, flower arrangements.\u00a0 And all of that stuff\u2014including a dining room table and six chairs\u2014arrived before our guests did that afternoon.<\/p>\n
From where I sit, I can see six of those tables, the dining table and chairs, two of the flower arrangements, and four of the lamps right this minute.\u00a0 Later we added some additional furniture\u2014including the two white sofas Bill and I bought at Frederick and Nelson in 1987.\u00a0 We also added some leather furniture.\u00a0 So replacing some of the \u201coriginal\u201d furnishings was also on our to-do list for this year.\u00a0 The old furniture\u2014three arm chairs and the two 30 year-old sofas are in the process of departing right this minute.<\/p>\n
This year we\u2019ve added oriental rugs in the living room, sent other rugs out to be cleaned, installed a gas-log fire-place in the living room, and fixed the one in the family room so it works on a switch rather than with a lighter.\u00a0 Yesterday we had a new piece of copper artwork installed on the patio and had the porcelain tile throughout the house professionally cleaned and treated with a sealer.\u00a0 The new furniture arrives on Friday\u2014just in time for us to leave without actually having a chance to sit in it.\u00a0 (We did sit in it BEFORE we bought it.\u00a0 Our decorator thinks it\u2019s hilarious that I won\u2019t buy any piece of furniture no matter how stylish if it doesn\u2019t pass the sit test.)<\/p>\n
Last night, with the floor still wet and the house reeking of sealer, we sat out on the patio, listening to decades old music, having a glass of wine, and simply being.\u00a0 Tomorrow it\u2019s off to Phoenix for several days of appearances before our eventual departure on Sunday.\u00a0 I now have a manicure scheduled for a little over an hour and a half.\u00a0 That means I need to pack FAST because those suitcase zippers are hell on manicures.<\/p>\n
So it\u2019s time to pack and go.\u00a0 On the way north, we\u2019ll work on this summer\u2019s honey-do list.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure it\u2019ll be a doozy.\u00a0 In the meantime, Tinus needs to know what day we\u2019ll be back.\u00a0 He needs to adjust the mail forwarding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I live with two men.\u00a0 One is my husband\u2014the other is our \u201cguy.\u201d\u00a0 Tinus is our property manager\u2014keeping track of the various problems and projects that arise at one end of the road or the other.\u00a0 He has our list of workmen on his phone, and when something goes haywire, he\u2019s the one who calls […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,165],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tour-2","category-traveling"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-iG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1158"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1159,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1158\/revisions\/1159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}