Exploring

All of my moves previous to the one that took to Georgia have been within Livingston County in Michigan. So this has been a big move for me. And part of what makes it interesting is the exploring new places.

We covered a fair share of Forsyth County while we were shopping for our new home. With the help of our real estate agent Julie Tressler and her trusty GPS we can away with some sense of the layout of the county and the neighborhoods. Well, at least the neighborhoods in our price range. Our kids said they chose this area because of the low property taxes a couple of years ago. Now the average housing price is the highest in the metro Atlanta area. We were lucky that the market for housing was so poor when we were in a position to buy.

We ended up in a subdivision which is in between Georgia 400 shopping district and lake Lanier. The lake was created to generate hydroelectric power and supply drinking water for north Georgia. It is a huge lake run by the Army Core of Engineers and is encircled by a large number of parks which provide lake access. We took my sisters Mary and Carol one of the parks when the visited after driving down one of our cars from Michigan. The park is only minutes from our home and provides a stark contrast to the urban feel of the GA400 shopping district.

The shopping district is very much that same as that you would find at home, only more in one place. There is the Kroger supermarket, and Home Depot, Wal-Mart and the other nation wide chains that provide a sense of familiarity to the new location. There are new restaurants to sample and the old stand by furniture store of Art Van’s has been replaced with a Rooms to Go which is very much the same. We are trying not to stay in our old ruts by trying new places down here.

No Time to Rock!

It has been almost four months from my last post and a world of changes have taken place. The house we lived in for more than 25 years has been sold. We have purchased a new home in Georgia. We have moved 750 miles to our new home and are now residents of Georgia. The 2010-2011 school year has started and I am not involved in teaching for the first time in 38 years. We moved into our new home on September 16^th and things are just starting to calm down.

There are some good things about moving, I guess. And moving once every 25 years seems to be about the right frequency. Our new location in Cumming Georgia was initially dictated by its closeness to our granddaughter Lalita, and of course her parents our daughter and son-in-law. We have, however, really gotten to love the area for its other advantages. In one direction we are five minutes away from a shopping district with every kind of store you generally need to use. In the other direction is Lake Lanier with an abundance of lakeside parks from which the natural beauty can be enjoyed.

The kids are only fifteen minutes away. We have set up a room for Lalita where she can spend the night. We have a laundry basket of toys for her to play with when she comes over. With the help of my sister Carolyn we are already assembling a library of books for us to read to her. I am in the process of child proofing the cabinets she should not get into.

Sense we have been down here we have seen her go from the slow crawl that a soldier would use to go under barbed wire to the four limbed crawl which makes her here one second and gone the next. Watching her grow and develop new skills has been one of the joys of relocating.

One of the other joys of the move is that my office, from which I am keying in this missive, has moved from the basement of our old home to it current location in a “bonus room” above the garage. There is now a window next to the monitor from which I can observe the comings and goings in our neighborhood. Our neighbors are a variety of ages and races. It is a great place for me to take my daily walks.

The house looks like our home now that our furniture and pictures have found their places. Our cats, Bonnie and Clyde have gotten use to their new digs, if not the visits from Lalita and horror of horrors the Molter’s dogs. A cat door placed in the door to the basement allows the cats to escape to there and hopefully the kitty litter to soon be relocated from just outside my office door to the basement also. As the days and weeks have passed we are gradually making the changes which make this place our own as we settle in.

Projects to tile the kitchen and add a screen in porch as well as Lalita’s first birthday are in the immediate future. A family gathering after Christmas and a cruise with friends in the spring also loom on the horizon. Retirement has not been boring and the rocking chair in the living room is only use to coax Lalita to sleep.

Feeling Guilty

We traded in my wife's 2000 VW Beatle for a Hyundai Elantra Touring. This kid from Dearborn Michigan is feeling a bit guilt for buying a foreign car. Not guilty enough to not buy the car, but guilty just the same.

Now to be sure this is my wife's car, not mine. We are trading in a VW, a German car made in Mexico for a South Korean car made in South Korea. Last year we purchased a Ford Escape for my primary ride. My sister is purchasing a Ford Fiesta which is made in Mexico. My wife does not let me forget when I insisted we buy American and purchased a Dodge Caravan and found out that it was built in Canada with a Japanese engine.

I guess I feel all the more guilty because I really like this car better than the used Plymouth Vibe we were considering. Of course that is really a Toyota Matrix with an American name plate slapped on it. I liked it better than the Ford Fiesta, the one made in Mexico, or the Ford Focus.

I am feeling guilty, but I will get over it.

The Waiting Game

My Blog is boring, my sister texts me this morning. I haven't posted anything sense June. She is right, of course.

I made my deadline to get the house ready for showing. After mistakenly calling it a "viewing" the joke has become that if the house wasn't ready for listing, I would be made read for a viewing. With the listing posted for all to see (click here) it changes to a waiting game.

It is a waiting game with a strange twist. I have a checklist of items to do before each showing. The house must be in pristine condition at all times, or at least close enough so that at a moments notice it can be returned to that condition. There is a box into which I must toss certain items which would clutter the house and take with me. There are the towels that are out just for show and the hand towels we actually use. There are glass tops to be polished and kitty litter to be cleaned. Even my wife has stated it will be nice when we can go back to living normally.

So far we have had two showings scheduled with one canceled and the other was no sale. There has been nothing the last week. During the past week I interviewed three moving companies and learned the details of what is involved in a cross country move and how expensive it will be. All this was done in case someone walks in with a cash payment and we have to leave quickly. Life is full of preparing for "what if" scenarios.

Count Down to Listing

We are in the final count down to listing our home for sale. Next week Wednesday evening we meet with the realtor to finalize the paper work and pictures needed to list the house. Most of the heavy lifting in that respect is done and now I have to do the organizing of my office, workshop and garage.

In a way, stuff has been swept under the rug and I am going to have to go back and clean out some drawers and cupboards in which stuff has been stored. This is little junk that sometimes has more sentimental value than the big stuff has. Going though the drawers you are taken back to vacations and people you have known and throwing out the thing is hard.

As soon as I get through with this phase of this change in life process, I can move forward. The parting with things is like looking back and the moving to Georgia, buying a new house is part of the process of moving forward. I am looking forward to moving forward.

Walking and Decluttering

In to week two of this retirement gig. It really will not seem like retirement until school starts in September.

I have restarted my walking routine. I have gone from two miles to three and plan to work my way back up to 5 miles. I have gained more than 25 pounds since the beginning of the last school year and need to take it off. I want to make serious effort at my old goal of just being fat rather than obese.

I have been making progress on my decluttering tasks to get the house ready to put on the market. I feel I should be able to complete the process by the end of this week. The incentive to get this done is more freedom to do what I want for the rest of the summer. That is really old thinking; I shouldn't just measure the time by the end of the summer.

Alot of Help from of Friend!

The biggest single honey do on the way to putting the house on the market was accomplished yesterday thanks to a big hand from my friend Mark Lawrence. The ceiling in the basement which has a few sagging places in it is looking good and the trim work is replaced. Mark is Mr. Handyman when it comes to anything wood and has more tools than Tim the Toolman.

His white headed screws and nail gun made short work of the project. The boss is pleased and I am down to the painful process of going through my "stuff" and throwing treasures out. A lot of it is already gone and Salvation Army took a big load of old furniture away on Tuesday. I have to spend some quality time in my office being ruthless about throwing stuff out.

Mark just came and took a load of scrap lumber I had laying around in the garage! Less stuff for the landfill, oh boy!

I turned down an offer to golf with the guys this Monday. I have not picked up a club in more than a decade, which is one of the reasons Carol wants me to give the clubs away. I hope to get back into the game this summer, but I don't want to totally embarrass myself with the guys who play more regularly. Besides I need to get this place in shape or suffer the bosses wrath.

The one non-cleanup activity I am going to get back into is my morning walks. My expanding horizons need to be in better control.

Rocky Start

My first three days of retirement were spent nursing a bad cold. I guess the body thought that it was its turn for attention. After toughing it out on Saturday with the normal schedule of breakfast out grocery shopping and later dinner with the Lawrences I gave in and let the cold run its course. I finally got a good nights sleep with the help of Benidrill last night.

Usually on Sundays I make out my lesson plans for the week ahead. Sense a routine is one of the most common things retired folk say they miss I decided to keep doing a plan for the week ahead. I created a template in word for the weekly plan and put in the chores that Carol expects me to complete each week. In addition I have space for additional activities to be involved in each weekday. I figure that this will give me a sense of accomplishment and remind me to to the things that will keep my new primary boss happy.

The next couple of weeks are devoted to jobs that will get the house in shape to put on the market. Salvation Army is coming today to pick up some furniture and a guy is coming to stretch the carpeting in a bedroom. Tomorrow Mark is coming to help me fix the ceiling in the basement. The rest of the week will be devoted to continuing my de-clutering my office, workshop and the garage.

Other than preparing for the move this seems like just another summer vacation period.

End and Beginning

For the last 38 years I have been a public school employee. The time was spent teaching at Hartland High School for most part, with the exception of a couple of year diversion as assistant principal. All that came to an end today with my retirement.

The school district and the state of Michigan offered incentives for older and more expensive teachers to call it quits and make room for younger and less expensive teachers. I was planning to teach for a couple of more years and call it quits at 62 when I could get social security along with my pension to provide for enjoying a life with fewer demands. But the monetary incentives made it unnecessary to wait. So here I am retired a couple of years earlier than I had planned.

The day was busy filled with the usual end of school year administrative and house keeping tasks. Grades for all students had to be finalized and recorded. Textbooks had to be inventoried and stored away. But the room had to be cleaned out a little differently this year. Nothing was to be left to be used next September. Anything that was not wanted by another staff member was thrown in the the trash. All the personal items worth saving were boxed to take home not stored away to be used another school year.

I usually keep my keys over the summer so that I can do work in the labs I work in, but not this time. The turning the keys over to Alice was a tangible gesture of leaving in a way that meant I would not be returning. With the incentives there were more retirees at the end of school party and the good by hugs and farewells were different from the see you in September that usually take place.

I will miss most but not all the people I work with, just as I am sure there will be those who will not miss me. I have 38 yearbooks to commemorate the years at Hartland. I had many of the people I will miss sign this final volume in a sentimental gesture. My sister told me recently that she had thrown out all of her yearbooks. It may be yet another example of my inability to let anything go, but they serve as a record of a interesting career.

There won't be much time to sit and reflect on the past as my wife, Carol, and I plunge forward into a number of changes. The biggest change is to pull up stakes and move from Michigan to Georgia to be nearer our daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter. Getting the house ready to sell, showing and selling it, finding a new place to hang our hat will be a major theme for the coming months.

Along with this effort and weaving its way through out my activities will be the redefining myself as something other than the teacher I have been for the better part of four decades. I have of course been a husband, father, brother and other roles during that time but the job that defined me was that of teaching. I have read a couple of books about this process and I am actually looking forward to playing with my redesign.

The days ahead will tell what Munday Part II looks like.