Settling in

It’s been a full week in the new house and it is starting to feel like home.  Most of the boxes are gone and most of the pictures are hung.  We already made the massive Bed Bath and Beyond trip for all the stupid things that we didn’t bother to bring or didn’t used to need.  Like laundry baskets.  In our KC house, the washer and dryer were in the closet of the master bedroom so there wasn’t anywhere to carry laundry to or from.  Now I have to go downstairs to the laundry room. Oh the deprivation! I also splurged on a new iron and ironing board and we are trying to figure out what color towels we want in the master bath.  But that can come in time – we’re the only ones who see that the towels are grey and the master bath is beige and brown. (Please don’t tell Martha Stewart or whomever is a house guru on HGTV.)

img_3646Buddy is settling in too – he’s enjoying the plethora of new toys that we have acquired to keep him busy.  That said, he still spends most of his time following us around, whining at the door to the garage every time Frank goes out there, or sleeping on our bed while he still has the run of the house since we are both home. And we think he might have a new girlfriend.  Our next door neighbors have two little fluffy things and the smallest one (lhasa apso maybe?) is a little white puff ball named Lucy.  So far Buddy has not tried to kill her and has actually been very excited to play with her when we have enough adults around to prevent any doggie mayhem that could ensue.

And we have met the neighbors – at least most of them. On one side (with the dogs) is an empty nester couple with a Corvette and an in-ground pool.  On the other side is a family with 4 young kids who were happy to take the ginormous swing set off our hands.  We also have a blended family with two attorneys and an older couple across the street – self declared as the oldest ones in the court.  These kind folks invited us over the day the PODS arrived as they were having a cookout and we got fed and well watered.  They also introduced us to a couple from around the corner who moved from Herndon to Overland Park to Fairport.  It’s a little creepy to have people with such a wealth of common references.  But it’s nice to have new friends to drink with.  🙂

And we are enjoying the area.  We had a few days of cool temperatures that we think is normal for Rochester but then the hellofaheatwave hit and it seems everyone is roasting in 90+ degree heat.  The difference here is that it is unusual rather than common.  The last time Rochester hit 100 degrees was in 1953!  In DC, it happened every July – as soon as the Smithsonian folk life festival tents went up on the mall. And KC didn’t often hit 100 but it was regularly in the 90s starting in May so even these three days aren’t much to complain about.  Especially since we actually have a well insulated house that we can keep at a reasonable temperature – yippee!  And we have beaches nearby – not oceans mind you but we are 30 minutes north of Canandaigua Lake which is lovely (and is where one of the wine trails is located!) and 30 minutes south of Lake Ontario.  If you’ve never seen one of the Great Lakes, it’s really impressive.  It’s hard to believe that it’s just a lake since you can’t see the other side.  Ontario is the smallest of the five but still impressive nonetheless.  And even in record heat, the beach wasn’t overly crowded – and the water was still cold!

 

So here ends our monthlong journey.  We are no longer homeless and as of this week, neither one of is unemployed.  But that’s a story for another day.

Transition complete

Those who follow the travel blog will know that we have been abroad for a few weeks as we were in between houses.  The original plan was to pack up one house, ship the contents to the new house while we galavanted across the globe (okay, visited family) and then return to the new house.  Well, that’s not how it worked out.  Here is the transition tale of woe.

The departure from KC was more than chaotic. The closing was moved up to May 31st with a provision that we would have until 8am on June 2nd to  be out of the house.  That should have worked out perfectly as we were gettin on a plane that day.  The two PODS that we were sure would hold everything were delivered on the 30th and local movers came on the 31st to load all our stuff which didn’t actually fit. We had an enormous amount of stuff left over and needed to get it out of the house. God bless Nicole at the UHaul at 31st and Main in KC – she helped us with the rental truck to schlep stuff from the house to the two storage units we needed to hold all our crap.  It took until 9pm on Friday night for the two of us to make the final run and leave the house broom clean. All of this in 95 degree heat.  Ugh.

But it was handled and we went on our little trip.  And returned to do it all in reverse.  We needed to empty the two storage units into a 26 foot truck which Frank would drive, towing the Mercedes, while Buddy and I rode in my Hyundai.  We arranged for the same local movers to help us do the loading on Monday and we were ready to rock and roll.  Except they didn’t show up.  So the two of us loaded the enormous truck (again in 95 degree heat) and 5 hours later, we were ready to hit the road.  We had hoped to leave KC by noon and make it to Bloomington, Indiana to see some friends.  Well we finally hit the road about 4:30 so that plan went out the window but we were determined to make it to Indiana.  So rolling through traffic and across Missouri and Illinois, we eventually made it to Terra Haute about 1:30 am.  Too tired to unload anything, Buddy got to sleep in the king size bed with us and we managed about 6 hours of shut eye.

Then it was on the road again: destination Cleveland.  I had gotten lots of recommendations for things to do and see while there and the drive wasn’t going to be too bad so things were looking up.  Until I plugged in the address of the hotel we had booked and Google maps kindly informed me that parking was limited at my destination.  Oh no.  I had booked this hotel long before we realized that we would be driving a truck towing a car.  I sent out a few emails to the hotel and we got on the road.  By the time we stopped for lunch, we had gotten word from the hotel that there was no way to park the truck anywhere nearby.  So we needed to beg for a no-fee cancellation (the deadline for that had passed) and find a hotel that would have room for us to park.  Kudos to the La Quinta Inn Cleveland Airport West for coming to the rescue.  Located right across the street from the Great Northern Mall, there was lots of space for the truck and they were incredibly dog-friendly.  The clerk who checked us in had Milkbones for  Buddy so she was a friend for life! We could even leave him in the room while we went to get dinner in a restaurant across the street – something we missed the previous night as we ate Wendy’s on the grass outside the truck stop.

Decent nights sleep secured, we were ready for the final leg of the trip: a mere 4.5 hours to Rochester.  And it started to rain.  And it kept raining.  Torrential downpours from Cleveland to Erie, PA.  There were stretches of the road where Frank in the truck behind me couldn’t see my car at all.  It was a nightmare.  But we made it and managed to get to the house-that-would-be-ours to park the truck and wait for closing.

NY has an interesting approach to real estate transactions.  Apparently only attorneys can handle them and there is an absurd amount of paperwork involved.  We closed on the house on Friday morning, just me and Frank and 3 lawyers – one for us, one for the seller, and one for our lender! But lots of signatures and just 45 minutes and we had the keys.  Buddy was stupidly excited to run around his new house.  Of course he had no idea it was his house but he’ll catch on soon. We then spent the next 4 hours unloading the truck ourselves – in 75 degree heat (much more to my taste).  We spent the first night in the new house sleeping on the airbed we used for our last night in KC.

On Saturday morning the PODS arrived and on Saturday afternoon the local movers came and helped unload them.  We found that there was some substantial damage to some of the furniture as the KC movers didn’t seem to secure anything so boxes fell and furniture shifted.  I need to see what the insurance implications are but I certainly can’t say that I would recommend Ray-Mac to anyone. Nevertheless, the PODS are empty, there are boxes everywhere, and I have no idea where anything is.  But I spent last night in my own bed in my new house and that is something to be thankful for.

Farewell to KC (ala Dr Seuss)

Some of you might be aware of my penchant for bad rhymes by which I besmirch the pseudonym of Theodore Geisel.  In honor of our departure from the middle of the map, here is another such composition.  Enjoy!

The time has come to say goodbye
Yes it’s hard to face
That years have passed – they really fly
And now we leave this place.

The adventure has been an amazing one
With many more smiles than tears
To think of all the things we’ve learned
In lo these four short years:

BBQ is more than sauce
It’s something on which to compete
Baseball goes well with BBQ
Burnt ends at the K make a game complete!

We saw the Royals lose a hard one
Then watched them win the crown
The fountains blue and a small parade too
It really took this town.

I had heard the winters were pretty bad
But that didn’t seem to show
I’m still waiting to experience
A really bad Midwest snow.

We learned how to manage a “quaint” little house
And the challenges an old place provides
But Brookside never lost its charm
Especially during Christmas tide

We even found a great church home
From two churches made to one
We laughed and prayed then laughed some more
It will be tough to be outdone.

A canine also came into our lives
Many years after one did depart
Now Buddy really rules the roost
There’s no doubt who is in charge.

And life in KC isn’t bad
Great friends and fountains and food
Can’t say much for local wines though
(They really aren’t that good)

So please consider when next you plan
To travel to the East
That Rochester is not so far
A mere thousand miles (at least)

We’ll finally have a “real” winter
And wines more to our taste
But it’s true that we’ll have left behind
A bit of our hearts in this place.

And now a final “au revior”
No “adieu” for such kind friends.
I prefer to think that it won’t be long
Until we meet again

We’ll be traveling for a few weeks before we return to the moving saga so pop over to the travel blog if you are interested in following us in Iceland and Scotland. Otherwise, see you later!

Pretending to be normal

Okay I know that Frank and I pretend to be normal most days but things have now reached their illogical conclusion.  We have spent what seems like months packing – okay Frank has – but we kept trying to pretend that we were just living in our house like normal.  All that went out the window today.  We are now T-3 days until closing and we can’t just box up the stuff we don’t feel like using over the next few days.  It’s time to get serious.

And serious is where we are.  The bathrooms have been packed and cleaned out.  One bed is in parts and another is slated for disassembly tomorrow. The final files have been placed in a box and my desk is also ready to be taken apart. After spending all day in the most miserable heat on Saturday and Sunday  wrapping and taping and running to the Uhaul store for more boxes so we could wrap and tape some more, we had a brief respite yesterday that came in the guise of a cookout with friends.  It was a lovely break where we pretended everything was normal – even if we did spend way more time trying to explain Wegmans than could ever be considered normal for KC! Even on departure, we said “See you later” rather than “Goodbye” cuz it felt more normal and delayed the tears at least for a short time.

So now we are out of social engagements, out of time, and out of excuses.  Today the kitchen had to be packed.  Still trying to use up as much food as possible, we started with a homemade quiche Lorraine (cuz that’s normal!) and then as another impossibly hot day began in earnest, we did a trial run for the drive to NY and packed up the cars exactly as it will be when we pull out of the driveway for the last time:  suitcases for vacation, air bed, kitchen necessities, dog crate and bedding, and an inordinate number of boxes of booze. Hmmm….

Then everything that was left in the house got packed.  Well mostly.  I can’t believe how much stuff was hidden in the kitchen cupboards!  Frank had packed a great deal of it already but left out dishes and glasses and pans and appliances we are still using.  All of it had to find it’s way into some kind of container.  It’s time to stop pretending that we live here and that we’ll actually cook anything.  (Foreshadowing:  the grill isn’t packed yet.  🙂 )

Away went the bread machine, Kitchenaid mixer, toaster oven, frying pans, cookie sheets, bundt pans (really, who makes bundt cakes anymore!), knives, cutlery, plates, bowls, mugs, and anything that was hidden in a nook or cranny in the kitchen.  When that got boring, we’d wander into the living room and take apart lamps and clocks.  At one point Frank noted that by packing all the lamps, we would now have no light in the living room.  I looked around at the bare walls, stacks of boxes, and huddles of misplaced furniture and pointed out that the room wasn’t usable anyway.  After hours of packing, we were still reflexively trying to be normal and act like we would actually use that room again.

img_3324

All our kitchen “necessities” less the plastic wine glasses already in use.

Six hours and close to a dozen boxes later, we called it a day and rescued the cargo from the steaming hot cars.  Our dry run netted us the realization that you never have as many boxes as you need and there are always things that suddenly appear after the last box is closed.  I have officially designated one of the rubbermaid tubs from the garage the “flotsam and jetsam” box for the plethora of misplaced items which will suddenly appear when the movers arrive.  We are now squatters in what will be someone else’s house in 3 days with only the bare necessities for eating the inevitable take out. For one last night though we’ll pretend just a little and cook our KC strips on the grill. And eat them off of paper plates.  That seems almost normal.

And the fortnight of chaos begins

It’s official – we have two weeks left in Kansas City.  We’ve moved past the first of the “lasts” and are now well into the last of the “lasts” – last symphony, last visit to XXX restaurant, last haircut, etc.  And we’ve started saying goodbyes which is painful and a bit surreal.  The farewell open house was last Saturday and about 50 people stopped by to drink with us and help us deplete the “can’t fit this booze in the car with us” stash.  In several instances, we won’t have a chance to see them again before we go because our schedule over the next 12 days is crazy.  Wanna hear more?  Of course you do!

After spending weeks gathering moving estimates, we decided to use PODS and do a fair amount of the work ourselves.  The University is giving me a very reasonable moving budget which would be sufficient to cover the move if we were going straight from point A to point B but of course we are not. The closing date on the current house is 3 weeks earlier than the new house which means we have to find some where to store our stuff.  The full service moving companies wanted anywhere from $2K – $6K for storage!  That doesn’t work for my frugal sensibilities or our budget so we decided to go the PODS route since storage is built in to the price there.  That means coordinating all the services separately:  people to help load the PODS here in KC and people to help unload the PODS there in Fairport.  Then there’s the packing.  We had people come in and pack for us last time which was great but not efficient:  we had no incentive to actually sort through things and pack them in a way that made sense to us.  Months after we arrived, we were still finding boxes with two cup hooks and a screw wrapped securely in paper and loaded in a moving box.  The packers had no way of knowing if those things were important or not so they got packed with the same care as our glassware and china.  We want to be much more selective in how we pack this time so we need to have someone who actually knows what is important and what isn’t.  Which means that Frank is doing (nearly) all the packing.  And the sorting. And the shredding.  And the dumping. We are being far more ruthless this time than last time.  We are not keeping my father’s bronzed baby booties that were in a box with my dead parent’s tax returns from the late 90s.  Nor are we continuing to keep motorcycle parts for the bike Frank crashed on Leap Day 1996.  Or bank statements from our first joint bank account in 1988.  We’ve nearly killed the shredder trying to get rid of all these things. (Not the bronze booties – they just went straight into the trash.  Hate mail about keeping family heirlooms can be sent to dontcare@gmail.com)

For weeks we have been weeding and sorting and packing.  (And by we, I mean Frank.) Now we are getting down to the challenge of continuing to make progress in packing things up while we are still trying to live in the house.  I have 8 more days in the office and I suspect that I will be wearing the same outfit for most of them because everything else needs to be packed.  In fact, we will actually need to take apart our bed and pack up the last of the kitchen items before we are actually out of the house.  This will be interesting!

The timing of the next few weeks is slightly insane. We had a fair amount of last minute negotiations and angst over some details of the sale of our current dwelling which I will not yet detail because things could still go sideways and I don’t want to tempt fate!  But we are now scheduled to close on the current house on May 31st and the buyer will take possession on June 2nd.  Why?  Because he needs a May closing date to avoid some June bills (we think his rate lock is expiring) and we have the movers coming in on May 31 so can’t actually be out of the house on that day.  So the PODS get delivered on May 30th.  The movers come to load the PODS on May 31st and late that afternoon, we sign all the papers.  Since the PODS are loaded but not yet picked up, we are staying in the house the night of the 31st.  And all our belongings will be in the big white boxes in the driveway. So it’s an air mattress and suitcases for our last night on Dartmouth Road.  Then on June 1 the PODS get picked up, I finish retiring from the Bank, the dog goes to the vet to be boarded, the Mercedes goes to a friends garage for storage, and we head to a hotel by the airport.  Why?  Because on June 2, we get on a plane to Iceland!!!

Yes, in the midst of all this, we are going on vacation.  A real vacation and not 3 days in Kentucky where I watch Frank drink bourbon.  If we have to be homeless, we might as well do it in style!  So keep your eyes on the travel blog because that’s where we’ll be.  Five days in an AirBnB in Reykjavik before we hop back on a plane and head to Scotland.  We get the weekend in Troon visiting my side of the family (Are you ready Barghs?) before heading to Bannockburn for a full week in a cottage that is stumbling distance from the family homestead.  Jesse will be joining us for that week – Evelyn isn’t able to make it though so we’ll be a little sad.  We get a full week of visiting family and friends, lots of cups of tea and pints of cider and the odd box of curry thrown in for old times sake.

Then Frank spends father’s day on the plane back to KC where we have one more night in the airport hotel before preparing for the transition road trip. We’ll pick up the convertible and drop it off with a neighbor who is helping make sure it gets on the transporter.  Unlike other moving details, we can’t nail down the exact time that our third car gets picked up because we need to wait for a car transporter that is headed toward NY to come through KC.  It will be some time in a 5 day window but we don’t have 5 days to hang around and wait.  So we are leaving it in good hands, picking up the houseplants from the next door neighbor and the dog from the vet and then we are off.  Two cars full of vacation clothes, house plants, important booze, the dog, and a box of “stuff we need to live in the new house before the furniture arrives.” Current plan is to stop in Bloomington the first night to visit friends there (ready Pearl?).  Second night is Cleveland because it’s there.  Then we get to Fairport two days before our tentative closing date.

Tentative?  Yes, the real estate process in NY is such that we are required to allow for 60 days before closing but we cannot get a firm date because it is dependent on “attorney availability” which isn’t confirmed until 3-5 days before hand.  Yes, even with more than 2 months notice, we still aren’t sure exactly when we are closing on the house and therefore can’t schedule our furniture to be delivered yet.  Grrrr.  So we *think* we are closing on June 22 but we won’t know until a few days prior so the furniture is getting delivered on June 25.  So we might have 3 days in the house with nothing but the air mattress and coffee pot.  And the clothes we took to hike in Iceland and visit Scotland which will of course be appropriate for summer in the Finger Lakes.  But that will give us time to stock the fridge (hello Wegmans!), plan for where the furniture is going, and possibly even paint the one bedroom with the unbearable pink and brown walls – which has been dubbed the “Baskin Robbins” room!

So keep your eyes here for moving info and on the Cannon Family Travel site for vacation stuff.  There’s plenty more adventure to be had!

 

A week in real estate

What a week we’ve had.  We bought and sold a house within the stretch  of 6 days! A whirlwind trip to Rochester results in offers on two houses, one successful.  We return to a few days of crazy preparation on the current house to have an accepted offer in less than 36 hours on the market!  Let me explain.  (No there is too much. Let me sum up.  🙂 )

While shopping for a house and contemplating what is important to us (see previous post), we found a house that wasn’t quite perfect but checked most of our boxes: relatively new, (slightly) bigger kitchen, soaking tub in the master bath (jacuzzi actually), fitted albeit compact closets in the master bedroom, an open “great room” off the kitchen, formal dining room, 3 car garage and lovely big backyard with patio.  It was just missing the formal living room.  The basement was unfinished but had potential for an updated man cave (Frank misses his pool table) and workout area.  It would take some work but it was doable.  It was in a slightly different area than we were originally looking (Webster versus Pittsford/Fairport) but had a reasonable commute for me and was close to Wegmans!  If you haven’t experience Wegmans, I feel sorry for you.  It is one of the things we are most looking forward to in our move.  And good wineries.  And mountains.  Oh, and my new awesome job.  Now we were hoping we had found a home to look forward too as well.

After spending Friday afternoon and all day Saturday traipsing around 14 houses, we made a second stop to the favored one on Sunday morning.  Then on Sunday afternoon we made a pretty common lowball opening offer: $12K under asking.  The current owners had only been in the house for 8 months and had priced it at $30K more than they had paid for it.  I’m all for free market commerce but that seems like a high return for a coat of paint and some new hardwoods.  They took several hours to respond to the offer – the agent said she couldn’t get a hold of them until about 8pm but it turns out that they had two more showings they were waiting for.  They countered right in the middle, splitting the difference between our offer and asking.  Unfortunately for them, Frank “Mr. Antsy Pants” couldn’t just sit and wait for their response and took to the online real estate sites where he found another house that had just been listed that day (who lists on a Sunday afternoon?) that seemed to check ALL the boxes.  We hastily made arrangements to see that house on Sunday night.

Yes, we were the obnoxious people who wanted to scope out a house at 7pm on a Sunday when the owner had to be there because of a sick child who couldn’t be spirited away on our whim.  Boy am I glad that Frank has no patience!  This house has (nearly) everything we could want. Certainly everything the other house had but with a formal living room, his and her walk in closets, a larger unfinished basement with taller ceilings and roughing for plumbing, on the end of a cul-de-sac.  It’s only 5 years old – newer than the previous house by 10 years – and nearly the same price! What is missing is the patio/deck but with an acre of land, we’ll have plenty of space to build one! (And yes, we know that one room requires some new paint.  I love most of the colors but pink and brown are not our thing!)

And with a deadline on the counter for the first house looming, we made an offer on the second house.  Since we were all convinced it was grossly underpriced, we didn’t want to start with the lowball offer so we went $5K under and it was accepted!  We flew home Monday with the comfort of knowing we had someplace to live. It’s roughly a 30 minute commute for me which is a little longer than what I was hoping for but still completely reasonable.  The other downside is that it is 15 minutes from Wegmans rather than 5 but we’ll learn to live with that.

Tuesday morning started the real chaos.  I went to work on the mortgage paperwork and Frank worked to finalize everything we needed to show our house.  Most of the interior paintwork was done while we were gone so there were only a few tidbits to be fixed on Tuesday and then all the furniture replaced in the staging arrangement.  Wednesday the photographer came and took all the amazing photos we needed to have people love our house.  While that was happening, Frank was frantically rolling out sod in the backyard to finally cover all the dirt that was still exposed from the construction of the garage last year.  Thursday had a flurry of paperwork and approvals and the listing went live on Friday around noon.

Now the tables were turned.  Whereas the previous week, we had been kicking people out of their homes so we could wander through their lives, it was now our turn.  Four showings on Friday afternoon meant that Frank and Buddy had to drive around KC until I got off work and we could grab some dinner.  Luckily it was a cool cloudy day so Buddy could hang out in the car while we ate.  The texts came in all through dinner setting up showings for Saturday so it was clear we had to be scarce from 10am through 3pm. So we ran as many errands as we could think of: going to the farthest Whole Foods, then heading back into town for Record Store day, grabbing lunch out in the burbs again near where I was headed for my 90 minute massage (heaven!) while Frank and Buddy toured various parking lots and did more driving.

Later that afternoon, we got the standard lowball offer – $15K under asking – and countered with $5K under which was immediately accepted.  And like that, we are done.  There is still the inspection to deal with which I think will be more challenging than the one we had on the 5 year old home. But for now we can stop hiding the toaster oven in the basement and can actually cook dinner without worrying about the smell of lasagna “messing up” the curb appeal. We still have the challenges of arranging movers around staggered closing dates and trying to squeeze a visit to the family in Scotland as well. But for now we have a period of relative calm to appreciate how lucky we are, especially given our last foray into the housing market, and plan for all the fun things that come with a new home.

 

 

 

Letting go

We’ve just spent 4 days wandering around Rochester trying to find a house. (We have an accepted offer but until we get through the initial stages, I don’t want to say anything that might jinx it!) In the process, of driving all over eastern Monroe county and traipsing through more than a dozen houses, we had lots of opportunity to reflect on what is important to us and what is not. None of the houses were perfect – we knew we wouldn’t find that – so we needed to figure out which kind of imperfect was best for us.

One of the lessons we learned from our soujourn in KC is that we are not “quaint little house” people. While we still love our quirky little Brookside bungalow, we had to let go of the notion that the charm of a 90 year old house outweighed the pain of the upkeep for us. It wasn’t that there was so much work to do really; it was more that everything that needed done was just that much harder. For example, it’s a plaster and lathe house so even fixing the ceiling in the foyer when the bathtub above leaked meant a lot more work than just some drywall and mud. So for this go round, we decided to look at newer houses. Although there was nothing wrong with the houses from the 20th century, they felt very dated and not what we had in mind.

The second thing we had to think carefully about was space. While we know that we have downsized just a *little* too much in our move to KC, we weren’t sure exactly how much space was the right amount. We saw several gorgeous houses that were upward of 3500 square feet – comparable to what we had in VA before we gave away all the furniture that you need for a house that size. We had to let go of the idea that more is always better and find a happy medium between our current cozy 1800 square feet and the cavernous homes that we could afford to buy but not furnish.

And lastly, we had to really focus on how the space was distributed. We are still of the “formal living room and dining room” generation. I like having a room with comfy seating and no TV and another room to have Christmas dinner. Apparently, that isn’t how youngsters roll these days so builders concentrate on “great rooms” off the kitchen and “morning rooms” where you do all your eating. We nearly needed to let go of our antiquated floor plan requirements but we were lucky enough to find a 5 year old house that was built for people like us. Instead, I needed to let go of the notion that I needed a separate study. I have one now where I do all my school work (lecture prep, grading, etc.) but since I have promised Frank that I will only have one job (at least for a while 🙂 ), I don’t really need a study. (Then again, we have an extra bedroom upstairs so maybe I just need to let go of the first floor qualifier….)

So stay tuned to see what we gained when we let go.

Deja vu all over again?

Apologies for the silence on the Cannon Chronicles – we have been doing a lot of soul searching and contemplating the future which would have made for abstruse and often depressing blog posts.  It’s funny that we started this blog four years ago to chronicle the move to a new stage of our lives.  And here I am doing a reboot for the blog as we prepare to do it all over again.

The last four years have been a real growth and learning experience for us.  We thought that “going back” to the part of the country where our family started and “going back” to the kinds of work we did then (Frank – turning wrenches, San – working with researchers) would be a breath of fresh air and just what we needed after the stress and agony that much of our lives in VA had become.  We didn’t realize how much we had grown and how hard “going back” to anything would be.  Frank realized that “just” fixing cars isn’t enough.  He basically ran his own shop at South County High School and was able to be a mentor and a leader.  What he found here was that it was much harder for him to do the work and lead the work in the way he wanted.  His particular place of employment provided particular challenges but every workplace has issues. I thought I was going to my dream job, working for a great boss and with people who valued my interesting blend of skills.  The great boss part is true but changes in senior management over the last year shed light on the mismatch between what the executives valued and what I had to offer.

So we had to make some choices.  Frank chose to take some time off and not work at all.  After the much needed road trip (chronicled on the travel blog)  He became a “house spouse” – spending time fixing up the 90 year old house that was beginning to lose it’s quirky charm.  After the previously mentioned flood, there was more contractor headaches, a bathroom that needed tiling, a newly build garage that needed customizing, etc. I also needed to make some choices and I chose to look for a new job.  This was an agonizing decision to make because I didn’t hate my job but I realized that while I loved what I was doing, I wasn’t doing what I loved.  So I decided to answer the phone when the next headhunter called.  And the odyssey began.

After a few whirlwind months of Skype interviews and flying hither and yon for in person conversations, I was in the enviable position of having choices.  I could stay in the comfortable central banking world where I had 20+ years of contacts and a good reputation.  I could move into teaching full time and enjoy the comfort of great colleagues and no relocation requirement. Or I could move out of my comfort zone and move into a new area where my expertise was very relevant but where my contacts were limited and the location involved moving (again). After much contemplation and lots of discussions1, I picked the hardest path. Let me explain.

A dear friend once complained about hiking with me.  She insisted that when faced with a choice on the trail, I would always choose the route that went up.  It has become a standing joke in my family that mom always chooses to go up: up mountains, up towers, up whatever is there. (I’ve written about the challenges of “going up” while hiking in MO.) I like the challenge and the promise of birds eye view which you don’t get from the bottom of the mountain. So I applied that same reasoning here.  I could easily have stayed where I was and kept doing the things that I had been doing.  There was no drastic imperative to change but that felt like going around the mountain: familiar but tedious, without pain but without payoff.  Teaching full time would have required some climbing to really do it right but it felt more like a hill than a mountain.  I wanted to be happy climbing the hill.  I tried to figure out how to make that work.  But alas, when it comes down to it, I do really need to go UP.

So Frank gets to follow me up another hill.  This trail leads to Rochester, New York where I’ll start a new challenge in a new industry and new location: Chief Data Officer for the University of Rochester.  I’ll be the first person to hold this position so I’ll be climbing with a compass but no map.  (Have I tortured this metaphor long enough?) The position involves all the nerdy data stuff that I love but applied to running an academic institution rather than supporting monetary policy research.  I’m stupidly excited and scared to death at the same time.  And that’s how I know it’s the right thing for me.

Be prepared for more frequent posts as we figure out how to market and sell our “cozy Brookside bungalow oozing with charm and replete with upgrades” or whatever the real estate agent decides to use as a marketing quote. Then I hope to have lots of interesting stories to tell about this next leg of our adventure.  If nothing else, there are real mountains nearby that I can climb!

 

 

1 For those who listened to all my angst and helped me walk through this difficult decision: ten thousand thanks.

On resiliency

It has been a tough couple of months in the Cannon household.  Following the joy and family fun that went with Jesse’s graduation, there has been the proverbial one thing after another.  From the never ending saga of the garage construction (a complete rant on that will be published when the damn thing is finally done!) to an unusual amount of insanity and stress at both our places of employment, we have been soldering through with the assistance of an unusual amount of caffeine and alcohol.  We knew that the current atmosphere was unhealthy and that the status quo was unsustainable.  But we also knew that we had a two week vacation coming up where we were planning for the Great American Road Trip:  San and Frank in the Mercedes convertible heading west to see some of the great sights of this beautiful country and have a break from our everyday woes.

We had been looking forward to this trip forever.  It got us through the never ending rain that turned our dug up back yard into a mud pit worthy of monster truck competitions.  It got us through the 115 degree heat index days that Frank sweltered through without AC at his shop.  It was the only thing that got me through the days of painful and pointless meetings at work.  Everyone on my floor could tell you when I was going on vacation because I told everyone at every chance.  This past week it had gotten into single digits.  On Wednesday, I made it through the 4pm pointless conference call because there was only 3 more wake ups until my vacation.

But God or Mother Nature or some other all powerful existence had other plans and the massive thunderstorm that rolled through Kansas City late Wednesday night dropped 7 inches of rain on us.  That was enough to take out the massive tree in my neighbor’s yard which went crashing down on 3 cars, two fences, and one garage.  And the power lines.  The thunder was astoundingly loud and drove the dog insane so Frank took him down to the basement where it wasn’t quite so loud and where it would be cooler since the power was out.  When the alarm on my iPhone went off Thursday morning, there was still no power and when I went to check on the boys in the basement, the dog jumped off the couch into the 4-6 inches of water that had built up when the power went out and the sump pump stopped pumping.

The newly finished man cave
The newly gutted man cave

Frank had been sleeping on the futon not realizing that water was rising all around him.  When I think of what might have happened if there had been something electrical going on as well….

With only 2 wake ups before our trip, we had black water in basement which means everything it touches that isn’t metal or plastic has to go.  The insurance company sent out their water remediation company right away but they couldn’t do anything until we had power back.  I had an all day meeting that I couldn’t miss (another part of the “what is wrong with San’s job” story) so Frank was on duty to see what could be salvaged and what work could be done without any power. Big tree It took a very large tree crew most of the day to cut up the tree and release the power lines and KCP&L finally got our power restored late Thursday afternoon.  Then the clean up could begin.

But it was going to be a long process.  And we had hotel reservations – some prepaid – hundreds of miles away where we were supposed to arrive in 36 hours.  My heart was breaking with the though that our vacation couldn’t happen.  In the process of typing this, I realize how petty this sounds.  Neighbors lost vehicles and across KC people lost businesses in the storm.  Our damage was not as extensive but it will still take months to recover and all I could think about was not going on vacation.  How shallow!  It wasn’t losing the trip itself that made me want to cry every hour of my all day meeting – it was what it represented in our lives.  A chance to rebalance, reclaim an important part of our lives that had gotten lost, save our sanity and possibly our marriage as well.

After the work crew left Thursday night, I set about canceling reservations that I knew we couldn’t keep, negotiating where I could for lost payments and deposits, and trying to see what contingency plans we might possibly be able to salvage.  We figured out that if all went well and we could get through the clean up, we might be able to salvage part and maybe most of the trip.  When Friday arrived, it was San’s turn to stay home with the work crew while Frank headed to work.  Luckily, Frank had worked his butt off on Thursday trying to salvage stuff and because we actually had an empty garage, there was somewhere to put stuff.  The water mediation crew spent the day Friday, tearing up the carpet, removing substantial parts of the drywall, breaking down the furniture that would have to go (after letting me photograph everything for the insurance), and hauling the wet, smelly remains out to the driveway.  They departed late Friday afternoon after setting up the monster dehumidifier and industrial strength fans.

We spent Friday night wallowing in self pity (and way too much wine) and did some real soul searching until the wee hours.  On Saturday, we were determined to make things work and so our real work began.  We hauled away some remaining items and spent the next 8 hours schlepping, evaluating, disinfecting, unpacking, repacking, cleaning, photographing, documenting, weeping, reminiscing, and generally doing what we needed to do to make the best of what we had. By the end of the day,  the stinky pile was twice as big and contained everything that we knew couldn’t be saved no matter how much we wanted to pretend otherwise.  This included not just furniture and assortment of CDs and DVDs but a collection of framed cross stitch pictures I had done over the years that never made it out of the cardboard moving box; the toddler sized rocking chair my grandfather had made for my dad as a child, and other irreplaceable items. But there was a lot that we could save – thank you Lord for Rubbermaid tubs! – and we went through Lysol, 409, and industrial strength disinfectant like there was no tomorrow.

Water marks on the book cases
The soggy threads
The pile waiting to be hauled away
The things we could salvage
Buddy the Clean Up Supervisor

We still need the junk guys to come and haul stuff away but we are now well enough sorted that it is possible for us to think about departing.  We have everything provisionally booked to be able to leave tomorrow if everything works out with the insurance.  I am grateful to the understanding bed and breakfast owners who let us cancel our reservations at the last minute with no or minimal penalty.  (Special shout out to Jasper Stone B&B in Sioux Falls, SD and West Yellowstone B&B) as well as those who were able to accommodate us at the last minute – especially since we had to warn them that we might have to cancel if things don’t go as planned tomorrow.

More importantly than the trip though is that this whole experience brought some things to a head for us and even if we don’t have the trip that we’ve been planning for so long, I think we have figured out how to move forward and make things better without “needing” a vacation quite so badly.  Don’t get me wrong – I am still very much looking forward to a change of scenery and a lot of hiking.  But now it is because I want to refresh and rejuvenate my spirit, and not because I feel like it need it to save my soul.

If all goes well, you’ll be able to find new travel tales on the Cannon Family Travel blog starting tomorrow.  Keep your fingers crossed!!!!

Ch-ch-ch-changes

And so the last vestiges of parental responsibility are now gone. After 20+ years, both my children have grown up into responsible adults, or something that.  Like many families this time of year, ours is going through some interesting times.

Jesse has become an accomplished (and somewhat organized!) human being having acquired two degrees while working two jobs and playing rugby.  The impish tot who did whatever she wanted (consequences be damned!) can now outplan her list making mother.  She has spent four years in t

he slightly crunchy environs of Vermont and the theater community in California and has traded that in for the most corporate job one can imagine for a theater/engineering major: Walt Disney! No more tattoos and piercings (or flannel but that’s a practical issue rather than a dress code requirement!) and she’ll be in a notoriously conservative state but I know she has developed the backbone and thick skin she’ll need to be successful.

Duncan is also ready to make changes.  I think the comfort of being paid to do the work he did for credit as an undergrad has worn off as has some of the charm of Charlottesville – or what charm there is for someone with meager resources.  It is painful for me to not be able to help make things easier for him since I don’t understand anything about biochemistry or the job market for people who do something that involves proteins… some things Mom just can’t fix.

Even Frank and I are facing changes to our recently changed life.  First, we now have Buddy the Beagle mix, our rescue dog that pretty much runs our lives.

We’d like to think he’s the reason that we don’t just pick up and run away for the weekend but we have to admit that we didn’t do that before we rescued him so it’s not really his fault.  He has changed some things, including our approach to winery picnics.  We want to take him with us but he’s basically a jerk to other dogs so those opportunities are limited.  We actually drove 90+ miles to visit a winery yesterday because a) we like their wine; but mostly b) they have a great picnic table on a hillside where we know that there won’t be any other dogs.

Add to that the pain of renovations.  We have been rebuilding our garage since March, a process so unpleasant and involved that it will get its own post if it is ever completed.  In addition, there is unrest in the workplace and for the first time, there is a non-zero probability that San will not retire from her current position.  Nothing drastic (yet) but enough uncertainty to increase the discomfort that comes with feeling unsettled.  We still don’t know what we are waiting for and our time is running wild…. (apologies to the late great David Bowie).