Second Time Around

I’m sitting in my mostly empty house running down the seemingly never-ending list of ‘to do’ items in the coming days.  You will never know how many little projects your home needs until you move out of it. In fact, I think all homeowners should have the opportunity to move OUT of their homes every ten or so years just to keep things fresh. In my life I’ve remodeled two houses and bought an old boat and refitted that. I thought I knew what hard work felt like. But I’ve never worked as hard as I have in the past three months, and that’s saying something. We need a vacation. How about a trip to Mexico?

Playa El Burro. You can barely see  S/V Galapagos.

Slowly but surely we are getting the hard work done to prepare this house for new renters; renters who are not our children. It was great renting the house to our kid and his friends. The bar was super low in terms of what they expected of the house. Since Andrew grew up here, he was used to the fact that the three way switches in the kitchen and office were wired incorrectly. He didn’t expect there to be a doorbell; people just knocked. The old  dated pale yellow wallpaper felt warm and comfortable to him. The grout in the family room and kitchen, well, hasn’t it always been black? The chipped paint on his bedroom door wasn’t an issue, much less the fact that there were two different kinds of doorknobs on the doors off the hallway. The nicked and scratched paint on the cabinets in the kitchen? Part of the patina; evidence of a room well used. All the scratches on the solid fir doors left by various dogs over the years? Ahhhh, we love the memories of those pooches. And are all those growing green things in the landscape actually weeds that set a million seeds? Who knew? These things have flown beneath the family radar for 18 years. We just didn’t care about them. (Except the weeds. I totally cared about and took care of those. All the time.) But now that we are trying to make the home attractive for other people, we do care about those things. As well as thousands of others. 

Yes, having Andrew and Friends move into the house worked great while it lasted. The mortgage got paid, the kids had a much nicer place to live than they could have afforded individually, and Mom and Dad got to move onto their spiffy old boat and pretend that they would never have to come back and face the music that is moving out of the home you’ve owned for many years.  We downsized our possessions quite a lot, and then we just kind of … left. On some level we knew it was too good to last. And we were right. Kids get married and go off and do the things they are meant to do in life.

When we left last time, all of our furnishings stayed right where they were. This time as we clear the house we are faced with choosing which things to keep and which to let go of. It’s probably not a surprise that I don’t let go of furniture easily. Once it’s gone, I’m fine, but the parting is hard if it’s a piece I like. And I do like furniture. Some of the most ‘historical’ (a word which here means I’ve probably had it for decades) pieces are being given to family and friends, which makes the parting a sweet sorrow tinged with a good bit of happiness. The velvet living room chairs and antique mirror going to a cherished ‘adopted’ daughter, our own daughter’s best friend; the piano of my childhood going to our very close friends who live just across the street; our green four poster bed borrowed by some of Andrew and Jill’s best friends, the ones with the new baby; Andrew and Jill choosing our sofa and a couple of stuffed chairs for their future home.  Even my own sister and mom are taking a couple of things. We infuse meaning into these giftings of furnishings with the history of the Boyte-White family woven into their very presence.

And so here we are; sitting in a house with little furniture surrounded by a yard with almost no weeds as summer disappears into the darkness of fall, slowly but surely moving stuff out of all the rooms. It’s a little like gradually disappearing.  In the end we are going to wind up exactly how we started in this house: living in one room, sleeping on a mattress on the floor surrounded by the few things we need to live day to day while we finish cleaning and remodeling the rest of the house. We are still on target to ‘leave the dock’ for the second time sometime in October. 

Astute readers will be asking the obvious: But where are Andrew and Friends going? The friends had a baby and moved on. But Andrew and his wife, Jill, are preparing for their own traveling adventure. They’ve been planning to do some extensive traveling and their plans are coming to fruition. They are outfitting their Honda Element for camping and about the time we leave for Mexico they will be heading off on a cross country trip and then to Europe. They fly from New York to Paris in December (BRRR) and plan to sell their Honda when they get to North Carolina. After a stint in Europe they hope to get to Ecuador to visit our Claire and her Dan, and then we are crossing all our fingers and toes they will come do some crewing for us aboard Galapagos, wherever we are at that point. You can follow along on their travels if you like, since they’ve started their own blog The Wander Blobs. Why that name? It’s a story, and I’ll let you go to their blog page where they define for you: What is a Blob? We are enormously proud of them both for having a dream that became a plan that is now a happening reality. 

And speaking of keeping dreams alive, we had the good fortune to meet up with the crew of S/V Totem up in Seattle. Jamie and Behan Gifford were the special speakers at the recent meeting of the Puget Sound Cruising Club. We last visited in person with them down in the Sea of Cortez where we made darn sure we got a chance to get them on board so we could pick their brains about our pitiful rig and our need for a new sail. They gave a great presentation on some very special places they’ve been and totally lit the fire for us again. Thanks, we needed that! Having our noses to the grindstone as we do, our cruising life feels so very far away, almost like it existed in a different lifetime. It was great to see them, and also to see so many of the cruising club folks we’ve met over the years. Kevin and Cressie on S/V Blue were there, as well as a few other ‘boats’ from the sea of Cortez. It was a little like old home week and makes one realize just how tight and small the cruising community is. It seems like a small world when you see people you knew down in Mexico back here in Seattle. 

In the same vein of keeping the dream alive, you’ll notice the photos I’ve posted are not from the house. Why would you want to see photos of me cleaning grout or painting molding? After listening to the Gifford’s talk I began thinking about all the many beautiful places we’ve seen so far that I haven’t written about. This place in these photos stands out.

These photos are of the the rock art you can find close to Playa El Burro, in Bahia Concepcion. Finding this rock art was one of more entertaining hikes we did as the weather began to warm up last May.   We anchored at Playa El Burro for this specific reason.  What I want other cruisers to know about finding this delicious rock art is that the guide book everyone relies on is wrong. The most popular guide book tells you that the trail head can be seen from the anchorage and this is not correct. There is no trail to the rocks. You can absolutely see a well defined trail going up the mountain, and there is a trailhead close to a small roadside restaurant. But if you take that obvious trail up the hill you will never find the petroglyphs and you will be very disappointed. I’ve taken photos to show you exactly where to go to find these spectacular pieces of ancient art. Go in the morning and you’ll have shade for your hike.  And the guidebook is totally right about the bell rocks! You’ll find huge boulders that ring like a bell when struck due to the iron content. I’ll go a long way to see rock art. But this place is really easy to get to.[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_llpgJgl9fU[/embedyt]

Back to my previously scheduled program of hard labor. S/V Galapagos, out.

This is sign by the roadway. You want to find this sign and then walk inland from the road toward the clump of trees. Once you’ve located your first petroglyphs among the trees, just keep going uphill from there, following the tumbled boulders. There are hundreds of pieces of art. It’s fantastic.

Here’s the view from the position of the sign.Turn around and walk inland to find the rocks.

 

 

 

Finally Landlords

This week will usher in a flurry of activity around the old homestead as we prepare for our first, and probably only, experience having strangers living in our house. We had pretty much given up on that idea of how to make a little extra sweet mullah. We had a number of inquiries over the last few months, but at the end of the day, no one had come through with an actual deposit of money to hold the place. C’est la vie. No harm, no foul, and not much lost in the preparation in terms of money. After all, we’re content to live in our house and have no one to care for Skippy yet.

Skippy with one of his many hedgehogs.

Skippy with one of his many hedgehogs.

Now we have a fish on the line and so this week will see us scurrying doing a final empty of drawers and closets, getting rid of more stuff because that just makes good sense, and cleaning the bejesus out of everything. I actually have a list and a schedule in order to make this deadline. Who knew I was so capable of being organized?

The long term plan still remains for our son Andrew and his girlfriend Jill to find jobs here in the Tacoma area and join another young couple (best friends forever) in renting this house.  Andrew just finished that GIS certification to add to his Bachelor’s Degree in Archeology/Geology. He’s looking for his first GIS gig. He’s a hard worker and plays well with others. Keep your eyes open, okay?

Five years of full time school. He is so ready to be done. With dualing computer screens, he is seriously a chip off the old block.

Jill graduates from Western Washington University today. Go Jill! We are so proud of her. She’s a fine artist and her degree is in alternative Arts Education from Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies. She went to high school at the Tacoma School of the Arts. I think she must have known her general destiny for years. We are looking forward to seeing how her career evolves.

How can this have been an entire year ago? Dan and Claire are back in Guatemala, Jill is wearing the mortarboard this year.

How can this have been an entire year ago? Dan and Claire are back in Guatemala, Jill is wearing the mortarboard this year.

It’s kind of amusing to me that this idea of the younger generation living in the family home is turning out to be the actual plan because years ago, before any of them had finished school, much less had jobs, they all fantasized about living here together when we went gallivanting over the sea. We scoffed. We couldn’t see how they would pull that off.  Now, that’s actually the plan. Why would we scoff at the machinations of youth? Stupid middle aged people. Have we forgotten youth’s magic? Sheesh, I hope not.

So we will get a week of living aboard at the end of the month while our house makes us a little money to earmark for something required on the boat.  We are allowed to spend up to 8 nights/month on board without being considered ‘live aboards’, so that’s perfect. We are looking forward to it. 

 

 

One Giant Leap

Well, the time is here, folks. After years of planning, downsizing, wondering and envisioning, the time arrived this week. We put our house on the short term rental market. I’m writing this post by way of recording what, for us, is the biggest leap of faith we’ve taken. Even bigger than buying Galapagos without having a test sail. Even bigger than getting pregnant. Well, maybe not. But still. It’s big. No, it’s HUGE.

Just want to remember all this.

Just want to remember all this.

Long term readers will know that we have really struggled with the decision about the house. Do we sell? Do we rent long term?  My desire all along was that we somehow find a way to rent this house as a furnished home. That would solve a lot of issues in the short term. We could store things in the attic in a locked space, and if we got ‘out there’ and decided the life isn’t for us (fat chance, I know, but anything can happen) we’d have a place to come home to.

Added to that is the fact that we are 15 years into a 30 year mortgage so we can see the house being paid off someday. It seems like this house should be a good financial investment in the long run, in spite of things like housing bubbles and economic downturns. I have visions of this house providing part of our income, as well as a hedge against our tax burden by continuing to own ‘real’ property. Is it worth it to try to hang on to it at this point? Could my visions become reality? Sometimes I really wish I could foretell the future. But alas, this is where the leaping into faith comes in handy. A certain amount of denial is also helpful.

Really comfy beds. I hope to make the beds on Galapagos comfortable, too.

We feel as though we are in a good position in our location to make this work: close to large military bases where people moving to the area frequently need short term housing that isn’t a hotel. Maybe they have kids and pets. Our house would be perfect for them, and they get a travel allowance that would help them defray the costs of the stay.  We have a good friend who is an experienced property manager and will rent to good people and help protect our investment. The numbers look good on paper and at this point, there is no competition for a rental such as this in our area. Having a good and trusted manager is literally the only way we would even consider doing this.

Other things have fallen into place at the right time. We secured a storage unit with a workshop space at the marina this month. We’d been on the waiting list, crossing fingers that one would become available. My worries about the landscape and gardens have been relieved by my friend Rachel accepting the job of caring for them while I’m away. It’s a win/win because I’ve known Rachel for a long time and she is an excellent gardener. She will also do the housekeeping between guests. This relieves my mind quite a bit because we already know and trust Rachel. She’ll make some extra money, and we’ll be free of worry about those details.

In addition we were able to work with a local insurance agent to update our homeowner’s insurance to reflect this use of the house. Amazingly, we are actually saving hundreds of dollars per year for even better coverage. I was incredulous, but it was true.

Soon the world will be my garden, I hope.

So now the advertisements are in place. Our manager, Edwin, has been talking up this property to all his considerable numbers of contacts in the area. This is the true testing time. So much hinges on it that I cannot yet get excited. No way. We’ve done our part, now the Universe must do its part and get the rental calender on this place filled. We have between now and Spring 2017 to see if this will work. We sit with all of this as though gestating.  Please spit and spin three times, pray, think, focus, imagine, intend, face east, or whatever you do that is meaningful to you to add to the energy of this forward movement of our cunning plan.  We appreciate it!

Will kind of miss that big tub.