Tag Archives: Downsizing

Make Lemonade

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Sometimes life throws a few lemons our way and we have to decide how to respond. This was what happened last week when the wind kicked up, making the tall fir tree next to the greenhouse shimmy and shake a bit, releasing a large branch.

Look closely at the third panel from the right. Yep. It’s gone.

That’s right. A big branch took out one of the roof panels of safety glass. Tiny squares of glass flew everywhere, landing even inside of my gardening gloves. This is why I do not spend any time in the greenhouse when the wind is up.

Why, you might ask, did we build the greenhouse underneath a giant fir tree? Did we just fall off the turnip truck yesterday? No, we did not. There is no place on our property that is not encumbered by giant trees. Living with this kind of danger has its own kind of beauty. And craziness.

This greenhouse stood for over 5 years with nary a branch falling through fair window. Until last year. We lost the pane next to this one last year during the really big winter storm that also caused us to lose our large picture window in the kitchen while Mike was standing too close for comfort. And they say sailing is dangerous. This whole ‘branch falling’ scenario is why I have plans to be on the boat this winter when the wind starts blowing. I learned my lesson last year. And we’ve decided any glass that gets shattered in the greenhouse will be replaced by polycarbonate or some other clear, strong material that laughs at falling branches.

So to clean up the mess, everything had to come out of the greenhouse because the glass was simply everywhere. You would not believe how much stuff a person can store in an 8 x 10 foot greenhouse. Mike started pulling it all out and I realized this was the perfect opportunity to go through and get rid of a bunch of stuff I don’t need anymore.

What did I tell you? And that’s not all of it.

So yesterday and today, that’s what I’ve been doing while I ruminate on the two boats we’ve seen lately and come to terms with my feelings and thoughts about this whole plan of ours. It’s been time well spent in a number of ways, not the least of which is that I now have a very tidy greenhouse and two big loads of gardening ‘stuff’ that can go on the free section of Craigslist.

I like to come in here during the winter, pet my succulents, and pretend I’m someplace warm. I have a very good imagination.

Time to put the succulents to bed for the winter.

Now you know why I bother overwintering my succulents. This is Epiphyllum oxypetalum.

 

 

 

It’s Our Anniversary!

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It’s the one year anniversary of our blog! Since our first blog post last October, we’ve posted 90 times, had almost 250,500 views, and increased our traffic to an average of 3000 hits per month. That might not sound like much to people who’ve lived in the blogsphere longer, but to us it represents what can happen if you just keep plugging away. In spite of the fact that I do most of the posting, Mike holds the record for the number of hits on a post in a single day. His post with the photos of Orcas in Commencement Bay got 646 hits. I have yet to forgive him for that (both the record number AND the fact that he was alone on the boat when those Orcas surfaced right by him).

This is still the goal.

As anniversaries are times of reflection, I thought I would do a sort of interview about our progress in the last year.

Question:  How happy are you overall with your blogging experience so far?  What is the easiest thing about blogging? What is the hardest thing? 

Melissa: Well, overall I am surprised at how much I like it and how many ideas I can come up with to write about. I think that’s the easiest thing; coming up with topics. Since not all of them are any good, choosing what to write about can be challenging.  I never thought of myself as a writer, so it’s a whole new world.

The hardest things are keeping the length of the posts down to a mild roar, and also sometimes keeping a light and upbeat tone. I can have some dark days in this process, but no one is going to want to read about that.

Mike: I’m at a 6 out of 10 in terms of happiness. The hardest thing is keeping up with the patches and fixing the bugs. The easiest is writing posts, but I haven’t written that many.

Question: What is the most enjoyable part of blogging?

Melissa: It’s the feedback from readers and making friends with other bloggers, hands down. I know we have a lot more readers than we do commentors. I wish more people would post comments because without them it’s like putting a part of yourself out into a black hole in the universe, never to know where it lands. It sort of like that philosophical question: It a tree falls in the forest and there is no one to hear it, does it make a sound? I think the answer to that question is, ‘Who cares?’. Same think with writing a blog. If no one reads it or comments on it, then who cares?  I also like the way blogging makes me organize my thoughts. That’s a benefit I would not have predicted.

Mike responds:  Getting nice comments from readers.

Question: What have you not liked about blogging?

Melisssa: Sometimes I can have a pretty twisted sense of humor. When I’m writing, I have a certain tone in my head that sometimes does not get translated well onto the page.  I always assume that people will know when I’m being humorous, but sometimes they don’t. I guess that’s part of the learning process for me. Believe it or not, my sense of humor is nothing compared to my kids’.

Mike: Trouble shooting the site.

Question: Reflect, if you will, on how satisfied you are about your progress in reaching the goal of voyaging. What feels solid to you? What frustrates you?

I’ve given away all of my yearbooks. I don’t miss them one bit since I photographed all the pages that had anything relevant to me. Here I am as a senior in high school, doing actual school work before the invention of the personal computer. Dinosaur days, to be sure.

Melissa: That is a complicated question. This year we have done a good job of paring down our possessions and simplifying how we live in our home and we are still in the process of doing this. We’ve been married for 30 years and raised two kids, so we have a lot of stuff. We’re pretty much normal Americans that way. So there is still much to do.

On the other hand, we will still be living in this house for a few more years and I’m finding myself unwilling to give up everything as though I’m going to live on a boat, when the ‘living on a boat’ part isn’t in sight. I don’t want to live in a house with no furniture or give up all my craft things before I have to. And we got rid of our truck too fast. With the property we own, we need a truck. So now we are going to have to buy another one. That pretty much sucks, if you ask me.

Mike: We are making progress but I am looking out five years and that still feels far away. It would be nice to have the right boat that we could start making ready for our cruising life so that we could be working on and putting money into that boat. Of course, if we decide to cruise on Moonrise, then the money is going to the right place already.  I think our experience and confidence for blue water voyaging is actually pretty good and while finances will always be a little vague, I know that we will be able to make this adventure happen.

Frustration comes from not having certainty about having the right boat and the need to continue working a few more years.

Question: What decisions remain to be made in putting your cunning plan into place? Why have you put these decisions off?

Melissa: The thorn in my side is setting the date for casting off. We know from more experienced people how important it is to set a date and just go, but so far we have been unable to agree on a date. The problem is that Mike wants to go when he retires, which is in 5 years. I will retire from my practice when Andrew graduates from college, but Mike’s is the ‘big’ retirement. Five years feels like an eternity to me, especially when I think about all of the life events that could easily happen in that amount of time that would inevitably delay our departure: things like family illnesses, grandchildren (however unlikely), or our own health (even though we are both quite healthy now). I feel a bit like a woman who has waited too long to have a baby and is now too old to easily conceive: every month that passes is another month I will never get back.

This time last year I was having fun looking at boats, anticipating selling Moonrise. Now it’s possible we’ll keep her. We aren’t sure anymore.

Believe it or not, I also worry that I will lose interest. It seems impossible now, but there are lots of things I’ve been really into for several years, only to be done with them at a certain point. I remember meeting some people at a local cruising club raft up who just sail around this area because they have lost interest in going  further. They said they don’t want to be hot, or be cold, or be challenged anymore. They just want to relax and have fun. They were in their 60’s. The tone in their comments and glances at each other was that they didn’t think Mike and I would ever go if we waited that long.
That tone fell on the fertile ground of my own fears.  People grow and change throughout their adult lives and interests grow and change along with that. What I do know is if I die before I do something this cool, I am going to be one really pissed off ghost roaming the seas.  I soothe these fears by planning to be reincarnated as a child of a wealthy family who sails around the world as a lifestyle. Maybe the Bumfuzzle children will grow up to be  sailing vagabonds and one of them can be my new parent. They seem to come from good genetic stock, and the Bumfuzzles would probably be fabulous grand parents.  Hey, whatever it takes to get me through the night. Probably the more we get out there and sail together, and I mean sail away from Commencement Bay, which is getting to be a little boring at this point, the more I will remain interested.

 

It’s hard to take care of this yard when we’re on the boat. But it’s harder to walk away from this property when values are so low.

The other decision we haven’t yet made is what to do with our house. Aside from being our family home, it’s the only property investment we have. Mike thinks we should sell it; I’m not so sure. Much will depend on property values when the time comes, I suppose. We are in a great area for rentals and we have a friend who manages rentals to military families. If we could turn the management over to him, we would have someone we trust to keep watch over this property, and maybe we could eventually derive an income from it. I hate to give that up. And yet the possibility of being able to leave with no financial liabilities is very seductive, and it is doubtful that we will come back to live in Lakewood. We can’t really make that decision until we see what the market is going to be like in a few years.

Mike: We will need to know which boat we are going to voyage in within the next two or three years. If we can make Moonrise bluewater-ready, then we will be in pretty good shape. If we decide that another  boat is needed, then we have to adjust our finances to pay it off and get it ready.  Then there is the house. Do we sell or rent? Income during our retirement has to be considered. Which pot do we draw from while we are cruising and still relatively young? These decisions are put off because I have more questions than answers. As usual.

Question: So what’s the next step for you?

Melissa: The next step is to continue honing down our belongings a bit at a time, keeping the goal of voyaging in mind as we do so and simplifying our lives the best we can while still living comfortably in our home. We’ve taken Moonrise off the market for awhile, although we’d sell her to the right buyer. Meanwhile, Mike has been doing a lot of projects on the boat and his skill level with wood working is really improving.

Mike: The next step is to find out if we can make Moonrise the boat we will take. If it is, then I can continue to work on improving her and preparing for the major upgrades (Sails, Windvane, Rigging, Tankage etc) .

 

Last Christmas I cut down on the crazy gift giving. We didn’t miss it. This year I plan to cut back even more. If I put it in writing, I have to do it.

 

Another One Bites the Dust

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File this under ‘how to save money so you can buy a boat’, ‘downsizing’, or ‘preparing to cruise’, whichever you prefer. Mike and I are trying to live more frugally lately and this means that at times we have to make choices. Suffice to say I ran smack up against my definition of self, otherwise known as ‘ego’, this week. Turns out this whole idea of saving money is making me a pretty cheap date.

Recently 3 seemingly unrelated things happened: We sold my Mazda van, and our daughter moved to an apartment in Seattle, on her own once more. She left her 1994 Toyota Camry behind forever, sitting in our driveway. Then our son came home for the summer. I had been driving his cute little Toyota Matrix, a car both versatile and attractive. Astute readers will see the handwriting on this wall by now.

This is what I usually drive. Cute, versatile.

When a son returns home for the summer, he wants his car and because the car belongs to him (and I promised he could have it back) I am currently without vehicle. I need to get to work. We considered our options, including riding the bus (but I have to find a way to the bus stop) and buying a scooter to be ridden in the summer. Cute, but not very versatile. Trouble is, we don’t want to replace one vehicle with another. That’s not part of our plan.

“But wait!”, you may think. “Don’t you have the old Camry?”. Oh. Yes. We. Do. Let me tell you about this car. We bought it for $5000 when our daughter was a Junior in highschool. She has driven it for 10 years. Driven it only. Not actually cared for it. It has 270,000 miles on it (Long live Toyota!). It has had several minor skirmishes with various fences, gates, and other vehicles and apparently we don’t believe in spending money fixing cosmetic things on old cars.  Think of the damage as war wounds. The windshield is cracked, the doors don’t lock properly, the windows will roll down but then won’t roll up, steering is decidedly wavy, the dashboard is cracked, and it leaks like a sieve… as in there was a small lake on the passenger’s side of the car and Mike actually found large mushrooms growing in the back. I am not making this up.

The Camry was a fine looking automobile. That's past tense.

 

Understand, we have never driven new cars, believing a new car to be a profound waste of money. We do not even drive late model cars, as a general rule. We pretty much see cars as a means of transportation. We like them reliable, safe, inexpensive, and fuel efficient. So we don’t really think of cars as being reflections of our true selves, but there’s a limit and I thought I’d reached it when faced with this transportation issue.

I contemplated driving the Camry. Mike had spent considerable time and energy drying it out and cleaning it up. But still, it’s a car from 1994. I don’t even remember that long ago. I don’t think Andrew even existed yet.  I thought about clients and colleagues sizing me up as I pulled into the parking lot in this ‘vehicle’. I thought about the fact that as a middle aged woman, I am already part of a segment of the population that people don’t take very seriously, as though my usefulness as a human being is nearing its expiration date. (If you think this isn’t true, you are either not a middle aged woman, you are not paying attention, or both.) In short I was thinking, ‘What will people think of me?’. I ran smack up against ego, once more! Damn! Will it never end? Where is the part of me that gives less than a rat’s ass about the judgments of others? I know she’s around here somewhere…

I contemplated driving the car to the park and ride, taking the bus to work. It would actually be fine as it stops just a few blocks from my office and I would enjoy the walk. That was the plan for today.

Then I found myself driving to the park and ride in pouring rain, without an umbrella. I would get soaked walking the few blocks to my office. Unacceptable. So I drove to work. And you know what? It wasn’t bad. I studiously ignored any looks from other drivers. Maybe there weren’t any. I’ll never know. There is a sunroof and great visability in that car; much better visability than the Matrix. And the sound system is terrific! I pulled into the parking lot with my hearing aids vibrating to ‘Another One Bites the Dust’.

Can I allow my self-imposed persona of the professional woman who drives above-average looking, versatile cars give way to the part of me that wants to be frugal for the sake of living the rest of our lives on our own terms? Yep. I can. I’ve always been a bit of a rule breaker, even when I’ve made the rules myself. Another one bites the dust, indeed!

My new ride!