I'm Moving Again!

Just kidding. Sort of. I've told Don if I hated living in our new home I'd still stay a good ten years - moving is highly overrated and we're not going anywhere. But my blog is.

Just about every single aspect of our lives has changed in the past few months, so it seemed a good time to change up my blog too. So where? Here. What am I moving to? A new way of blogging - absolutely the real me, posts more often but shorter, generally. (Sometimes a girl just has to get something off her chest.) I won't have a site meter, won't even always allow comments if I can figure that out, won't have any sidebar links to anybody. I'll still be reading blogs of family and friends but I'm already learning time, with a retired husband at home, works very differently. On a beautiful level we have no schedules. On a maddening level we have no schedules. Time gets eaten up with sitting too long sharing morning coffee or fixing the septic system or 100 other things.

So I hope you'll feel inclined to move with me, but with no obligation to do more than sit a spell. Come listen to what life on a lake in central Texas is like - with a newly retired husband, kids around and kids sorely missed, new friends, no friends, snakes and such, bluebirds over breakfast, mostly conservatives and a measure of rednecks and racists, cranes fishing off our dock and bits of toilet paper flying up in the yard, gardens and cooking and sewing and knitting and reading books (when I find the time) - life in Texas is working out to be an adventure a minute most of the time!

You Could Get All Blubbery Over Laundry if You Let Yourself

14 years ago, two days after Christmas when we were poor as church mice because we'd tried to put together an extra nice Christmas for my MIL who was very recently widowed, our dryer died. Completely. With three kids living at home, a dryer wasn't a luxury and we couldn't go more than a few days without having one available. I still remember calling the appliance guy, even recall the name of the company. He came out and told me it was dead. Done. No hope. Not worth fixing.

So we bought a brand new Maytag for right at $500 we did not have. Paid cash we did not have. Because who has $500 you didn't plan on the day after Christmas when you have three kids at home. I remember writing the check and thinking it'd be a real challenge to figure out how to come up with the money to cover it next payday. Rob Peter to pay Paul sort of thing.

We still have that dryer and it still runs great, and I'm not holding a grudge against it for needing a couple of CPR sessions. It's still a champion at drying a load of blue jeans in 45 minutes.

The washer was bought when our son was still living at home, and still bringing home those white nylon football practice pants that refused to let go of that green smear on the knees. Sweaty nasty things that I'd try not to touch as I tossed them in, but I had to use a bar of my MIL's homemade bar soap to get out those stupid stains. He had to have the pants ready for the next day, and for some reason I thought they needed to be pristine white every single day so he could destroy them again, and bring them back to me.

So we're finally, finally making the move that is possibly going to go down in the Guinness Book for taking the longest time to finish. The house we're moving to came furnished. Some of the stuff is great, some is awful and some is in between. Some we sold, some we gave away and some we kept. The washer and dryer at our lakehouse aren't anything to write home about - they aren't the super cool front loaders, with the neat box on the bottom to hold powder and such. They aren't in fun red or blue or anything - they're white. And I actually despise the buzzer on the dryer that we can't seem to disable, so that it sounds like a fog horn going off to tell me the towels are nice and fluffy. It's a bit like someone with a horribly screechy voice yelling at you to tell you dinner is ready. Good news delivered badly. But they work, at least as well as what we have here, if not better because they've had even less use than ours. So we may as well go with them and not take our PA ones with us.

Our last kid moved out 7 years ago, and since then we've done two loads of laundry a week. Except the weeks when I tried to be a Martha Stewart and did the sheets, and don't ask me how often that wasn't. It's my least favorite chore, even after cleaning bathrooms. I've said before if I was wealthy I'd have someone change the sheets daily and fix my hair every single morning. But I'm not, and it shows in how seldom the sheets get changed. (And possibly in how my hair looks...) I remember the days when I did two loads a day and still couldn't keep up. How times change.

As we laid in bed last night, talking the talk that comes right before you drift off, it was to the sound of jeans bouncing around in the dryer. The very last load in the dryer that our kids' clothes were in. And dippy as it may be, it felt like a right of passage.

Not that I was overly sad about it, just recognized that it'll never pass this way again, those days of knees stained with freshly mowed grass, or cheerleader uniforms that have impossibly small waists, or countless socks that can't find their pair for anything. No more loads and loads of towels because a teenager decided they need a fresh one for several different areas of their body, all after the same shower.

We're giving away our washer and dryer today - the washer to a girl who was in my small group years and years ago. She went to prom with my son when his ankle was broken and there was no hope of dancing - what a girl! She's now married and expecting her first child, and their used washer is giving up the ghost. The dryer is going to a couple in our church who have three young boys - and she said she has to dry everything three times to get them done. Great places to pass them on to! It tickles me to know kid jeans and too many towels will go through them for a few more years. Baby clothes will be washed in that washer - how fabulous is that?

And our washer and dryer down south? They'll have swimsuits from our grandkids playing in the lake, or my husband's nasty fishing clothes, or his sweaty t-shirt from mowing the grass in the Texas heat, or my jeans, with mud on the knees from planting and weeding my garden. Or baby burp cloths from our newest family member, or sheets and sheets and sheets and towels and towels and towels from having all our family come to play with us. I do believe I'll feel differently about washing those sheets.

Great stuff to think on happy times ahead. That's what we're about right now.

We're pulling the plug on our internet in just a day or so and won't be connected to the world for about two weeks. I'll be back soon to share how feathering our nest is going. And in the meantime, hope you all celebrate the best holiday of all - Easter, Resurrected Life and fresh starts.

Riviera Maya - Last of Photos

Our 'celebrate retirement / birthday / 29th anniversary' at Riviera Maya was at an all-inclusive resort for one week. We figured a couple of excursions would be a good break but not make it too hectic or expensive.

The first trip we took was by ferry to the island of Cozumel. I wore a patch and bracelets and they assured me the ferry was huge and would not be a problem. They lied. But I survived. Having a history of motion sickness it has to be somewhere really spectacular to abide the ride. Cozumel was worth feeling like dirt for 45 minutes each way.

The island of Cozumel sits right across the bay from Cancun, has grown like crazy in the last five years and now has 90,000 full time residents who live in the upper 1/3 of the island. The middle 1/3 is all mangrove forests and they provide a break from the hurricanes that tend to hit here. The bottom 1/3 has no homes or hotels, but does allow day trips to enjoy snorkeling, scuba diving, beach combing, etc.

We took an open-air ride with a narrator that lasted all day. Our first stop was to see some Mayan ruins then we pulled off the road, to check out the lagoon, across from the beach.

One very large male and two female crocodiles lived there, and sure enough - when the narrator whistled they came close. The male was over 10 feet long, and the females pretty close to that too. The creepiest part was that when they went underwater even a few inches you could not see them at all for the color of the water.

Here you can see the lagoon on the left and the beach on the right. The most beautiful white sand beaches and look at the color of the water! It looks like my grandson, Grayson's eyes. The water was too rough that day for snorkeling - they told us it was only 30% visibility but we were still able to walk the beach, have lunch in some hut they set up, and I was able to grab a gorgeous pink conch shell out of the waves that came up on the beach. After being unsuccessful I watched a woman whose arms were full of shells. She put her back to the water, stood with her eyes peeled for the surf coming in, and once she saw a shell wash up she'd reach down and grab it before it washed back out to sea. That pretty pink shell is sitting on the ledge of my tub.

Here Don's sporting his birthday gift - I was able to hurry into the hotel lobby shop and grab this straw cowboy hat that he'd had his eye on. $29 american money and he loved it. The narrator and his helper sang Happy Birthday in Spanish, and the entire bus sang it in English - so a pretty fun birthday overall. Don got so tanned on this trip natives were asking him if he was from Cuba. Nobody asked if I was a native.

The narrator told us the water was about 50 feet right where we would have snorkeled, then it went into a black hole - bottomless. Nobody had gone down far enough to find bottom. Isn't the ocean just amazing?

Back in the town of Cozumel we were given an hour to shop and browse, finding fun items for our grandkids' Easter baskets. Mexico is such a colorful place - bright splashes of color anywhere they can put it. It was fun to watch shoppers deal with the sidewalk hawkers, striking a bargain. They love to bargain with you. If you say no to their price they tend to come after you with another offer.

We came across this group of young girls, skirts swirling as they did the Mexican Hat dance.

The other excursion we went on was a bit crazy. We asked our hotel concierge about a 'romantic lobster dinner cruise' and they immediately yelled, 'Captain Hook!'. We ended up going on a five hour ride of figure eights around the lagoon while everyone drank tequila, did salsa dancing and we did indeed have a lobster dinner below deck.

Posing with the skeleton heads before we boarded.

Not sure where we'd put this if we framed it. Doesn't it look like we're at tribal council on Survivor? Where's Jeff Probst?

Once dinner was over another boat, much like ours, pulled close and started firing on us with cannon sounds and big puffs of smoke. Pirates started swinging through the air, landing onboard where our Captain - Jack Sparrow - had a big sword fight with their captain - Captain Hook. Our grandkids would have loved this part of the trip. Not so much the three hours of very loud salsa music and tequila and complete strangers grinding into each other. We were ready to get off once we pulled up to land, but overall it was fun. Headache inducing but fun.

Our hotel was one of five Iberostar's - all grouped together within security gates so we could feel comfortable walking the grounds. At the end of the resort, near the golf course, was a shopping center with lots of shops and restaurants. They also had this gorgeous carousel for the kids to enjoy and at night it was lovely. The center courtyard had a mexican version of a jazz band playing, and we sat and enjoyed that for awhile. That horse in the background is completely made of blocks of wood - it was beautiful up close.

Our final night - we chose the mexican restaurant (they had mediterranean, japanese, italian and steak too). You could buy the hats but we chose to just pose for one photo with them. Mariachi singers serenaded us during dinner - the perfect touch to end the evening.

Early morning - time to get up and head home. One last glimpse of palm trees silhouetted in the rising sun. Fabulous, fabulous trip - we'll be back for sure.

Family Photo Album - Riviera Maya

Update: Raccoon creature is a coatamundi. Still working on the bird...

A welcoming touch to our room... ate the chocolate wafer, admired the covered grapes.

Views from our second floor room...

Coconuts abound!

Pedicured toes taking it easy by the pool that went forever.

That is absolutely not a high spare tire around my middle. It's a crease in the photo.

Hot Caribbean trip companion!

A pair of swans swimming by every morning during breakfast.

Lovely start to every day - mexican coffee and breakfast buffet which included vast amounts of pastries.

Some people called these raccoons. One lady called them the 'cute mexican bears'. We called them lemurs but honestly who knows. They were everywhere there was food and very friendly.

An albino peacock. I managed to get one of his longest tail feathers (already removed from his body. I did NOT pull it out.)

The sixth one is missing, but these guys live their whole lives in one little pond. Very pretty. Reminded me of my sister, Barb who happens to love them.

This guy visited everybody, walking up and down the pathways. There were no closed doors - everything was wide open all the time.

No idea what this guy is - but he sure was pretty.

Iguanas - not my favorite. Hard for me to believe people pay money to have these as pets.

Every day someone had made a fabulous sculpture out of sand. I loved this one.

Our beach was a good mile long, and the perfect place for an afternoon walk every day.

Huge pelicans that stooped here, looking for lunch.

More of my raccoon buddies, as we were walking back to our room.

It's amazing how many show up when you pull out a bag of cheese nips. I got to feed them from my hand and only one was a bit feisty. Most of them were sweet and gentle.

We're as busy as a one-armed paper hanger right now, getting ready to move south in two weeks, but I'll post the rest of the photos in a day or three. We're busy but we're reasonably rested, tan as all get out and happy as clams to be together.

Gotta Love It!

This past week we spent an evening in Dallas driving around checking out the lights in the ritzy part of town (the part where Jerry Jones lives....) - horse drawn carriages filled with people, bundled up and sipping cocoa - they were as beautiful to see as the lights were. The houses - amazing, truly amazing.

A few samples:

This blurry photo is my attempt at sticking the camera out the window as the carriage was trying to pass us - didn't work - we ended up with a carriage jam. It was fun to sit there and listen to the jingly bells on the horses' reins.

And our hands down favorite:

Merry Christmas everyone!

Riveting photos of The Alamo and River Walk

Here are our photos of the Alamo and the Riverwalk, in San Antonio, Texas.

Anybody want to volunteer to break the news to my husband? When you mess with the settings on the digital camera, and you see 'no image', they mean it.