I’m back. Or at least, enough of a degree of settled into our new place that our updated rhythms are starting to feel normal, and we’re finally past the most urgent of pushes to put things where they belong and fix the things that weren’t quite up to standard. Strangely, someone visited the blog today to read the post I’d written about the heartbreak involved in getting our Milwaukee home ready to sell. It was an odd reminder of the predictable and unpredictable ways houses need upkeep and maintenance.
And an interesting reflection on the state of the rental property we left behind. As we packed out, we discovered extensive black mold along the entirety of the north wall of the basement, on top of the other issues that plagued us. Within a week of being in the new house, we both noticed the improvement in our health. Even our youngest Husky, who last year scratched open her whole face for several months running with extreme allergic response itching, hasn’t been scratching as much or as hard now that we’re here.
Our intrepid real estate agent, Susie Branco Zinn, had recommendations and guidance to respond to every question we had – from getting our home inspected, to finding contractors to put in a husky-proof fence before we moved in, to pointing us toward reliable service-providers. She made buying our house in an overheated real estate market as stress-free as was possible and I will sing her praises for the rest of my life for her contribution to our miracle. Interesting new research about how “Sesshaft” (German word describing a sense of being rooted to a place) Americans have become, and stories from colleagues who had spent months searching, and had multitudes of offers declined, were the backdrop for why I see our experience as such an outlier. I also followed some of these tips for lightening our load prior to our move… and yet we still ended up paying movers to move nearly 11,000 pounds of our stuff. The State Department’s old rule of thumb of 1,000 pounds per year of a family being together… was distressingly on target.
Luckily, for as stressful as moving is, neither of us hit the burn-out threshold. The ones who took the move hardest were our dogs. They completely denied their breed’s basis of having been companions to nomads and therefore more likely to be flexible in the face of change. The girls don’t like the new, permanent dog doors at all, and are leery about all the stairs in the new place. I’m crossing my fingers that as the number of daily disruptions decrease, their level of comfort will increase.
All of that to say… I know there are people who have reached out in recent months who’ve fallen to the bottom of my newly exploded to-do list. I apologize and will reach out individually in the next month or so. Since I’m still catching up on my day job’s to-do list, too, my evenings and weekends aren’t quite available for word-herding yet, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I’m looking forward to committing book 3 of the Planet Seekers series to paper. You’ll see my progress documented here, so keep an eye out for a return to my more regular cadence of blog posts. Thank you, everyone, for your patience in the meantime.