Wendy & Gary's New Chapter

Blog

  • February 7th, 2025

    oplus_3145728

    Gary’s post: Another morning post. We have to stop meeting like this. Yesterday was an interesting day emotionally. We closed on our house and are no longer homeowners. Funny thing is what the event does to you emotionally. Although Washington has a LOT of problems, socially and politically that don’t agree with us – we still have a lot of roots there. After living there for 8 years, our kids are there, grandkids are there and lots of good friends. And it has a lot of entertainment there. You don’t realize how much you miss that until it’s gone. For me, I was pretty depressed yesterday. It’s difficult you start to reevaluate your life decisions and wonder if you could have done things differently with a better result. Hard to know and a “rat-hole” that you can let yourself fall into. You only have one life – so you do the best you can with it. We’re in a good place, just different and it’ll take some time to adjust. Going from a large metropolis to a very small town – that will take some adjustment. Crazy thing is, I’ve lived here before.

    Another topic, living in a trailer. I can’t see how people do this for long term. And to live in a van, that’s insane. Yesterday I emptied the waste tanks for the 4th time in two weeks. I need to figure out how to avoid this task – it’s stinky, smelly and no fun. I have to dump it into a smaller tank, transport it to a dump site and empty. Rinse and repeat 3 more time. GIANT PAIN IN THE ARSE! Then there’s the whole small space thing. While I LOVE MY WIFE, it’s still difficult to live in a super small space even though she’s gone most of the day. Then there’s working from the trailer. While I did work from home for 15 years, somehow, it’s different now. I think it’s knowing that I’m in a place with no friends, no immediate access to my kids, no ability to shop close by and nothing I can work on because my workshop is completely filled up with crap. It’s really the impact of knowing that you’re living in a limited space for a long time with no ability to maintain your regular routine. A new reality for sure.

    Alright, enough complaining. Just interesting observations with this new reality. So today will be interesting. I’m going to try and get my New Mexico driver’s license. I’ve had one before, so we’ll see how this goes in our small town. I’m going to get the “real id” version since they don’t recognize Global Entry or any of the TSA issued id down here. Ridiculous. Then next week, we’ll attempt to register the truck. The I’m supposed to meet an electrician to estimate what it will cost to add another 50-amp outlet to charge our new EV. I’d really like to figure out how to split our current circuit, add a load monitoring device so that the EV charges at night while the RV isn’t using all the power. That would be optimal and save a lot of money.

    To solve the RV wastewater problem, I’m meeting with our septic tank company on Monday and we’re going to sort out if it makes sense to install a 1000 gallon holding tank (which gets pumped) or go ahead and install our septic system for the house and use it. Either way it won’t be cheap.

    The electric gate work starts next Monday, so that will be good. I just need to get money moved to pay for it. That’s a whole different story. I need to work with our investment people to make that process quicker or at least more convenient.

    We’ll see if the foundation gets pinned today. Our general contractor has been sick for the last few days, so we need her to get well. Hopefully we can meet with here soon and sort out the budget. I still don’t have well water hydrant installed, so that project will be front and center next week along with getting the workshop more organized so I can get a garage door opener installed and some working space. The workshop is going to be a big project. I need to insulate it, wallboard and make it climate controlled so it’s usable all four seasons. That will keep me busy in retirement. And then there’s spreading gravel to keep the mud and dust down along with trying to restore the pasture to something reasonable. More work for after that house is built.

    Enough for today. Need to get started and ready to deal with the local MVD people! Hopefully it goes smoothly. Should be a story in this somewhere!

  • February 6th, 2025

    Blood Moon

    Gary’s post: Another morning in New Mexico. Crazy weather. When we got here it was 3 degrees at night. Now it’s 33 at night and 70 degrees during the day. Forecast calls for colder weather next week and some rain and snow – MUD!!!

    This morning is a sobering post. Yesterday was 3 years after my brother passed from alcohol poisoning. Very sad and lonely way to pass. My relationship with him is one of my biggest regrets. Although we weren’t close, I still miss him and wish I had another chance – but life is only once. That’s a lesson I wish I had learned early.

    Today marks exactly 8 years since we moved from Texas to Washington. We close on our home sale today, so we’re now officially “homeless trailer people” and residents of New Mexico. I’ll get my drivers license tomorrow, then register the truck here. Still need to get insurance moved.

    Spent yesterday doing Itron work, meeting with contractors and trying to arrange the mess in the workshop. Installed an X-brace on the front of the RV to help stability. Seems to really help with movement of the RV when the wind blows and people move inside. Feels more stable. Also installed some motion lights on the steps which helps at night. So dark here with not light pollution. Spent lunchtime moving some stuff over to rental storage temporarily which created some space. I’m going to have to call off the garage door opener installation for a couple of weeks until I can get thing more organized. No room for them to work and install the opener. Still need to follow-up on a wastewater tank and fresh water for the RV. Filling the tank and hauling the wastewater is getting old…fast. Today will be dedicated to following up and trying to get those two things sorted out, along with job work (so much to do before I retire in April).

    Tonight, we meet with our contractor to sort out budget, building costs and cash flow. So many little things that need attention. Hoping that we get started on the foundation this week and excavation next week. The new gate work starts next week, so I’ll post pictures of that. I still need to get about 3 truckloads of crushed gravel delivered to cover some of the dirt and keep the mud and dust down.

    Well, nothing much more to blog about. Tomorrow will be entertaining as I’ll be dealing with small town motor vehicle people, so that should create some fun stories. Time to get the day started.

  • February 5, 2024

    Our Stuff in my workshop

    Gary’s post: Another morning in New Mexico @ 5:30am. Still recovering from yesterday. Movers showed up and packed all our stuff into my workshop to store for the next 8 – 12 months. As you can see from the above photo, you can barely close the garage door. I managed to hurt my shoulder yesterday, so I can’t move anything until it gets better. That makes finding anything in this mess difficult. To top it off, we’re supposed to have a garage door opener installed on Friday which would make things a lot easier. We’ll see how things go in the next couple of days. Need to rest the shoulder so I can move some of my youngest’s stuff over to our rented storage space. It’ll be an adventure finding all his stuff in this jumble.

    More work with contractors today. Meeting with the fence guy to finalize the entrance gate design. Decided to add a “man” gate and shorten the overall car entrance. That should make things easier. We’ll see how this evolves. I’ll post some pictures of the progress. Hopefully it will make things a lot easier on everyone.

    It’s interesting about how our focus has changed from our living situation in Renton, Washington. With our closing happening tomorrow, we’re focused on the simple things and adjusting to living in a 5th wheel for the next 8 – 10 months. The basic things, like getting well water to the trailer, finding a contractor to install a wastewater holding tank, getting reliable internet set up (Starlink is working well so far). And trying to get too involved in the Federal craziness that our current President is creating with his band of minions. This current government reminds me of watching the movie “Minions”. Enough commentary – this isn’t a political blog.

    The “To-Do” list seems to keep getting longer and longer. Still need to get a NM drivers license, register the truck and trailer and redo insurance. Then there’s the work on the property. I’ll be meeting (hopefully) with the electrician to get the EV charger installed somehow, our contractor to work out a budget for building the house, installing lights on the workshop, getting more gravel for parking and walking areas… so much fun.

    Our property (and most of NM) is largely dirt, so when it rains it becomes largely mud which sticks to everything including our dog. It hasn’t rained here in over 100 days, so hopefully next week I can get some gravel delivered and spread. Then it’ll be a war with the weed which are impossible to kill. I think they thrive on weed killer. They grow in anything and everywhere. And the weeds with sticky pokers love to get entangled in Harp’s fur. Then there’s the “Goatheads”, which have a sharp burr on them and like to puncture everything and poke Harp’s paws. Can’t wait until spring – not. In the meantime, we’ll keep plodding along, working on getting the house built and cleaning. Did I mention the New Mexico dust. Loves to cover everything when the wind blows, which is pretty much every day. Inspite of all this, this state and place is still beautiful, with good people and great food. I’m still adjusting to small town living, but I’ll get there. I just need to get past the 10-minute wait at a restaurant when there’s open tables because there’s not enough servers to cover all the tables. Happens a lot here.

    Enough for today. Need to get started on my day, rest my shoulder and keep focused on getting myself retired and the property ready for building. Hoping to get the foundation pinned out tomorrow. Everyone works at a slower, more relaxed pace here. Need to get used to that and slow down…..

  • February 4th, 2025

    oplus_1048624

    Gary’s post: Another morning post (5:45am). Another New Mexico sunrise.

    Today will be full of fun. Our belongs finally arrive from Washington. They’ll show up in a 70′ semi-trailer, so getting it into the property on the access road will be fun – but doable. Looking forward to finally having tools, clothes and access to some kitchen stuff. The fun part will be organizing the workshop so that we can get access to things and keeping the New Mexico dust off of things. Of course, the timing sucks. Wendy will be working so I get to deal with this (again). It’s fine, Wendy had to deal with our move from Texas to Seattle, shoving all our belongings into a 2-bedroom apartment. I’m sure this weekend will be spent organizing the workshop, moving Jaret’s (our youngest) stuff into storage and trying to make sense of the mess.

    More work to do on the property. I got bids from contractors for an electric gate. It’ll be about 10k to get one installed, but worth every penny. And I have another company coming to put a garage door opener on the workshop – which will be about $800 because it needs a 3/4 hp opener that runs about $600. And then there’s the EV that’s coming at the end of the month. I need to get our Chargepoint EV charger installed, so time for another visit from our friendly electrician at $90/hr. Thank goodness it’s only money. Amazing how expensive it is to get everything installed and set up. Still waiting for a call from our septic provider on installing a RV holding tank so I’m not dumping our RV waste tanks every week. Nasty and smelly. And waiting on a quote to get a water line installed from the pump house so we can use well water in the RV instead of filling the freshwater tank every week. Nothing every goes quickly in New Mexico…. which is a good thing as it forces you to slow down from the frantic pace of civilization.

    I picked up our building permit yesterday, so that was progress. Our contractor took it over to the state inspection agency for their approval and permit. It’s a crazy system in the county here. The county issues the building permit, then the state issues the inspection permit. The state also inspects the concrete foundation. The state permits are 3x more expensive than the county. Probably because they have real people who do work, or sorta do work. We’ll meet with our general contractor on Thursday to discuss budgets and work out cash flow and payments.

    From a construction perspective, the foundation corners get “pinned” on Thursday or Friday. I’ll fly the drone and map the layout against the site plan to make sure we’re in conformance. I want the house to be aligned too “true” north and south. That’s about 33 degrees off from magnetic north and south. Once that’s done, then the excavation starts, and we break ground. I’m also going to pay our architect for the down payment on the panels – want to get them ordered and built before the price goes up because of tariffs. Gotta love government stupidity.

    Well, time to get ready for the day’s festivities. More to come. Someday Wendy will actually post something – but don’t hold your breath. She tends to get focused on work…

  • February 3rd, 2025

    February 3rd, 2025

    Gary: Today is the first day of our regular schedule. Wendy starts work at her new job here in New Mexico. Busy day today as I’ll be picking up our building permit for the house, getting quotes for a new gate to the property (tired of going out in the cold to open the cattle gate) and FINALLY getting the truck washed. Just the usual boring stuff. Of course, I’m still working remotely, but I’ll mix that in with appointments and chores.

    Hoping to see our belongs from Renton sometime this week. We’re definitely not a fashion show as we’ve been wearing the same clothes for the last two weeks. Funny thing about rural living, the only the animals see you most of the time, so what you wear isn’t really an issue. It gets dirty, so worrying about fashion isn’t a big deal. I have noticed that here, most people don’t give any thought to what they wear. It’s actually hysterical, like you’ve traveled back in time 20 years. I’ll have to post pictures of some of the more “interesting” fashion trends. And then you have the urbanites that have moved from the city to the country to escape the crowds but still dress up everywhere they go. The contrast is humorous.

    Our 5th wheel is cold again this morning. 23 degrees outside. Our furnace isn’t big enough to keep the trailer warm, and the trailer isn’t a 4-season trailer. We had no idea what we were doing when we bought it even though I did a lot of research. I compromised with Wendy and got the trailer that had her ideal layout. And this trailer was built during COVID, so the construction is marginal. Just like any travel trailer, you have to fix things all the time. After the house is build, there may be a mysterious trailer fire….

    We’ve discovered that Internet access here is marginal. My brother-in-law is using DSL from a local provider. Being in the “country”, it’s constantly going down for hours at a time. After calling Xfinity, they wanted $52,000 dollars to run fiber to our property. Ridiculous! Internet in rural America isn’t a reality. And 5G Internet isn’t available here – yet. So, we’re trying out my father-in-law’s Starlink system, and frankly it’s pretty good. Instead of the 40Mbps from DSL, we get around 120Mbps for a little less than 2x the prices of DSL. I think we’ll move to Starlink for now until the Russians or the Chinese destroy Starlink, and we’ll keep DSL as a fail-over. Crazy what you think about for work connectivity.

    Well, I need to shove Wendy out the door so she can make money, and I can retire. I’ll have to call our electrician today to get another 50-amp circuit installed for the EV. It’s darn expensive to build up infrastructure so pastureland is livable. We’re going to minimize our living footprint so we can save grazing pasture for our cousin’s goats and cows. Need to be responsible for saving water and grazable land.

    Enough for now.

  • February 2, 2025, 8:00am

    Gary’s Post: Groundhogs Day – Hopefully this is not a repeat from the film…. Anyway, this is the first post of our joint blog. Some background. On January 18th, 2025, we climbed into our truck with our dog and headed south to New Mexico. A couple of days earlier we had the movers come and pack up the house with the belongs we had left selling or donating stuff and adding stuff from our youngest’s house – that’s another story for a different blog. One and a half trucks of “stuff”.

    We spent two days driving from Renton Washington, through central Oregon, Utah and part of Colorado into northern New Mexico and finally into Los Lunas. Amazingly beautiful country. We now living in our 5th wheel on two acres that we bought a couple years ago from Wendy’s cousins.

    oplus_3145728

    The home in the background is my brothers-in-law manufactured home that he occupies which is another story……

    Anyway, after two years of planning, paying for infrastructure and getting my brother-in-law set up, we’re finally in New Mexico. We got our building permit from the county, so I’m planning on documenting how our new house is built (it’s a SIP construction home). Should be interesting. We’re getting Wendy an EV for her commute to work to avoid the gas price rise due to President Trump’s tariffs. Of course, that means another call to the electrician to add a charging circuit to the workshop.

    Well, that’s it for now, more after breakfast and some awesome New Mexican food.