Category Archives: Moving

Keeping Our Eyes on the Prize

We have come a long way. When we began writing this blog five years ago (five years!), we had no idea how to write a blog (the very first posts are pretty bad, lol) and we had only a vague idea of when we were moving to Puerto Rico. We had a contract to buy a finca with 25 acres in the jungled outskirts of Lares, Puerto Rico and were just waiting for the paperwork to clear, a mortgage to come through, and ideas for income sources when we moved to appear.

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At the first property we tried to buy

We thought, perhaps, within that year.

But things changed; the title work didn’t come through cleanly. The mortgage companies said it was non-comforming and in general it just sort of fell apart. In the mean time, we kept working and living in Colorado and as we thought about it we became more and more drawn toward the west side and the ocean. We looked and looked for properties and visited PR various times. We even put in another offer/contract on a place in Isabela/San Sebastain, before we finally found and bought our little slice of paradise in Rincon, Puerto Rico.

From other side
The Prize! 🙂

Now, we are finally on the verge of the big jump. We have worked out the kinks. In just about 100 days, we will have left all that we know -our friends, family, jobs, home- and will begin our new life, from scratch.

Now that we are in the home stretch, we have to close down our life in Greeley, Colorado. I am finding that this is much like attempting to unravel all the various roots and ties we have here. And they run much deeper and tangled than I initially thought.

We are still selling nearly everything we have. This has been a much more emotional task than we thought when we started. Everything we keep in our lives has some sort of reason for being there. Sometimes they are very superficial, and other times, they have huge sentimental and identity attachments, like Britton’s Corvette or my jewelry armoire that was a gift from BK.

We are also trying to detach from opportunities and work we have here. While we have to remain somewhat present to our current lives, we also have to know that we just can’t get too wrapped up in the latest and greatest new event. As it turned out, at my work, one of the grant programs (a cardiovascular health disparities program) that I coordinated just happened to end too. We had a nice celebration to acknowledge all the work we had done over the last two years on this program.

Ama Tu Vida crew
There’s going to be lots of goodbyes

We are also going through our to-do lists. Like doctors’ visits, vet visits, making accounts paperless, arranging places for our too-sentimental-to-sell, too-bulky-to-bring stuff, checking off our Colorado bucket list (and occasionally adding to it). We are planning our going-away party. I also had some information to share with Greeley chicken enthusiasts who want to know what the chicken laws are, so I finally wrote a page here about the rules for chickens in Greeley that I had been meaning to write for some time.

americana chickens

Sometimes we still get so busy in our day-to-day chores we forget what we are moving towards! It’s important to keep our eyes on the prize, but we also can’t be so forward looking that we miss what we are doing right now. This life-changing stuff has been a good practice for a lot of things. Mostly of balance and of letting go.

Letting go of our egos. Letting go of our stuff. Letting go of money and comfort and jobs. Letting go of our identities (somewhat). Letting go, moving on and making space for something new entirely. Sometimes we get profound insights on why we are doing this and other times we break down (probably mostly out of fear) and start having alternate reality fantasies of what our life would be if we just stayed in Colorado. And, of course, we know that it would be good and fine, because we love our life, but it would be, well, the same game. Rinse and repeat.

We have played the game here in Colorado. We have played the heck out of it! We are really good players. We have won this game. It’s time to collect that prize and start playing a new game. Watch out, world. Here we come.

BK and Cass2

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Everything Must Go!

Everything must go!

We have slowed up a bit on the sale of our stuff front, after we sold some major items like Britton’s Corvette, Stratocaster, Amp, some small furniture pieces and plants but we are realizing that we still have a lot of stuff that will need to be sorted through, sold and/or given away before we leave. In short, in order for us to go, everything else must too! We need to get with the program and get rid of some stuff!

Here are just a handful of the wide range of remaining items we will need to part with:

Framed Metallica MM Poster Treadmill Side Table Loveseat Entertainment Stand Futon Jewelry Armoire to side Living Room Stuff Coffee Table    IMG_2871Seltzer in box with chargers

We sort of pride ourselves on not having that much stuff, but when it comes down to it, we actually have a lot! Way more than we thought. We have so much still to get through. If you know of anyone looking to buy anything, let us know. Or if you’re a friend or really in need, we might just give it to you. Seriously. We have a lot of stuff and we need to pare this down. Or maybe we could trade for a Home Depot gift card or something (I have a strong feeling that we will be at Home Depot in Mayaguez a lot when we first move!). Make us an offer. Leave us a message here or email us.

We are planning on having a neighborhood garage sale in July. Hopefully we can unload a lot of this then or before! We are nearing the 100 day countdown and we need to get our butts in motion! Puerto Rico here we come!

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How I Will Be Ok With Summer All Year Round Or Is It Spring, Yet?!

Man, it seems that this winter has been going on a little longer than usual. Every time we think we are done with the snow and cold and have a nice 80 degree day, the forecast shows that another cold front will be working its way down bringing wind and snow. Tomorrow, the first of May, is supposed to have a high of only 39 with 4 to 7 inches of snow.

Maybe we get this extended winter to remind us of how great an endless summer will be when we move to Puerto Rico…a…long…drawn…out…goodbye…to Colorado winters.

So this weekend even though we were pretty sure it wasn’t quite the end of winter, yet, we just couldn’t help ourselves from kicking off the fun of summer, kicking off the type of lifestyle we will live in Puerto Rico nearly every day.

We started up the grill and ate tropical-style food outside a few times.

Outdoor Grill
Woosh. Starting up the coal grill for the first time this year

Grill food
Yum! Grilled chicken, grilled pineapple, black beans, salad and grapes.

We bought plants for the flowerpots out front (that will have to be taken inside tonight since it sounds like we will have a pretty hard frost).

Before flower pot
Sad old pot that had been sitting on our front porch all winter

Trunk full of flowers
Trunk full of flowers for the pots

Working on the pots
Working on the pots. I love the insta-beauty and have always enjoyed this type of easy “gardening”

We took long, sunny walks. We remembered HOW MUCH we love nice weather.

A lot of people ask us if we will appreciate nice weather less if we don’t have the contrast of winter. And honestly, I don’t know. There is a certain quality and feeling from a cozy winter house watching movies, reading, sitting by the fire drinking hot tea and looking at the sparkling snowy wonderland outside.

But I also know that I feel so much more alive in the summer. How I want to be outside. How I want to be with other people. How I want to grow plants and raise baby chicks and start new projects. I feel like all winter I have been hibernating and spring is time to wake up. Will that be different in the tropics? Probably. Because there is no winter to shake off and bolt off into summer, it will probably be a slower fizz, a constant brewing undercurrent, instead of a jolt into life. A lazy, languid, and warm “island time” sort of feeling instead of the rush to get everything done, everything planted, “hurry, hurry, hurry, take advantage of this nice weather because winter will be here before you know it” feeling.

While I can’t know the future too far down the line, I know I have lived over 30 years with some pretty harsh winters, so at least a few years without them will be fine by me. Yes, I am sure of it.

UPDATE: The snow came down hard and cold and more than likely killing all the fruit tree blossoms. Let’s cross our fingers that they rebloom soon.

Peach snowy bloom flower

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Just Like the Goats

When we stayed with Awilda at the property we nearly bought in the rural jungle near Lares, Puerto Rico, we learned quite a lot from her. About her philosophy and attitude towards life. About how she ran her finca. About her goats. We still often think about her and the inherent wisdom that comes from living as a partner with nature for most of her life. One of her pearls of wisdom we still often quote was that we humans are “just like the goats”.

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Me and a goat on a rope in Lares

This was specifically in response to how she had helped her daughter through the labor and birth of her grandchildren without any doctor or medical help of any kind. We sort of just stood back, awed by this woman. “Just like the goats” she had said. As if we were actually the crazy ones to think we needed all the fancy tools of modern society.

As we thought about it more, it is really pretty true. We humans are a lot like goats. We give birth. We raise our young. We eat and rest and play, and need a social structure, just like the goats.

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Feeding a baby goat out of a bottle

We also have built a huge infrastructure that makes us THINK that we are not like the goats. We use examples of how we wouldn’t have survived without the system, how the system is a net, how technological advancement helps us out in situations where things might go wrong. How we have much larger brains than other animals. How we can do some amazing things unlike other animals. All of these are true. I am quite certain that without the medical system, 5 days after I was born, I would have soon died. As many goats have died. And yet, at its core, we are still animals just like the goats. Living, fragile creatures that need a community to survive.

Sometimes when we think about our move to Puerto Rico we feel a little over our head, out of water, leaving our known infrastructure for the unknown and we get scared. When we are scared we have a tendency toward trying to find some protection. In the modern world these are things like money, insurance, technology, schooling, advanced tools, experts, security systems. Helpful, sometimes, but all made-up human contrivances that make us think we are separate from nature.

estrella-awilda-and-britton
Estrella, Awilda and Britton in Lares. They have shown us that if they can do it, we can too!

Underneath it all we are just like the goats. We will figure out how to survive using the tools that are available to us. We’ve been to Puerto Rico many times. People live just fine. They don’t need nearly as much “cargo” and contrivances as we have just to survive the harsh Colorado landscape. It is warm all the time. There is food and medicine dripping off the plants and swimming in the ocean. It rains nearly every day.

If Awilda in her 60s, her stepmother in her 80s and her goats can survive in the jungle mountains of Puerto Rico, we should be just fine in Rincón. We just may need to toughen up a little. And maybe get a goat or two.

We really are just like the goats. And goats don’t need much. It will be nice to try a life that is closer to that more basic, natural existence. We are just like the goats, but with bigger brains. And sometimes those brains do us more harm than good.

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