Change and adjustment

Change is never easy. We think it will be easy, but it never is. There are always unresolved issues that disrupt everything. Our move is one of these things that we at first thought would be rather easy, but has turned out to have many hidden problems that we never anticipated. We thought at first, "Good Lord, this is our 26th move! What can go wrong?", but as things have evolved, we have discovered lots of things that have worried us silly. Happily, we have our kids, who have been gems in all of this. Heather was here last weekend helping us to pack. Melanie and Jennifer were here earlier doing the same thing. Now, as the time to move approaches, we are discovering that much of our lives are tangled up in all of this. We can hardly wait to get to Pittsburgh, to be twenty minutes away from two of our children, but getting there is the hassle.

The closing on our house is April 30, and the closing on the condo will be May 11 or 12. We will load our things on May 10, after getting back here from Washington, D.C. where we will attend Mitch and Gary's wedding, and I will assist. We barely have 24 hours before the moving truck arrives. Not much time to get all of the last minute things done. It will work out just fine. It is the timing that is the problem, not what we are doing. We have to keep that all in mind. I remember when we arrived at our Alpine Lake Cabin after retiring from Christ Church that the place was full of boxes and we had to create pathways to the chairs and the bathroom. It was a silly mess. We solved it by getting in the car and going to Hilton Head for two weeks. When we came home, we had clear heads and a willingness to attack the boxes and get ourselves settled into the cabin. It worked out wonderfully. The break was essential. We will probably have to do something similar this time. We will see how it all works out when we get to Pittsburgh and have the condo furnished what our spirits are like. We will probably need to take a break and go somewhere to settle ourselves out. When this happens, I know that we will be just fine, and our move will be complete. Fortunately, we have kids who will help us in all of this. Thank God for family.

Packing and Moving

Heather came down from Cleveland to help us with our packing over this weekend. We have been very busy packing dishes, pictures and whatnot from our closets and cupboards. I have been trying to get the lawn lugs to cut the grass all week, and finally they agreed to come on Sunday afternoon. I hope that works out all right. We still have to close on these two places, get a mortgage and move. That ought to go very well, but I will certainly be glad when it is all over at last and we can settle into our condo in Pittsburgh.

It is amazing to me how much energy we expend with all of this. I pulled nails, spackled and painted in the living room and kitchen. That ought to make our buyer happy. Some of the holes were large enough to create a problem, but they are now filled and look great.

We are going out for breakfast this morning. We deserve it after yesterday's effort. I look forward to eggs over easy, sausage and a couple of pancakes. That ought to fill us up for the day. We might get little more done today before Heather goes home. I really appreciate her work with us. It is so great to have wonderful children.

Facing another move

Buying a house is never easy. We began this process after Christmas when finally we heard what the kids were trying to tell is, to move back to Pittsburgh where our roots reside. We put our Charleston home on the market, and waited through the summer to see what kind of offers we would get. We got none, and we decided in September to take the place off the market. In the meantime, we had bought a condominium in Pittsburgh that we loved, but the woman who sold it to us called and said that the places where she was trying to find to live had dried up, and she wondered if we would sell the place back to her. We agreed, and went through a second closing that gave the place back to her. We were called saints by our kids, but we were confident that what we had done was the right thing.

We put the house back on the market on the first of March, and immediately had a stream of people coming through the door. Ultimately, we got a rather low offer from the one of the lookers and we haggled a bit with him, and eventually arrived at a price. We went back to Pittsburgh over Easter to look for a place to live. Wonderfully, we found an even more attractive condominium in the same plan that the other one was in., It has two larger bedrooms and two full baths and a double garage. We couldn't be happier with our housing situation. All that remains is to close on both of these places, get a mover and transfer everything to Pittsburgh.

We can hardly wait to get back to a place where we will be twenty minutes away from both of our older daughters and only two hours away from Heather, who lives in Cleveland. We hope that this will be our last move before assisted living. We are no strangers to moving, but it has become more tiresome the older that we have gotten.

Changes after Easter

We drove to Morgantown today for Rosie's appointment with the dermatologist who took care of the small spot on her nose. This went well and we drove home in a driving rainstorm that was not easy to navigate. We stopped several times at rest stops and got some hamburgers at Wendy's, so it was a trip that was necessary, but not really pleasant.

Life is full of days like this. We endure them and we get through them and they in some ways nourish us. I am really glad that Rosie's nose got attention, and the rain drive was worth it. I can see the beauty in that, which makes it all worth while. We are home again and we will see what the days ahead bring. We have two closings to deal with: one on this house, and the other on the condo in Pittsburgh. We are really thrilled that life has dealt us some goodness in the past couple of weeks. It isn't only Easter that brightens our lives, it is all that is going on in them. We will have lots of time to settle down, and we will know a wonderful peace in our new home.

Easter and beyond

Rosie and I went to Cleveland to have Easter with our youngest daughter, Heather and her family. It was a marvelous time. Over the weekend time, we stopped in Pittsburgh to look at some condos that were available. We found one that we liked very much some twenty minutes from each of our elder daughters. We are looking forward to closing these real estate ventures, packing up and moving to our new home in Pittsburgh over the next couple of months. We have talked about little else.

The homily at Heather's Easter service was about discovering life that comes out of death. That is a great insight, one that we have all preached about over the years, but yet needs to be planted in our brains again and again. New life will come for us in Pittsburgh, and we will love it beyond belief. We are already planning our packing and getting ready for a move again. We have moved some twenty plus times since we were married. We were in Pittsburgh in our rectory for 18 years, and we have been in this house for six, but a move is a move. Time is staring us down now with both of us in our seventies. and we are looking forward to having these next years closer to family. That, after all is the point of all of this. Our family is extremely important to us and we love them very much. May God bless us in this move.

House Selling, etc.

We sold the house yesterday. This has been quite an odyssey and I'm glad it is over. We will close sometime in the next two months and get ready to move back to Pittsburgh. Getting ready means sorting out what is in this place and what we will take, what we will give to the kids, and what we will try to sell. We have a lot to do. I am thrilled at the prospect of getting close to our daughters and our grandkids and our new great grandkid, Sammy who we will baby sit this weekend. We are continuing the theme of the roaming Woods that we have kept up over the last several decades beginning in Indiana, PA in 1955 when we were married and continuing through several places in Texas, West Virginia and Pennsylvania and then back to WV. Getting back home to Pittsburgh is of the highest priority to us. It will be a wonderful experience. Our kids are ready for us, and we are certainly ready for them.