T-17: OMG

The to-do list we’re working on is completely unmanageable. I move from obligation to obligation.  What has to be done right now?  What can be delayed a few minutes, a few days?  What is essential, what is not?  As I try to make sense of this, I feel as though I am in a haze.

Here’s a quick overview of the many strands of action I am managing:

Preparing the house for house sitting: getting rid of all the excess that needs to go the Salvation Army, beginning to store all our personal items so the house sitters can have space for their goods; purchasing dog and cat food ahead, making sure all the repairs are done; making sure the animals are up to date with their shots; preparing the “care and feeding of house and animals”  document; getting a debit card to pay for animal expenses; clean, clean, clean… repair whatever needs repairing.

Preparing the yard for our absence: get all the beds in order, weeded, mulched, and organized; prune the overgrown shrubs; replace the rotten garden timbers with brick; make sure the tools, mower, hoses, etc. are in good order.

You may think this sounds over the top. It is to a degree, but it is also defensive.  In the years we have been using house sitters, we have discovered that sitters will do and allow things that owners never would.  A case in point: one year, we left the seldom used basement toilet with a wonky fitting.  We told the sitter to make sure the valve re-seated if the toilet was used.  When we came home, we heard water running.  Sure enough, the basement toilet was running and apparently had been for weeks, given the size of our water bill.   Another example: rare oh rare is the sitter who will maintain the garden.  For renters and sitters, watering and mowing the grass alone is pretty challenging.  If we don’t weed, mulch, and prune, we come home to a jungle with aggressive plant likes grape vines and coltsfoot, circling and killing our perennials.

Getting ready for the trip itself: getting the bikes overhauled and prepared for long-term travel; making sure we have all the maps for the trip.  (We just received maps for our routes from Portland to north of Seattle where we join the Northern Tier route we will follow across the country.  We also received the maps from Portland, Maine to Boston at the end of our trip.  www.adventurecycling.org). We have joined www.warmshowers.com, which is a website that connects touring bicyclists to people who are willing to let you camp or stay at their house. 

We still need make arrangements to ship our bikes and BOBs from Detroit and Laramie.  We think through the pack again and again: do we have the right clothes?  Do we need better rain gear?  What safety and health preparations are prudent and which are extra weight?  We have a flight from Denver to Portland, but how will we get to Denver from our mountain cabin?

Driving across the country:  We will drive across the country to our cabin in Wyoming before leaving.  We have a whole variety of furniture, dishes, and other materials that need to be packed to take to Centennial.  We think we will camp across the country, but because we will need to travel fast, we better make sure we have reservations. 

Wes’ 60 birthday/retirement/bon voyage party: We are hosting a party before we go, so there are invitations to be sent, food to be prepared.  We will spend the weekend getting the backyard ready for the party.  (See above)

Getting our bodies ready:  We both have had extensive dental work and mine is still not done.  I am still trying to get to the gym (although I am supposed to be there right now as I write these words) to continue my strength training.  We have also been trying to get as many bike rides as possible before we go.  I should go to the optometrist, but it is looking like that will wait.

Making sure the retirement and financial changes are complete: There is a mountain of paperwork, new insurances, changes of accounts and more that have to be managed.  Wes has been nagging me for more than 3 weeks to get my IRA transferred.  I say, “soon, soon” and keep it on my to-do list.  We need to make sure we can pay all our bills online, something we have never done to date.  So far that is a “soon, soon.”  But time is running out and I regret we did not do this change last January.

Of course, these are ONLY the preparations on the personal side.  The to-do list for the company and for Wes to close out 30 years of teaching are twice as big and twice as complicated. 

Right now, we are like buffalo facing a vicious snowstorm blowing in from the east.  There is nothing to do but put our heads down, accept that pleasure is not going part of the picture for a while, and keep on plodding to our goal.

So, while we can see that our escape is coming, we are deeply experiencing the tangling bondages we have so tightly wound around our life.  The irony is nearly overwhelming.  We want the weaving to stay intact while we carefully extract ourselves from the weave.  So many threads to unravel, so many threads to re-weave.

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T-27: When the Universe is Ready

The Gate is open....step through

Ok, Universe, thank you for saying yes to our big plans for this trip. I can see the gate has opened.   In the few days several important energies have shifted.  All have given me such a big sense of relief.

Step 1.  We have found our house/animal sitter.  After numerous interviews and conversations, we have found a young woman who will happily deal with our odd dog, Louie.

Step 2.  The Dreaming at Daybreak fundraiser was more successful than I dared imagine.  The 1 year cash total exceeded our challenge, and most movingly, promised donations into the future.  I am stunned, humbled, and thankful.

Step 3. A grant renewal had slipped my mind and was not included in my cash projections, but will make a significant payment this summer.  It will move Matrix out of the cash flow blues.  The new leadership will not be faced with that particular form of hell.   This was the final step in making it really, truly comfortable to make this big change.

Two years ago, I wrote the first blogpost in this series: T-720: The Commitment is Made; Let the Wrangling Begin.   I wrote in that post, “We will do this to mark a transition in our life and to harken back to our first years together.  It will mark the end of the years of Massive Work, where both of us regularly worked 60 hour weeks and did little else, giving ourselves wholly (and destructively) to our jobs.  It harkens back to the first years of our marriage and youth, where some of the happiest days of our life were spent on long distance bike travel.”

Reading this post of nearly two years ago is especially poignant today: May 26, 2013.   34 years ago, we were married.  Today, as we were driving out to our regular breakfast spot, I read out loud to Wes the timeline of a 45 year marriage.  At the end of the article, the wife said that she couldn’t believe that she still enjoyed his company so much.  They had their ups and downs and their near misses, but here after all these years, they still loved their time together.  Both Wes and I were crying at that.  Because after all these years, with plenty of ups and downs, and some years of doubts and confusion, we still really enjoy each other’s company.  We truly are each other’s best friends. 

35 years ago, both our souls leapt at each other and said, “There you are again.”  It only took one date (really truly, one date) and then we bonded and have been nearly inseparable since.  (Although Wes says he never spent so much time being alone until we began living together—see note about giving ourselves over to our work).  Even now, when I crawl into bed hours after Wes (he’s a morning person; I’m a night person), I still want to “plug in.”  I snuggle my hips into his and I feel as though a circuit is complete.   

We drive each other crazy, but make each other laugh.  We know each other’s stories inside out, but can spend hours making up stories and elaborating the ridiculous adventures of our alter-egos Googie and Bonkie.   Wes will never be done telling me to close the door, or quit leaving my shoes and socks everywhere.  I will always be frustrated with him because his idea of planning is starting. 

When we go on this long ride: 4500 miles, we will prepare our bodies and our minds for the third third of our life.  We will let go of the structures that have shaped our every day.  And we will invest in that which we have neglected: our health, our relationships, and our writing.  We face this new world a-coming with joy…and a few tears… Here it comes.

T-42: Promises Made....and Kept

Two years ago, when we made the decision to go on this epic bicycle trip, we identified several commitments which had to be met before we could leave.    Some were big and scary; some would take a long time; others would require a bit of luck.  Before we could go, we had to:

1.       Be completely out of debt: no mortgages, no car debt, no personal debt

2.       Wes had to be retired and have secured his pension;

3.       Matrix had to be put on secure footing, so it could run without me.

4.       We had to have our estate planning done

Two years ago, we still owed tens of thousands on our mortgage, had just purchased a newish vehicle, and were carrying a small amount of personal debt.  For months upon months, we paid a double note on our mortgage.  This was no fun, I can tell you.  When Wes would get a bonus for his teaching overages (the result of his giant sized classes), we would pay more on the mortgage.  We set up extra payments on the car.  This meant that we were just working and paying bills.  We were happy to use the excuse of our exchange daughter Louise staying with us to give ourselves permission to spend some money on recreation and travel.

I think we would have just made it out of debt in time, but we were given a great boost from a sad source   After a long decline, Wes’ father passed away, leaving his house to his sons.  Unfortunately, selling the house caused a huge rift between the brothers which still has not healed.  Wes’ share of the proceeds allowed us to pay off the mortgage and the car, to our great relief.  There is something poetic about this.  George was a great outdoorsman.  He would spend months each year in the mountains, happily living a tent, and riding horses into the back country with “Eastern dudes” who thought they wanted to kill elk.   It is nice to think that George’s final gift to us was a chance to fulfill this lifelong dream.

Getting Wes retired was actually pretty easy.  We had been growing increasingly concerned both about his ever increasing work load, the never-ending drumbeat of anti-teacher press, and the constant incursions on teacher pensions.  Truly, the writing was on the wall about retiring sooner rather than later.  Making the psychological adjustment was much more difficult.  Wes is an excellent teacher who has invested his identity, his heart, and his time into this work.  Now, that he coming to end of this phase, he can be moved to tears to think he will never again have the chance to teach The Scarlet Letter.  Now that’s an English teacher!

Securing Matrix: now there’s a notion.  This has been a complex, scary, upsetting, difficult, and ultimately hopeful endeavor.  Just the other day, the board signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Andrea, Jake, and Megan to take over the day to day operations of Matrix.  I am very happy to see the company pass into the next generation.  I would be lying, however, if I didn’t also admit that it has grabbed at my heart to not be at the center of things.  But I also know that every child has to head out on their own and make their own life.  I have always, rightly or wrongly, thought of Matrix as my child.   I feel as though I have successfully seen my child “married”.  Both Wes and I laugh that it is appropriate that our “child” would end up in a non-traditional marriage.

When we return from the bike trip, I will serve as Matrix CEO with two primary responsibilities: getting that damn kid a trust fund and place to live.  With those two key pieces in place, I feel I will have done everything I can to make sure that Matrix can survive into the future.  This is still Mom-thinking, which has been both a blessing and curse.  Like a Mom, I have always been willing to do more than any employee would.  I truly believe Matrix would not have made it 22 years without some heavy duty parenting, but if I have done my job well, it should never require that kind of care again.  We’ll see.

We have finished our estate planning, though not finished all the details.  Those details, along with 8 jillion logistics, some of which are huge (like securing a house/cat/dog sitter) are the pile we are moving through in these last six weeks.  There is still a lot to do (a major fundraiser, for instance, getting our bikes and gear to Portland and back, for another instance) that have to be done.  However, we have done most of the heavy lifting and can see the light growing, ever growing at the end of this tunnel.