A new home (Cleo style)

One of the most difficult things to do was to find a home for our cat, Cleo.  She had been living in an apartment for most of her life before her caretakers had to move to the East Coast.  She had been in the shelter for three months before we adopted her.  She went into the shelter weighing 18 pounds, and she weighed 15 pounds when we adopted her. (She wouldn't eat in the shelter and just hid in the corner hoping for a new family.)

We adopted her at 11 years and 15 pounds.  We had just finished the kitchen remodel and Modelo (the last of the black cats) was still with us, so she had a lot of nervous feelings, but she adapted pretty well.

With our move, however, we had to find a new home for her.  One of Emily's previous co-workers, Stacy, was willing to take her in.  A new environment awaited:: two other cats, small children, birds, fish and a mid-sized dog!  Cleo seems to have adapted to her new environment, though...

She's 15 now and down to 12 pounds through a carefully maintained diet; I expect that she'll have many happy years there.
 

Downsizing!

When you've lived in the same house for 15 years, you accumulate a lot of stuff!  What do you do when you need to compress everything into five suitcases?


There are primarily two options for moving out of the country: fill a shipping container with everything you own, or get rid of your possessions and travel with only what you need.  Emily and I have chosen the second option.

Large items, such as furniture, went on Craigslist.  Smaller items are much harder.  Since we're moving to South Dakota before we go to Ecuador (to change our US tax basis), we have separate boxes labeled for all of our siblings, children and mothers.  If we come across something that one of them would want, it goes into their box.  (I don't know if they'll want the stuff we're giving to them, but that's their problem.)  What to do with the rest of the stuff?

I worked at Williams-Sonoma for three years, and our kitchen is packed with pans, gadgets and containers of all types.  I have cake cutters still in the wrappers, two complete sets of Calphalon cookware, thirty pasta plates, two complete sets of china and so much more.  What better way to give it a new home than a garage sale!

We've had two garage sales with everything priced to sell.  We even had comments from some of the people that showed up saying, "You're not trying to make money, you're just trying to get rid of stuff!".  Both were very successful.  One guy showed up and bought all my rakes and shovels ($7) and then found a CD that he wanted.  I just waved at him to let him know that it was his.  It's a very liberating feeling to just let things go!

The most difficult part of downsizing was getting rid of my tools.  I'm an avid woodworker and home improvement guy, so I had some difficult decisions to make.  The first was the realization that I may not have electricity available when I want it, so most of the power tools had to go.  I sent a list and pictures to Larry to see what he would want, and he bought them all!  He's going to outfit one of his rental properties with a workshop, and, with the tools that I sold him, he'll be all set up with a custom cabinet shop.

(For you fellow woodworkers out there, yes, many tears were shed, but I know that the tools are going to a good home.)

As for me, I've had to downsize to a single tote of tools:

It includes mostly manual tools: handsaws, screwdrivers, wrenches, levels, plumb bob, string line, etc.  They are all of the tools that I used in building outdoor structures, and I figure that's what I'll need in Ecuador.

If you haven't checked out our current backyard, here are a couple of links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1L8obD2_Kto
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlxEFS5PtK4

We're almost done with the clean out - time to sell the house!  That will (hopefully) be the next post.

Decision time

Emily and I have known for a few years that we wanted to move to Latin/South America.  After visiting my friends Robert and Barb, we knew that Ecuador was the place we wanted to be.  The question became: When do we make that change, and how do we do it?

I had started working at bebe stores corporate offices in January of 2012.  I thoroughly loved the job and the people that I worked with.  Larry, my director, and I had many common interests outside of work: construction, woodworking and gardening.  My "customers"/coworkers (shout out here to Yuliya, Bill, Kate, Debbie and many others) were a pleasure to work with.  Working in a relatively small office (120 employees) let me develop attachments and relationships with the people there, and I could have easily spent the rest of my career there.

Emily had a different experience.  She started working at Facebook at the same time I started at bebe.  She enjoyed the people that she worked with very much, and the culture was casual and created to entice people to spend  most of their time at the office: free meals, snacks, open office space and an attitude of "Work fast, break things" that contributed to a high energy/vibrant work culture.  Unfortunately, she had to experience a management change that ruined that culture for her.  She still enjoyed working with her peers (other project managers, directors, etc.), but her "leadership" had created an environment of competition and distrust, and her desire to work there quickly evaporated.  She left Facebook at the end of October.

Rather than looking for a new position, we decided that this was the time to make the change.  It was with much sadness that I met with my director Larry and told him that I would no longer be working for bebe.  I told him that the position that I had as Senior Systems Manager was the best job that I had had in 20 years, but I was no longer interested in working in IT.  Emily and I had made the decision to move to Ecuador and give up corporate life.

Many people questioned the change.  Some family members said, "You can't do that!".  Some co-workers said, "Ecuador?  That's a stupid place to go!".  We knew, however, that it was the place for us, and we weren't looking back.

In 1994, Emily and I moved from Minnesota to California with very little: $1000 from my 401k, my Ranger pickup, her Grand-am, a trailer full of clothes and a futon.  We had made a major lifestyle change before, so we knew that we had the experience to make the change.  The only question was when, and that answer was given to us.

We live on a cul-de-sac of 23 houses, and over the past 15 years we've gotten to know our neighbors very well.  Our best friends on the street, Rory and Lindy and their two kids Makena and Jackson, will be the most missed, along with Bill, Glenn and Maria, Greg and Mo, Alex and Michelle, Michael, Barbara and all the others.  We've been blessed to have lived where we have and wish all the best to the friends and neighbors that we're leaving behind.

Now comes the hard part - downsizing!