Life is What Happens While Making Other Plans.

Back in Portland and the Great NW

Our first plan: Ron and I thought we could rent a place in Portland or Vancouver for the summer. This would allow us to get ready for our move to Mexico and to say hello and goodbye to all our friends. HA! Were we ever naïve? Portland has a 3% vacancy rate for rentals and the only rentals available require a year’s lease. We have relied on friends to help us out and we are extremely grateful for all the support we have been shown.

Our Second plan: Ron and I arrived in Portland on April 24^th and stayed at Larry and Susan’s Sellwood house for two weeks. This is the house we rented last summer after selling our home in Vancouver. From there we moved to Gary and Edmund’s house in SW Portland and house sat while they vacationed in Italy. Stunning sunsets from Gary and Edmond;s deck!

We moved back to the Sellwood house for one week and Ron helped Larry get the house ready for Hillary and Scott (Larry’s daughter and her husband and two children) to move in on Saturday. Ron worked doing some wall repair, painting and various minor handyman jobs. I mowed the grass and ran errands for parts as needed. We made great progress in getting the house ready. We volunteered to help out on moving day. We moved out on Friday to an airbnb in NE Portland. On Saturday there were some delays but we were able to help until around 7:00 PM including serving dinner. We left and went to a restaurant to join friends whom we have not seen for quite a while. During out last week in Sellwood, we put an offer on a  ‘so called’ 3 bedroom  2 bath house near where we were staying.  One of the bedrooms was in the attic area and was quite small (8X8) and the second bath was in the unfinished basement.  So in reality, it was a 2 bedroom 1 bath home without a garage, but nicely refinished in a period way.  The asking price was $535,000.  In two days, they received 10 offers (mostly all cash) with the high bid at $596,000.  We were way out bid.

Our Third Plan:  Our son Mark has taken a new job working for a community college in Wyoming.  He has finished his PhD program and finalizing his dissertation. We agreed to go back there to help pack up because Mark was already committed for another season at the Britt Festival in Oregon that will take him to the time he needs to start in Wyoming.  So our travel plans were changed again to allow for this side trip.

Our Fourth Plan: While at the bnb we decided to look at real estate. Portland is on fire as far as the real estate market is concerned. We learned that 200,000 more people are expected to move here over the next 20 years. We also learned that real estate prices were expected to rise 12% this year over last year. We were afraid we would get priced out of the market and decided we could buy a condo and rent it while we were living in Mexico. That way we would have something to come back to and if we decided at that point that we wanted something different we could sell it and use the money to buy something else.

Somewhere in all this I had a hysteroscopy procedure to remove the polyp I discovered I had while traveling in Central America. Unfortunately the procedure was not successful and I learned that the only way to remove the polyp was to have a hysterectomy. Drat!

Our Fifth Plan: That meant changing our plans regarding departure. The operation was scheduled for June 22^nd. My next option was September so I took the 22^nd. I also had the option of June 8^th but I would have to miss the wedding for two friends, Kathy and Penney, who have been together for 35 years. I couldn’t miss that!  Because of the surgery, Ron felt we needed a home base to come home to and we looked at several condos in Portland.  We put in a bid on one, but were out bid.  This was a very fancy historic building from 1911 and the unit was remodeled in that period.  Very high end.  But it was small; only 1000 sq feet with 2 bedrooms and 1 bath. 

Our Sixth Plan: During this time we found a house to lease in Mexico through our friend Stacy. We were over the moon to score this house: it sleeps five, was within our budget, is in the exact kind of neighborhood we wanted and we could walk to the center of town in 10 minutes. It doesn’t get any better than that.  Google Casa Emily San Miguel and look for a VRBO listing for pictures

We left the bnb after 12 days and on June 11^th drove to S Oregon for the wedding weekend. It was fabulous as you would imagine. I never saw two more radiant women. After the weeding we drove to Salem OR on Sunday and spent four nights with our friends Rollie and Dolores Wisbrock. Ron helped Rollie with a couple of projects there too.  Then we went to Portland and stayed two nights with Janet Flaherty, another friend. She is getting her spare apartment ready to use as an airbnb and Ron helped by installing some electrical plugs/switches, hanging artwork, a spice rack and other handyman tasks.  I could rent this guy out!

Saturday June 20^th we drove out to Parkdale in the Columbia Gorge. This is where Larry and Susan live. They had invited us to stay with them when I found out I needed the hysterectomy. I do not know what we would have done without them. As it turned out the timing was perfect. L & S leave June 29^th for three weeks in France. We (Ron ) will  take are of the farms with its geese, ducks, veggie garden and the smartest dog ever, Baker. I will be lounging around recuperating and hopefully helping out as I can with the limitations I will have.

We bid on a second condo to rent out while in Mexico and this one we won.  It is about 1200 sq ft. with 2 bedrooms and 2 baths in a nice NW area of Portland.  We will close the end of June.

Medical Madness

Every doctor I saw this summer found an issue requiring a procedure. The dermatologist found a basil cell and removed it. The dentist said I have two old crowns that need replacing (scheduled for July), I have already mentioned the hysterectomy. To top it all off I found out yesterday that I need eye surgery due to my glaucoma and cataract that will require me staying in Portland for aftercare for one year. Double drat.

Our Seventh Plan: That totally eliminates our move to Mexico for now. Needless to say I shed some tears over that. Being who we are we went into hyper-drive and solved the problem.  So another change of plans.  Instead of renting the condo, we will move into it for the eye surgery recovery period.  And, we cancelled the lease on the Mexico property.  The owner was really sweet to let us out of the agreement; because we only were able to snag it when someone else had leased it for 2 years and had a medical episode and backed out.  The universe truly is strange.

Our new digs in Portland:

Here’s the current plan: tomorrow I have my hysterectomy which requires a six week recovery. Our closing on the condo  supposed to happen on the 29^th if all goes well with the inspection on Wednesday. Ron will work on getting us moved in while I am recuperating so when Susan and Larry return we can move into the condo. Hopefully I can wait to schedule the eye surgery until October which will allow us to go to VA in August to help Mark and his family pack for a move to WY where Mark has accepted a position at a community college there. Then we hopefully will go to Costa Rica in mid September to staff a bnb until Oct 8^th. We were offered this opportunity in April when we were staying at the bnb. We have invited Sandi and Bill. Ron’s sister and her husband to join us. Then we will return for my eye surgery and a year of aftercare. I really want to fulfill our dream of living in San Miguel so hopefully we can do that in Oct 2016. We will find out on Monday if the eye surgeon will let me wait until October to have the surgery.

Parkdale

The views from every room in the house!

Parkdale is a small community just south of Hood River OR in the Columbia Gorge. It is an agriculture area known for growing cherries, pears and apples. Larry and Susan have started an orchard of chestnut trees. They have a ton of strawberry plants so Ron and I got up early this morning and started picking them. Larry said there was probably 20 pounds of strawberries ready on the plants. Guess what? Strawberries grow on the ground. We had to bend over the entire time to pick them and soon found out how hard that is. Oy! But what strawberries. We put a small dent in the crop that needs to be harvested. Unfortunately today is the last day that I will be able to pick them…maybe in another three weeks and maybe not. TBD.  We picked about 7 or 8 pounds; cleaned them, packaged them in 1 to 1.5 pound vacuum packed bags and froze them for later use.

Ron has been learning farm chores, especially caring for the ducks and geese, collecting eggs, and other farm chores. This is something for a guy who doesn’t do gardening and has been a city boy his ENTIRE life.