You’re all like, “Kristina, first you put out a survey asking where we’d visit you if you lived there, then you try to pretend you’re considering more conventional bucket list items like an overseas trip or a health retreat in the middle of covid. Who are you kidding? We know that all you really like to do is collect houses and puppies.”
For those of you who guessed I was adopting that adorable little pit mix (who, by the way, was genuinely up for adoption right here in Albuquerque), well, you certainly have precedent for your guess. I have been known to adopt puppies!
In fact, here’s some more puppy pictures, just for fun! OMG, this one is only a mile away from me!
Huskies, Chihuahuas, and adorable mixes:
What is holding me back is my uncertainty about my future. I don’t want John to have to deal with two aging dogs, a new puppy, and a sick wife if my cancer comes back. That’s too much. Of course I would like a new puppy – maybe that can be my celebratory gift to myself when I pass my 7-year mark (after which, it’s much less likely that the cancer would come back).
Now you’re all going, “Kristina, you are not going to wait 7 years before you get another dog. We know you better than that.” Ok, you’re right. Probably not. But maybe I should at least wait a couple of years.
Meanwhile, I am super excited to have found a local friend to help me with my current two dogs, Kai and Rosie! When I got diagnosed with cancer in January, we drove the dogs down to Houston and my in-laws generously cared for them while we were in Boston getting my surgery done. This time, if I need more medical treatment, I’ll have local care for them. That’s a big relief.
My friend, Sandy, is also going to care for Kai and Rosie while we do a little bit of traveling to visit Laura. Sandy has a teenage daughter – and talk about teen puppy love! It’s a complete puppy love fest over there. I’m not sure my dogs are even going to want to live with me at all anymore! They’re not going to want to come home!
Meanwhile I’ve been stewing about wanting to spend this winter somewhere warmer. I had become obsessed with vacation rental listings. I looked in Tucson and Palm Springs and Phoenix and anywhere warm, but all the rentals were so ridiculously expensive. Maybe affordable for a 4-day trip, but I wanted to spend all winter somewhere warmer – not just a week or two! It didn’t help that I also wanted to have a pool, and to be able to bring the dogs, and have enough room for visitors. My wishlist far exceeded the amount of rent I was willing to pay.
Meanwhile, on a somewhat unrelated front, as many of you know – for a couple of years John and I have been trying to figure out where we want to retire. Our top two criteria are: near the kids, and warm in the winter. Slight problem – it’s not warm in the winter near the kids!
After we got two of our rentals sold this spring, I hired three different real estate agents. One for Albuquerque (because…Albuquerque), one for Tucson (warm in the winter) and one for Sacramento (nearish to the kids).
Ever notice how, when there’s not a perfect solution, your brain just goes round and round? At least mine does!
So here I was, looking both for somewhere to spend this winter, as well as looking for a retirement home, and those two searches started overlapping a bit. Pretty soon I was looking at vacation rentals and/or long-term rentals and/or houses to buy, in various cities in California and the southwest…
You know in the comics when people’s eyes have spirals in them? Yeah, that was me, spiral eyes. It was so confusing! And impossible, because on top of everything the housing market has gone nuts. I hope none of you are trying to rent or buy right now. I don’t recommend it!
In Albuquerque, there is almost nothing available to buy or to rent. We have tenants moving to Florida, and already people are calling me asking to rent the house. I’m not even advertising it – they just saw the POD moving container in my tenant’s driveway and realized they were moving. Oh! Oh! A house is coming available! They got my contact info from my tenants and have been pestering me ever since. I could rent or sell that house in an instant, word-of-mouth only, without even listing it.
Tucson is equally crazy, with multiple offers on the first day of listing, bidding wars with offers going thousands of dollars over list price…it’s cutthroat out there.
In case you’re not addicted to Zillow like I am, that’s an utterly ridiculous number of views and saves for just 3 days. That’s an order of magnitude too high. I don’t know why everyone’s trying to rent or buy a house right now! I would think everyone would be worried about the future of the economy “in these uncertain times”. But I guess not!
Some people may be wanting out of their apartments (these covid times are especially miserable in apartments – shared air flow, no backyards, etc.). There may also be people in the northern part of our country terrified at the prospect of being trapped in their home all winter, unwilling to hang around outside in the freezing cold but unable to go to indoor public spaces due to covid, deciding to wait out this winter in a warmer climate. Also there’s a fair number of people who are now suddenly able to work from home, who are leaving the expensive cities like San Francisco and going to warmer, cheaper places. Apparently it is actually possible to rent an apartment in San Francisco, for the first time in forever.
It’s hard to predict the future. I keep thinking that housing prices are going to drop over the next few years because our economy is struggling. I’m worried that the smart thing would be to wait and buy later. So why are John and I looking into buying now? For us there’s that bucket list issue, the concern that maybe I only have a couple years to live if the cancer comes back. We’re no longer inclined to put anything off!
Therefore…drumroll…the pop quiz answer is…the first thing we’re going to do on that bucket list is try to buy a house in a warmer location. Winter is coming!
I do still have my eye on Sacramento, which is located between the kids, but I’m just not sure if that would be close enough to either of them to make it worthwhile. It’s not actually possible to “buy a house near the kids” because the kids don’t live near each other! They are not even in the same state. So for now, we’re planning to drive out in our van to see them – not as often as we could if we lived closer, but hopefully more often than we’ve managed in the past.
15 years ago I came to Albuquerque from California in search of cheap sunshine. We are now looking at Tucson in search of warm winters and a cheap swimming pool.
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