On our drive to and from Boise, John and I listened to several TED talks that I had downloaded before we left. They contained tons of interesting information, but one nugget that stuck with me is this: we are happier with our decisions if there is no option to change our decision later.
The study was more complicated than I want to try to describe, but basically, the participants had to choose their favorite of several things they made – they would get to keep only one. Some of them had to make their final decision immediately. Others were asked to choose one, but they had several days to exchange it for a different one if they changed their minds.
Wouldn’t you rather have the option to change your mind? It seems like we all would, but some time later, they followed up with the participants, and the participants who weren’t given the option to change their mind liked their items better than the participants who were given several days to change their mind – regardless of whether those who could, actually did exchange their item.
Turns out we are more satisfied with our decisions when we make a final commitment at the time of the decision. At least according to that series of studies. And it makes some sense.
For example, I quit my job in April, and I haven’t decided whether I’m going back to work or not. It seems like that would be a really wonderful situation. Maybe I will – maybe I won’t. I can do whatever I want! And I do feel privileged to be in that position. But I’m finding it surprisingly stressful and unsatisfying to have that option open indefinitely.
I keep starting to look for a new job, and then deciding against it, and then not knowing whether I should or not…I’m really in limbo. And I think I just need to embrace something. Am I going back to work soon? Later? Never? Am I retired? Changing careers?
I have accepted a few new coaching clients, but I’m not even sure about that. How many clients do I want? Is coaching going to be my primary endeavor?
When people ask me what I do, should I say I’m a coach? Or should I say I’m retired? Yes, people ask. My bank asked me yesterday, and I wasn’t even applying for a loan, I was just opening a new deposit account. Not two hours later we ran into friends of John’s at Golden Pride, a local fast food place, and once again, my career status came up. Where do I work? What do I do?
All the way up to the last moment we had reason to believe that the sale of the Placitas house wasn’t going to go through. But we went ahead and signed the paperwork and went on vacation.
Three days later, just as we were arriving in Boise after two days of driving, we got the news. We were closed. It had funded and recorded. Amazingly, we no longer owned that house.
Just for fun, John had followed the tradition of burying a small St. Joseph statue in the yard. After the house sells, you’re supposed to dig the statue back up. Catch is, we were going to be gone for over a week, and with luck, by the time we got back, we would not own the house anymore and shouldn’t be out there digging things up. So we took a risk and dug him back up on our way out of town the day after we signed the papers, a couple of days before we actually closed.
If you haven’t heard of the St. Joseph tradition, don’t worry. I hadn’t heard of it either until I moved here. This is a very Catholic area and the little statues are easily available.
We buried the St. Joseph statue just for fun; we don’t actually believe in it – but let me tell you this. I buried a statue to sell my townhouse in 2008 when we were getting married and the market was crashing. My house sold – John’s didn’t. At least not until 11 years later when he buried a statue. There you go. Proof! 😉
It’s sort of hard to comprehend that the house is actually sold. I don’t think that house is going to leave our minds right away. It’s been a big part of our relationship. We’ve probably spent more money and effort on that house than any other joint endeavor for all of these past 13 years together.
In a way it seems like now we can start over, starting from where we thought we’d be when we got married. Ironically, after several moves, we are now living back in the very same neighborhood as the house we first bought together in 2007. We’re literally a very short walk from our first house, off the same cross streets, sharing the same neighborhood park.
Just like back in 2007, John has a short commute and I don’t have a job in my environmental career – I’m working from home, doing some life coaching. It seems like we’re going to try again, and maybe this next decade will be easier than the last one.
Before I went to Boise, I took Larrisa to a children’s beading class at Mama’s Minerals near Old Town.
They gave the kids a lot of beads to choose from, and a tray to help them organize. If I ever get back into beading myself, I’m going to buy one of these trays. They are inexpensive and very handy.
Most of the other girls were making themselves bracelets, but Larrisa was making her grandmother a necklace. Larrisa is very appreciative of her grandmother, who took her in when her mom was struggling.
She picked out a beautiful piece of quartz for the centerpiece. Problem was it didn’t have a hole drilled, so there was no way to string it. The instructor kindly offered to wire wrap it, and did a great job.
I haven’t been posting much because we were in Idaho for over a week (more on that soon). And then when we got back, it was discouraging coming home to a house that’s a construction zone. Plus I’ve only managed to do about half of the unpacking from our move. The house is for the most part functioning, but it’s not a very relaxing place to be yet.
This is the scene that greeted us when we got home and opened the front door.
And it wouldn’t have helped any if we had come in the back door instead. Here’s what that looks like:
Plus, both bathrooms were in middle of getting work done.
The hall bath was the most useable. Just covered in drywall debris with a gaping hole in the ceiling where a fan was being installed. So the first thing John did before even unloading the van was clean up the drywall mess so we would at least have one bathroom we could use.
While I’m amusing you with pictures of my chaotic house, here’s what my office looks like.
The dining room without any pictures on the walls is peaceful, almost Zen-like…
…until you notice the huge pile of camping equipment on top of moving boxes in the corner.
Shortly after getting home from Boise, I got a big migraine for a couple of days. I think it was the barometric pressure drop due to the elevation change. I get migraines due to pressure drops when the weather gets stormy or when going up in elevation. The elevation in Boise is 2,730′ and in Albuquerque it’s about 5,500′ in the part of town where we live.
I also got a migraine when we went backpacking at 7,000′ during our Idaho trip, but that one didn’t last very long. It was preceded by an aura, which I don’t usually get, but when I do it’s useful because it gives me early warning and I can take the medicine quickly.
Anyway, I’m all better now, except I’m still limping around due to a fall while backpacking (more on that later). My house is still chaos, but I am hoping to take some time today to get a few blog posts up. In between the chaos, lots of good stuff has been going on!
Yes, it’s actually that red. Actually, it’s redder than that even. No, it’s not food coloring, that’s red chil-aaaay!
John and I were finally able to find organic hominy, at both Sprouts and Albertsons. The key turned out to be to look for it in dried form rather than canned. The dried is more time consuming to use – it needs soaked overnight prior to cooking. In New Mexico hominy is often called posole when it’s in dried form, the same as the name of the dish that’s commonly made from it. Posole is also spelled Pozole, such as in Mexico.
Both canned hominy and dried posole are made by treating the corn with lime to remove the outer shell of the kernel. The lime is then rinsed off and the posole is air dried and packaged for sale. Or it can be ground coarsely to make grits or ground fine for masa.
Here’s a rough recipe for what I made tonight, sorry I wasn’t following a recipe and I didn’t measure anything, so amounts are just a guess:
12 oz dried white corn posole, soaked overnight, drained, rinsed
1 onion, coarsely chopped
3 garlic cloves
1 whole bay leaf
Red chile flakes (to taste). I only used about a teaspoon, but I have an unusually hot local batch of it.
About a tablespoon of dried oregano
About a quarter pound of chorizo
Salt to taste (a fair amount)
Put in crock pot with water, cook all day, adding water as needed. You can substitute chicken or pork for the chorizo, or leave it out altogether. Vegetarian posole is also excellent. I also often put green chile in it (this being New Mexico) but I didn’t this time.
The last time I made it I used chicken and green chiles instead of chorizo and red chiles, so it was a boring beige color. It was just as good though! And even hotter.
This past week has been nail-biting and patience-challenging.
A month ago, in early June, we packed up my Santa Fe stuff and loaded it into a pod and got the townhome ready to rent.
We hadn’t wanted to book the pod pick-up ahead of time because we weren’t sure how long it would take us to get it loaded. But then when we did get it loaded and went to schedule the pod pick-up, they were booked 3 weeks out! I knew they would be booked up for a few days, but I didn’t anticipate my stuff would be sitting locked in a pod in the Santa Fe driveway for 3 weeks!
Our pod pick-up day wasn’t scheduled until July 8. Well, that gave me plenty of time to advertise the townhome and get renters lined up to move in. I set their lease to start on July 9.
The pod company is supposed to email and call the evening before pick-up day with the “service window” so you know when to expect them the next day. But the evening of July 7, I didn’t get my service window notification. I called them in the morning to find out when they were coming and they said they had to reschedule me to the next day. Reschedule! The new occupants are moving into the townhome and the pod was in the way!
The townhome only has a one-car garage and a narrow driveway. The pod completely fills the driveway and blocks the garage. How could my tenants even move in? I frantically texted my new tenant, asking when her moving truck (or pod) was scheduled to arrive. She said not to worry; her truck wasn’t coming until the morning of July 11. Whew!
But then later that day I got an email saying the pick-up and delivery of the pod had been rescheduled again – to July 10. Ok, that’s still in time for my tenants. But the evening of July 9, I once again didn’t get my service window notification. Uh-oh, in my experience, no service window notification means no service!
I called first thing the morning of the 10th, explaining that it’s been 3 days and the new occupants need to move in! They assured me that even though my online account didn’t show a service window, that I actually had a service window from 7 AM to 10 AM. Ok, well, thanks for the warning (it was already 8:00 by then).
Except the pod still didn’t come. By noon on the 10th I was really sweating it. What were my tenants going to do if the schedule was pushed out again? By that time, I had called this company so many times that I knew my way around their phone tree (don’t select “I want to know my service window” because that just sends you into an automated recital of the same things you can see online, which in my case did not include a service window!)
Then my pod finally, suddenly, arrived!
But meanwhile, we had another problem. On the morning of the 9th, our house sale appeared to fall apart. We were doing everything we could on our end, but ultimately the buyer has to be comfortable; it’s a big decision. John and I have once or twice backed out of a purchase ourselves (and not regretted it).
Our agent was quite sure the sale was not going to go through. She was so sure that she sent us the paperwork that we’d need to relist the house for sale again at the end of the week.
Meanwhile, back when I still thought we were closing on the 17th, I had hired a moving company to move all our furniture and decor out of the Placitas house on the 11th. Now my agent was telling me not to move it because she wanted it in there for when the sale fell through and we had to put the house back on the market.
Unless of course we actually did manage to close on the 17th, in which case we would need to have moved our belongings out of there. What to do? Were we going to close or not? If I cancelled on my movers, I would be out of luck. They didn’t have any more open time slots before the 17th, in the event that we actually closed on the sale. It’s nearly impossible to get decent movers on short notice this time of year.
And the last time I just “hired some guys” to help me move some stuff out of that house in Placitas, I caught them shoving my boxes down the stairs and catching them at the bottom (yes, seriously). They laid a ladder down on the stairs, hoping the boxes would roll down the rungs. Except not. The first guy would give a box a big shove at the top, watch it bounce down the stairs, and the other guy would pick it up at the bottom. They had quite an assembly line going until I told them to cut it out!
John doesn’t ever like to hire help anyway; it was all I could do to insist on the professional movers for this final set of furniture. After hurting my back a couple of weeks ago, I was determined not to move it all ourselves!
We were told we should hear back from our buyer the morning of the 11th, the same morning that we had reserved movers. So I had the movers start by unloading the Santa Fe pod, and delayed the decision about whether to move the Placitas furniture as long as I could. But finally, by mid-morning my movers were done unloading the Santa Fe pod in Albuquerque and ready to go up to Placitas and get everything from out there. So I called my agent and told her I was going ahead and moving our stuff out. And we’d just have to hope the house is actually selling.
The movers were great! Here they are, expertly backing a huge trailer up the long, long, steep driveway. It opens up to plenty of turning room at the top, but it is very narrow on the way up.
They did a very good job, carefully wrapping everything up and not marking the walls as they moved things out. Look at that beautiful, empty garage. (Sigh.) That’s the one in Placitas.
The garage in our new house is now completely full to the ceiling with junk (a fraction of which I actually want).
My house is in almost as bad of shape.
I suddenly have 2 houses worth of stuff piled in one, very modest-sized house. It’s a total zoo. I’m continuing to give stuff away, and I’m trying to unpack in as organized and efficient manner as possible (which is slowing me down considerably).
Since our garage is totally packed full, our truck, camper van, boat and two cars are piled up in the driveway and spilling into the street. Between that and the huge pod in front of the house, we look like everyone’s favorite neighbors, if you know what I mean.
But for the first time in a few years, all our stuff is in one place – well, not counting the two storage units, lol.
We are currently thinking we will close on the 17th, but we are not celebrating yet. It’s 3 long days from now and anything could happen. Stay tuned!
I forgot to hit the “publish” button on this post when I wrote this, so it’s a couple of days out of date. But here it is.
We have a young couple moving into the Santa Fe townhome. They are very excited – it is so hard to find anything in decent condition in Santa Fe for anything like a normal rent price.
We got the last of our junk out of the Santa Fe garage. One final trip to the donation place (which, by the way, supports Big Brothers Big Sisters).
We donated an entire pick-up truck load, including the dogs’ beloved bean bag.
Don’t tell the dogs! It was just too big for our new house. Someday they’ll have a small couch in the TV-dog-man-cave, and they can watch TV with John in the evening and life will be fine. But John has not had any time for TV recently, and we don’t have our furniture yet. Soon. Soon. (I hope.)
The Eagle Crest house is the only one left that still needs rented. Sam is almost done with the tile and I’ll be advertising it soon.
According to the article, Tennessee’s attempt to ban weddings officiated by internet-ordained ministers is a means to target LGBTQ marriages because those marriages often use internet-ordained ministers.
However, John and I used an internet-ordained minister because we decided we’d rather be married by a friend in our own backyard than by a church official we hardly knew.
In practicality, I don’t see how Tennessee could succeed in this. They might be able to require some additional form of licensing for those officiating weddings, but there’s no way they can require them to be religious. And who’s to say what constitutes a religion? Any one of us could start a religion, and probably make it sound less bizarre than most of the world religions we currently have.
Our first outing was to Explora, which is a children’s science museum. I think she liked it, and I enjoyed it too, although I got a migraine afterwards. My migraines are sensitive to large echoey indoor spaces. I thought it would be quiet enough – being a museum. But it’s hard to predict. I usually do fine with indoor concerts, but I don’t do well with indoor malls, aquariums, pools and gymnasiums. So it’s more about the type of noise than the actual volume.
I’ve been mentioning my migraines lately, but actually I’m doing way better than in the past. Lately my migraines have been discrete events a week or more apart, and I can usually tell what triggered them. But for some years there, they were nearly continual and it was hard to tell where one started and the other one ended. It’s amazing to have many migraine-free days. It makes me wonder how I ever used to manage!
In this first exhibit, the goal is to build tracks on the wall for marbles. You have to get them lined up just right so the marbles stay on the tracks. Also if it’s too steep and the marbles go too fast they’ll leap off the track.
This next one is a magnet. She built a bridge across between the magnets with the marbles.
It’s a nice big open space (which is why it was echoey)
Here she is learning about plumbing at an outdoor water exhibit.
She’s controlling this suspended model airplane with hand and foot controls.
I had to google the quote because I don’t read Spanish very well, but apparently it means, “When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” I doubt Henry Ford said it in Spanish.
Enormous legos. Those would have been fun to have as a kid!
We were mostly indoors, but it looks like I took most of the pictures outdoors. I particularly like this one.
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