Category: Personal

Where I Blog

Ronni Bennett of the Time Goes By Blog recently started a feature on her blog with pictures of where other Elder Bloggers blog. It is aptly titled Where Elders Blog. I just sent my picture of my blogging space to Ronni. I am sure she will post it soon.

If you don’t want to go to her page I thought I would also include the picture here.

As you walk in the front door of our house the office is to your right. This picture is taken from the front door entry way. Duke’s desk is on the opposite wall of the office from mine. We have only lived in our house for three months so I am still getting organized.

Whereiblog

And here is a picture of our house. The white stuff is snow.

I think I will do a future posting with pictures of our neighborhood and what it is like to live in a Del Webb community. Does anyone have any questions they would like answered or anything I should include?

Renohouse_2

A Great House in Union City – For Sale in a Buyer’s Market

We picked a really bad time to try to sell our house. Sales of existing homes fell 4.3% nationwide in August and
San Francisco Bay Area house and condominium sales fell 25% to the lowest for an August in 15 years. I think our house is a great examples of the slump. We have priced it very competitively at more than 10% less than what similar houses were selling for a year ago but our agent says that nobody is even looking right now. It sure seems like a great time for someone to get a great deal. I am not worried because I know that in the long run it will sell and even at these lower prices we will still make a nice profit but still…..

You can see pictures of the house on our listing. We were down in the bay area Tuesday to see family
and do some yard work at the house.

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I planted some more flowers. It was a picture perfect bay area day to be working in the garden.
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Lots to do

One of the advantages of living in a place that people go on vacation is that there are lots and lots of things to do. Maybe this is true anywhere you go. There were certainly lots of things to do when Duke and I were in Manchester, Iowa on vacation a month ago. In just a week we did Hooverfest, two ice cream socials, the Sweet Corn festival, First Friday at Five (live music, beer and food) and spent a day at the Amana Colonies.

Anyway, there is also lots to do in the Reno area. Yesterday we went to the Best in the West Nugget Rib Cook-Off in down town Sparks. The food was so good that I wished for a bigger stomach.

On Wednesday I met my good friend Linda for lunch in Truckee which is 45 minutes east of here. We hadn’t seen each other in almost three months. It was SO good to see her. In the Truckee chamber of Commerce building I picked up brochures about everything from horse back riding to hiking to wine tasting to the Sunset Idea house to rafting and bicycling. Linda and I had a great time browsing the shops but we did agree that moving and having too much stuff does put a damper on one’s desire to buy things!

My Summer

This has been an incredibly hectic and challenging summer. I have a hard time coming up with the right way to describe the last three months.

My Mother’s dying overshadows everything else. It is like a run away freight train running right through the landscape of my life. All the things we did this summer like moving to Reno, getting our house ready to sell and  visiting Duke’s family in Iowa would have been the major landscape scenery of the summer if that freight train hadn’t come barreling through. I like the illusion that I am in control of my life but this summer has reminded me that control is an illusion.  Now I would like to think that things are getting back to normal. We are leaving tomorrow for the bay area to help Duke’s girls move back to College which starts for both of them next Monday. For Vicky we’ll help find an apartment in LA and help her move into it and for Valerie we’ll move her stuff into the dorms at St Mary’s in Moraga. Once that is done we will bring another load of our stuff from the storage locker in Union City up to the new house in Reno. We’ve lived here for going on 7 weeks and I have so far spent 5 nights here. 

It bothers me some that I haven’t really thought about what it means that Mom is gone. I haven’t dealt with all the emotions of losing her forever and the horrible long dying process. I have been able to avoid falling apart emotionally by staying in denial. I
don’t think this is necessarily good but it is what it is. Any time
someone is symathetic I start to break up but then I just push all that to the background and go on. I suppose that in time I will deal with it. But for now I am just taking one day at a time. I know that it will help to spend time with my friends, my daughters and my Grandson. I’ve missed them.