Fall                                                                            Closing Moon

So. Excel was not my electric and gas supplier. Instead I have Intermountain Rural Electric Co-op. I like that it’s a co-op. Connexus, our electricity utility here in Andover is a co-op, too. Gas is Colorado Natural Gas. All tidied up now, but involved the usual your call is important to us, our options have changed and all available agents are busy at this moment but please remain on the line.

I’ve called six separate fence contractors and still have no call back. My first calls were last Friday. The Denver metro real estate market is in heat, money flying everywhere by wire, check, cash. Little room for new folks to get their foot in the door. I do have until December 18th or so before the dogs hit the ground in Conifer, but there has to be a fence by then. Persistence, I imagine.

My preference is to nail things down well ahead of the date necessary. This is not about responsibility or bourgeois norms, but about managing my anxiety. If I have enough time, I can deal with problems, and there are always problems. If I don’t have enough time, I find my decision making gets crossed with time pressure, sometimes that yields poor judgment. Don’t expect to see me as an EMT, emergency room doc, or policeperson. Slow and steady in these matters.

The big rug is now back again at the American Rug Laundry. They’ll spiff it up and wrap it in brown paper. It will go in that wrapping onto the Stevens Van Line truck. The last time I took it in the guy, when I picked it up, said he’d never seen a rug with so much sand. That’s the Great Anoka Sand Plain and four dogs in action.

Fall                                                                                   Closing Moon

Transferred gas and electric utility to our name, effective 10/31/14. Connected dsl and landline service effective 10/31/14. Bought washer and dryer online from Sears Outlet. In budget.

Harvested the leeks, the true last harvest from our garden. Leek and chicken pot pies on Tuesday. Kate’s been busy getting stuff organized for my trip. She packed up all the canned goods and I’ve started carrying them upstairs. I’m taking my second Gateway desktop and our HP inkjet printer, too. Various potions from International Ag Labs will be on this load, plus one gas can. Coffee press, tea kettle, sleeping bag, pillow, toiletries. A chair, a folding table, a lamp.

We bought a washer and dryer online from Sears Outlet and they get delivered on November 4th. I’m going to track down a freezer while I’m there.

And of course there’s the routing number and account number of the closing company so, high finance style, I can wire money to the closing on the 31st. I have to take a power of attorney with me that allows me to represent Kate in the closing. Lots of little moving pieces.

The big oriental goes into the American Rug Laundry for its last shampoo and rinse in this state. Then it will go on the moving truck, not back on the floor.

Oh, and I have to visit the library for recorded books. Traveling cross country is a lot of seat time. As I’ve said here before, I use these trips as retreats, spending some long periods in silence, meditative, not meditating. Contemplative. Clears away the webs of the day-to-day.

With this week coming up one full ring of the three-ring tent will be collapsed, rolled up and packed on the train. That’s the Colorado ring. The Andover tent will stay up until this house is sold. The third ring, the move itself, will come down in mid-December. That tent is getting smaller. The circus is leaving town.

Fall                                                                                              Closing Moon

The good-byes have begun. Went to the Walker this afternoon with Stefan and Lonnie. Having a place to move and a potential moving date, house packed on December 15th and 16th, gives definition to Colorado bound, a definition not possible even when the books were packed and the scout had been out doing her job.

(Ruth and Gabe on the first day of school this year.)

Pulling away from friends will be the hardest part. Lonnie and I have been going to the Walker together, off and on, for the better part of 30 years. The Woollies, the docents all many years of time. It was this glue that held me here a few years back when Kate and I first considered this move. The time was not right. Now it is.

As Lonnie said, you don’t leave friends behind, friends are for life. That’s true. The difference is the seeing and being seen on a regular basis. I’ll miss it, but the call of the mountains and the grandkids is stronger. Consequences, all decisions have them, neither good nor bad, just necessary.

Doing only the things that only I can do put Colorado on the will do side of our life’s work. Only I can be Grandpop to Gabe and Ruth. Only I can be father-in-law to Jen and stepfather to Jon. Only I can learn, for myself, what the West means within the unique context of my life. Only Kate and I can make this journey together, a bonded team.

And only I can say good-bye to you, my friends.

Fall                                                                                            New (Closing) Moon

Journey before destination. I’m back to this, back to living in the move. No longer as move-stupid as I was yesterday. With the critical Colorado mortgage process complete we can look at moving dates. I just e-mailed A-1 movers to see if the week of December 15th works for them. If it does, we would stay for the Woolly meeting, then follow the truck out to Conifer. If not, then we’ll go the first week of January.

There’s still residual weariness, exhaustion, not yet made up. I’ll be on the road again Wednesday, this time driving, so it will be a while before I’m fully caught up on my sleep. That drive will, however, be a peaceful one, listening to audio books, enjoying the quiet of a rolling retreat. Road trip!

It’s not like we’re finished. We have to finish packing, get that fence built in Colorado, pay many different people to do a lot of different things, but it’s manageable. Doable. The best part is that we can work toward the transition with our own decision making and judgment. The underwriter will have retreated to her underworld. If we’re lucky, no underwriter will make the trip up to judge us ever again.

So leave taking really begins. This move is happening and within a month and a half. Saying good-byes used to be a weakness of mine, sudden departures with no farewells. Not so today. I look forward to seeing many of you, Minnesota readers, before I leave. If somehow I miss seeing you, then good-bye.

Fall                                                                                      New (Closing) Moon

You may notice that I have changed the name of the moon. That means I will be driving out to Colorado next week for closing on our new home, 9358 Black Mountain Drive. Valerie, our mortgage consultant, called me about a half an hour ago and said the underwriter told her the loan would be approved! That’s one end of this process wrapped up. Now all we have to do is move, then sell this house.

Wow. Still trying to take it in. It was the result we hoped for, even expected, but until confirmed, anxiety. The rest of it feels down hill from here. The months of preparation mean we will easily meet a moving date in December or early January. Our stuff has been decluttered, our work on this house will move forward after we’ve emptied it and we can settle into our new place before the heavy Colorado snows of March and April.

Now the fence becomes the next highest priority, since without it, we can’t move the dogs. I’ll just keep calling until I find the right person.

I feel lighter, much lighter. We can focus on building that new life, a mountain life and a family life. Can’t think of a better way to spend the third-phase. Yippee.

BTW: Good job, Kate. Our scout.

Fall                                                                               New (Samain) Moon

Waiting is wearing. No news (which is good news so far) on the mortgage. We’ll know no later than Tuesday, October 28th, but that doesn’t leave much time between when I need to leave, driving, and the closing date of October 31st. If the decision is positive and we both imagine it will be, it will close off one end of the moving process.

Then, many other things become more straightforward. We can pick a moving date. We can make firm decisions about larger items that won’t work in the new place. We can do the math on almost all of the process and see what our assets will look like after closing. And project what effect selling this house will have on them, too.

I’m sleeping ok, but find that once I wake up, going back to sleep is not possible. Too many scenarios, ideas, issues hurdle the gate before the sheep can get there. That means I’m still in a modestly sleep deprived state, which I don’t like. It will pass.

Fall                                                                                 Samain Moon

Mover. Selected. Home Insurance. Selected. Appraisal. Done. Sleep. Disrupted. 58 pages of documents collated and faxed in addition to the 30+ we sent out on Monday. Done. Whole forests must shudder each time a realtor makes a deal.

A list of 25 things that need to get done between now and move in. Examples: Inside work list. Paint bid. Carpet bid. Pick a moving date. Get specific house measurements. Buy washer/dryer. Contract for perimeter fence. Estate lawyers for Colorado estate law. Medical insurance in Colorado. Medical records to Colorado. Wireless setup. Utilities transferred. And on. and on. and. on.

Due to early rising to complete more document discovery, collation and transmittal both Kate and I are a little (ok, a lot) fried. Sleep deprived and wrestling with detail overload. I don’t feel overwhelmed, but I am pretty whelmed.

This two weeks will probably be the most intense of the entire process if our mortgage application is accepted. Here’s an example from the Hadean realm of the underwriter. When I sent them a copy of our IRA holdings and our Vanguard holdings, I did not print the second page. I never do to save paper. But, if it says page 1 of 2, the underwriter has to see the second page. Even though it contains nothing. So, reprint. Resend.

How this process ever got accomplished before fax and e-mail, I’ll never know. It must have required logistical expertise of military strength. In the early 1980’s I was involved in a major settlement with the Keith Heller folks. They brought you those lovely cement slabs with swatches of colored panels on the West Bank. When the community group with which I worked finalized the deal, we faxed my signature to Washington, D.C. to HUD. This was such a big deal-the faxing-that I have a picture of myself in the act.

Now there’s fax, e-mail, scanning. Document retrieval, sharing online. And electronic signatures. Without all this there is simply no way we could have contemplated finding a house and trying to buy it in a period of three weeks. Which also means, I suppose, that we would not have had this fun, super compressed period we’re in right now. Hmmm.