Adventure 862: A View from the Perch/1

We made it home from wintering in Tucson on April 6. By then, our house was being made ready for the market by yeoman work from Angela and Leticia who cleaned, scrubbed, and staged. It is now May 21. The house is sold. We're five days in to living in our new digs which we're calling "The Perch". We're just a couple of old birds living up on the fourth floor. The people who bought our home of thirty-six years are a young family with three boys. The father is a civil engineer; the mother is a Pediatric ICU nurse, and the three boys are budding geniuses who've been on award winning robotic teams. The parents love to cook, so they were impressed with our kitchen (As they should be). They also loved the pizza oven, the garden area, and the shop. Most of all they loved that the boys could attend the same school they've been attending. The family has been living with grandma (Who lives ten blocks away) for the past three years while Rebecca, the mom, finished nursing school. Meanwhile, Ty, the dad, commuted from Redmond, Oregon on weekends. It's easy to see why they were eager to find a house. We're glad to say to them, "This house has been great for us; it's your turn." Meanwhile, we've been downsizing, packing, moving, reminiscing, lamenting, feeling a little wistful, shedding a few tears, and mostly enjoying the thrill of "jumping off the cliff" into our new life paradigm. Life has been such a flip book. It seems the pages flip by faster all the time. On the ride, we're trying our best to realize that life is good, especially today.

We spent nearly half of our lives and all of our married life (to date) in this home.

The new adventure begins.

On move in weekend, Libby came home to organize the kitchen. She's quite good.

Our kitchen space is proving to be quite easy to operate.

We were pleasantly surprised to find that the great room has more space than we anticipated.

We'll miss this guy.

This is the main entrance. Our perch is up and behind, opposite this view. We look down on the courtyard and out into the Southeast from our balcony.

We still have to hang our art, hook up the TV, lay down a new rug, and get the internet started. All in good time.

Our bedroom is spacious as well. We have a walk through closet that's large enough for our clothes plus some storage, and we can actually do a pirouette in the shower! In addition, there is a half bath off the kitchen that holds the washer/dryer. Plenty of room for us. Fric was 180 square feet. The "Perch" is more than six times the space.