What Are We Doing?

              We are excited about our new winter home and anxious to move in.  I am not-so-patiently waiting for the concrete to be poured for our RV pad and car port/patio and parking space.  We probably won’t be able to move in till the end of December, after the RV pad cement cures for 4 weeks.

              We aren’t “hanging up our keys”, however.  We still plan to be long-timers, though not full-time RVers.  For six years before we moved into our RV full-time, we spent about half the year traveling.  The last time we spent less than a month traveling in our RV was in 2002. 

              The day will surely come that we are either unable or not interested in RV travel, but we don’t see that time coming very soon.  We are already planning next year’s travels.

              For the past 6 years we have been spending our winters in either Arizona or Texas.  In many ways, our life won’t change much.  Now, we will be living in our winter home during those months, instead of in our RV.  The home is better-insulated, so we won’t be as tied to the heat index in Arizona as in the past. We will be 10 miles further east than in the past—closer to some hiking, further away from other trails.

              We are making new friends and missing our neighbors in Valle del Oro.  But we know, we will soon have good relationships here, as well.  It is a new chapter in our lives, though not too different from what we have been living.

They Don't Understand

John and I are a team. We make our decisions together and don't act until we are in agreement. In fact, we usually can anticipate what the other will say or think because we almost always think alike. I don't know how a couple can be full-time RVers if they don't agree about most things. You have to really like each other as well as love each other and you have to agree most of the time to make that lifestyle work.

For a good part of our married life, we have worked together in one way or another. We do have different responsibilities in our common life--John does most of the driving, though not all of it. He hooks up the electric, water and sewer systems of the RV while I take care of leveling and setting up the inside. I do the cooking. He washes the dishes and we do the laundry together. I am largely in charge of indoor cleaning.

While I handle our finances, we make financial decisions together. That has been true all of our marriage. (It must have rubbed off on our sons. Both of them have wives who handle the finances.)

We are buying a house/park model this fall in Arizona. Over the past couple of weeks, we have had meetings with a salesman, the sales manager, the sales coordinator, a manufacturer representative, and the resort manager. Two of the men looked only at John most of the time they talked. One woman looked mainly at me as she talked. Two of the people were really good at treating us equally and including both of us fully in the conversations. This week, we bought furniture at American Furniture Warehouse and the salesman treated us as co-participants in the purchase.

I don't know if the men didn't understand that women can be equal partners in the purchase of a home and additions that are built there. Or maybe, they don't approve of women in that role. And why wouldn't John be equally interested in the rental agreement here?

If I could train people in customer relations, I would tell them to treat both husband and wife equally, whether or not the two really have an equal voice in decisions. They can't judge from the outside and it is better to err on the side of equal treatment than to offend one member of the couple.

If we were 20 years younger, we would be handling this home purchase in the hours after work or on the weekend or during a short break from work. But we are both 71 and we no longer have that kind of stamina or ability to change focus quickly or multi-task. So this purchase, with the many meetings, has taken up most of our time and most of our energy. That explains why I haven't blogged in a week.