And we're moving in February why??

(Photo is view from my home office door which opens on to the front porch of my beautiful home in Queidersbach, Germany.)

It has been snowing for a week.

All the locals told us it would be a hard winter. They were right, but seems a large part of the world is experiencing the same misery. Where we are trying to move from is covered in a white blanket even as the place we are moving to is getting pounded hard for the second time this year. "We haven't had much snow in five or six years," my cousin told me when I inquired as to the winter weather in Blacksburg.

It was certainly not our plan to move in February. We wanted to be out of here before then but all the accidents and recovery times just kept pushing us later and later.

This morning I cannot see the dense ivy at my front door. The trees are coated white yet again--the last coating never left, it just got added to. The funny front yard sculpture of a dog with his nonexistent head stuck in a hole in the ground is unseen, the only hint of his location being marked with a little mound of snow over the tip of his tail. Inside the metal body is a complete ant colony I discovered when I tried to move it to a new location. What are they doing now, buried in frozen darkness? I should have removed him and my favorite terracotta yard items into the garage while I had the chance this fall.

At the side patio I have been sprinkling seed on the bricks to make it easier for all the birds to find. I will run out soon. Seven fat blackbirds are either hunkered down in the deep snow, puffed out and unmoving, or hopping around pecking to find whatever they can not covered by the fall from last night. A netted bag of suet and nuts takes a while to get their attention. It is frozen and hard to eat. I should put on my boots and fill up the feeder. Grand tits, nuthatches, chaffinches and enormous jays are regular visitors. This morning, a solitary blackbird sits motionless inside the empty feeder, wondering why the filler-upper has been shirking her duties.

Inside the house, the packer-upper is hunkered down from the weather starting her third housebound day wondering why her "feeder" is so incredibly full and trying to get it ready to empty out.

My last grand opening

Tonight I sit in a billeting room on Chievres Air Base in Belgium. It is cold and foggy outside. Inside, my room is littered with papers, briefcases, and various digital gadgets from computers to card readers and cameras, all the necessary trappings of pulling together a commissary grand opening and being able to record it as I go. New to me this time is a Blackberry, a modern-day nag if ever there was one. Trying to be all things--phone, internet, camera, stereo--it has all sorts of challenges requiring me to figure it out as I go and frustrating me all the while. Of a greatly easier device is the new Kindle I received from Bill for Christmas. This device has nothing to do with the grand opening, it is just for feeding my ever-present appetite for reading. This device has turned out to be one of the easiest and must enjoyable electronic gadgets I've ever used. It is currently dishing up "The Measure of a Man" by Sidney Poitier, an actor I've always admired. For a book junky, this is like having a library on demand: buying a book can be done in less than a minute with the device not even plugged into the wall or a computer. No more having nothing to read on the road!

This trip is my last official grand opening. I have five weeks to go before I retire. Instead of going out in the evenings with the group, I stay in my room, isolating myself as a way of distancing from the emotions of saying goodbye to friends from Cairo, Egypt, and Livorno, Italy, here to work their usual magic on the new store. These talented and hard-working people have gained my respect. Knowing I may never see them again causes my insides to tighten and all my words to catch in my throat. I wish I could work beside them to design an endcap but can't find the time from my own job to do so.

My future keeps intruding on me this week. A problem with a new bank account in Virginia. A lost key to 931, our new house in Virginia. The longer I stay in Belgium, the more I can distance myself from the whole idea of leaving. These little surprizes jump into my email and remind me. Again my loyalties do the split, one foot on each continent, trying not to fall face first into the Sea of Separation.

The holiday is finished

(Photo of Bill and the little tree he decorated before I got home. We usually have a big tree with lots of European decorations on it.)





Thanks to Bill's efforts, Christmas did exist in my house this year, though in a much smaller and colder fashion than we normally have.

After arriving home from the airport on Christmas eve morning, I found only a trace of snow on the ground. Inside, my very smallest tree stood atop an end table with decorations and a few packages around it. The fridge had food for Christmas day. I went to bed for a few hours and got up to speak on the phone with a friend having a very sad Christmas because of a marriage gone nuts. As I spoke with her, I noticed the house getting colder and colder. Bill came up to me to inform me that the tank in the basement was totally empty! Christmas eve, 300 feet from my oil man's truck, and the tank is empty. Another fallout from my snow delay. Knowing it is probably hopeless, I call the cell phone and leave a message. We spend the evening feeding the fireplace and curling up under the covers. Fortunately, it is not below freezing outside.

At 1030 Christmas morning, my oil man Herr Wilhelm, calls to say "I come 5 minutes or never!"

Of course, we welcome him with open arms and profuse thanks and a few hours later the house is cozy again.

Christmas and New Year's were amazingly quiet this year. We were tired and just happy to read, eat and sleep. We stay up late and get up late. We wonder if this is what it will be like to be retired. We stay in our pajamas for two days and go nowhere. Bill had bought me Amazon's electronic book called Kindle and, though in love with real books, I take such a liking to it that I read one whole (free!) book on Christmas day. Bill has to travel to England for four days on business before New Year's and arrives home late and exhausted on the eve , another reminder of why we want to retire. Two airplanes, three cars, 1100 kilometers in four days takes a toll.

After New Year's, I marvel at the fact that I buy Andre Agassi's book "Open" through the computer and it drops magically into the Kindle in about 35 seconds from "one-click buy." As I take root on the couch again for hours and hours, I remind Bill that he is the one who bought it for me. He doesn't care. He is asleep in the recliner, recovering from his whirlwind tour of England.

Finally, on Saturday, we remove all signs of the little Christmas, pack it up and start working on my retirement papers. I've stalled on this long enough and dread the process immensely. I feel totally unprepared but grateful that Bill has gone through the process and mailed his forms a couple of weeks ago so he is coaching me through it all the way. When finished, I feel relieved but still wish I could just fast forward to the new house and be planted in one place, no longer in limbo.

I have not set foot in the office since arriving home except for a brief 30 minutes. More importantly, I haven't wanted to. Mentally, I have almost cut the cord completely, but remain still attached to it through obligation. I hope that once I've landed on the other side I will be able to move forward with some determination, no longer in limbo with one foot in each world. I have come full circle. Seventeen years ago, first arrived in Germany,I described myself in the same way and, as time went on, began to feel my worlds slidely slowly apart, pulling me away from the country I will now return to for good.

A light at the end of the snowbank

I made it to Richmond on Friday, Dec 18, driving from Salem with no problems. Turned in my rental car, checked into a Best Western a half mile from the airport and settled in to see what would happen with impending snow storm. By Saturday morning, there were 6 inches on the ground here and triple that in many places in western Virginia and north of Richmond. Long story short, my flights to Dulles International and on to Frankfurt, Germany, were cancelled. Thousands of people were stranded in airports and I was glad to be in an hotel instead. Going online for change of reservation was not working so I took the shuttle to the airport and stood in line for over an hour in hopes of talking to an agent. Gave up when the snow started heavy again. Finally on Sunday morning I have been able to get rebooked out of here on Dec. 23, landing on Christmas eve morning. My cousin Dreama who lives near here has dispatched her husband to come get me in his 4-wheeler so I have been rescued from the hotel for the next few days.

A step toward making the new house a home

Thanks to a business trip to Virginia, I was able to take some extra days to travel to Blacksburg with a to do list for the new house. I was met there the first afternoon by our lovely realty lady, Charlotte. She transferred all the keys to me and we chatted while sitting in the floor of one of the carpeted rooms. My emotions were running high because I knew I had entered the "last time I'll ever do..." phase of ending my career and starting a new life. It would be somewhat easier, I said, if I could just stay in Blacksburg right now and not have to go back to Germany at all. I would get to skip all the hard goodbyes if I could just stick my head into a hole in the four acres of forest surrounding the house and pretend. Unfortunately, that cannot happen.

Instead, I checked into a hotel and set about working down the list.

Flooring...two rooms from dreaded wall to wall changing to cushion vinyl in the art studio and hardwood in the office. The choices and possibilities were way too overwhelming to handle without a pro to help me out. Finally that one could get checked off.

Landscape...It was an adventure just finding the place in Ellett Valley on a road that should have been named Lost Hollow. I arranged for the millions of leaves to be removed from the limited grass areas of our house and made an appointment with a designer to meet me at the house the next day. Thousands of dollars will be invested in these two projects! Luckily, the house is in excellent condition and not in need of anything except furniture and us.

The nice thing about a town like Blacksburg, is that a network of trusted people is in place and accustomed to doing things for people with empty houses. Charlotte goes the distance with us and will oversee the floor work, the winterizing and be one of the three people entrusted with a key in order to check on the house until we arrive in March. We will then oversee the landscaping ourselves and, of course, the painful arrival and placement of our furniture.

The great room may become my favorite part. As the sun passes from end to end of the back of the house, it floods the huge windows and draws bright blocks of light on the oak floors. A camping chair placed in one of the warm pools affords a perfect view of the forest behind. No house breaks into the portrait of nature. The local deer disappoint me by chosing never to set foot on my land, despite the fact that everyone tells me they are everywhere. I assume that will change about the time the new landscape is placed, offering a new buffet of tastes and smells for them to explore. Though I really want to grow flowers in my retirement, I imagine the garden will be confined to one of the two decks, high out of the reach of the pretty munchers.

After a busy week of buying supplies, asking about cell phones, televisions, cable connections, propane, personal property taxes, etc. I headed back to Richmond only to find myself awaiting a huge snow storm and wondering if I get out of the airport in time tomorrow to connect to my flight in Washington Dulles. It is Dec. 18th and flying promises to be a real challenge between the weather and the holiday travelers. If I were ever a boss again, I'd promised never to make my people fly in December unless it was totally unavoidable!

The forecast in Blacksburg is for 17 inches of snow; Richmond about 10. Bill reports that Germany is not much better; even colder and snow on the ground already. Even Italy and England expect the white stuff. Looks like the tough winter predicted has started. I hope all the trees keep standing at 931.

We are homeowners

Today marks the first day of our owning a home. The mountains of paperwork are done. We are relieved. Now we must make our way through the next few months it will take us to actually move there. One of many steps to our new way.

Trying to catch up and find a house

After Bill and I finally felt recovered enough from the car accident to travel, we went to Virginia in September to attend my mom's family reunion and do some serious house hunting. Bill had done some hunting in May without me and the two favorite houses from that trip were still on the market. We found a nice long-term stay efficiency for the two weeks and set out every day to look at houses in Floyd and Blacksburg, Va. Interesting, we started and ended with the two favorite houses we had on day one. After looking at way too many places, we settled on a lovely wood house on 4.5 acres of forest. Wood floors, wood ceilings, lots of glass inviting the outside in, three fireplaces and lots of space. It reminds me of my house in Germany and was the only house that got a big "WOW!" out of me from the moment I stepped in the door.

Throughout the hunt, each day was stressful. We really wanted to be in little Floyd but found nothing there that did it for us. The people were amazingly friendly, it was chocked full of art and it was tiny enough to walk to everything. Known for country bluegrass music, it is a small town that has remade itself into an amazing sort of new age music and art mecca. More than one resident told us it is special and we believe them. Every time we go there we will probably wish we lived there! Every day we came home knowing we still hadn't found the right house.

As time was running out, we gathered all the paper on all the houses and did a process of elimination. By time we were done, only Blacksburg houses remained and went down to three, two and one. We went back to 931 again two more times, made an offer which was accepted on the first round and now it's just a matter of all the paperwork and the signing. Strange, all the looking was so stressful, but once we narrowed it down to one house, we were both relieved.

First step taken. Now, how the heck do we really get it all together and get there??