Life as you know it has changed.
Well, maybe not your life. But mine, for sure. I have gone
from a nomadic, trailer trash person with the freedom to move whenever I want,
to a tied-down, chained to a house, property owner.
No longer will I have the pleasure of answering the
question, “Where do you live?” with the answer, “In my trailer.” Inevitably the
questioner looked puzzled and said, “yeah, but where do you live when you’re
not camping?” Oh, that was fun.
No longer will I be able to do my housework in 20 minutes so
I can spend the rest of the afternoon sitting in the breeze watching the swans
glide down the lake.
But I guess everyone has to grow up sometime.
Back when we were working, we knew how we wanted our
retirement to look. Travel was paramount, and we had a bucket list a mile long.
We planned everything out many years in advance. We knew we didn’t want to have
a house sitting empty while we traveled at length, nor did we want to have a long-distance rental property, so we sold the house and funiture as our
employment end date got closer.
It was easier than expected to adapt to living in a trailer,
moving around the countryside. We came to love it - the freedom, the adventure.
It was everything that we had expected, and more. I can honestly say that there
was no downside to living the nomadic life.
So it makes it unexpected that our next step took very
little planning at all. In fact, I’m not quite sure how it happened. We saw a
cheap property, took a chance and bid on it. We lost that low-ball bid, but it
took root in our minds that we wouldn’t mind living in a permanent spot again The one challenge to being a Canadian full-time RVer was that we had to find friends or family with land to stay on when the campgrounds closed down for the season and we weren't able to head south yet. For some reason, countries have rules on how long a foreign visitor can stay in their country.
The house that we finally ended up purchasing is a fixer-upper with “good bones”, according to the house inspector.
It’s not a big house, and only one floor. But it has a kitchen that would make any cook’s heart sing.
It is a house with a history. It was originally built as a one room schoolhouse in the twenties, and a fellow just down the road has told us that he attended this school for all 8 elementary grades. We have found an old desktop in the attic, initials playfully etched into it with the date of 1938. It will be an adventure to discover more about the place.
We have spent the summer making it ours, and now we are
preparing it, and ourselves, for the coming winter.
But the hard part had to come first.
Now that we have a “sticks and bricks” home, we no longer
need our much loved rolling one.
With
tears in my eyes, I watched the new owners pull our beautiful Airstream out the
driveway and down the road. I hope that they
will be good to her.
My driveway looks empty now. Life has changed.
W
