Several changes to our life and lifestyle are on the horizon. Effective on Monday, January 30th, Charlotte starts a new position with a consulting firm back up in Northern Virginia, Fairfax County to be exact. She left her previous firm on October 17 and did a bit of independent consulting for a couple of months. We were still ensconced here in our home within the Kiln Creek neighborhood of Newport News, VA.
As a result of her being offered and accepting this position with this new firm, the decision was made to relocate ourselves back to the Northern Virginia area. Sort of like coming home, considering that the area was our home for well over 30 years.
So now comes the “fun” times, oh sure! We are in the process of prepping our current house for sale and are searching the Fairfax, Arlington, Alexandria area for a new home in a condo building. Winter is not supposed to be a terrific time for selling a property, but we are hopeful that Kristie, our real estate agent down here in Hampton Roads area, the terrific and professional person who helped us last year in finding and buying this house will be very successful on our behalf again.
We also engaged Alanda, the same real estate agent in Northern Virginia who helped us sell the condo we had in Alexandria. She also was a terrific professional who worked wonders for our condo sale. She is on the job again to find us another great condo home. We do see a few listings up there that are attractive to us, are in the optimum locations for the times she will need to go into her offices and are within the price range we are looking for. But the biggest problem for me/us is that by the time we are ready to start seriously working on a new home, the ones we really like will be gone most likely.
So now it begins, we created a pair of to do lists. One for the contractor/handyman will be perform the fix up/repair and image tasks, and the other for us to enable us to address all of the myriad things that it will take to sell one house, buy a new home, engage movers, prepare for the double trips from Newport News to whatever section of Northern Virginia we actually buy a new home.
Another major concern is for our aged, senior fur baby cats. Both are in their teens and as we all understand that age range is positively ancient for kitties. Our Penny appears to be in decent shape, but we will have a vet check her out prior to the move. Our sweetheart Duchess however is in not such good condition. She has been suffering for quite some time with various ailments and of course the problems that are part of becoming a senior citizen of the feline world.
So, we will have a veterinarian coming in a few days who will give her a good physical evaluation, assess her quality of life, whether she is in intractable pain (we know she has pains, simply because of her movements and vocalizations.) and what, if anything, can be done to improve her wellbeing. You see, like a lot of people who are owned by their animal children, our two fur baby kids are family, not pets. So, we care about their life quality as other people care about their human kiddos.
But all will be addressed as we progress toward our departure from the Hampton Roads/Newport News Virginia area and return to the DMV (District Maryland Virgina area).
Author: harv1941
Just a summary, I am 84 years of age, retired in July 2013 and settled down to promoting the dangers of bacterial meningitis, which killed my beloved son, Mike in 2009. My wife, Charlotte, and I embarked on an adventure of live aboard cruising, aboard a large Blue Water motor yacht. While our beginning was rather fraught with hurdles, we continued to look forward to the day we moved aboard the Misty Lady and cruise the eastern seaboard and associated waterways. After more than four years of life aboard this Bluewater Motor Yacht, I developed an advanced problem due to interaction with medications and experienced rather frightening balance problems. Therefore, getting on and off the yacht was fraught with danger of falling between the docks and the boat's hull. Walking the docks was also problematic considering that our yacht club docks were all floating docks and my balance problem was a danger during the walk from our yacht's docking slip to the clubhouse or out to the DC Wharf facilities and our car housed in the yacht club's reserved garage. SO, we had to regretfully put the Misty Lady up for sale and move back on shore. We moved on shore, first into a condo apartment in Alexandria, then after two years there, we relocated to the city of Newport News, in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia. Our original desired location was in the city of Hampton, Virginia, which is the oldest English-speaking settlement in the United States having been established originally in 1610. My ancestors came to this country through this settlement in the mid 1600s and lived in that area for around 100 years before beginning a migration of one portion of our family toward the west.
I looked forward to moving back to this area and exploring the roots of my family, both maternal and paternal ancestry, but we found a great house in the Newport News area and became ensconced in the terrific neighborhood of Kiln Creek. My wife, being still actively employed, received a substantial offer in a position with a government contractor firm back up in Northern Virginia. So we put the Newport News house up for sale, receiving and accepting an offer withing two days. We then relocated back up to the city of Alexandria and into another high rise condo. My wife reached a point where considerations for retirement were becoming very important. She indicated that she really didn't want to retire in Alexandria, so once again we began a house search in the Tidewater area, this time in the City of Williamsburg and in a community restricted to 55+ age owners. We found the ideal location, initiated the sale and closing for our retirement home. We then put our condo on the market. Alas, the market was not as robust as before so we had to change asking price a couple of time, but finally the Alexandria Condo was sold. Now we are set to enjoy the great locations found here in the Tidewater/Hampton Roads area, considering that we are history buffs and there are literally hundreds of historical sites in this segment of our nation. Of course living in Williamsburg is the epitome of history living life.
So, now we are in our retirement home, in a great retirement type community. A great clubhouse with a fine dining restaurant, a grill/pub, an award winning PGA designed golf course and miles of walking trails. Looking forward to my wife's eventual full retirement and the two of us visiting all up and down the east coast historical spots.
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Misty Lady Thought and Comment 