A Moving Experience…

Yes, the Great Move is finally completed. Well, as complete as it gets for right now.

Maybe a quarter of our stuff is here in Rio now. The rest is coming by the slow route…a truck from California to Texas, then a boat from Texas to Rio, and then another truck (or series thereof) the more than two hours to the house.

Between the move and million details related to that and a billion more unrelated to the move itself but to getting the house and all settled in, my schedule—both personal and professional—is a disaster. I can’t remember the last time I actually sat down and did any writing. Nor can I remember when I last was able to just relax and think.

But things are slowing down a little.

The place here is very nice, though the actual house we will be living in is still about eight weeks away from being finished. That means the entire place looks like a construction zone. Maybe that’s because it is a construction zone.

The property is an old plantation of some sort. Being in Brazil, maybe I’m better off not knowing what they grew here. There are three houses here now and we are temporarily occupying the largest of them.

This house is fairly big, but not really for three adults and three kids. Luckily, there is a built-in partial solution I’ll get to in a minute. This house will eventually be for Maria, her daughter, and granddaughter. It will be plenty big enough for them.

There is a smaller place that has two bedrooms that we have turned over to our oldest, Amanda. She’s turning the extra bedroom into a music studio and has everything else there she needs. That at least means one less person in this place! The downside is that we may never see Amanda again. Seriously, a huge part of the deal of her getting “her own place” is that she has to come up to “The Big House” (her words, not mine!) for breakfast and dinner with the family.

The third “house” is actually an old barn or storage building of some kind. I’m really not sure what it was used for in the past, but it’s being converted over to almost like apartments for the various staff taking care of security, gardening, and all the rest. Some of the security people in particular work long and odd hours, and we want someplace they can stay instead of driving all the way back to the city.

Interestingly enough, the new house that is being built is very similar to our old place in California. I guess that makes sense since we all really liked that place.

The pool, hot tub, and sauna are all in, but the wiring for the pumps and such is still in process. The roads are all completely done and paved, and the fence and gates are installed, though the automatic openers for a couple of the gates are flakey. The contractors are working on all of that.

We have phones and electricity, but the Internet is still on the odd side. I really don’t understand the system, but we will link via satellite back to our data center in San Diego, and there is a “temporary” dish mounted on a truck parked in the yard right now. Sometimes, we get solid Internet connections at blazing speeds. Other times, dialup would be faster. The real dish is supposed to be installed in about three weeks or so, and I’m told that will solve the problems.

Oh, and the “garage” is still being built. Not much of a rush on that, though, since all of our vehicles are coming on the boat. That includes our trucks (2), car, my motorcycles (4), Amanda’s motorcycle, and Jack’s “project” cars (5). Add in there all the tools and stuff Jacks needs to work on his toys and it gets complicated.

One thing we have talked about is getting a few horses. That will involve a barn or something. Me, I don’t care for horses. Truth be told, I’m about halfway afraid of them, but the girls love horses. Jack enjoys them. I suspect that JJ will like them, too. I guess that means I’m outvoted if it comes to that. We’ll see.

And speaking of the kids, Amanda has been busy getting “her place” the way she wants it, but Debbie and JJ have been a little bored. With so much of their stuff on the slow boat and all of the chaos around here, they haven’t had much to do. Jack and I have been more than a little distracted, so they have had to fend for themselves quite a bit. As always, Maria has been a great help there, and so has Amanda, letting them “help” her with tasks in her little house. But the big thing is that some of the construction crew have sort of taken JJ under their wings. He’s picking up a lot of Portuguese and the old mix of Spanish, Portuguese, English, and Dutch that so many of the locals speak. Like all little boys, JJ is fascinated by the construction equipment and tools, and the workers even had him pounding nails down flush into some boards the other day.

Overall, I think things are going well. Not as fast as I would like them to go, but that’s not too unusual…patience has never been my strong suit.

By the way…did I mention that I really hate moving?

Keep Loving!