La Paz: Season Two

To Home and To Wander

About three weeks ago, Ed and I were sweating it out in the lovely, but extremely humid Oaxaca coast. Now we’re back in Ashland, enjoying lovely July weather. The nights are cool, the days not too hot. Just perfect.

Ashland from Hitt Trail

 We enjoyed Puerto Escondido, what little we saw of it in our brief two days, and we decided we have to return in the winter months. There are a number of places where we could go to birdwatch and hike, but these activities are best done in cooler temperatures.

Love these guys! 

Our hotel pool and the beach in the background.  

If you’re thinking of going to this seaside pueblo, stay on the beach! We failed to do that, but oh well, taxis are cheap.

In returning to Ashland we’ve had to rely on the goodness of friends and family for our accommodations, and we are deeply grateful to all of you who have housed and fed us.

We don’t want to overstay any of these welcomes, however, and since we had decided make Ashland our home base, we figured we should look at houses. 

In our three weeks here, we’ve looked at many homes. We put an offer on one that seemed the perfect fit—one level, good natural light, an open floor plan, a view.

The inspection suggested otherwise. A new sewer pipe to the road was needed and the siding…omg…we looked at the peeling paint and dried caulk, and both thought, “No, not again!” The irrigation system clearly needed work, and there were other issues that would take time and money. We backed out. 

It was a relief. In particular because the cost was on the edge of what we wanted to spend, and all we could think was we’d have no money for travel. Yikes!

The lesson was clear. We needed to be more thorough in our house appraisals and less spontaneous. We were spontaneous in La Paz as well—twice. At least we hadn’t put earnest money down on those.

Amazingly for all the emotion-driven decisions we’ve made, we haven’t attached ourselves to something we’ve regretted. And we are having fun.

Given that this sale fell through, Ed and I decided to cancel our trip to Washington and Canada in order to spend more time looking. We were bummed, but needed to home in (pun intended).

As we looked, we even considered renting. But renting for two weeks here and there doesn’t work, nor does renting long term while traveling months at a time and paying for two places.

As it turns out, we found another house we really like. We put an offer in and accepted the seller’s counteroffer. Inspection is Wednesday, so I’m not saying we have a new home yet. If it goes through, we take possession August 20 and have a week to move in before we head to Europe.

But here’s the important question: Can Ed and I be untethered while owning a home?

I think so. 

This whole idea of being tethered or “stuck” (in my mind) started to gain traction with me when my mother would not/could not make a decision about downsizing and moving when she needed to…when she had the mental and physical capacity to do it.

I began to fear the same would happen to me—to Ed and me—and we would be sitting around in 10 or 15 years, still hashing out whether we should stay or move, and then we’d never move even though we had not made a clear decision that we wanted to stay.

The fact that we sold the house and managed to pack up and get our stuff in storage has been extremely freeing. We know that we can make a big change. We can live out of two suitcases for four months.

For me—for us—being untethered is letting go and making a change, and discovering new opportunities. We can certainly do that with a damn house.