One Year to Live: Month Five
8/29
Our trailer arrived Friday before Labor Day and we filled every inch of our allotted space (including one repack to fit in 8 or 9 more boxes) before the truck picked it up on Tuesday. We spent a day cleaning and making runs to Goodwill and the dump before finally leaving around 5:30 Wednesday night in our fully packed 30-foot rental RV. We arrived at the Spokane KOA sometime around 11:30 PM.
9/4
Thursday we drove about 550 miles from Spokane to Billings, Montana, once again arriving close to midnight. Between the 5 whining wiener dogs and an overly affectionate feline we got very little rest. We gave up trying early Friday morning and left the campground headed for Kennebec, SD.
9/5
Friday was the only day we did any sightseeing, visiting Sturgis and the Black Hills Harley Davidson shops and spending an hour or so at Wall Drug. Things get a little fuzzy after that due to some serious sleep deprivation and white line fever, but I do know we left early Saturday morning headed for the Kansas City KOA. I think that was the only campground we made it to while the office was still open and we actually hit the sack a little after sunset.
9/7
We left KC around 1 AM Sunday morning to make the final push towards home. Despite taking a nap break in a Walmart parking lot in the middle of nowhere, we managed to pull into our new driveway around noon. That’s 2400 or so miles in about 89 hours - not bad for a zoo on wheels.
9/8
Monday morning we hit the Toyota dealership bright and early to pick up our new Scion xB. The trailer arrived around noon and the rest of the day was spent unloading boxes and furniture into the house and cleaning up the RV. I finally crawled into the freshly re-assembled bed at 1:30 AM for 5 hours before getting back into the RV to make the drive to Nashville to turn it in Tuesday, following my dad the 120 or so miles to Music City.
9/9
After dropping off the RV, we picked up my son for an overnight visit and headed over to Opry Mills Mall. We saw the new Batman on IMAX, ate dinner in a restaurant with a huge salt water aquarium ( complete with sharks ) and ran into Melissa Lawson (the Nashville Star winner) in the Gibson Gallery. Very cool.
9/10
The next morning we dropped the kid off and made the 3 hour drive back from Nashville to meet up with my aunt and cousins for lunch. After 3 hours of catching up, we drove 30 miles or so to get to a decent sized grocery store to fill up our empty fridge with food we can eat without needing plates or pans, which of course are all neatly packed away in a box somewhere. Ah the joys of moving. :)
9/15
We got hit pretty hard by the remnants of Ike on the 14th, and as a result of the 75 mile an hour winds, our power, phone, internet and part of our front porch were down for several days. I had to drive 30 miles to an internet cafe to send a few emails for work on the 15th, which was supposed to be my first day back at work. In reality, it was Wednesday afternoon before everything was up and running again.
9/23
All in all, the move to Kentucky has been quite an adventure. Although we’re starting to settle in and figure out how to get around, we still have one whole room that is filled to the ceiling with boxes. Time to rent a storage unit. :)
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One Year to Live - Month Three
I wrote a post called One Year to Live a few months ago, and I just thought I’d give an update on how this exercise has changed my life so far, as well as use this opportunity to explain my absence over the last month.
The big news thus far is that we are preparing to move to Kentucky from Seattle at the beginning of September. This is really a huge deal and a major undertaking, as you might imagine. We spent a few days last week traveling around Kentucky and Tennessee visiting family and looking at houses before finally deciding to move into my grandmother’s old house in Mayfield, the town where I was born 37 years ago.
I left KY about 12 years ago and moved to Seattle, and my wife is a Seattle area native, so this is a big change for both of us, although in the end I think it will be a great change of pace for us. We’ve lived in a tiny little house for the past 10 years, doing OK but never getting ahead due to the high cost of living here. Now that I make decent money and have a boss that is willing to let me telecommute full-time, we should be able to live really well in KY, where the cost of living is a fraction of what it is here.
Most of my family lives within easy driving distance, and my oldest son is currently in Nashville, so it will be good to reconnect with the people that matter most to me. It hit me pretty hard when my grandmother passed in November of 2006 because I hadn’t seen her in probably 8 years. I don’t want to live that regret again by continuing to live so far out of reach of my loved ones.
The other cool aspect of this move is the proximity to Nashville. While Seattle does have a decent music scene, I really think Nashville is going to give me the greatest opportunities as an artist, given my country roots.
All and all, I am excited about the future and the ability to kind of reset and refocus my life on the things that really matter. That’s really what the “one year to live” exercise is about.
I’ve also slowly been working on Clif.tv, which is still very much a work in progress. I’ve been writing a bit and recently finished a song called How Beautiful She Is that I am happy with. Since I will lose the daily commute and gain about 2 hours a day after the move, I hope to use that time to get a lot more writing and recording done once we’ve settled in.
That’s about it. I’ll give another update once we’re planted in the Bluegrass State. Thanks for listening. :)
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How Beautiful She Is
Episode 4 features a brand new song, How Beautiful She Is, about a soldier who loses his sight in the war. I hope you enjoy it.
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