Finally, May 1, 2020 arrived and we got back into our house in Knoxville, Tennessee! The excitement was real, even if the house was empty.
A couple of days after my birthday, I received my gift: getting back into our house! Excited, we headed to the storage facility nearby to retrieve some of furniture we kept, but for the most part, we just camped out, using the versatile RV/travel gear.
Per COVID protocol, I had a Zoom birthday celebration with friends (and kept it under the 40 minutes we got for free…). That was definitely a new experience, but it was nice to see everyone and feel closer to them.
It also felt nice to cook in a real kitchen, and enjoy once again some of the best features of our Knoxville house: the back deck and gazebo, and the large front window. We took full advantage of the relaxing oasis in our back yard, critters in tow, and we admired a colorful sunset through the cinematic window overlooking our living room.
The weather was beautiful, so we resumed our regular neighborhood walks. We used to take long and short walks with our dogs when they were younger; we had to use the doggie stroller this time, as their old legs couldn’t keep up with the hilly terrain. Across Northshore Drive, we walked through the park to the water, dodging a long black snake heading for the thicket by the Frisbee golf area.
The warm and fuzzies continued as we visited with family in Maryville and Oak Ridge.
The months of May and June brought a bag of mixed feelings as we tried to sell our house—our home of 15 years, which didn’t feel quite like home anymore. The process was complicated and dragged on, made more miserable by the incompetence of our first realtor. Meanwhile, as luck would have it, David received a job offer. One morning, he handed me a cup of coffee and asked: “How would you like to move to Colorado?” I took a sip and smiled—and the rest is history (which you can read in my post Serendipity Has Its Way). We packed our doggies and headed for the hills, the Rockies, in July of 2020.
A year later, to the day, we moved from our rented apartment into a house (see the story in my post Honey, We Bought A Fixer Upper!), which then we proceeded to make into a home. Come back to read more about the renovation process and its results in my next post!
