Long Hiatus - New State -

Life has zipped along at an extremely rapid pace for us since Thanksgiving 2011. The day after Thanksgiving, Doug and I were driving to Irving for lunch with his daughter, Nancy and granddaughter Julia. As we drove along Doug says, "You know, with this economy slumping so much and our investment portfolio going down with it, we need to be thinking of truly downsizing in the next five years. If we don't, there's every possibility of us winding up in a piano crate under a bridge." I nodded affirmatively as he continued driving. A few minutes later he says, "Maybe we need to do this in the next two or three years." Again, I agree with him. About ten more miles down the road he says, "We need to do this now. What do you think?" I tell him I'm with him however he wants to proceed.

We had a lovely visit and luncheon with Nancy and Julia and picked up our conversation on the way home. Doug says, "Id like to move some place further west." The wheels started turning in my brain and I recalled living in Arizona as a child, but do not now like Arizona politics. Doug had lived in Albuquerque forty years ago and fell in love with New Mexico. I told him New Mexico sounded good, but not Albuquerque because it's too far north and cold. Besides, it's a large city and would still be too expensive. Doug says, "Okay. We'll look about 200 miles south and 2500 feet lower on the western side of some eastern leaning mountains." Upon arriving home, we looked on a map and lo and behold-Alamogordo popped up. Doug immediately sent an email to the mayor asking about Alamogordo and a good real estate agent. Mayor Griggs responded quickly saying, "Come on. You'll love it here and here's the name of a great real estate guy."

I started receiving emails of listings right away. We got through the holiday season and in January, I zeroed in on six homes. We drove to Alamogordo and as we started driving through the Sacramento Mountains in New Mexico, I was hooked for sure. We came in a day early so we would have time to drive around the town and get some idea of what we were getting ourselves into. The next morning we met the real estate agent and I was ready with a list with the one I was most interested in at the top. We went in, looked around, and Doug said, "Well, what do you think?" I replied, "This is the one." We went back to the office and made an offer and returned to Weatherford. We drove back  in February for the closing on the house and moved to Alamogordo March 15, 2012.

About ten days after moving in, Doug decided to connect the water to the inside refrigerator so we can enjoy cold water and ice. On the back wall of the garage is a tree of copper pipes that he worked from. Later that evening I went out to the backyard and noticed water running down the side of the house. I immediately told Doug and he says, "I hear water dripping in the bedroom." I ran in and began moving photos and artwork sitting on the floor around the walls waiting to be hung. I placed a waste basket under the leak and noticed an even larger leak starting over the high boy. As I returned with a pan, upon entering the bedroom, I heard a strange noise and jumped back into the hallway just in time to avoid a 4 x 6 piece of sheet rock coming down. There was also gobs of wet insulation slung everywhere. I told someone later that it looked like an elephant had come to visit with a very bad case of diarrhea. Doug turned the water off and went up a ladder to figure out where the water was coming from. One of those copper pipes had once been connected to a swamp cooler and when they disconnected it, they simply crimped it. The stop valve on the pipe in the garage area had been left partially open and this led to the flood.

We spent the next 19 days in the Super 8 Motel while the insurance company and contractors put the house back together again. More later...