First Things First

I wanted to go ahead and get this first bit out of the way. In the description, up there, I put “From Texas to Washington State and Onward to the UK!” So, let me clarify that one real quick.

In 2018, after more than thirty years of living in Texas, my husband and I packed up our family and moved the two thousand plus miles from Southwest Texas to Washington State. Yep, we moved literally half way across the country. Observe.

Oh, and we drove. Hauling a travel trailer, all of our worldly possessions, two kids, two cats, one fish, and a dog. Fun times. It actually wasn’t that bad and we, surprisingly, didn’t have anything go wrong. No one got sick, nothing bad happened, there were no flat tires, nothing. Shocked the hell out of us too! By the way, the dog we had, our sweet Charlie, we ended up finding another home for her unfortunately. It wasn’t that we couldn’t handle her or that she did anything wrong. Simply put, she went from having a big yard to having no yard and while walks were a plenty, she was noticeably going nuts and wasn’t getting any better at all. Some dogs can handle small, cramped quarters… some simply cannot. And it was unfair to expect her to just deal with it. So, we found her a good home with a nice family that had a big ol’ yard. I miss her terribly and think about her often but, that’s part of being a responsible pet owner – doing what is best for the animal, not for yourself. There was no way of knowing whether or not she’d do alright with the change in surroundings or not, until we actually went through it. The same thing later happened to one of our cats, was completely fine while we temporarily lived in a travel trailer for three-four months. But we move into a larger (obviously) apartment and she started literally shitting on the carpet, even though nothing about her litter or box had changed. Vet checked her out, she was just acting out for whatever reason, she was not happy. My best guess? Too much stress. She was too freaked out. Unfortunately, we had to find another home for her too because… apartment. Last update we got from the adoption agency showed she’s doing just fine, still has some litter box issues whenever things change around her though. Meanwhile, our eldest and remaining cat – he’s fine. None of it seemed to bother him at all. In 2019 – my daughter adopted her cat from a shelter in a town north of here so now we’re back to two cats and all those lovely deposits, fees, and costs that go with them. But I’ve seriously digressed.

Anyway… the whole point of this is that we moved from Texas to Washington State without knowing a single soul up here. We don’t have family up here and had no friends up here. I still don’t but honestly, I’m a serious introvert so it doesn’t bother me all that much, probably not entirely healthy but whatever. With the covid right now – I’m not missing much.

See, back in 2014, we came up here to Seattle and onward to Orcas Island on vacation. And were like “damn… it’s nice up here”. Because, well… here.

On the left – where we were living. On the right – where we vacationed. And not to mention the temperature differences. For example, the day we left Carrizo, where we used to live in Texas, to move up here – it was 109 degrees F. That’s about 42-43 C. In June. Not even the hottest part of the summer yet. When we got up here? We drove through snow up in the mountains and needed hoodies once we arrived. The weather simply cannot be beat. Even right now, during the “heat wave”. We don’t have air conditioning in the apartment, a lot of places up here don’t – and honestly, it’s not that bad at all. No A/C down in Texas? HA! That’s a fast way to literally die. Not like “oh, it’s so hot, I’m dying.” No, literally die from heat stroke/exhaustion.

Now, we’ve been up here since June 2018, so, we – luckily – had plenty of time to enjoy a lot of what the area has to offer before quarantine. The kids are going to schools that the school back in Carrizo couldn’t even get close to on their very best day ever. That’s another thing – the opportunities that the kids are going to have being up here and away from there. That’s not to say that there aren’t opportunities elsewhere in Texas, there are – and I do miss a lot of things about Texas. But you can’t change the weather there. Kind of like how location is so important when buying a house – it’s the one thing you can’t change about it.

So, now that we’re up in this beautiful area of the US, what could possibly have us wanting to move abroad, you might not be wondering. Well, that, is for another post.