Apparently, we are not quite ready to settle in to the country life of retirement; the life of mowing 5 acres of grass and then watching it grow again.  Moreover, what we find ourselves embracing in this chapter of life is that we don’t have to play by the rules.  It’s called redefining retirement for a reason, and that’s what we’re doing, again. We’re redefining our path of retirement.

Life is What Happens

Sometimes, life has a way of defining our path and sometimes, life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.  You know, like planning your retirement. We have the prettiest piece of land and we love our little brick house. But it isn’t quite the fit we were looking for in the sense of long term. 

Our neighbor, with whom we share a property line, had been interested in our property at the same time we bought it. Subsequently, we told him we were giving thought to listing our house/property if he was still interested.  As life – fate – would have it, a few days later we had ourselves a contract of sale. No agents, no brokers, no muss, no fuss.  As a result, here we are just a few weeks out from closing escrow and closing the book on this experiment in country living retirement. Also known as redefining retirement.

Lessons Learned

Anytime you can learn from an experience, it’s a win-win.  We now know more than we ever thought possible about living on property with a well, and what that means if the power were to go out.  No power, no pump, no water.  We learned about septic tanks and drain fields.  We learned about having a big propane tank to fuel our gas stove, we learned about wildlife that roamed the property after dark and what can sometimes occur by said mischievous (and hungry) wildlife. 

I learned the song of cicadas can drive me to the brink of insanity.  But maybe the most fun of all was fostering 3 (siblings) barn cats and taming them to live out their life on a nearby horse farm.  It’s been a grand adventure and there are no regrets whatsoever.  It’s just time to turn the page in this chapter of life.

Gearing Up

So, we’re gearing up to make yet another move.  I think this makes 4 moves in 6 years and our 8th purchased/remodeled home!  We’ve been cleaning closets and selling a few pieces of furniture that we’ve acquired since moving east in an attempt to whittle our worldly goods down to the bare minimum.  Family heirlooms and treasured keepsakes will live in our son and daughter-in-law’s attic.  The rest, along with our car, will go into storage.  Come mid May we’ll hand our house keys to our neighbors/friends and say good-bye to our experiment in country living retirement.

Bound for Portugal

Next up, we’ll be house sitting in nearby Virginia for a few weeks. While there we’ll take care of appointments, doctor visits, etc., and map out a few more details in the grand scheme of things.

If all the pieces fall in to place, the way we hope they will, by mid June we’ll be on a plane bound for Lisbon, Portugal.  Why Portugal?  Well, that’s a story for another day. Suffice it to say we fell in love with Portugal in 2015 and it’s calling us back.  It’s the starting point.  The starting point of us redefining retirement, again.

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