Chapter 9 - California Dreaming becomes reality

After we decided to move to Oceanside, our lives entered chaos from which they have not yet recovered.

The reverse mortgage thing was really complicated.  The lender rep we worked with was very nice but was a bit scatterbrained, and would forget that I had sent him the information he was requesting earlier in the day, sometimes multiple times.  The escrow company (in most places we would call this a title company) was chosen by the seller, and they must not have had experience with either a) a remote client, such as us, and b) a reverse mortgage.  They were always behind the eight ball.  And they never got us anything on time.

Our purchase agreement for the house in Oceanside was signed, finally, on February 20.  California law says closing should happen within 30 days. February has 28 days this year, so the closing target date was March 22.  But the buyer’s agent insisted on March 20; evidently they didn’t teach her about February in school.  In the meantime, we had to work with Fidelity to get the very, very large down payment organized and had to learn what was needed to do a wire transfer to a California bank. 

And, oh, by the way, we had to get our house in Richardson, Texas ready to sell.  There were some problems with it that, in our opinion, would turn off a prospective buyer.  We did NOT understand what the market was like, and how the house would literally have to be on fire not to sell quickly in our neighborhood, and for some buyers that might be an advantage.

We had been working with a realtor in our area, actually a mother and son (Sandy and Jeff Wolfe, highly recommended) who worked together quite well, and they were not pushing us to make a move before we were ready.  They did a very good job of explaining the process.  We would list the house, someone would make an offer, we would accept, have a home inspection, and then the negotiations would begin, over what repairs would be made and what we would do to offset what could not be repaired, and how much of it could we stand.  My good friend Roy, whose wife works in real estate, said be prepared to hear lots of things you don’t want to hear.

We had a very hard time finding someone to do some of the minor repairs we knew about – we had some stonework in the front steps that had gotten messed up during the long drought we had in Texas a couple of years back, and we had some decayed and rotted boards under the gutters that somebody never cleaned.  After a while, our realtor recommended a handyman who could make all the required repairs.  He came right around and gave us an estimate. Then we didn’t hear from him again, until I got back with our realtor and told her what happened.  The handyman then called and made an appointment.  It turned out that he was very talented and worked very quickly. He cleaned up our problem areas in a day or two. His name, for anyone in the area, is Trace Ivey.  If you live in Plano/Richardson/Garland and need a handyman, let me know and I will send you his contact info.

We had a sign in front of the house saying ‘Coming Soon’ and we decided on when to let it appear in MLS.  But first we had a photographer come, and we had to de-clutter the house so her photos would show the house at its best.  This was not easy.  Our house had almost thirty years of clutter. 

One problem was the kitties.  We have two cats, Smilo and Trillie, and they needed to be kept out of the way.  We had cat carriers, which we used to take the critters to the vet for their infrequent visits, but, thinking ahead, we needed a way to transport the kitties to California, and the cat carriers were too small for so long a confinement.  We found some crates in Petsmart, designed for small dogs. They were perfect, and even fit in the back of  our hatchback Toyota Prius automobiles. But two of them would barely fit in one car, and there would scarcely be room for anything else.  It was looking like two cars would make the trip.  I had hoped to ship one.

But the crates worked for confining the cats during showings.  We started showings on a Thursday afternoon, in advance of the house being in MLS, and had showings all day Friday, and someone asked for a showing at 8 PM but we said no.  We received two offers above our asking price, one by $10K and the other by a little less.  The lesser offer was cash, an investor looking to flip the property. 

In the meantime, our California property did not close on time, and stumbled along slowly with incredibly stupid questions from the loan underwriter.  For example, they wanted a payment history on our Texas homeowner’s association.  In California, HOA’s rule the roost, but in our neighborhood in Texas our association was really just a social organization, completely voluntary, with a fee of $15 a year.  We had to send them a link to a web page describing it.

We had a home inspection done on the Oceanside house, but the home inspection business is something of a racket, in my opinion, where they check certain things on their list, but don’t actually look around as you would as a homeowner.  We had only seen the Oceanside property two times, and really didn’t remember it well. The home inspection looked at about 5% of what I had hoped for. We had big problems when we moved in, some of them still hanging on.  We could not be there for the inspection, but our realtor was.  She later admitted she hadn’t watched what he was doing.  I'm still pissed.

Back to Richardson. We decided to go with the cash offer, because the process did not depend on a home sale in another state.  The buyer asked for a two-week closing (!).  Fortunately, he also said we could stay on in a no-cost leaseback for two more weeks, giving us a month to get out.  But our California house still had not closed.  We had a one-week period where the buyer had the option to back out, depending on the outcome of the home inspection.  The buyer asked for some small repairs to the house, but also asked for significant concessions for the pool.  We had known we would get whacked over the pool.  We made an offer to cover all repairs, and our realtors thought it was reasonable.  So did the buyer.  Now we had three weeks to get out.

We had some moving companies come in to give us estimates.  It really is kind of awkward, because the person who comes is sort of like a scout. You never see that person again, but they are the ones whom you interact with up to the time you make a decision. Afterwards, we worked with a guy at the warehouse in Carrollton, and with the van driver.

We got lots and lots of moving boxes from Atlantic Moving Services, and bought more locally from U-Haul.  We got lots of boxes from Total Wine and More. Those we filled with books, and donated somewhere around 35 boxes of books, and still had a heck of a lot of books left to move.  We donated our vinyl records and a lot of clothes and many other items to St Vincent de Paul. 

Richardson has twice-weekly trash pickup, and once-weekly recycle pickup. You can request bulk and brushy item pickup every Friday, and they will take just about anything except nuclear waste.  Richardson has the greatest garbagemen in the world.  We gave them plenty to do, but we should have given them more.

We were not moving everything – our Texas house was 2540 square feet, and our California house is 1800 square feet.  The rooms are all smaller, although more open. We did not move the furniture in our guest bedroom – the bed got sold.  The TV table was donated.  We disposed of our sofa, loveseat, and side chairs from our living room, because they were badly scratched by the cats and we couldn’t even give them away. I paid our lawn guys $50 to carry them out to the curb. We donated the convertible sofa from our den to a family who desperately needed it and didn’t care about the cat scratches.  Basically we moved our bedroom set, our kitchen table and chairs, and the dining table, chairs, and sideboard.  We moved the TV table, my desk and two office chairs.  We got rid of two old computer tables, a side chair, and gave away a recliner.  We also sold our washer and dryer, and gave away our plasma TV.  We did go do some shopping when we got to California.

In the meantime, our California house dragged on.  I had been sure, when we first started on all of this, that we would be stuck with two houses for a significant amount of time, but we reached the closing date on our Richardson house and the California house had not closed – part of the delay was a holiday honoring Cesar Chavez, which caused all the government offices to be closed the day the deed was supposed to be recorded.  Texas doesn’t take that day, needless to say. 

After March 31, we were technically homeless, although we had the leaseback period.  The closing at Chicago Title was a snap. Very professional.  The California house closed a couple of days later, but the closing documents were mailed to Oceanside, and we were in Richardson. One of the documents was a refund check, because the escrow company had overestimated our required deposit by more than $25,000.  I asked them to stop the check and do a wire transfer to our bank, which, to their credit, they did.

We were kind of in a tight spot, though, because the movers were coming on a Wednesday, and after that we had no place to sleep.  The movers did a fine job, carefully packing some artwork that we were unwilling to attempt to pack.  (Smilo attacked it a couple of weeks later, breaking the glass shielding.) We had some school volunteers coming on Thursday to pick up our (huge) refrigerator, bound for a teacher's lounge (we threw in our remaining Diet Coke) and our cleaning lady was coming one last time to try to clean up the mess, and on Friday we planned to take the last scraps out to bulk collection.  The cats stayed in the house, and we stayed at the Hyatt House a little ways down the street.  It was bittersweet.  We had lived in Richardson for nearly thirty years, and now we were leaving for a new life in California.  It was probably the third hardest thing I have ever done in my life.

Whatever was left had to go by car.  That included two cats, some clothes in suitcases, and some unopened wine bottles, a couple of jars of pennies we had long since forgotten about, dirty laundry, and other stuff that got missed.  Laptops and iPads came along as well.  We left Richardson at 7:25 AM on April 13, and did not stop again until we had covered 304 miles in 4 hours 34 minutes, finding ourselves a bit hungry in Big Spring, Texas.  We used Siri to find a Taco Bell.  We did not want to leave the cats in the car for any length of time, and in fact had to leave the windows open while parked because the weather, while nice, was too warm to leave them closed, so we were pretty well committed to fast food for lunch.   The cats each yelled for a while in the car, but after a while they got tired and went to sleep.  But if we went over a bump, or if the pavement got a bit rough, they started yelling again.  I told Smilo I agreed with him, it was a miserable experience.  The problem we had was we had two cars and two drivers and no relief drivers, and we needed to get there. We thought the movers were coming on Monday, so there was no time to lollygag.  Another problem is that the Prius has incredible range.  At 50+ miles per gallon, with an almost 11 gallon tank, you can easily go 450 miles without stopping for gas or even getting on the low side.  Except your bladder can’t go that long.  Or at least my bladder can’t.

From Big Spring we drove to Van Horn, 221 miles. We were now getting to the 80 mph speed limit part of Texas.  We refueled there, and after a brief pit stop in Fabens, Texas, we made it completely out of Texas.  Driving through El Paso late Friday afternoon was not exactly fun.  The speed limit is low, and traffic is pretty heavy.  Then there’s still some more Texas after you get through El Paso, but there is a definite feeling of accomplishment when you cross over to New Mexico.  You can drive from Dallas to El Paso and beyond in a day, but it is one long damn day.

Jody and I communicated by phone while driving.  I had my (built-in) GPS going and in general did the navigation, but I would check on her and Trillie once in a while.  We didn’t hit any serious gaps in cellular service.  We both have hands-free Bluetooth connections.  Our drive was helped by the fact that we were heading into the sun, with the days fairly long, and each day we crossed into another time zone, and fell back an hour.

Our next stop was at rest stop in Deming, NM, 152 miles after Fabens.  As we got tired, the stops were becoming a little more frequent.  Finally, we got to our goal for day 1, Lordsburg, NM.  It is pretty much the last place you can stop prior to Arizona, and there’s a whole lot of nothing once you get to Arizona, so you might as well stop for the night at Lordsburg.  There are a bunch of motels, and we ended up at a nice Quality Inn just off the interstate.  We unloaded the car and let the cats out of their cages in the hotel room. They were a bit shook up, although Smilo promptly ate some chow and used the litter box.  We were told there was a restaurant nearby, but we failed to find it. Since it was Good Friday, it’s possible that it was closed.  We got something to take out at McDonald’s.  We had last been in a McDonald’s in Chartres, France.  It’s a long story.  At least we had some nice Pinot Noir to wash down a Big Mac and an Egg McMuffin (no bacon) and some fries.

On our first day, according to the Automatic app, we drove 823 miles.  Some of that was extra, looking around for a place to eat. 

The next day, after breakfast at the hotel, we lost Trillie.  She had managed to get past the barriers that Jody built to prevent her getting under the bed.  The bed was on something like a pedestal, and she got under there.  I started packing the car while Jody tried to entice her out from under the bed, with no success.  I saw a guy from the hotel in the hallway and explained our predicament.  He came in the room and promptly moved the mattress and box spring, and Trillie fled from her hiding spot.  I managed to grab her and put her in the carrier.  But we didn’t hit the road until after 8:30, an hour later than I had hoped. 

Arizona was, for the most part, very pretty to drive through.  The first part of the drive we had very light traffic. The hardest part was driving from Tucson towards Phoenix to where I-8 starts up.  There was lots of traffic and lots of huge trucks in the left lane going 75 mph.  We stopped at Wilcox, about 73 miles, for gas and bathroom, and did not stop again until Gila Bend, another 200 miles west.  Gila Bend has a Taco Bell!  After refueling at Gila Bend, we drove to El Centro, CA, 178 miles west, where we took a break and refueled. From El Centro we did not stop again until we reached Oceanside, 136 miles, including a bit of a wild ride on I-8 through many 4000+ foot passes in California, straining the poor 4-cylinder Prius to its limits. When we got to Oceanside, we ended up on the wrong side of Ocean Hills Country Club, at a gate where you can’t get in unless you have a transponder.  At that point I was on the phone to our realtor, and she said drive around the corner.  It was that easy, but we had only been there a couple of times.  We got in past the guard station but didn’t have a key to the house, so we waited for Nancie to arrive.  She and her husband brought us a large welcome basket.  And we came on in.  The furniture, we learned, was on a truck heading to New Orleans.  That’s right – the wrong direction. 

The house we saw on April 15 was not the house I had in my memory.  It was smaller, had much less storage, and was not as updated as I recalled.  I can’t explain it – memory is just not that reliable, we took no photos of our own, and we saw lots of houses and they all blended together.

We left the cats in the house, and went on to the hotel I had reserved in Oceanside.  On the second day, I drove exactly 600 miles, including to the hotel and out to eat that night.  Drivng all day in a Prius is not exactly a good time. The car is very flexible, holds a lot of stuff, gets fabulous mileage, but it is not that comfortable to sit in for all of that time, and it is not blessed with a lot of power.  

Our movers came on Thursday, early, and unloaded the truck in a couple of hours. There was some minor damage but nothing worth fighting over.  That night Judith, our next door neighbor, had us over for dinner.  Judith, who emigrated to the US from Hungary after the uprising in 1956,  went to Boston College for her masters degree.  I went there quite a bit earlier than she did.

Since getting here, we have replaced the washer and dryer that were already here but hardly worked, and we are replacing the microwave and stovetop/oven, which are pretty old.  We bought a new 56” Sony TV to replace the plasma we gave away.  We bought new living room furniture (sofa, loveseat, two chairs) and found a new product called Furniture Defender, which protects the corners that cats love to tear up.  It works.  We are still struggling with the lack of storage and have donated a lot of stuff to a local charity. 

Oceanside has trash and recycle pickup once a week.  They provide rolling bins to hold the stuff, but the ones in the house were so small they couldn’t hold a regular trash bag. We ordered larger ones – most people do.  We got rid of most of our moving boxes through the Nextdoor website, but some we had to take to the dump, dodging the heavy garbage trucks in a Prius.  We think we have the trash under control, but we miss the world’s greatest garbagemen, found in Richardson, Texas.

The weather has been nice.  We had a big storm one Sunday, and some sprinkles, and we experience the marine layer because we are close to the ocean.  One day we did some shopping in Vista, a little more inland, and the car got pretty hot, but back in Oceanside we kept the house windows closed.  We have turned the air conditioning on one time, to see if it worked. We have used the heat a couple of mornings, but that’s it.  We are 3.5 miles from the Pacific as the crow flies, although to drive there is quite a bit more.  So far it has not been anything close to hot.

I got my driver's license the other day, and the automated system allowed me to register to vote. So it's pretty much official.