Happy New Year! Can you see clearly what 2020 will bring? Here we are already firmly over our New Year's Resolutions, and on with our lives. It has been a really long time since I blogged. I've been a tad bit busy, my bandwidth for writing, in large part, taken up by working on writing a book. More on that in a future post.
We are back in our home in Ahwatukee. So Very Strange! We haven't lived in this house for two years, really 4 1/2 years if you go back to when we first became nomads. We stay in this house or another home we own between renters (generally for very short periods), and we are currently looking for a new renter.
Newton's First Law of Motion states that a body at rest will remain at rest unless an outside force acts on it, and a body in motion at a constant velocity will remain in motion in a straight line unless acted upon by an outside force.
We seem to have come to a screeching halt, and we are at rest... sort of. An outside force, namely the best renters in the world returning to Ireland and leaving our house in a ready to rent condition has stopped us in our tracks, for however long it takes us to find someone to fill it.
This is not our first time to "repatriate". It has happened to us several times in our lives. It is a real thing to feel discombobulated on returning "home". We continue to be so thankful for having a place to return to, but it won't be long before we start being "itchy" to hit the road again.
We spent the both the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays in Tucson at two fantastic pet sits. Ky was recovering from a double hernia surgery. It wasn't an emergency, but something that needed to be done so that we didn't have to deal with a crisis while we were out and about, potentially in a foreign country. The hardest part about it was that he couldn't play pickleball for 6-8 weeks. Of course, he was back on the courts at four weeks.
Of course, the best part was getting to be with the kids, the loves of our lives!
In between our pet sits it was also great fun to be back in Phoenix for some of the annual Christmas events. It was worth returning for each of them alone. My former Toastmasters group party was a hoot that included the famous and hilarious white elephant exchange, and a new member who is a very talented ventriloquist. She and her "volunteers" kept us laughing out loud!
Getting to catch up with all the neighbors at an annual Christmas stocking stuffer party that I actually started about 20 years ago (wow that really dates me!) was a special event. It makes me so happy that one of the neighbors is carrying on the tradition.
I was also able join some of my amazing sister pilots, the Phoenix 99s, in flying Treats to the Towers for Christmas. In our annual event we deliver sweet treats to the air traffic controllers in the airport towers all around the valley. It is one of my favorite things to do. The Cessna 172 was sweetly familiar, and the open air cockpit of the Super Cub for one of the flights was chilly and exhilarating! It was my first time to get to fly in the Super Cub - what a rush!
Right now we're back in Phoenix. Dear amazing friends in Phoenix, please do not take this the wrong way, but I'm having a tough time here. Being in a place where we've spent so much time feels... repetitive. It's our fault, and we should be better at finding new things to do in Phoenix, but we fall in to our old routines. We have plenty to do, but it seems like it is mainly the necessary stuff like repairs on the house, appointments with doctors, car maintenance, more projects on the house, etc. You, dear friends, are by far the best part of coming back. When we leave again, we will miss you!
Pickleball as usual dominates a good portion of our free time and we even participated in a tournament. No medals this time, but we played well against excellent competitors, and we learned some good lessons.
We are itching to hit the road again though. Below is the tally of our two previous year's of lodging - our lives by a few numbers.
We spent the most nights pet sitting, then in Airbnb's. We stayed in 67 different places this year. And they were almost all good days and places. We love pet sitting the best, and we are so thankful for all of the opportunities we had to stay in peoples' beautiful homes with some of the nicest pets on the planet!
In addition to our typical sits with dogs, cats and birds, we expanded our resume with some new animals this year. We had never before kept worms, chickens or horses, but now we can boast of our prowess and understanding of all of those. Every pet sit and every Airbnb from this year were fantastic, absolutely all 5 stars. We also had the opportunity to stay with family and friends 16 times. We generally limit those stays to no more than three nights because as Benjamin Franklin famously said, "Guests like fish, begin to smell after three days. We hope that no one ever says of us, "Oh no, the Coffeys are in town again!"
Here is my affiliate link that we use for finding pet sits.
We would love to know if you decide to join in the pet sitting site. Everyone we have referred has loved it and I especially love to hear where you travel to if someone keeps your pets, and/or, where you travel to to keep someone else's pets and homes!
Back to Newton and part of his second law, "Any force, such as friction, or gravity, that causes a body to slow down or speed up, is an unbalanced force.
What I'm feeling at slowing down and staying in one place is an unbalanced force. We're advertised in all the right places, and we're trying to patiently wait for the right people to come along and take it. Only God knows His plans though, and we are waiting to see what those are. We're hoping it includes an extended trip to South America. We're just waiting for the unbalanced force that causes us to speed up again!