WTN: I bought a new house yesterday

[Jenise]

To celebrate, the seller pulled out this:

2021 Efeste Cabernet Sauvignon Lil' Mama Red Mountain
One of the best WA cabernets I've had in awhile. Drinking perfectly now, and silly good value for an under-$30 RM cabernet. Savory, complex, great minerality and balance; and it didn't taste immature. I'd have guessed it to have more years on it. I have yet to drink a '21 WA red that didn't impress--this is proving to be quite the vintage.

To celebrate, the seller pulled out this:

2021 Efeste Cabernet Sauvignon Lil' Mama Red Mountain
One of the best WA cabernets I've had in awhile. Drinking perfectly now, and silly good value for an under-$30 RM cabernet. Savory, complex, great minerality and balance. I have yet to drink a '21 WA red that didn't impress--this is proving to be quite the vintage.

Congrats, Jenise! Sounds like a great way to celebrate.

[David M. Bueker]

And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wine, and you may ask yourself “how did I get here?”

[Jenise]

It's only half a mile from my current home, so the good news is the wine cellar won't have far to travel!

Congratulations on new house (and good luck with cellar move)!

[Jenise]

Thanks, Dale. I have no idea what I'm going to do about the wine cellar, but there will at least be extra room in the garage to do something make-shift and the inventory gets smaller every day. Down to just 1219 now!

And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wine, and you may ask yourself “how did I get here?”

Thanks, Dale. I have no idea what I'm going to do about the wine cellar, but there will at least be extra room in the garage to do something make-shift and the inventory gets smaller every day. Down to just 1219 now!

Don't know the current costing on this stuff but when I was working as a lab rat at a bio company they used cold rooms made from prefab double wall sections with insulation between the walls and they locked together using a special square drive key (camlock). You just set them up, locked them together and made a room of whatever size you wanted, then hung a cooler compressor on one side. You could have more than one cold lab in a giant warehouse that way. Might be worth looking into. Might also be worth talking to our mutual friend Drew, who should have some insight into scaling down some of the systems he uses.

Congratulations, Jenise — hope the move is easy and the new place is everything you want and need it to be!

[Jenise]

Thank you, Patchen. It's a major downsizing that I'm already panicking over, but it's a single story home that will be a lot safer for Bob. Peace of mind is worth everything.

[David M. Bueker]

Peace of mind is priceless.

[Robin Garr]

Peace of mind is priceless.

Second the motion.

. Down to just 1219 now!

Congrats on the new lakeside house.

I got double depth racking when I had to move my wine. So if have six of the same wine they need only three holes. It's more stable than single depth

[Jenise]

Speaking of peace of mind, Bob walked into my office yesterday sobbing. When he could finally speak, he said "Thank you thank you thank you. The new house is the best present ever." He has Parkinsons dementia so doesn't always fully grasp things right away, but he understood more than I realize how unsafe our current home was for him, and the reality of what I'm doing finally sunk in. He was just that overcome with relief.

[David M. Bueker]

We need a hug emoji.

[Jenise]

Don't we, though.

Wow, Jenise. Good luck with everything, not least of which is dealing with Bob's Parkinsonism. The choice of a single story house is very wise indeed. My wife and I have begun talking about a move that would coincide with our retirement from our current positions (a good 3-5 years in the future). To this end, we've started saving shippers to use in our (considerably smaller) cellar relocation. We're also relentlessly downsizing, as I'm sure you're doing now, too. I find it's easier to part with things than I'd imagined, heartless soul that I am, but we haven't got down to the "essentials" yet (books, albums, wine, furniture, kitchen items) where the real wrenching decisions will have to be made.

[Jenise]

Mark, thanks. To be honest, it's not something Bob and I ever discussed. Not even with his disease; he was suddenly too far along to have conversations about it. I just announced one day that I was going to go look at a house. Six weeks later, I bought one.

Funny, when we moved here into this fabulous MCM house with the open 2200 sf main floor that is five areas, not rooms per se, with an elevation change to announce each new intention, it never dawned on me that we'd be here 20+ years nor did I, then relatively young, consider that my 10 years older husband or I would ever have a disability. Not until we visited the home of a new friend who talked about designing his new home to "age in place". I remember that night clearly, and how I froze mid-winesip and realized that even if it turned out that we wanted to stay here forever, we probably couldn't. There isn't even a shower on the main floor.

Dread set in, and it never left.

We spent today in the upstairs room/office I'm sitting in now. Eight old computers were gutted of their hard drives, ten backup drives to god knows what were pulled out of boxes and closet corners, hundreds of feet of cable, batteries and e-doohickeys of all kinds have been removed. This was Bob's area of expertise, but he has always hated getting rid of things. And it's not so much the physicality of that process but the decision to make something go that's the hurdle. The disease, even before we understood its presence, probably contributed a lot to that.

There's a book by American writer Walker Percy called, I think, Second Coming. At a moment of crisis the lead character/narrator, an unhappily married man about age 50, mentions that growing up one's surrounded by parents, teachers, churchfolk and the like, all who dutifully attempt to prepare you for the future by teaching you in general terms about life and death. To paraphrase from recollection, "but it's not life and death you have to deal with, it's fucking and dying and you're never prepared for either."

Those words flattened me with their truth the day I read them long ago (and at a time when one didn't often hear F words). And it all came back to me today as the friend who was helping me sort things was--with the best intentions in the world--telling me all about moving boxes and dumpsters which are weeks away while I'm in fact having to make yes or no decisions right now about a mountain of electronics that Bob who put them there no longer remembers or understands why they're even here. And this--dealing with the A list "essentials", to borrow your word--is the fucking and dying part of moving. Not to put a curse on you, but someday you'll remember we had this conversation.

The kitchen's going to be the worst.

Those words flattened me with their truth the day I read them long ago, and at a time when one didn't often hear F words. And it all came back to me today as the friend who was helping me sort things was--with the best intentions in the world--telling me all about moving boxes and dumpsters which are weeks away while I'm in fact having to make yes or no decisions right now about a mountain of electronics that got so complicated that Bob who put them there no longer understands why they're here. And this--dealing with the A list "essentials", to borrow your word--is the fucking and dying part of moving. Not to purse a curse on you, but someday you'll remember we had this conversation.

The kitchen's going to be the worst.

Oof! Yes, we've lived in our current abode for 34 years now, and will continue to for another 3-5, barring catastrophe. That's why we're downsizing now, trying to ameliorate the angst when it actually comes time to pack up our belongings. In this, I'm motivated by the experience of having to clean out my mother's house after she and her housemate had passed away. We ended up filling 3 dump trucks after carting 10 carloads to Goodwill and other charities that would take used clothing, books and furniture. At the end, we had a giveaway of what we couldn't donate in the driveway of my mother's house. We had to do this all in one week, as my wife and I had flown halfway across country to do it. (That was an accumulation of 33 years of occupancy, so quite relevant to our own situation).

Best of luck to you over the next few weeks, as I'm sure that it's not much fun.

[Jenise]

Three dump trucks? Awful. Yes we've been through a lot of this already ourselves. You're doing it right by keeping that foremost in your mind. 34 years is a lot of accumulation. We've been in this house 21 years, and before that moved about every five years. Because of that a lot of sifting got done on a fairly regular basis. And yet here we are with 3400 sf of things.

Need a 99 Jag convertible? Got one. A Nordic Trac? Got one. An 1850 American square grand? Got one. My problems are bigger than just the wood working equipment in the garage that Bob hasn't used in 30 years.

Fortunately, I'm not the sentimental one. I find it easy to toss. There has been a cardboard box on the floor of our bedroom for the past two years, a permanent collection bin for anything upstairs I suddenly decide to get rid of. I haul several out a month and it's hardly made a dent. In some ways because Bob, who IS the sentimental one, keeps fishing things back out.

Friends are giving me advice on selling things. Heck, if I can get someone to just come take things away, it's theirs! Those 1-800-GOT-JUNK commercials are speaking to me.

I came up with a new plan for accepting all this last night. Just think, I told myself, of all the AirBnB homes we've rented. Sparsely outfitted, most of them, but one makes do. Dinners are created, fun is had. I have to imagine my new house being like that vacation rental--all or most of the neccessities, but nothing more.

I came up with a new plan for accepting all this last night. Just think, I told myself, of all the AirBnB homes we've rented. Sparsely outfitted, most of them, but one makes do. Dinners are created, fun is had. I have to imagine my new house being like that vacation rental--all or most of the neccessities, but nothing more.

I think that's the right approach, Jenise. We too have spent a fair bit of time in AirBNBs the past few years (sabbatical, visiting our son at his college, etc) and especially our sabbatical stay in Berkeley for 4 months taught us how little we really needed to live comfortably.

[David M. Bueker]

As I get ready to visit my mom in a few weeks to finally start carting stuff to the transfer station and Goodwill…

[Jenise]

David, good luck with that. Is she prepared to part with things?

[David M. Bueker]

David, good luck with that. Is she prepared to part with things?

Yes. She’s just not a person who likes to run errands/ferry stuff around. That was always my dad.