Today also marks the day that we close escrow on our San Francisco flat, simply referred to as 23^rd Street. Over the last week of our travels, our agent has been giving us email updates as to the status of the deal – our 4^th round of buyers this year who are attempting to buy our 3-unit building. After so many failed attempts at selling, it’s hard to get one’s hopes up and I’ve become somewhat numb and disbelieving that this ride would ever end. But it is. The buyers have signed documents, us sellers have signed documents (sister Joy signing on my behalf – THANKS JOY), and now I’m just waiting for the proceeds to be wired into my bank account. Long exhale.

So many times this year we’ve asked ourselves, ‘Why is this happening?”. I like to think everything happens for a reason and lessons are to be learned from all experiences and so we’ve contemplated this question many times. Actually there are two questions I keep asking myself: “Why did I have to lose a good friendship over this?” and “Why is this taking soooooooooo long?”.

I can’t say I have any good insight on the first question – most of you know the story: A good friend of mine since before we bought the building, she became one of my three partners in the building for close to nine years, pulled a freak-out during the first attempted sale, we stopped speaking to each other, and we had to take her to mediation back in September which concluded in me and my remaining partners buying out her portion in the building. This resulted in me owning MORE of the building instead of LESS! I have grieved quite a bit over the friendship loss, spilled a lot of tears. I like to think that on the path to enlightenment (for don’t we all think we’re on that path), the universe is putting me through a test. For what do I love more than anything than my relationship to money, and this former friend has cost me over a hundred thousand US dollars in unnecessary expenses and capital loss. Money that I would have liked to have. The universe, I think, wants me to bone up on the act of forgiveness and understanding. I feel that I have pretty much passed through the grieving stage but I am definitely not quite there on the forgiveness stage, nor do I feel like I am any closer to understanding the reasons for her actions. Maybe some day in the future we will come face to face again and we can quietly talk about this period in our lives, but I don’t see that happening for a while. Time.

“Why is this taking soooooooooo long?”. The answer to the second question seems clearer. As Bruce & I were pondering this last week, we concluded that the universe wanted us to understand that it takes time to become enmeshed and immersed into a new culture; the universe did not want us to hastily jump into any big ‘land’ deal before it’s time, especially since we fully expect this next land purchase to become our home and project for the rest of our lives. Some of you faithful readers & friends may recall that within our first weeks in New Zealand last March, we saw and were immediately drawn to a $1.5 million dollar property up in the Coromandel area and spent a decent amount of time working the numbers to see if we could buy it. And that would have been the wrong thing to do. It has taken nothing short of a year, and may probably take even another, to figure out where in New Zealand we want to settle. There’s so much to learn and absorb: climate issues, water issues, zoning, building codes, where the like-minded communities are, etc. The more we learn, the better equipped we will be to find our dream property. It’s been a blessing that we didn’t have the money from 23^rd to rashly put towards the first property that got us excited as there are MANY beautiful places to settle in New Zealand. And it’s taken time to continue to define and refine our goals and budget. From this current trip we’re on, we have concluded that we are South Islanders and will now focus our efforts on two areas we’re keen on in the north part of the south island. YAY!

As I lay in bed this morning in an unfamiliar bed in The Top 10 Holiday Park in Wanganui pondering the conclusion of our sale, I feel a lot of things – a little happy, a little relief, a little disbelief, a little sad – all blended together making be feel quite neutral. I don’t feel much in the way of celebrating; I think I’m feeling more contemplative than anything. A nice walk in the woods is what is called for. I was saying to Bruce that I feel I need to do a little ritual to get some closure. He said we should do some kind of energy release ritual to release our energy from the building. That’s a good idea. I’ll be focusing on release today as we go out exploring Wanganui.

As so we move on.

23^rd Street, I release you.

]]> http://www.kathysgetaways.com/214/oneyearlater/feed/ 4 http://www.kathysgetaways.com/34/it%e2%80%99s-over-and-it%e2%80%99s-beginning/ http://www.kathysgetaways.com/34/it%e2%80%99s-over-and-it%e2%80%99s-beginning/#comments Tue, 28 Feb 2006 20:02:26 +0000 Kathy http://www.kathysgetaways.com/34/it%e2%80%99s-over-and-it%e2%80%99s-beginning/ We are sitting at the airport waiting to take off. Everything these past ten days has been surreal. Mixed up. Sad about endings; happy about new beginnings. Lots of time spent with friends. I’d been holding it together fairly well but finally had my cathartic release during the last hour in the house. Packing up the bags, taking one last walk through all the rooms to honor both the good and bad times we’ve had in each – saying goodbye to all that we’ve achieved and accomplished there in the last eight years of our lives, it was too much and the tears came. And came. And came. Joy was there to take us to the airport and patiently waited outside so we could have our ‘walk about’ alone. Strange…. I didn’t cry when we said goodbye to friends, mainly because I know they are an intrinsic part of our lives and we’ll be seeing them again in just a few months, but the house I’ll never see again. It was our first home, we’d put so much sweat into it, it bore witness to our whole relationship – the early years, the engagement, the marriage, life with roommates and without, years of Monday night gaming, parties too numerous to count. The leaving and letting go of the house represents closure of a particular phase in our lives and a part of me mourns its passing. We closed the door, shed another tear on the front steps, hugged and said goodbye to our neighbor and then we were off. Off to new beginnings.

And for those who have been following the saga of our TIC partnership – my friendship with my one partner is salvaged and right again. After a few heart-to-heart emails and a really good phone conversation, we decided that it was our evil-twin sisters who were behaving so badly and we’ve now wrestled control again. She is a good friend. The TIC sale will move forward will full cooperation from all parties involved. Everyone will be okay.

After another restless slumber, a crew of six men in a large truck showed up at 8:30 am with vast amounts of wrapping materials. The foreman surveyed the house, determined there wasn’t enough room to actually ‘work’, and ordered everyone to empty out the hallways and some of the rooms of the boxes we’d already packed. With nothing to do ourselves, Bruce & I sat in my office and observed the madness. The men were working so rapidly, putting together boxes, packing, then taping them up and stacking them in the hallway. At one point during conversation, Bruce & I were stopped mid-sentence by the cacophony coming from the hallway.

I tried to rest, but couldn’t relax, so I went for a walk and chilled out in Dolores Park. It was a gorgeous day and I soaked up the vistas of this beautiful city. An hour later I walked back to the house and found that I couldn’t get up the stairs. The men (there were now nine of them) had turned our three-story staircase into a ‘chute’ using pieces of cardboard jammed into the steps, and they were chuting boxes down one after the other and loading them onto the truck. As I observed this from across the street, I thought to myself, “So much stuff. So much crap. When did we accumulate it all? Did it make me happy? Or was it a burden?” Of all the things we have, there are only about a dozen or so items that I really love; the rest is meaningless and which I could probably do without. And then I had this fleeting thought: If the container were to mysteriously fall off the ship, it would be okay! It would be possible to walk the earth lightly unencumbered by so many material things. (This was a fleeting thought though as the ‘artist colony concept’ we are going to try and create will likely require us to have some stuff: beer making equipment, backpacking/camping gear, ski gear, books, music, games, gardening tools, workshop tools, sewing machine & materials, guest beds, etc. Oh, and my shoes, and my bags, and some faux fur coats. OKAY, OKAY, I’ll admit it — WE ARE STUFF HORDERS AND WE LIKE IT. So there. But we’ll get to experience living lightly while we wait the eight to ten weeks for the container to arrive.).

During a lull, I managed to haul myself up the stairwell and back into my office where we waited for the afternoon to pass. At one point we heard the men laughing like little kids. I peeked out to see what was going on – they were chuting themselves down the stairs to go on break!

At the end of the day about 80% of the house was packed and loaded into the truck. The foreman told me that the container was not going to be brought and loaded at the house as originally thought – instead they would load a truck each day, bring it to the warehouse, and then reload it all into the container.

Day 2 — They arrived with a smaller crew of four at 9 am. I thought it would only take a few hours to finish up the job. It actually took longer than the previous day and they didn’t wrap up until after 5. Bruce & I holed up in an empty room with a borrowed table, a ‘staying behind’ chair, carpet, and telephone, and a couple of books. Time passed so slowly. The house was emptying. It was weird to see how big the rooms were when devoid of stuff. I felt both sad and excited.

The Final Count: 15,020 pounds (the estimate was 14,600), 470 individually marked items (beds, boxes, furniture, etc), $11,715 dollars for door-to-door service (includes delivery and unpacking on the other side).

We celebrated with champagne that evening in our empty house, sitting on the floor, eating dinner, and toasting to this accomplishment. We’d spend the next week ‘camping’ out in our house, sleeping in our sleeping bags, using empty boxes as make-shift tables, tending to the remaining tasks on our list.

A week later and we got word that our container was booked on the Pacific Link. The woman couldn’t tell me when the vessel was due to sail {strange} but did know that it was scheduled to arrive in Christchurch (Lyttleton Harbor) on April 23^rd. Tack on another week or so to clear customs and schedule delivery and we’re looking at seeing our goods sometime the first week of May. Holy cow! We’re going to be traveling nomads for the next nine weeks.

Last night we had dinner with the ‘kidlet’ gang. This refers to a group of my long-term close friends of whom the majority now have kids. They are my west coast family — I’ve been friends with them since I moved to SF in 1989. We know each other’s families; we’ve been on countless vacations together; we’ve been through thick and thin. And now they have families of their own.

I so love being Auntie Kathy and last night was another fun one for me. I spent a good hour playing Hide-n-Seek with my little friends, Harry, Ella, and Manny. They are precious. Harry asked if I was famous because he saw on my business card that I have a ‘www’ website.

The friends all contributed to making a home-cooked delicious meal. And they surprised me with a “Walk Down Memory Lane” book of favorite photos from our seventeen year history. Lots of laughs. While we’ve physically changed (bodies little more portly, eyes a little more baggy, teeth a little more yellow), emotionally we are still steadfastly and forever connected; the distance that this move will put between us will not interfere with our friendship.
This is a shout out to you guys: Lori, Susan, Harry, Ronni, Ella, Suzy, Pam, Dan, and Manny — I love you all and look forward to getting you out to The Land of the Long White Cloud!

Partay! Yes, the week started off really well last Saturday. We held an open house ‘sidewalk sale’ and invited all of our friends to come over, peruse the box-filled lined hallways of stuff we weren’t taking, have a cocktail, and toast to good friends and good fun. We’ve had many, many, many parties here over the years and this was the grand finale. About 40 people came through over the course of a twelve hour day. It kind of felt like a Burning Man/wedding reunion of sorts as not all of the folks run in the same social circles – so to have mostly everyone here at the same time was very cool and very touching. I issued an edict that no one could leave without taking something home with them. And it was a total success! About 90% of our crap left in the hands of good friends. It really is true: one’s man junk is another man’s treasure! (good day!)

Bruce’s hard drive was fully recovered (Yay!). However, upon returning home and installing it, he couldn’t get it to work in his computer, so he had to go back across town and have it looked at again. He only brought the hard drive and not the whole box, so when he got home the second time, he had trouble again (can you tell we’re not thinking clearly these days?). So, for the third time, he trekked across the city, this time with the whole box and we got the problem resolved. (frustrating!)

We drove over to the East Bay one afternoon to Nigels. Nigels is a wonderful store full of hand crafted rosewood furniture. It’s where we bought our platform bed and dresser years ago. Well, the platform bed came in pieces and was installed by the nice folks at Nigels. I wasn’t home to witness the installation but Bruce had watched and written notes about how it was to be done. And now that we have to un-do the bed six years later, the notes are kind of undecipherable. Soooooooooooo, we went off to Nigels to get a demonstration on how to disassemble the bed. This time we took better notes AND took a movie! (neutral)

Met with another stager early in the week. Stagers are interesting people. They are very perky and chipper, and walk around with paint swatches and like to tell you how to ‘neutralize’ your house so that it will appeal to a large audience. This time I was emotionally ready to ‘hear’ about how lovely she would make our home. I just smiled a lot and jotted down notes. By the end of the week, I had received both bids: One for $5800 and the other for $6200! This was for a two-month stage. Guess which one we’re going with? (neutral)

We spent a lot of time with our agents this week. They are not just our agents; they are good friends. One lovely day we drove out to the Beach Chalet for lunch and beers – mainly to celebrate our friendship and our impending move, but also to discuss all that needed to be done to get the unit ready for market (good). We had them come through the house another day with another friend who is going to do the work on the flat, and we went from room to room and made quite a long list of repairs and renovations to be performed. The work will consist mainly of repainting rooms (the ‘IN’ color is Tropical Straw), patching cracks in the walls, fixing some electrical outlets, and just generally sprucing up the place. We’re estimating a budget of $10,000 and a three-week time frame to get all work done! (sad – yup, I got a little sad again thinking how ‘perfect’ the place is going to look). On yet another evening, after an already long un fun-filled packing day, we went over to our agent’s office to talk about a listing price and work on the disclosures. We thought this would be a ‘short’ meeting. She had ordered a preliminary title report and when she started reviewing it she noticed that we’re all on title as ‘joint tenants’ — problem! This was wrong – joint tenants assumes that we all equally & jointly own the building and if anything happened to one of us (ie, passed on), the others would automatically take over our interest in the property. Wrong, wrong, wrong. We have refinanced the property three times in the last five years and somewhere along the way the title company recorded our interests incorrectly and we never noticed it. So, bottom line, we get to add this to our task list for next week. We need to go over to the title company, have them redraw up our deed, all six of us have to go over and sign, and then we have to file it with the city so that in a few weeks when a title report is ordered again, it will show up correctly! Close to four hours later, we finally finished our discussions, came up with more tasks to tackle, and came up with a listing price – $789,000! (emotionally & physically exhausted!)

I had dinner with my good friend Pam one evening. Pam’s been one of my best friends for close to 18 years – we’ve been through so much together and now that we’ve got significant others and she’s got a wonderful little one, we don’t often get to have any one-on-one time. So it was all the more meaningful that she made an effort from her busy schedule to come hang out and have some ‘girl time’ with me. (excellent)

I had to cancel dinner plans with some of my other girlie friends (sad), but I had seen all of them earlier in the week at the party and will see most of them next week at other social events so it wasn’t that bad.

We spent a lot of time with the building partners researching financing options for the building. I mean hours were spent calling various banks to understand what kind of financing can be had for a partial-TIC sale. We had three scenarios we were researching; 1) Whether our existing loan could be ‘assumed’ by new buyers. When we refinanced last year, we had specifically asked the broker for an assumable loan; turns out after many, many phone calls to the bank and to the mortgage broker, that it’s not. This was disappointing as we have a very good 7 year ARM at 5.375% and it would have been great to been able to offer this to new buyers; 2) Find potential lenders who would do a ‘group’ refinance and find out what their rates are; 3) Find potential lenders who would do ‘individual’ TIC refinances and find out what their rates are. The reason we need to know this information is because of the one partner who is not selling. Those of us selling are going to cause a refinance of the mortgage and we are now in a higher interest rate environment than we were last year; per our lawyer, the non-selling partner should not have to participate in paying higher interest payments, so we need to compensate her for the ‘difference’ that the new mortgage will have over the old mortgage. Emails were flying between the partners and the lenders and sad to say, some of our partner emails got a little ‘ugly’ – tensions are running high, we’re trying to figure out this ‘compensation’, and we’re stressed beyond belief. So, it got a little out of hand. This happened a few days ago and I’ve been really, really sad that we’ve come to this. I don’t want to feed the TIC meme where every TIC ends up resulting with fighting partners and lost friendships. We were all friends going into our TIC in 1997 and we’ve generally had a really, really, great partnership (not without some bumps and hiccups, but always resolvable) and it’s killing me to think that it may destroy a 16 year friendship. I need to see if I can rise above and fix it. (really sad)

Oh, again, in between all of the above, was the packing, organizing, packing, and organizing. Hour after hour. Boring, boring, boring. But by the end of the week, I felt like we were in excellent shape for the movers who are coming on Monday. There’s just a handful of things that still need to be tackled over the weekend. We are moving to New Zealand! (happy)

Oh, and one more thing. Bruce bought a still this week from the brew making store. Apparently having a still is legal in NZ, so the mad-scientist will be in his lab distilling away! (crazy)

Scanlon parent and sibling visit Feb 3 – 6th: Everyone came into town for the weekend. We had a chance to chill out and avoid packing; got to eat out at a couple of our favorite restaurants; and spent a lovely afternoon out at the DeYoung Museum. (all good)

Had coffee with a couple we’ve corresponded with from our Yahoo Ex-Pats Group. Scott & Anne are from Seattle and are moving to Dunedin (we’ll practically be neighbors!) and are about 2 weeks ahead of us in their emigration journey. They were in town having their last goodbyes with friends and agreed to meet us for a quick coffee. We commiserated and shared stories about each of our respective year of planning for the move. It was great to meet folks ‘like us’ and I think we all bonded — we’ll be seeing them again once we’re on the other side. We felt rejuvenated and excited about going to NZ after spending time with them (good!)

Bruce’s hard drive crashed and had to be taken to the computer doctor. No word yet on whether data can be recovered (bad)

The truck started to show it’s unhappiness with our leaving by refusing to start a few times. Not clear on whether this is a real problem or just a short-term temperamental one. (bad)

Got one staging bid for the house. For those of you not familiar with this concept, this is a new industry which has emerged in all the major cities with high real estate values. When one is going to sell their home, it apparently pays to have it ’staged’ by a professional to help buyers visualize how lovely their potentially new home will look. This service is not cheap — to stage our 1500 square foot flat will cost approximately $6,000 for two months. But… the rewards are supposed to far outweigh the cost. The stager walked through each of the rooms with me advising what to change (ie: colors to repaint) and discussed how she would display each room. It all actually sounded lovely and sounded like the ‘home’ I’ve always dreamed of — perfect, clean, no mess, no papers, no books, no clutter. I actually had a little meltdown afterwards and felt really, really sad to be letting go of our flat. (bad)

Hosted a dinner party for four and enjoyed an evening with some good friends (good)

I met another gal from the Ex-Pats list, Ronni, for a quick coffee. Ronni had spent a year and a half abroad (partly in Sydney and partly in Wellington) and was now back. She decided it wasn’t for her and I was keen to talk with her about her experience. The bottom line — all societies no matter where you go have their issues and New Zealand was no exception. My gist from talking with her was that NZ was really too small and too homogenous and too nationalistic without the diversity for her. She experienced a lot of anti-american sentiment and didn’t ever really find her groove. She did pick up a husband along the way though and they are now excited to give it a go back in San Francisco. It was good to get the ‘real’ scoop from someone who’s tried it, and I know it was just one person’s perspective, but I couldn’t help but feel a tinge of unhappiness afterwards — in some small way, I really want New Zealand to be my utopia, but intellectually I know that it’s not and could never be. I had a brief moment of second thoughts and doubts about moving (bad)

We went downtown to set up our currency exchange account with HiFX. They work with emigrants to help facilitate their currency needs from their home country to their new country. We’d gotten some referrals for this firm and decided to go with them since they have an office here in San Francisco and also one in Auckland. This was our second visit to the office and we like the folks with whom we’ll be working (good)

We had a meeting with our TIC lawyer to discuss issues surrounding the potential sale of our flat. You may recall from previous posts that we live in a 3-unit Victorian building of which we own 1/3′ish of the building. Our partners and us all share one giant mortgage — this is called TIC (tenants-in-common) ownership. At one point, we had all agreed to sell our interests in the building which was going to make for a nice clean sale. However one of our partners recently decided not to sell and that has opened up a can of worms and some new potential problems to solve with respect to the others of us who are still planning to sell. Dealing with financial matters, especially when there are large sums involved, amongst partners who are friends can be extremely difficult and emotionally trying and not always easy to reconcile… hence our trip to see the lawyer with the whole group to try and get some answers. The meeting went well enough, but there is a LOT of research and negotiation that needs to occur over the next few weeks before we go and before we put the flat on the market in early March. We were definitely emotionally taxed by the end of the week (bad)

Packing, packing, packing. Oh, and between all the things mentioned above, we managed to tackle the following packing jobs:

• I cleaned out 20+ planters and gardening pots. I have a few outdoor garden planters that I really like and want to take with me. However, NZ is very, very strict on bringing anything with any soil residue into the country, so I had to really, really scrub out my pots with hot water and run many of them through the dishwasher. This took a couple of hours to accomplish.
• I packed for Burning Man. I found this to be quite hilarious as those of you who know about Burning Man generally know that one typically ends up packing the NIGHT before going to Burning Man, not seven months in advance. But, since we’re keeping a storage unit with all of our Burning Man gear, there was certainly no reason for me to lug my stuff to NZ only to have to lug it back again this summer, so I went through all my BM clothing and organized it neatly into those giant ziplock bags and packed it into a suitcase. I am ready to go!
• We drove out to the storage unit and dropped off all the BM gear we had in the house and picked up some stuff that will come with us to NZ. This included the two giant, giant parachutes that are used to cover the geodesic dome which is also coming to NZ. The parachutes were covered in playa dust filth which would be a big no-no for NZIS, so we had to run them through the laundromat and then hang them in the back yard to dry over the course of a couple of days. Fun!
• We started purging the back mud room of all excess crap that Bruce had acquired from his real estate renovation days. We ended up with four rather large boxes of excess wood and other debris that needed to be disposed of.
• I managed to spend a bit of time in our other storage room and disassembled the two shelving units and started organizing and packing up the myriad of gear we had shoved in that room.

Spa Day! At the end of the week I elected to use my spa package gift certificate that my wonderful friends gave me as a birthday present last October. I spent the entire day at KamalaSpa down off of Union Square. This place was pure decadence. I had four ‘treatments’ over the course of the day which included a two-hour Shirodhara, a one hour Rice-Milk massage, a one-hour facial, and a 90 minute pedicure. By far, the most decadent was the Shirodhara which is described as follows: “This ancient Ayurvedic treatment has a calming and soothing effect on the nervous system. It consists of a warm dosha balancing oil that is slowly poured on the forehead for 30 minutes, followed by a calming 60 minute massage. The total finishing effect being a relief of tension and stress with nourishment to the scalp and hair. Following this treatment is a 15 minute Sweda Steam and Shower”. Pure indulgence. I had a great day – good for the mind and good for the soul! (most excellent)

]]> http://www.kathysgetaways.com/24/emotional-seesaw-part-i/feed/ 0 http://www.kathysgetaways.com/16/faith/ http://www.kathysgetaways.com/16/faith/#comments Mon, 16 Jan 2006 07:19:02 +0000 Kathy http://www.kathysgetaways.com/16/16/ From the time we started talking about this move about a year and a half ago, the word faith has entered and remained a key concept in my vocabulary. This has been an incredible year of change for me; changes in ways that I’ve not been accustomed to. I’ve always been a person who’s made calculated decisions, who knew what was coming next, who always had the next job before leaving the first, etc. I always made prudent and ‘safe’ decisions.

Now I’m jumping off the cliff and heading full steam into relatively unknown territory.

We’ve spent the whole last year planning for this move. It’s been a journey of shedding, shedding a lot of things that have formed my identity: my job, my home, my car. I left my job that I held for fourteen years; got rid of my car I had for eighteen years (my beloved Nissan Sentra), and am now selling my home of seven years. It’s been difficult to let go and it’s been a long process of grieving for the loss of these things held dear to me. The thing that gets me through the harder days is faith – faith in myself and in my husband that this painful upheaval of extracting ourselves from our friends and family will be worth it.

When folks ask what are we going to do there, how long are we planning to stay, when will we be back, the only answer I can truthfully say is “I don’t know”. Sure, we have some ideas, but we have absolutely no idea what the future holds. I don’t know if this is the most foolish thing I’ve ever done or the most brilliant. Who can say until we walk down the path. We will learn and grow from this journey and we will be better people for having followed our hearts and for trying to pursue a dream.

As George Michael says,
You gotta have faith…
Mmm, you gotta have faith
‘Cause you gotta have faith, faith,
Mm ’cause you gotta have faith-a-faith-a-faith!

I gots it!

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