WE HAVE A HOUSE!

Lots going on here!  Okay, not really.  Ray and I just came back from a nine day trip to Sonoma Wine Country and also spending another fantastic day in San Francisco with our wonderful friends from Tennessee (we traveled with this same couple last fall to Napa).  It was a great vacation (you know Ray being retired for almost two months really need a getaway), but the pollen!  I thought Virginia was bad and was hit with dark circles and big bags under my eyes upon my return from a beach weekend with my co-workers.  I thought California would be cleaner?  Or maybe I was thinking everything would have been bloomed and grown by the time we got off the airplane?  What was I thinking!  Apparently Sonoma County and northern California have a pretty high pollen rate!  Last week, the oak trees were in full swing.  The grasses and flowers were all growing and blowing.  And it was all stuck in my face and head.  And then Ray suffered by developing that night time cough, and then one other person in our group suffered that night time cough.  So for about a third of our vacation, I was in bed by nine pm with my head feeling full and the rest of my body feeling lethargic and non-vitalized!  The wine tasted off a bit, but that didn't stop me from tasting 96 of my favorite kinds!  I celebrated my 49th birthday, and I had a relaxingly calm, quiet, and peaceful Mother's Day.  I did miss seeing Carly though.  This will be one of many events and holidays to follow, I realized again, that I will not be hooking up with her.  I was not only feeling a bit under the weather, but I was also feeling homesick.  But I know we will make up for it all the times we come back to VA or she visits us, or better yet, when we travel to other far away exotic places!  I have no worries that we won't see each enough or make it a priority to get together somewhere.

This brings me to our living situation in Panama and where Carly can spend time with us when we move there!  Our great friends, Clyde and Terry, once again hit their gringo trail and "toured" a three bedroom, two bathroom house in a gated community with a pool in the town of Chame.  Not getting into too many specifics just yet about the house, since I am not there and I haven't seen it myself except for pictures that the owner has on her site, and then Clyde took fifty additional more for me (Thanks, Clyde!), the house was given the thumbs up when they did the walk through.  Many A++++ later (given by Clyde) and a "take the house" by Terry, Ray and I emailed the Canadian owners, wired our deposit and first months rent etc, and with the wire going through tonight, they will email us back the signed contract.  And we will move in sometime the first week of August.

Chame.  Not exactly El Valle.  But the way Ray and I see it, there are two properties we are interested in El Valle.  We want to see and tour these houses once there.  We think it might be best to spend rainy season out of the mountains.  Then, possibly once our contract ends, we will either ask to stay on in this fabulous looking house or move up to the mountains for dry season.  Who knows!  This house in Chame looks wonderful, comes with a neighbor that will help us with odds and ends to get started knowing the ins and outs, comes with a community pool, is secure (for the most part, but just because it is gated doesn't mean I will let my guard down), and just seems organized.  We have done so many things efficiently, smoothly and orderly, I was hoping to move into our first home in Panama the same way.  With calmness.  Knowing it is clean and organized.  This, along with vacationing, was accomplished this past week.

Tomorrow, Ray and I are meeting a couple that found us through this blog.  We are meeting at a quaint restaurant that I love in Culpeper, VA.  We will share with them our stories, answer any questions they may have, find out where they are at with their plans on moving to Panama (I think they are a few years out still), and wonderfully make new friends.  I have seven days of commuting to work (three and a half work days this week--yes, I am still cutting out early this Thursday since it is Memorial Day weekend-- and three days the next).  This past week was difficult working two whole days.  I will miss many of the girls I have worked with these past eight years, but I won't miss the "hoopla" surrounding the past months events.  For now, I am going to enjoy this sunny Friday (the beautiful blue sky after a stormy night of rain and hail) cutting low lying branches off trees, pulling some weeds, taking a long walk working off all of that wine, and spending the day tinkering.  Looking forward to many more days of just tinkering in Panama.