Might be a brilliant idea, actually

March 6, Fern Ridge Wildlife Area (Royal Amazon Unit)

Mrs. Random’s mother, my mother-in-law Nancy, passed away early Saturday morning at age 86 after a long mental/memory decline and then more precipitous physical ordeals in the last couple weeks. She was an amazing and very cool, smart woman—an artist with a super friendly and charming personality. We will miss her very much.

Today is the Tinycats’ birthday! Fleur and Griffin are 16 years old and still healthy. Our sweet furry babies. The only challenges are weight-related: G is over 22 pounds and seems to be putting on a few ounces every month when he gets weighed at Solensia appointments. Fleur is under 10 pounds and is losing a few ounces every month. And Betty, the new young cat, is gaining. So I’m working on strategies to sneak food to Fleur while rationing G & B. Fleur hasn’t been that enthusiastic about our regular Nulo wet food, but I got some Fancy Feast kitten food in little cans and that’s a hit! NOM. I also sneak kibbles to Fleur when I can. But the other two have very sharp senses when it comes to food, and it’s quite difficult to be sly enough to avoid detection.

Yesterday, in between and after watching baseball (Giants coming from behind to beat the Cubs 8-6!) and women’s pro hockey (the Minnesota Frost beating the Toronto Sceptres 2-1 in overtime), I learned the basic rules of cricket, using YouTube and Wikipedia. It was a distinct lack in my sports knowledge not to have any idea how that game is played. After investing a couple hours absorbing various tutorials, I now feel like I have a solid sense of that old English sport which has worldwide popularity. Gone are the days when 5-days matches were the norm. Since 2003, a new TV-friendly short version of cricket has emerged and come to dominate internationally: T20 Cricket. Its games last 3-3.5 hours and involve pageantry and spectacle enough to enthrall full stadiums and garner huge television ratings around the world.

Mrs. R and I have lived in our current house for 35 years, and we’ve always said “they’ll have to drag us out,” and truly we’ve always imagined we would stay here until the bitter end, possibly hiring help who could live upstairs when the time came that we would need 24/7 assistance. However, in the last few months we’ve had multiple discussions yielding other thoughts, such as getting into a smaller place, or at least one easier to deal with (no stairs, minimal yard area, etc.), by the time I turn 80 (my god, that’s only 15 years away!). Then yesterday, on our hike, we started talking about the possibility of pulling the trigger on that idea much sooner. Like within a year or two! Moving to a new place while we are still in relatively good health and decent shape and able to really enjoy new digs might be a brilliant idea, actually.

So we have started a shared Google Doc to brainstorm our perfect new home, like what features we want in a house and neighborhood location, and also what would be absolute deal-breakers. There’s a section in the doc for pasting in Redfin and other real estate links to properties that look promising. We’re not ready to move now, of course, but we agree that it would be good to get used to looking at properties with a critical eye, as well as acclimate our nervous systems to the shocking new idea of “maybe we will move”!