The long, slow road of patience

Very few of us are actually good a being patient. We live in a society that demands instant results and impulsive decisions, “do now think later”. When you’re someone who bucks up against that trend you’re seen as weird, lazy, unmotivated (mostly negative connotations). I definitely go through periods of struggling with being patient, especially in this long season of waiting, but I know it’s the right thing. I’ve never been one to ask for more patience because the universe/God/higher power will always deliver on that by way of introducing all sorts of obstacles from standing in long lines of at the grocery store to getting stuck in random traffic. So when we had to make the decision to return to Denver, we absurdly out a time stamp on our stay here at two months. (Cute right?). It was really a self imposed deadline to get things done and not get stuck, which works for my motivation, but when unforeseen circumstances hold things up really tests my patience.

And that’s where things remain as I write this week. I have a final hearing for Guardianship and Conservatorship over my dad on Monday, where I’m hoping for some closure on this phase of things and for the sale of his house to be approved by the court. After that we will be able to shift a little bit of the balance back to our plans and livelihood. In the meantime we’re doing a lot of walking to stay sane, visiting family and friends, and some initial build work on the bus. (Still trying to find the friendliest avenue to document this project, open to your suggestions.)

Fully vaxxed and Visiting dad OUTSIDE where we soaked up some 🌞 and talked endlessly about George Strait

In the meantime of this homecoming, some big changes have happened with my business partnership, formerly known as Kinship Market. Since sales have been almost nonexistent for over a year and this business was only in its baby stages (and therefore not self sustaining), it was decided that we’d part ways and dissolve the partnership. In its place, the name Kinship Experiment popped into my mind as a placeholder for whatever the next chapter may look like in my entrepreneurial journey. This is just another area or example where I’m being patient to see what unfolds. I know I still want to continue amplifying my Guatemalan friend’s businesses and artistry, but I also want to expand into discussion of a holistic lifestyle around sustainability, responsible reuse, living in a smaller footprint, and so on. So be on the lookout for posts regarding a range of topics now, and more about lifestyle and more vs. just products to buy.

So much more to share about this messy transition time, but it’s sunny and a perfect spring day and it’s time to get outdoors to fully enjoy!

Well, I hit the wall

It has still been an action-packed few weeks. Dad finally got placed in a memory care facility on April 30. Zach and I drove him there from the VA in one of the hardest emotional days yet in this crash course journey with dementia. I had to advocate hard with the VA that this would be an appropriate level of care for him vs. a nursing home setting where they wanted to see him go. It’s been 10 days and it’s been an adjustment but mostly good. He calls from the house phone at the facility with strange requests ranging from “come pick me up from ‘work’ right now,” to asking about his cell phone (a flip phone) and letting me know he has a buyer for it can he get the number. The siblings and I take turns going to see him as the pandemic still dictates how often, how many, and how long visitors can be at the facility. It was a huge relief getting him placed but on the heels of that relief we ran into a hiccup with the house.

Back in February before any of this happened, my dad quitclaim deeded the house over to my brother Kurtis. Well, if we plan on applying for Medicaid in the next five years (which we do), there are gift penalties, Medicaid penalties, and taxes that the state of Colorado would have a right to because of the timing of the gift, so it was advised that we get the house deeded back into my dad’s name so he can spend down the proceeds and then apply for Medicaid. That is doable, but with this change we also need permission from the court to sell the house so I submitted a motion two days prior to our original closing date to ask for the OK to sell. Now we are in a holding pattern until that motion is granted.

It finally dawned on me how much this Guardian and Conservator work entails in time, energy, research, emotional work, and more. I’m bone tired and have been settled long enough for that exhaustion to really set in. Another realization is the great weight of grief that this short amount of time has taken so much from us. We put everything in our lives on hold to come home for family and in the chaos of that have really lost the through line. Yes, we have the bus to look forward to, but no idea where to build, and the need remains to be close to the metro area while the rest of this plays out. We are grateful to be staying with Zach’s parents and have fallen into simple routines, the kids do their homeschooling most mornings, I tend to whatever work around dad needs to happen, and Zach tinkers in the bus. It’s the long slow road and man am I tired. I usually have some quip of hope or optimism I’d love to wrap up with, but I’m low on that too at the moment. For now I intend on listening to my tired body and giving her the rest she needs.

First day and last day at Phillips Drive

Family update and our new “home”

It’s been another month of being stationary. I’ve slept like a baby in my queen sized bed, but it’s also been tumultuous and hard going through the emotional labor and physical work of all that we are doing while in Colorado.

I have been appointed as my dad’s conservator and guardian, so I’m making decisions about his care, his health, and his money for the foreseeable future. We have a great social worker from the VA who walked me through the process and continues to hold my hand as we navigate next steps for dad. We are still searching for a long term care facility that will accept his Medicaid pending status. (I also applied him for Medicaid after recognizing this as his best available option.) The administrative work I’ve done in the last six weeks is easily equivalent to a full time job. I’m a well resourced individual who isn’t afraid to ask questions and has very minimal barriers to entry, and I often think about people who are going through something similar to this in their own lives and just can’t. It’s no wonder there are so many hurting and desperate people in our society, there are so many broken systems that are not set up for people’s best interest, and even if they are, there are so many hurdles to jump through it’s hard to know where to even get started. After 6 weeks here, and my dad being hospitalized for two months I’m finally feeling at a confident base level for places to go and people to ask for getting him the best care for the future. Are you exhausted reading this yet because I sure am!

In addition to getting my dad set up for his future, we made the difficult decision to sell our childhood home. My brother has lived here his entire life, but can’t afford to continue living here with a single income. There was a lot of dysfunctional and codependent things with the finances happening in this house since, well basically forever, something I ran away from and messed up in my own way in my early 20’s, but then navigated and found freedom later in adulthood. Hot tip: Screw up with money when you’re young because the consequences are far less severe than late in life with no plan, no assets, and a mess for your grown children to clean up. I knew from a pretty early age that my own parents were completely irresponsible with their mortgage and finances, I never expected it to be to this extent. Fortunately, we can get out of this situation before things completely cave in, and the market for a lower priced home in the Denver metro area is smoking hot. We have accepted a cash offer and will be out of the house on May 5!

Dad continues to be in good spirits, and tells great stories

While all of this was unfolding, we also had to ponder our next move. Before coming back, we started dreaming about another chapter involving a little more space and perhaps some land. A little more space came in first, when we got the high bid on a government auctioned bus! I posted about this on my socials the other day, and basically this bus checks a lot of boxes for us: affordable housing, another fun project, twice as much space than our travel trailer, the ability to keep moving around (or not) depending on future conditions. We are very excited to get started on our next build and to join the robust and growing skoolie community! Zach, his brother Ben, and Camden flew out to Maryland to pick up our acquisition last week and returned late Sunday night. The had three days full of steep learning curves, junk food and cheap hotels, a quick family stop in Iowa, 9 states and 1700 miles crossed. We’ll start posting the progress on here as we plan things out. We’ve already tore into getting the seats out, and continue to scour the internet for ideas and floor plans. The next item of business is to find a place to park for the next few months while we work on her. We’re open to suggestions! This tiny home project has brought some much needed levity to the heavy stuff going on that I already wrote about. We are eager to see where this takes us next.

And no need to worry about Flossie the Red Dale, she will still be our first home on wheels and we’ll keep living out of her while we do this build. If we ever end up getting some land, she’ll go out to pasture as our guesthouse, she-shed, artist studio, or what have you. She has served us well and we’d never part with her!

A Big Detour, and Why we don’t make long term plans.

Flossie hanging out in my childhood backyard.

Well it’s been over a month since my last post and the thoughts are swirling around in my head which usually means it’s time to start writing again. I’m writing this from a bedroom in my childhood home in Northglenn, Colorado. Pretty much the last place I ever expected to be, yet the place where we are most needed for the time being.

While we were at the eco ranch in Texas and while the grid was down, we had limited cell service and reception. It was during this week we slowly found out my dad back had contracted an infection in his brain. Once we got settled in Marfa we gained more information from my siblings who had taken the wheel with regard to his care. Rather than making a beeline straight home we took our time (as we normally do on the road), because being back straightaway wouldn’t have changed any outcomes for dad.

Reflecting back, I’m still glad we did it this way as there were places we had planned on seeing in NW Texas and Southern New Mexico and not fully knowing what we were getting into in Colorado, we needed the time as our small family unit to bank up a little more self care and adventure since this would likely be the last of that lifestyle for awhile. Prior to all of this, we had been tossing around the idea of finding land in New Mexico where we could park Flossie, store our things, and eventually build to suit. Guatemala is still on the table, but maybe a little further out than we had hoped due to my dad’s condition.

It’s really hard to be straddling the potential next chapter with what we’ve come back to Denver for. It’s not entirely clear what our next move should be, all that is clear is that we’re in the right place for the moment. My dad made zero plans for this stage of his life, so it is up to us (my brother, sister, and I) to get some structures in place for his needs. I have applied to be my dad’s guardian and conservator and we will be selling our childhood home in the coming month.

I visit my dad in person now about once a week at the VA. He’s being treated well and is eating regular meals and more than I’ve ever seen him eat in recent memory. (The man has existed on coffee, cigarettes, and Coors for most of my life.) He is able to recognize each of us, but is not able to carry a conversation with any coherence. He’ll tell us a different story about where he is at each time someone talks to him. Sometimes he’s on a ship in Hawaii, sometimes he’s working in Oregon, other times he’s at the library or fire station. It all makes sense to him as it’s a reliving of a certain time and place for him, but has no context for the current time we are existing in. His prognosis is that this is his new normal, he will likely not recover and needs to be placed somewhere where he can have round the clock monitoring and care. We are still in shock and are processing all of this, there are a lot of moving parts and complexities to navigate, but we are doing it one step at a time.

Thanks to those who have called or texted or sent encouraging messages, please keep doing so! We are never too busy to grab a coffee or a walk, and it breaks up the tedious tasks we’ve been doing for the past few weeks.

If you’re the praying type, please pray for the Guardianship process to go quickly and smoothly, pray for a place to open up for my dad that will accept VA Benefits, as he has yet to apply for Medicaid or Medicare, and he may not qualify until his asset (proceeds from sale of the house) is exhausted. Pray for my brother Kurtis, who has never moved from this house and aside from my dad, will have the biggest life adjustment to make when this is all said and done. That’s enough for now, thanks for reading about our detour.

Winter hits Texas

As we all well know by now, Texas was suddenly hit with extreme winter weather conditions and we got to experience the southern edge of this unprecedented (that’s my first use of this overused word in this whole blog, it’s allowed) weather system. We escaped Del Rio after one night in a hotel. The decision to leave rather than sticking it out in our sad little hotel was a good one. Nearly all the businesses in Del Rio were closed and most places were without electricity. We paid cash to top of the gas (computers were down and the only open gas station could only accept cash, always carry a little cash!) and headed northwest into the unknown. It was a slow-going drive for most of the day. There was ice and small snow drifts covering the road and most people in these parts do not have the training or practice with these kind of inclement driving conditions. We saw a few semis off the side of the road that had either wrecked or abandoned their post (and were hopefully somewhere warm). As we made our way into Alpine, our only medium-sized town stop along the route we realized just how bad things were. Lines for gas and propane were long and supplies were short, luckily we didn’t need any groceries because the scene there would likely mimic what we all experienced at the beginning of the pandemic last year with hoarding and empty shelves. We filled our propane at the third place we tried then made our way south towards Terlingua.

Hotel parking lot Flossie is a sad sight

As we drove south things gradually calmed down. The snow was already quickly melting and our hipcamp host gave us a better route to his location that would help us avoid driving through a lot of mud. By the end of the day we were tired but dry. One more cold night then we could get back to “normal”, or at least that’s what the weather reports were assuring us. The following day as things thawed out we actually anticipated having a few plumbing issues that, despite preparing for the storm, were still caused by the hard freezing temps. Our kitchen faucet sustained damage and our pipe for water intake were the problem areas so Zach made the 60 mile drive back up to Alpine for parts while the kids and I stayed home. I’ve said it before when things have gotten this cold, sometimes we can outrun it by location, but other times you just have to weather the storm and then plan for damage control on the other side. Fortunately, these were relatively easy fixes that only cost a day’s work.

The Eco-Ranch

Our hipcamp hosts, Robert and Debbie have been homesteading this land for the last eleven years. They started building an earthship with tires but after Robert sustained an injury, they shifted their constuction to glass bottles. The end result is beautiful, glimmering walls that reflect the south Texas sun. However, the aesthetic beauty is just one small part of what makes this place amazing. This family’s specialty is poultry; with over 100 ducks, chickens, turkeys, and geese all serving a bigger purpose to help these people live self sufficiently and sustainably. They also have about a dozen goats that gladly greeted us and tried to nibble our clothes. Debbie toured us around and had specific stories to share about nearly every animal, which given the shear quantity was quite the feat. These animals are both their family and their sustenance. After a long visit with all the friendly animals we stepped through a door to the hydroponic greenhouse. This was the room dreams are made of (at least for me)! We learned all about their pond system with fish whose waste turned to nitrates in huge elevated barrels which then fed the hydroponic tables. Even in the dead of winter plenty of greens were growing and even with the cold spell and single degree temperatures they experienced during the storm plenty was still living and thriving in this one little room. We will definitely be applying this year round growing knowledge wherever we end up buying land and homesteading. We can be pretty self-sufficient in our little trailer on the road but something we’ve really missed this year is gardening and growing our own food.

This is what land stewardship looks like.
These were some very happy animals!

The following day with everything repaired and temps warming up, we finally made it to Big Bend National Park. Hard to believe, but the last National Park we’d been to was Saguaro in Arizona back in December. We were out of practice for a long hike so we instead opted for the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive and a handful of shorter hikes to maximize our sightseeing. Our favorite stops for the day were the Burro Mesa Pouroff a short and easy hike to a geological feature. And the Santa Elena hike, with a little elevation gain and beautiful stroll along the Rio Grande. The canyon wall was spectacular. On our drive out of the park we spotted two javelina and all throughout the day we saw numerous birds from hawk and golden eagle, to smaller wintering species. This desert climate is green, alive, and thriving, especially after the much needed moisture. We got back to the ranch just as the sun was setting, eager to return to the park the following days.

Well, winter had a second punch that quickly derailed those plans.

We couldn’t help ourselves with this fella 🤠☃️

We went to bed with increasing winds and some drizzling rain. I remember hearing the rain a couple of time during the night thinking, at least it’s just rain. Come morning however, we were blanketed with another couple of inches of cold and blowing snow that continued falling until about mid-day. We contemplated doing a supply run back to Alpine for water and produce – the two things that are the hardest to keep in plentiful supply when we’re this remote. Then we’d extend our stay at the ranch for a few more days to see more at Big Bend. But with no phone service or the slightest idea of what we’d be getting into we instead opted to stay home and leave on Friday as we originally planned. The kids were of course the most disappointed in this reality and it was one of the harder choices we’ve had to make lately since we all would have liked more time in this area. We booked a recovery week back at the Tumble In in Marfa where we are currently regrouping and watching the snow melt/mud dry with a few more amenities.