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!

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!

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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.