Thanksgiving. So thankful for a quiet life right now. Election over, Trump almost gone. COVID still raging but it’s something I have just learned to live with. I escape into books and memories.
I have spent a couple of hours reliving October and November 2016, when we decided to up sticks and move to Ireland. Reading the commentary as it happened, I am struck by how sure I was that this was meant to be, because my Irish citizenship came through, because our house on Softwind Drive sold so quickly, because it just seemed that everything was falling into place in October.
However, reading about how much work and angst there actually was winding things up in November 2016, arranging for the dog to be flown over, saying goodbye to younger grandkids, I am so glad that today I am sitting in my den/bedroom NOT contemplating any big move. R and I did discuss moving back to Ireland--or somewhere else--a couple of months ago but thankfully, we decided to just let it all go until COVID is over. And now I think that even when COVID is “over” and traveling is safe again, we won’t be giving up all that we have here to venture off into the unknown. If I wobble about it, I will just go back and re-read my notes from 2016.
Looking back, I think what I was most naive about was relying on the kindness of strangers. Writing to people in Ireland that I had never met, who belonged to our church, basically spilling out all about me and Richard, ultimately made it more difficult once we were actually in Ireland and met these people. Turned out we had almost nothing in common and, for “settling in” purposes it might have been easier if we had just found our way around Ireland first. The same thing with renting the “rustic 200 year old cottage” in Ballitore. In hindsight, and were I to do it again, I would have gone for an AirBnB for two weeks, giving us time to look around and, if we hadn’t found something in two weeks, just extending the rental or finding somewhere else. Instead, I paid for a month we weren’t there to “hold” the property, and then paid a forfeit month for leaving early. Meaning we paid four months for the two we actually were there, freezing and isolated. Good lesson.
Then there was the car. We were so worried about the cost of renting a car for a month, I decided to hitch myself to a rather shady, if charming, character that had been recommended by one of my online “Canadians in Ireland” acquaintances. The first car he sold us was so NOT what we wanted--it was too big but we were too polite to say so. Then, after two weeks of being terrified driving it when we asked for another car, he sold us a car that was actually illegal. Well, we didn’t know it was illegal until we came to sell it--something about in Ireland, you can’t sell a car that’s been in an accident to a dealer, only we didn’t know it had been in an accident when we bought it. So we had to go back to the shady character and, mysteriously, the value of the car he had sold four months earlier had dropped by E3-000. Buyer beware, especially in Ireland.
All this is to say that if I DO get myself talked into considering a major move next year, I will stick to the following rules:
Don’t sell what you have until you find what you want.
Don’t commit to any long-term thing, whether it is renting a house or buying a car, until you can see and touch and drive.
Be nice but not THAT nice. Don’t let them see the whites of your eyes.
Because the price of an extra flight and the price of renting an AirBnB and car as opposed to slapping down first, last, etc., on a place you don’t know you want, is really a small price to pay.
And a few photos that bring the memories back even stronger:
It took me four times before I could get the fire going at all and it threw out heat about four feet, lasted maybe half an hour. Atmosphere, loads. Heat, nil.
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