It’s Time
It has been quite a long time since I have written a post on this blog. Some of the readers who have enjoyed my previous posts and have encouraged me to start again. So here goes….
Since my last post, much has happened -some good and some not-so-good. Let’s start with the changes that have occurred during the past few weeks. First, we sold our house and are building a new one. The house we had was beautiful and offered us years of joy, but it was too big (5 bedrooms) and had a long set of stairs going from the first to second floor. Since, I have developed additional symptoms from my Parkinson’s Disease such as falling, tripping, and losing my balance. Each time I descended the stairs, I felt like I was risking my life and limbs. In fact, I was. It is a scary feeling when your brain tells your feet to do something and they just don’t do it. My husband and I agreed that we needed to change our dwelling to a more user friendly home.
The process of preparing a house for sale is overwhelming. First, we decluttered the rooms and sorted through a ton of stuff. Many items were donated to various charity thrift shops, many were given to friends and family, and lots of junk was taken to the local dump. We rented a storage unit and placed items in it that we were keeping, but did not need while staging our home. This process took much longer than I anticipated because I was only able to work three to four hours each morning. By noon, my dopamine had simply run dry and I spent the rest of the afternoon on the sofa recovering. I found myself going to bed at 8:00 or 8:30 longing to restore my body strength.
The next step in the process was placing the house on the market and learning to be ready at any time to show it. This is challenging enough, but even more so when you have Parkinson’s because you have no energy to mop the floor yet again. My saving grace was my wonderful niece who literally dropped everything in a moment’s notice to get the house show-ready. She is amazing.
Within a few months, we finally had an offer on the house., Phew!!!!! Now it was all real as we agreed to a four week closing date. How very blessed we are for our family (Ryan, Dia, Kyle, Brad, Cheryl and Jimmy) and our special friends (Debra, Ken and Yon) who made it all happen It felt like a whirlwind and much of it I don’t even remember. I will however never forget all of those who made the impossible deadline possible.
So our next step is to build a Parkinson’s-friendly home with accessibility being foremost in its design. We found a house plan that is a one-story open concept that offers wide doorways among other special features for making things accessible. There is a small spare room off the master bedroom suite which is perfect for those nights when I just cannot sleep. I can read or watch television, etc. without waking my husband. Later if I need extra help, it could accommodate a caregiver. In other words, we tried to think of the special needs I have now and may develop in the future.
Ah, yes, the new home will be built on the waterfront of a beautiful deep water creek which is so peaceful and serene. My husband is so thrilled to finally build a dock for our boat. We are very lucky to have found this wonderful building site and house design.
Finally, I have to express the gratitude we have for our niece and her husband who are allowing us to stay in their beautiful new home while we are building. This is especially great since we are in the midst of the covid 19 crisis and are quarantined. They have two adorable lab puppies who entertain us throughly when we can no longer watch the news on all the tv stations. The world-wide crisis does not seem so terrible when you are safely inside with your family playing games and sipping wine….
My thoughts and prayers are with those who are not so fortunate.
photo source: Pinterest
