Jackie's Blog

The first month in England- Rainy arrival, Buying a car, Drivers license, New phone numbers. The fun we had repatriating! More to come on this one too...

Lots more about the Queen Mary 2 crossing. I'll come back to this one...

 The Queen Mary 2 was moored just a short distance from our hotel but still too far to carry our enormous amounts of luggage. A quick Uber trip followed and our luggage was being whisked away from us while we started the embarkation process. We also had two pieces of hand luggage each- both containing things we could not afford to lose or break- including Dottie's ashes. We were very impressed by the speed at which they checked us through passport control and customs, and issued us with our new cruise cards. Before we knew it, we were being greeted by the crew and on our way to our cabin. The cabin had a small protected balcony but was plenty of room for us and our luggage, which most impressively arrived not long after us. We unpacked the majority of our clothes etc and found that there was more than enough closet and drawer space, as well as a huge space under the bed to store our actual roll on bags. We were very glad we had packed soft bags as they took up very little room....

 On Tuesday May 21st, we picked up our enormous rental car in Lynn, MA (which we needed because of all the luggage). Another good thing about travelling by ship is that there are no luggage restrictions, you just have to be able to fit it all in your cabin! We drove to Hartford, Connecticut and stayed overnight there to break up the journey to New York after Dick had already worked most of the day. Old and new- just like Boston Rewarding ourselves with local beer. The next day we followed the Hudson river into New York and booked into our hotel in Brooklyn. We returned the rental car, and then went exploring... A very hot day but a local pub (the Strong Rope Brewing company) with views to the Statue of Liberty solved the problem. It felt like we were going on holiday. We were not due to board the ship until the following afternoon, therefore the next morning we went for a walk along the waterfront in Brooklyn and spotted... The Queen Mary 2- our home for the next week. She is the l...

 We had a weekly countdown, and once we hit May it all became a reality. The house was due to close on May 16th, therefore the moving jobs became a little more personal. Literally cooking everything left in the freezer, and not buying anything other than fresh food. Starting to go through all my herbs and spices and getting rid of older ones or getting rid of those you buy for one recipe and never use again! I do buy some spices (especially Indian cooking ones) in bulk so some of those were vacuum sealed and packed away. The only foods you can pack are non perishable ones, so some dried food was also packed but why take up valuable container space with things you can buy later?  Starting to pull out clothes to take with us in the large soft but wheeled suitcases. This one was hard as we had to plan for at least three months living on a canal boat (with limited storage) through the English summer months and through the Autumn too. This meant layers- largely of thinner clothing ...

 You forget how a lot of different activities going on around you can make an old dog nervous. Dottie had already moved with us from California to Massachusetts. That time she was 8 years old and we drove with her across the US. You can find a blog of that journey in the archives. She was nervous then too as we self-packed to save costs but she recovered quickly.  Dottie, at 13 years old, was usually very relaxed, and being a little deaf in one ear would sleep for long periods of time but she started sleeping wherever we were. Usually by Dick's side in his office, or wherever I was in the house. Me being constantly on the move around the house made this much harder for her. Her dog beds were moved around more often which was also a little confusing but she still loved her walks.  By March, we had Dottie's place booked in the kennels on the Queen Mary 2 to bring her back to England and we had all the steps in place to ensure she had all the required vaccinations and checks...

 At the beginning of the month there was a total Eclipse not far from us but we chose to watch the partial version from our house instead. We were lucky enough to have already seen a full eclipse in Oregon in 2017.  Dick still managed to get some pretty good photos though! The sun looks like the moon! Here I am wearing lots of layers as it was quite cold when it became dark! Dick using the proper glasses. In the mean time, moving jobs don't stop! We had to remember to cancel any ongoing accounts related to the house itself in advance- the pest exterminating company and the paid compost pick up, for example. Regular subscriptions and deliveries were also cancelled.  We set up a new forwarding address in the US. This meant finding a company that mail can be sent to, digitally scanned and was available online for us to see and act upon if need be. We found that in St. Brendan's Isle based in Florida. Forms needed to notarized and sent too. We ended up forwarding our mail a w...

Having the house under offer and a confirmed move out date took a lot of the pressure off but there was still a lot to do! We booked my haircuts, annual physical appointments, eye tests and dentist appointments, and asked for copies of all our records so we could take them with us.  We finished up tax collection information and sent them off to the tax  accountants so they could be completed for the April 16th tax deadline (for UK friends- the tax year is a calendar year).  We had been talking to our financial advisors about transitioning our US investments for some time. We had deliberately chosen an international company with offices both in the US and UK to make the eventual transition easier five years ago. However, it turned out that the process to convert the accounts wasn't really used that often and therefore a mess . You can only have accounts in the US while you have a UK address (even though we are also US citizens) in certain companies. That meant moving the a...

We met three realtors on March 1st and 2nd. All of them came to the house and had three different strategies. The first one impressed us most as she came with a plan and timeline going forward. She felt sure we could go on the market quickly without having to do much else to the inside of our house (whew). The other two were a little older in their strategies, and to be honest a little condescending about what needed to be done before photos etc. The house photos were taken just a week later.  We had a realtor open house on Wednesday, March 13th and the regular open house for everyone else the following weekend. What was also nice was that Christine, our realtor, had an apartment in Marblehead that we could use for the weekend. Dottie went to stay with our neighbors so it wasn't so confusing for her. House sale pictures Basement Dick's office Living room Kitchen Dining room The house looked lovely, and we were very pleased to have eight (8!!) offers over asking price the follow...

 I promised myself I would try to keep notes about our 'Big Move' to remind me what we achieved over these months. I did. I carried on using Trello as an online monthly project manager but I also found that I had to use a paper planner because it was the only way I could keep everything straight on a daily basis. Looking back on it now there was an awful lot. I am writing this in July and so much has happened since but I will try to summarize it as much as possible. Let's start right at the beginning of 2024. A quiet Christmas at home with some decorations up-  I sold the pre-lit Christmas tree right after. This was the beginning of the big clear out of electrical items that would not work in the UK due to the 120v US v 240v UK power difference. Dick fractured a bone in his ankle on January 16th whilst walking to the train station after slipping on ice hidden under freshly fallen snow. At this point I was very glad I no longer had a job as all the dog walking, among many ot...

When we left California, we had a quote from a moving company in the amount of $24,000 which did not include the mileage! That was why we chose to self pack using Uhaul Ubox pods. We ended up with five pods, and the total cost including storage came to about $8000!  Therefore, we were quite scared at the thought of a transatlantic move. However, the cost of moving is largely the road cost. It is lucky that we live very close to a port! Right now, the cost of a 20 ft container shipped door to door is about $10,000, which is something we can live with. In the mean time, I have started removing the 'personal' touches in our home by taking down framed family photos, and mementos that have meaning to us but may distract a possible buyer. Now I have to fill in a lot of holes in the walls. 

 We decided to move back to the UK in the middle of 2023 and then it seemed so far away! Six months later, Dick has a new job (which he loves), and I don't have one at all, The latter being part of the moving plan. Technically, I finished working at the nursing home in October but I have worked two separate weeks in the mean time to help train my replacement and still maintain ties there. Since then I have kept myself very busy completing small projects in the house- all strange things that you only really notice when you are thinking about selling and what other people may notice! Paint flaking in a corner, and patching and painting a closet among other things. I've also started what I can only say now is phase 1 of the sorting and clearing out process. I say phase 1 as I've quickly realized that you need more than one go through 'stuff'.  Aside from that, I wanted to start recording the processes we are going through to move our lives back to the UK. I am using Tr...

 It's only when you know you are going to move that you start to really open your eyes to what is around you on a daily basis. Not only inside the house (how have we accumulated so much 'stuff' in the last four years?) but in the yard too. My raised vegetable bed is outside the front of the house, yes, not the back garden but the front. It's a small piece of land- maybe only a depth of 8 feet but enough to put a 12 ft x 4 ft raised bed.  I started tomatoes and peppers under the grow light with heat pads in the basement last year, and ended up with a bumper crop because we had such a dry and hot summer but I didn't start any other veggies. This year I tried a bunch of different veggies but in the coco coir pellets. They started really well but almost too quickly and were fairly weak plants, so they didn't transplant very well. I took a chance and sewed new seeds into the bed a bit earlier than usual, along with the transplants. Luckily, it was a mild Spring and e...

To be honest, I had rather forgotten about my blog but I was reminiscing about the road trip from CA to MA on Route 66 and came back to read it.  Here we are, four years later and at another milestone. We've decided to move back to the UK next year. There is so much to see and do between now and then, I thought I would try and keep a record of it all. We'll see!  Today it is raining, and we've tried to do something toward moving every time we are 'stuck' in the house. We have started going through some of the boxes in the attic office space. We ended up moving some things here from CA that we shouldn't have, therefore the aim is to whittle it down even more this time. We are also not self-packing like our last move either, so it is more about sorting through everything we have. We've already accumulated four boxes of electrical waste that have been taken to Staples.  The thing I'm not so fond of doing is selling online. I haven't had a great deal of ...

Last day of the road trip! Dottie won't be the only one glad to get there. We are looking forward to not packing up every morning and being able.to stay in the same place for a few days. It was 22 F when we took the dog for a brief walk this morning before getting in the car, and that was evident as we saw our first ski slopes and lots of very frozen ice on the roadside. At least the weather was still dry,  We drove from Pennsylvania, into New York State, and then into Connecticut. When we passed through Hartford, Connecticut,  I looked up where the summer camp was that I worked in the first summer I was at university. Camp Wah-Nee , which is near Torrington, now charges $11,000 per child for a seven-week (yes, that long) summer camp! I knew it must have been expensive back then  Finally into Massachusets, and only 68 miles to go... Dick has been recording the entire trip on a dash camera in time-lapse, being very careful to remember to turn ...