Next month this time I'll be sharing a cabin with my granddaughter while she attends her senior year of high school in San Antonio. So that will be 8 months living in Texas in one place and hardly any travel except for school holidays. It'll be the longest I've stayed in one place in a few years.
Hubby is very supportive of the plan and when I first discussed it with him (while we were in Hawaii in July), he said he felt it was the best possible solution as it relates to her completing her senior year of high school 200 miles away from her parents. She stayed with a friend's family for part of her junior year, but it didn't work out as well as planned and finding another family she could stay with that they trusted was proving difficult.
When I offered this idea to my DIL, I said I wouldn't be able to do it until October because of plans made for September (our annual anniversary trip starts in less than 72 hours + SoapCon on the 21st & 22nd in Kentucky), and at the time DIL still thought she had a viable family for granddaughter to stay with anyway. But that didn't pan out and DIL began to worry how she was going to deal with the first month of school. I suggested she take granddaughter to Mexico for a visit with her other grandparents, since DIL really wants to take a trip to see her parents this year and that she just start school after returning. So after son & DIL discussed it they came up with a plan: granddaughter would have to start school in her old school (the one she hates and was going to run away from home if they continued to force her to go to school there) for the first month of the school year, then she would travel with DIL to Mexico for a week and then have a week off to prepare for the move. So that's what's happening. Granddaughter apparently eagerly agreed to this requirement and all seems to be going smoothly as far as reports I hear indicate.
Anyway, while there in August, we did some apartment hunting, which was rather exhausting, but found a small cabin, more along the lines of a tiny home, fully furnished and will be moving in the first week of October. I even went to so far as to look at a senior living place who would have let her live with me as my live-in 'care giver', extremely spacious apartment with 2 bedrooms, but out of school district, but the price was really good and it had elevators. However, like the rest of the apartments we looked at, not furnished. Buying & moving furniture, no matter how frugal I may try to be, would still have cost about the same as this tiny little cabin in a lovely wooded area not far from her high school.
So what I can pack in my car is all I'll be taking with me. And my husband will be fending for himself for at least 8 months.
To prepare for my absence from home, I have been cooking up a storm, portioning and packaging and labeling and freezing meals for him to make it easier for him to eat well while I am gone. He said to me once when I was traveling and I commented on his dietary choices at the time, 'I eat better when you cook.' So sometimes I fix up a few things for him to eat while I'm gone, but I've never been gone for longer than 3 months & that time wasn't even planned, so I've never tried to fix this much food for him to have on hand.
Luckily we have a huge standing freezer in the garage and it's pretty darn full most of the time anyway. But I've re-arranged the contents a couple of times and managed to fill it even more compactly with individual meals that he can take out to thaw before he leaves for work and heat up when he gets home. All he has to do is add salad or in some cases, bread (for Italian Beef sandwiches, for example). And I'm still not done.
If I remove more of the older frozen foods, to use in meals, I can make room for more meals. AND if I make more room in the kitchen freezer, I can make even more meals. So that's the plan. I have the ingredients for another lasagna, another batch or two of tamales (this time, I'll add meat to some), and a couple of other meat containing main dish meals. But I have run out of individual containers. I'll have to make a run to WalMart tomorrow for those so I can finish up this part of the process.
PLUS I have to clean up the messy chaos I have created while going through my things to decide what I can reasonably bring for an 8-month stay in a tiny cabin with my granddaughter! I have often stayed alone in hotel rooms larger than that, so it will be interesting to so with another person for 8 months.
But I'll have about a week after we return from our anniversary trip to finish up before I have to head to San Antonio, so if I can finish up the food in the next 2 days, I'll be good with a week later to finish finalizing packing my stuff and cleaning up the chaotic mess I have made going through things to decide what to bring.
So my soap studio upstairs renovation is on hold for another year...
Hubby is very supportive of the plan and when I first discussed it with him (while we were in Hawaii in July), he said he felt it was the best possible solution as it relates to her completing her senior year of high school 200 miles away from her parents. She stayed with a friend's family for part of her junior year, but it didn't work out as well as planned and finding another family she could stay with that they trusted was proving difficult.
When I offered this idea to my DIL, I said I wouldn't be able to do it until October because of plans made for September (our annual anniversary trip starts in less than 72 hours + SoapCon on the 21st & 22nd in Kentucky), and at the time DIL still thought she had a viable family for granddaughter to stay with anyway. But that didn't pan out and DIL began to worry how she was going to deal with the first month of school. I suggested she take granddaughter to Mexico for a visit with her other grandparents, since DIL really wants to take a trip to see her parents this year and that she just start school after returning. So after son & DIL discussed it they came up with a plan: granddaughter would have to start school in her old school (the one she hates and was going to run away from home if they continued to force her to go to school there) for the first month of the school year, then she would travel with DIL to Mexico for a week and then have a week off to prepare for the move. So that's what's happening. Granddaughter apparently eagerly agreed to this requirement and all seems to be going smoothly as far as reports I hear indicate.
Anyway, while there in August, we did some apartment hunting, which was rather exhausting, but found a small cabin, more along the lines of a tiny home, fully furnished and will be moving in the first week of October. I even went to so far as to look at a senior living place who would have let her live with me as my live-in 'care giver', extremely spacious apartment with 2 bedrooms, but out of school district, but the price was really good and it had elevators. However, like the rest of the apartments we looked at, not furnished. Buying & moving furniture, no matter how frugal I may try to be, would still have cost about the same as this tiny little cabin in a lovely wooded area not far from her high school.
So what I can pack in my car is all I'll be taking with me. And my husband will be fending for himself for at least 8 months.
To prepare for my absence from home, I have been cooking up a storm, portioning and packaging and labeling and freezing meals for him to make it easier for him to eat well while I am gone. He said to me once when I was traveling and I commented on his dietary choices at the time, 'I eat better when you cook.' So sometimes I fix up a few things for him to eat while I'm gone, but I've never been gone for longer than 3 months & that time wasn't even planned, so I've never tried to fix this much food for him to have on hand.
Luckily we have a huge standing freezer in the garage and it's pretty darn full most of the time anyway. But I've re-arranged the contents a couple of times and managed to fill it even more compactly with individual meals that he can take out to thaw before he leaves for work and heat up when he gets home. All he has to do is add salad or in some cases, bread (for Italian Beef sandwiches, for example). And I'm still not done.
If I remove more of the older frozen foods, to use in meals, I can make room for more meals. AND if I make more room in the kitchen freezer, I can make even more meals. So that's the plan. I have the ingredients for another lasagna, another batch or two of tamales (this time, I'll add meat to some), and a couple of other meat containing main dish meals. But I have run out of individual containers. I'll have to make a run to WalMart tomorrow for those so I can finish up this part of the process.
PLUS I have to clean up the messy chaos I have created while going through my things to decide what I can reasonably bring for an 8-month stay in a tiny cabin with my granddaughter! I have often stayed alone in hotel rooms larger than that, so it will be interesting to so with another person for 8 months.
But I'll have about a week after we return from our anniversary trip to finish up before I have to head to San Antonio, so if I can finish up the food in the next 2 days, I'll be good with a week later to finish finalizing packing my stuff and cleaning up the chaotic mess I have made going through things to decide what to bring.
So my soap studio upstairs renovation is on hold for another year...
