Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.
— Incorrectly attributed to John Lennon. It actually goes back to at least 1957.
The road to Albania wasn’t straight. Far from it! I was doing something else when “things” came up. Here are a few of those things.
This piece is a little longish, so I suggest you skip the parts that don’t move you. Just read the headings.
31 Years in Nevada City, California
I used to live in Nevada City. It’s a fine little tourist town in the foothills of Northern California. But over time I realized that I had lived there way too long.
- I got married in 1986. I moved to NC with my wife in 1988. We got divorced in 1990. At that point, I could have gone back to Hollywood, but I didn’t want to be just a delivery mechanism for my New Age Neo-Hippie Ex-Didn’t-Love-Me-Anyway Wife. (A very nice gal, but the marriage wasn’t a very good one.)
- I lived in NC for 31 years! But there was a problem. Work was successful, but the rest of my life wasn’t. I gave up on trying to date. My friends were dead or dying and I got tired of eating alone.
- So around 2015, I started visiting Panama. I loved it! I made six week-long trips there, going twice a year. I was getting ready to move there permanently.
- I made trip #7 in 2019 with my hot new girlfriend Jennifer. I think I bought the tickets. It was a wild tropical vacation. It turned out that she found the heat to be very punishing. And it’s not much fun to be with a person who is suffering from the heat and humidity.
- So, so, so and well, well, well! I had a chance to marry Jennifer, AND you don’t pass up a chance like that! So on July 10, 2019, we tied the knot, welded the chain, combined the molecules, and mixed the blood. In the gazebo at the Nevada County Administrative Center.
- Seven days later, my little Nevada City house was empty and cleaned. I moved to Lodi, CA, and I can assure you life with Jennifer in Lodi was a lot better than life in Panama City, Panama, without her.
5 Years in Lodi, California
Lodi was (and is) pretty cool! Don’t believe the Creedence Clearwater Revival song “Oh, Lord, Stuck In Lodi Again.” Lodi is a very good place — combining the best of small town life with the worst of plastic strip mall suburban living. It has become a major wine center, too.
Truth in advertising: When I was a “yute,” living in Citrus Heights, California, Lodi was just a wide spot in the road. US-99 to Los Angeles was a two-lane road and Lodi had one traffic signal to slow people down. My family never stopped in Lodi for any reason. (See the movie “My Cousin Vinny” for the origin of the word “yute”.)
But Lodi in 2019 was good. My wife was beautiful and I was now co-owner of a genuine suburban home. The weather was fine and there were plenty of things to do.
Jennifer had done beautiful remodeling over the years, but the place needed attention. And we gave it abundant attention. We gradually got rid of my junk from Nevada City, fixed things, bought new appliances when needed, etc. etc. etc. I planted a new garden every year and botched it every year.
Refi #1. We did a cash-out refi to rebuild bathroom #1, removing bad exterior siding and the floor. We bought the world’s most expensive shower door. The house got exterior paint and roof repairs.
Refi #2 and an office building. A couple of years later, we did another cash-out refi and I got us the lowest interest rate in the Milky Way galaxy — 2.00%.
Jennifer used her money to convert our old TuffShed into a fully-equipped office for herself. Windows, door, insulation, air conditioning, flooring, finished walls, tons of electric power, and so on. The whole megillah, with a couple of nagilas thrown in.
We gotta get outa this place
All work and no play… makes you crazy. Jennifer was ghostwriting like mad. I was working on getting a book ready for publishing as a contract project. This was unsustainable.
But you can’t make it without money… But wait! You can make it with less money in another country, like Albania. You can make it on your Social Security and the proceeds from the sale of your house.
My body rebelled. It kinda “helped” our interest in moving that my body went into total rebellion in May of 2024. Bigtime foot problems, bigtime dematology problems, and bigtime weight problems. Kaiser-Permanente wouldn’t treat these conditions (and I would gladly repeat these accusations under oath in front of a Congressional committee). GROSS PICTURE ALERT!!!
We sold our house. Jennifer, a former real estate broker, handled it all. What a wonder she was! We cut a great deal for both buyer and seller. And we got out of town.
BTW, I sold my favorite child to my best friend. I was lucky. I still have visitation privileges.
De plane! De plane!
Doesn’t Tattoo tell us?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlnOcZK892E&ab_channel=SmoovioSmooth
Time to get outa Dodge. On November 5, 2024, we left the Quality Inn in Woodland. Getting the luggage out of the rental SUV was a big problem, but I left the bags and Jennifer at the terminal. Then John Ashley, a wonderful man at the Enterprise rental car return, drove me back to the terminal instead of just putting me on the Enterprise shuttle. (He also helped us stack two carts so we could go check in. Har! Your life in nine bags!)
I had a bit of physical pain. It was “OK,” or so I thought. I didn’t need a wheelchair until we got to Denver.
We flew out of Sacramento SMF on time. “Into a world of laughter, a world of tears, a world of hopes and a world of fears.” It’s a small world, after all.
