Moving to Colorado

I call this blog, “Blind and Deaf Adventures with LeeAnn” because LeeAnn is blind and deaf, and because everything we do is an adventure. 

But it also refers to me. As her sister and legal guardian, I have to be careful NOT to be blind or deaf to her wants/needs/desires. 

Life changes are not easy for LeeAnn. Four years ago, we moved her and mother into our home in Kansas. Leaving Amarillo was the hardest thing she experienced in a long time. 

(The first hardest for her, was when she moved to Austin to attend the Deaf/Blind school in 1972.) 

The move to Kansas was for the better for her and for mother. She didn’t understand she was safe with us. She also did not understand she had not been safe before. Mother's dementia had stolen her ability to properly care and protect LeeAnn, or herself. Predators, or at least one particular predator, was circling their waters. We saved them in the nick of time (but that's another story).

This latest adventure, moving to Colorado, has evolved over the past four years. Fulfilling our dream to live in Colorado became doable as our own lives were changing (but...that's yet another story). Colorado is where we want to be buried, some day (like 50 years from now!), and we want this to be our final place to settle and retire.  (Remember I’m 57 years old and my husband turns 50 this year.)

Moving is hard on anybody. For some, change is an emotionally charged event. For others, change is exciting, but the actual “move” is physically and mentally hard on one's mind, body, and soul.

Add to that moving from one state to another, three hundred and fifty miles between loads, and the moving experience becomes even more challenging, expensive, and time-consuming.

One of first trailer loads.

New car registrations, driver's licenses, phone numbers, doctors, dentists, hair stylists, nail techs...everything new and different.

Now, add to that: indecision. Whether to build on the five acres in the country we bought four years ago, build in town, or buy resale; and you’ve got the situation we have at hand.

All that doesn’t sound too bad, but, once again, I ask you to add another component to this scenario.  LeeAnn. 

She is mentally challenged and to say she is set in her ways is not quit accurate. Actually, she is cemented in her ways.

My sister doesn’t do change. She’s a hoarder of things and space. She is comfortable with no change at all.

Photo from google images,
not my sister.

EVER. She’d rather squeeze into a little bitty “office” to get to her chair and desk, or maneuver through piles and piles of collectibles in order to get to her bed, or dressers, than to throw stuff away or make any kind of change in the arrangement. I’m not sure where this personality trait comes from, except that she is mentally challenged and I assume she thinks that once received, one must hang on to, or one will never have again.

I’m not sure, it’s an assumption on my part. With LeeAnn, I have to assume a lot because she cannot explain. It’s like reading a pet’s actions to know what they want. Sometimes you know. Some times you assume you know…you know?

And I have to admit, the indecision on our part didn’t ease her discomfort.  We had three options. Build on our land. Build in town. Buy resale in town. We changed our minds, or it was changed for us by reality/finances, several times. I’m talking back and forth like Forest Gump's ping pong ball when he was practicing against a wall.

At first, going back four years, we wanted to build on our land. A dream home. Beautiful log home called the Castlerock.

The Castlerock, by Honest Ab Log Homes

It was all we thought about. I had it completely decorated in my mind and LeeAnn had a bedroom, an office, and we would share a Library down in the basement. But reality set in solid as the granite outcrop on our land when we received the estimate from the subcontractors. It was WAY over our heads financially.  

So we looked at resale and stumbled on a guy building new in Canon City. We liked the style of this home and we thought a corner lot on this street would be perfect. The architectural company had a floor plan that suited our needs, with a basement, four bedrooms, three car garage, RV parking, etc. It had everything, except it wouldn’t be on our land. Amazing view of Pikes Peak…really this option was excellent.

But then we got to thinking, “What if we built a smaller log home on our land?” Looking into that, we found the Raleigh.

The Raleigh, by Honest Ab Log Homes

Three bedroom, two bath, and we could modify the interior, add a basement with bedrooms, utility room, an arts and crafts/storage room, a family room and a library, for the same, or near to the same (okay, a little over the) cost as the new build in town. LeeAnn could set up her “office” in her bedroom. It would be fine. AND we’d be on our land! 

This is the critical thing. We love our little piece of Colorado. The thought of not living out there brought uncontrollable tears to my eyes. We had imagined living there for so long!

Meanwhile, we perused the resale listings, off and on. You know, just to see what was out there. <insert snickering from audience> One house kept cropping up in strange ways. (I think God was tapping me on the shoulder, but I had a hard time accepting the nudge. Like I said earlier, Who is the Blind and Deaf one here?) Back in September/October, I had “saved” the house along with several others to “follow” on the realty site. But it was three bedroom and I really wanted four, for a writing studio. In November, our realtor sent me an e-mail letting me know the owners were willing to rent-until-close. 

Still we focused on building on our land.

Understand, too, that during all this indecision: back and forth, back and forth with deciding what we should do, I was showing LeeAnn pictures of the log house and the floor plans, the new build in town with floor plans, and some of the resale homes. She had made a folder several months before, labeled, “Colorado Home Office,” in which she had put pictures of the Castlerock and 8X10 printout of the floor plans.  I had convinced her *wink* the Castlerock wouldn’t work, and the Raleigh would be good. Every time we changed our mind, she added the new pictures to her folder, and yet she would ask…

Log home? (meaning the bigger Castlerock) Wrong home? I love the Log Home with the basement for my office.

“I know.” I told her. “Too much money.” 

You need to understand at this point, LeeAnn has very little concept of money or commerce. She thinks, “If you want it, you buy it.” The finiteness of money is irrelevant to an acquisition. So she really didn’t understand why we wouldn’t (not couldn’t, but wouldn’t) build the Castlerock. 

As set on building the Raleigh as we were, we paid for blue-lines, tweaked the floor plans to our likings, discussed mortgage options with our bank, etc. Everything was being readied to move forward. But in our hearts, both of us were terrified of the mortgage payments, yet we said nothing to the other. Okay, sometimes our communication skills are…lacking. We knew it was at the upper end of our range. We were both worried and somewhat miserable about the decision. I kept hearing one of our pastor’s messages about peace. 

You know when something is from God when you are at peace with it. 

I wasn’t at peace with this, but I refused to address it because I thought, “This is what we want. It’s the right thing to do. We will love living out there on our land.”

Then one day, in January, my husband scanned the resale homes online and this same house caught his eye. He showed it to me. I was shocked. It was the same house I had marked as save, and our realtor had e-mailed me in November. This was a sign if ever there was one. We spilled our guts about our fears with the log home and the other expenses associated with building/moving so far out and on never-before-developed land. 

We set up an appointment and drove to Canon City to look at this haunting-our-minds home. 

By now, LeeAnn was completely confused.

After walking through the house, we liked it. Alot.

The price was much more reasonable for our day-to-day budget.  We’d have wiggle room to “do other things,” which is very important to us. You know, we want to have adventures, go camping, fishing, see Yellow Stone, the Red Woods, make trips back to Kansas to see family and back to Texas to see the grandkids (and our children, of course. Ahem!). I could go on and on. We discussed it all the way back to Kansas and we were leaning heavily toward buying this house.

But LeeAnn cried most of the way home. She kept signing, “I love the Log Home. I love the basement office.”

I told her, “I know. Too much money. Green house is better for us.”

She signed, “Wrong home. Log home, wrong.”

I said, “Too much money. Green house better.”

She wasn’t consoled, but settled down and stopped crying.  

I racked my brain to figure out how to make her understand. I reminded her of the bedroom she liked. It was already painted blue, her favorite color in the whole wide world. The thought of that made her happy.  I ran off pictures of the home from the realty web site and she put them in her folder. That really seemed to appease her. But from time to time she would ask, “Log home wrong?”

I told her, “Yes.”

Now, we are moved in. We love to see the deer in the yard,

 LeeAnn is settling into her blue room, and we have hung several of her paintings in there and the bathroom, which is virtually hers unless we have company. Soon we will unearth her what-nots for her shelves, but she has her desk set and is on her computer again. She has asked me several times, “Rent this house?”

I tell her, “Yes, but we are buying it.”

When we drove back to Kansas and cleaned out the house there, she helped and was SO excited when we finished. She danced and laughed, clapping her hands and signed, “Yeah, finished.” It was really cute. I knew how she felt.  That’s the worst part of moving, in my opinion.

We’ve started painting and making a few changes here and there. LeeAnn says, “It’s beautiful.”

Not finished,
but here is our Library

She LOVES the library and brought a book up to put on one of the shelves yesterday. 

Our Aunt Dorothy lives just two and a half hours from here. LeeAnn is excited to be closer to her and we anxiously wait for her first visit.  

U-haul (Paul), Pam, William,
and me, last in convoy.

Another friend from Denver has already been here. (She helped us move by coming back to Kansas with us, kept us on track, and then she was the fourth driver when we made the U-haul trek a week ago.) Thank you, Pam Wright! You are a friend in deed!

The more we get “moved in” and the more it looks like “us” the more settled we feel here. And LeeAnn is settling in too. She is back to her routine of breakfast, chores (she loves helping), and writing on her computer. She hasn’t asked about the Log Home in over a week. That doesn’t mean she won’t ask again. But for now, our adventure is less of a strain on our minds and our hearts. 

This is where we want to be, Colorado. LeeAnn will forever want to be in Amarillo, because that is all she has ever known. I am confident, in time, she will think of this as home and will not want to be anywhere else. I stand at the kitchen window with her and point out the view of the mountains. I say, “Look, the mountains are beautiful!”  

She agrees. 

This adventure will become a memory we will cherish in our hearts of the “time we moved to Colorado,” and we will move on to other…

Blind and Deaf Adventures with LeeAnn.

How about you? Has there been an event in your life that seemed insurmountable? Were you blind and deaf to a loved one’s state of mind? Did you see God’s hand in the mix of it all? Tell me about it. I’d love to know more.