We're Going to Northern Ireland!

We applied for a house sit in Northern Ireland over a month ago. We renewed our application after they renewed their ad on Housecarer.com. I sent it twice, without hearing anything back. Then last Tuesday, when we had given up, an email arrived asking if we were still interested! We don't know the exact start date, late May to early June, as their current sitters are stuck in Washington DC in the tremendous snowstorms of the past 10 days. When they are finally able to make it to Derry and thaw out, we will find out the particulars for our arrival.

This house sit, for 5 1/2 months, will involve the care of two Irish Wolfhounds. Since we live with 3 Great Danes; Loki, Clyde and Andre, taking care of giant breed dogs will not be a problem, more of a joy!

We are looking forward to Ireland, which my sister described as the "greenest place on earth". It will also allow us to miss the heat of summer in the Sonoran Desert.

The Way Foreward

After 3 years, I'm back. I found I could not continue writing about New Orleans and our experience walking out. Suffice it to say, we made it. We made it back 6 weeks later to clean out our house, (5 weeks), gut the insides ( 1 day with the services of 2 brothers and their crew), and sell it to a friend. By January we were packed into a trailer, which we had to off load into a truck cause our pickup would not safely pull it, and headed to Pennsylvania. From there, we spent 6 months in Penn Yan, New York on the edge of Kuika Lake at some new friends cottage. Visited back in Pennsylvania with our daughter and son in law. Spent another 6 months house sitting in Virginia.

Now we are house sitting a couple of times a year, when we find somewhere interesting to go. So far we have been to Hillsborough, NC, twice, Ashville, NC, Webster, NY, Tesse Froulay, Normandy, France, Tucson, AZ. and Launceston, Cornwall, England.

We spent last winter in Amarillo, TX, remodeling a bathroom for a Bill's sister. From there, we moved to Tucson AZ, where we are buying a house with our daughter and son in law. This will give us the freedom to travel without having to worry about our home, and give them the freedom to go while we watch their 3 Great Danes.

We have tried to put Katrina behind us, but even so, she crops up when one of us will ask, "Did ??? survive?" At this point the bulk of our belongings have been in boxes for over 4 years. Although I made a good list when we were cleaning out, it's still been a long time since we have seen things. We are looking forward to moving into a new home and unpacking.