Update

Update
It's been a whirlwind...

We closed on our beach house a month ago. That was the easy part. Since then both of our houses in New Orleans sold in record time. While this is wonderful, it also puts a lot of pressure on us to move. And we have no place to live since the beach house is basically a bit of a ruin right now.

The buyer for my house has been a dream. She loves my house, paid over ask, accepted the inspections without me having to do repairs or give money back, and is letting us stay in the house rent free 45 days after the closing. Both our houses close on August 23. So that means we have until the end of September to move.

Dave is desperately trying to finish a big contracting job Uptown in New Orleans, so he can start work on the Love Shack (the 300 sf cottage on our property) and have it ready for us to move into at the end of September. In the meantime, we rented storage space in Bay St. Louis, and he has been shuttling furnishings from his house to it. The plan is to empty is house first, then do mine.

So I have been packing and packing and packing. And selling off some furniture. It is daunting. The original plan was for us both to downsize tremendously. But then something else happened to make us hold on to our various collections of antique and vintage furniture and bric-a-brac. We acquired a prime booth in the best antiques mall in Bay St. Louis!

We will be shopgirls!

Nearly three years ago I was doing an interior design project in BSL, and I did a fair amount of shopping for the client in this antique mall. The ladies there were super friendly and helpful. Later I brought Dave there, and we all had many fun cordial interchanges. By coincidence both these women are leaving BSL! I was happy for their new changes in life, but a little bummed because I really wanted to hang out with them, One of them had the prime booth in the store, and I asked her about getting it in a kind of joking way, and she said, it's yours!

Dave looking over the contract for the space in the antique mall

Dave and I always talked about doing some kind of shop together, making our years of hoarding collecting pay off as an activity for our semi retirement. So here it is, the universe providing once again. I also was invited to teach tango in a fabulous art space nearby.

I will be teaching tango at Studio Waveland

So in the span of a month we have a new house, we sold two houses, we have to move, we have to renovate a place to live in, and we became shopgirls. These Saturday a guy has been hired to clear out all the brush and trash trees in the yard, and remove vines off the Love Shack. Dave's brother is coming from South Carolina to help him move, so hopefully Dave's house will be cleared out this week.

We've walked around the yard (I got bitten by fire ants last weekend) and the house several times, talking and planning, often taking our planning sessions to the local cafes and ice cream parlor. All in all things are humming along. We are both anxious to keep things moving forward, and still happy with our decision to take on this major challenge .

The Mockingbird Cafe in BSL

I celebrated my 70th birthday a couple of weeks ago, with lunch with dear friends and also a huge tango party. I truly do feel like 70 is the new 30.