The beauty of stuff

I´ve been without a permanent home for roughly six months. I haven´t been couchsurfing* the whole time, of course, because I have been the guest at the condo of the generous and welcoming J and S (the parents of N) in Gainesville. But I have been alternating between a home with extraordinary little furnishing and other people´s homes, and I now better appreciate the having of stuff. I´ve always leaned toward the minimalist side of the spectrum. When I was younger, I dreamed of owning just a few hundred items. However, it turns out that not only is stuff useful, it is reassuring to have it. 

It is a challenge when cold weather hits and you discover that there are not enough blankets for you and your houseguest. (Sorry about that, S!) It is nice when you own more than one bowl, so you can invite someone to lunch. And it is nice to know where the stuff is, and what it looks like. For example, I have cooked my go-to meal, spaghetti, in many homes in the last six months. I always know there will be some way to remove the noodles from the boiling water, but I don´t know if it will be a slotted spoon, a strainer, or a pair of tongs, and where I will find the thing. You can use quite a bit of brainpower figuring out how to conduct regular routines in new places, and I will be happy it when I end up in a more permanent place with furnishings. 

It has been interesting to observe the limits of my minimalism, and to appreciate owning things. But do not mistake my complaints - I still like my current life a great deal more than when I was working!

*Plus, most of my friends have actual guest rooms, and that is a 1000% improvement over living room couches. College-age me could only dream of this luxury.

Vagabond

Gainesville is a lovely place and I´ve met terrific people there, but why stay in one place when you have nothing tying you down? The visa application continues to be marked "En tramitactión" which I´m pretty sure is Spanish for, "Hold your horses, missy, and we´ll get around to reviewing this in our own sweet time." So I packed the car and headed on a month-long tour of the East Coast. 

Returning to DC reminds me of all the delightful friends I have here. There are always people around willing to do a bike ride or have lunch. Last week I organized a bike ride with nine people, three cars, and two bike racks that included stops for cake and French fries. We wanted the kids to only ride downhill (ie the fun part), and that required some complicated project management. Here my old biking group, G, N, and R, relax with beers in the freezing cold afterwards.

I spend a long weekend in New York City with my best friend M. We dressed up to go see the Macy´s department store spring flower show. I also made a delicious corn and tomato panzanella salad with her daughter J, who is a avid cooking apprentice. 

I focused on some of the smaller sightseeing attractions in NYC this time. The flagship public library is a beautiful turn-of-the-century architectural masterpiece. A free tour lets you see areas that aren´t easily accessible to the public. These carved wooden ceilings are actually painted plaster. 

In the fine tradition of roadside attractions, I found this noteworthy statue in front of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine (sometimes known as St. John the Unfinished, since the cathedral is decades in the building and not done yet). The Archangel Michael casts out Satan while standing on a double helix and a crab, surrounded by peaceful giraffes. I don´t think I´ve ever seen so much symbolism crammed in so densely into one piece of art. 

Adventures with friends and family

My younger brother S came, all the way from Washington (the state)! We get along really well but don´t see each other too often, what with living on opposite sides of the country. And since that distance is about to get further, I guess he decided it was a good time to visit.

We did fun things that do not photograph well. Cape Canaveral is three hours away, so we took a day trip and watched a SpaceX rocket launch. This was extra cool because S is a huge rocket nerd and regaled me with rocket knowledge so I could really understand what I was seeing. There were two communication satellites on board, but no people. We were able to get within seven miles, close enough to see the huge trail of glowing gases and then the exhaust as various stages fell off. I felt awed that we as humans are able to do things like this. I really want to go back if I can while I am in Florida, especially since S told me that Europe launches very few rockets.

We also visited the giant bat houses I´ve mentioned before. On warm nights, thousands of bats stream out at sunset to catch their dinners. The most impressive part was at the start, when a bird of prey caught an unwary bat in midair and carried it away for a meal. Sometimes you are the predator, and sometimes the prey.

Photo by Larry Hyler

I also recently visited the botanical gardens with my friends L and L. He is the avid photographer who took those great portraits a few months ago, and she is full of intesting stories. We posed for lots of shots among the greenery.

Photo by Rosa Colon

My friend R hosts occasional work weekends to help spruce up her large country property. I volunteered to use the electric pole saw to cut down unwanted vegetation. Picture three-foot-tall aloe vera plants with thorns - I´m not sure what they actually were but we decided to name them the Devil´s Arugula. They were massive and unpleasant to touch, and I got such a thrill chopping them up. It was a delightful afternoon, meeting new people and helping. My friend R has tons of friends and loves connecting them, and I am truly enjoying getting to know her.

Photo by Rosa Colon

A rest after the plant massacre.

I feel so happy that I have put down roots here and made friends like R and the L´s so quickly. Having time to devote to social events combined with interesting and receptive people in Gainesville has made such a difference. I hope I will be as equally successful in Madrid when I get there.

Retirement: One year in

The application is submitted, and now there´s nothing to do but wait two or three months for a response. In the meantime, I have lots of fun stuff to keep me busy in retirement, which I have been officially enjoying for one year this past February.

When I moved to Gainesville, I started volunteering for Habitat for Humanity. It´s a Women Build project, which means all the volunteers and construction personnel we work with are women. I love it. I am learning a ton of new skills and everyone is super supportive even when they are correcting your mistakes. The very first day I  showed up I learned how to use a nail gun and I was hooked, returning every Saturday that I am in town. The group completes one house per year, and so far I have learned door, soffit, and siding installation. I am sorry that I live in a place where not everyone has a home, so that this group is needed, but it is now one of the most enjoyable experiences of my week.

It has been a real surprise to me how social I can (and want) to be since I have retired. I have long known that I´m pretty introverted, and when I was working I was careful to have lots of down time to recover from all the personal interactions my job required. That meant that most evenings and weekends I´d be alone. Now that I don´t have to spend my social energy on work, I can socialize multiple times per week (and sometimes multiple times per day!) and still have time to recharge on my own. Friends drop into town or have a spare ticket for something, and I jump at the opportunity. It is truly delightful, and I am amazed that I have friends in Gainesville and friends in DC. Sometimes I feel like my friendship cup is overflowing, in the best possible way.

And just because, I got to attend a Holi celebration recently. It was as delightful as I expected. Maybe someday I can even experience this in India, although that´ll have to wait at least five years, when my visa no longer has such tight travel restrictions.

Navigating the system

To move to Spain, I´ll need a visa and the best choice for me is called a Non-lucrative Visa. From the name, you can see that it prohibits me from working. However, I will eventually be allowed to apply for permanent residency, as long as I follow all the rules. The benefit for Spain is clear- they get money coming into the economy without needing to give me a job, a boon in a country with relatively high unemployment.

I drink a lot of coffee while studying bureucratese, my new second language.

But the getting of the visa is not simple, and I knew that going in. Last November, I began by reading the brief instruction page on the consulate website. Then I spent several days reading all the comments on the Spain Expat page pertaining to visas, going back months and months. My friend M likened this is to a study of the Talmud - first you read the revealed words, and then consider what all the scholars have said about the topic throughout the years.  And it´s really needed. For example, what counts as proof that you have enough money? What does it mean to have a document notarized versus apostilled?* What do you do when all the Spanish consulate websites around the world go down for a week unexpectedly?**

I spent several months accumulating proof that I don´t need a job, that my FBI RAP*** sheet is clean, that I don´t have any serious diseases, and that I had a place to live when I arrived. These were translated into Spanish by a government-approved translator. I am now waiting for the last piece of paper, which I hope will arrive this week. In fact, I need it to arrive this week so that I can overnight express my application to the consulate. Because in six business days, the first of my carefully-procured documents expires and I´ll have to do that part over before submitting. 

tl,dr: To apply for a visa, you either need to be a very organized and legal-minded person, or you need to hire someone else who is. Fingers crossed that I can pull this off!

*Answer 1: Notaries verify that it is really you signing something, and the apostille verifies that the document really came from the government. Answer 2: The first takes 15 minutes to procure, and the second takes 10 weeks.
**Worry, very pointlessly.
**It turns out that´s a real thing: your Record of Arrests and Prosecutions.

Even more sights to see

I am back in Florida and working on my visa application again. Hopefully I´ll have more to share soon. In the meantime, just a few photos from my journey home.

I was lucky to find the UFO Welcome Center listed on Google Maps when I was driving through a small town. All I can say is that I think we need to invest a bit more in our welcome centers or the aliens are going to turn around and go home. 

I have a vague recollection of Yogi Bear and his propensity for stealing laden picnic baskets from my early childhood. 

The drives are more bearable with frequent stops for walks or bike rides. By the time I hit South Carolina, I had found spring, with blooming daffodils, the sounds of spring peepers, and deliciously warm weather.

Home away from home

I technically live in Florida, but DC still feels like home. It has been utterly delightful to spend the last two weeks with my friends here. In fact, I might even squeeze in one more visit before I leave the country. Since I stay with friends, I am trying hard to make sure I don´t wear out my welcome. My techniques for this are (1) leave the house a lot to visit other friends, (2) do the dishes whenever I can, and (3) bake or cook a lot of delicious food for them when I visit. So far, it seems to be working, but I´ll watch for any anonymous letters telling me stay in Florida.

So, how does a middle-aged retired physicist spend her time while on "vacation"? First, I helped some friends with a rental house they are renovating. They tore everything out down to the exterior brick walls and subfloors, and are framing the walls. I love this kind of work, even thought it was 0C/ 32F the day we were there. I have recently learned how to use a nail gun, and as they say, when you have a nail gun, everything looks like a 2"x4" that needs to be attached. 

I also enjoyed a very find bottle of Cardassian kanar with some of the Star Trek group. Obviously, only a few people in the world would be excited about such a thing, but luckily, I am one of them. 

Lastly, I fixed my computer! I dripped the tiniest amount of water on my laptop last month and fried the keyboard. I decided to try repairing it, but only once I was in DC, where my computer savvy friends R and N stood by with the correct tools and advice when I got stuck. I learned that my computer was really not designed to be taken apart - it took me three hours and a large part of that was shaving off tiny pieces of plastic that glued parts together. 

But eventually it looked like this, and (even better) it now looks like a laptop again. And I can recognize a heat sink or a motherboard, which will presumably be very useful information later in life.