Florihoma

What's this? A palm tree in Oklahoma? Well, turns out we weren't in Oklahoma for this recent picture. Did we take a cruise as we have other times we were homeless and jobless? No. Did we buy back in 2 doors down like we have been known to do? No. Did we look at each other one cold, dreary, damp day in Norman and ask each other what we were REALLY doing? Yep. Within hours we found Ashley, a lovely pet sitter who actually spent the first 5 years of her life in Fort Myers and we were on the road within another day. First the obligatory stop at Donut King, then with 14 hours of driving on day one, and 11 on day two, we were at the doorstep of our great friends and past neighbors, Terry and Larry to mooch some hospitality. We arrived with a suitcase each and vodka in hand. We knew they had this great cabana bedroom and it was more than ready for company. The next day we looked at about 20 properties....the day after that some more. And within 5 days we were under contract for a 2217 sq foot home in Caloosa Yacht and Racquet Club with tennis courts, kayak lake, riverfront marina and a fabulous private restaurant.

What? What happened to the grass fed ranching business? Maybe in the future....maybe on a much smaller scale, and maybe that smaller scale will happen right in SW Florida. What it comes down to is that the ranches we saw last fall all had been sold. Nothing new was coming on the market and we realized even if it did come on the market, we might not hear about it. We would have had to buy further and further out from Norman. Now we would be hours away from Rick's dad if he moved, too. And we started to be very uncomfortable with the idea of moving his dad.

And sometimes you don't know the beauty of something until you step away.... Oh, yeah, and you don't remember how much you REALLY like to see the sun, or how bad the arthritis can feel in cold, damp weather. I guess I should start using the term "I". I love water. I love warm weather. I love the sun. I love green landscaping. Rick loves to be able to move his knees and play tennis, and drool over sailboats. And Matt loves the idea of staying put where he seems to be satisfied with his "institution", knows how to drive to Walmart, and is working on getting a new girlfriend. And bottom line, we are still capitalists. We really like what we can get for our money in SW Florida real estate wise. All that added up one cold obnoxious day in Oklahoma when we made the decision to stay Floridians. Not a bad life. In fact, a pretty good one. We realized we had to "get away" to see the forest for the trees.

Now, we can relax. And get ready to move. Again. For awhile. For now.