Happy New Year! We are slowly working toward Launch 2018! We are now in touch with a realtor with the goal to get our house on the market in May. I cleaned and purged the living room yesterday! It’s pretty satisfying. The bookshelves were the hard part, we kept some books for now that will eventually not make the cut. 3 boxes of books to go! We have a plan for the next month, preliminary purge and cleaning of a room every week. We are still planning to buy our RV in March and we’re looking at buying new vs. used. We’d rather buy used but our RV of choice is very hard to find! We are considering ordering a custom new one. Depends what is out there when March rolls around. If we order new, custom, we probably won’t get delivery until May and that isn’t ideal. We’ll see what happens, that is something we’re still working on.
This week our Colorado friends have had a roller coaster ride with their new kitten. He has worked his way into their hearts and is adorable! His health has been a problem, but things are looking promising as of right now. It reminds me of the turning point in my life and my one true regret. I had a Dalmation puppy for about a week, my junior year in high school. He stole my heart within minutes and then after I brought him home he got sick. Long story short, I had to make the decision to put him down when the vet said he didn’t have a good prognosis, after he had spent days at the clinic. I still wonder if I did the right thing, it felt a little bit like giving up on him but it was also not putting him through any more suffering when it was likely he wouldn’t make it. I don’t know if he would have pulled through, but the gist of it is, that is what made me decide not to pursue Vet school. I thought I wanted to be a veterinarian since I was in elementary school. Before that, I wanted to be a “whale trainer”, I wanted to work at an aquarium. Much later in life I realized I didn’t really agree with whales in captivity but that’s another story. I wanted to be a whale trainer and then I wanted to be a marine biologist, when I found out that’s what “whale trainers” usually are first. Then I wanted to be a Veterinarian. I’ve had pets and loved animals since before I can even remember. I had the grades and the means to pursue vet school. That dang Dalmation broke my heart and convinced me I was too soft-hearted, that no matter how many animals I could help I would always agonize over the ones I couldn’t save. I very much regret that decision now. After I decided not to pursue vet school I wasn’t sure what to do and I just drifted and I don’t think I ever really figured out what I wanted to do. So here I am. I don’t know how my life might be different now if I had chosen that path and gone to vet school and become a veterinarian. That’s a tricky mind game to play. I’m very happily married to my best friend and we have the most amazing little girl. Hard to say if that would have happened if I had chosen vet school. I am blessed to have a good job but honestly, it bores me. Total honesty. I could be doing so much more. I’m over that, though, and happy with what I have done in my life. I’ve certainly made my share of bad decisions in my nearly 39 years but I regret none of them, they were learning experiences. It’s life. So my one true regret is the thing I didn’t do. Going forward, I want to embrace our plans for a life of travel and I won’t regret it for a minute. If we decided not to pursue that, I think that would end up being another regret. We have been given an opportunity that most people don’t get until later in life (travel in retirement!) and I don’t want to squander that opportunity. Deep down, it’s been a dream of mine- of ours, for years and years. I’m so excited to make it a reality!
3 Reids on the Road 