Month: March 2017

 So much going on

gacott Leave a comment

I see that Vivian updated you about this morning . . . . so much fun. There I was, water shooting up to about my waste, wondering what the heck I was going to do. It all worked out in the end, so that’s good. :-).

This is not the easiest thing to do, totally upending everything because, well, why not. Totally goes to my needs to always be pushing the limits, always be growing, always be moving. But TOTALLY goes against the man,s sense of “protecting the family, being a good provider, being a stable provider” on and on. So a lot of inner tugs and pulls in different directions.

We lived in a great house, surrounded by great friends in a great community.

We now live in a camper next to an old busted up house that many people here are wondering why we would ever do such a thing.

Why indeed.

Both Viv and I have lived fairly rough lives, really. Long stories that neither of us often tell or speak of, but not easy lives. And I think it’s mostly because of that, we want to make a difference, a very positive difference. Certainly we could have done so in Colorado, but we felt a need to better our own financial situation at the same time. For me, it comes down to making sure Vivian will be taken care of for the rest of her life, no matter what ever happened to me, and I didn’t feel I could really do that in Fort Collins.

I am sure that many of the feelings we both get are the same type of feelings that the settlers had. Which settlers? It doesn’t matter, choose any of them. They all wanted more than what they felt they could achieve where they were. I don’t think I have ever really thought of it like that, but it fits.

All in all, we are pretty darn happy with what we have done and what we are about to do. Our contractors start phase one of Landscaping on Wed of this week and will soon start building our first building for us, a shed. More on that later.

Trouble in Paradise

Vivian Acott Leave a comment

I’ve been meaning to write about our forward movement and some awesome experiences we’ve had since being here in paradise, but today turned out to be frustrating and I think I need a moment to vent.

We’ve been buying bottled water for drinking since we’ve been here. The local water just isn’t delicious like Fort Collins water. So we made a conscious decision to set up a water filtration system for our camper. Yesterday we went to the local Walmart and bought a filter and drinking water hoses. Gotta do it correct, right?

This morning before heading out to SPI (South Padre Island) Garret went to turn off the outside faucet and detach the old hose to hook up the new. Well the old corroded faucet broke below ground level and the old hose and faucet were fused together, probably hadn’t been separated in over 25 years! Well the pipe broke, about a foot in the ground. We did not know where the water turn-off valve was located and the long time tenant, Charley, was gone at the time. Of course we panicked, not wanting to waste precious water, panicked as if we would have in Fort Collins, thinking about the $$ rolling down the road. About an hour later Charley showed up and told us where the valve was located and we were VERY glad to get the water turned off. One thing about the water here in RGV (Rio Grand Valley)… it’s cheap, cheap, cheap! I don’t know if we’ll ever adopt the view that water is not a precious, expensive commodity. Just doesn’t seem right, don’t ya know.

During our panicked moment we called our Construction contractor to see if their plumber could come out to repair the broken water line. They came quickly to our aid, fixed the water line in about 15 minutes and saved the day! So now we have filtered water and tomorrow I’ll test it to see if it’s going to meet our tough standards of having delicious water to drink.

We’ll save SPI for another day =)