It’s been a LONG time since I’ve dusted off My Ole Site and posted anything.
Married Life has been good to me and I’ve been busy. But since the last time I posted here, lots of things have happened. Our landlord broke two of her promises to us when we moved into a big three-bedroom home she owned. She promised us she wouldn’t raise the rent (Lie #1) and that she wouldn’t sell the place and make us move (Lie#2)
The day the registered letter arrived I told my wife: “These are never good news” and sure enough it wasn’t. She was giving us three months to Get Out. I looked around and couldn’t find anything we could afford to rent that was in a neighborhood I really wanted to live in. Hell we were going broke living there as it was.
My wife had been pining to see her kids and other family back in her native Canada so I loaded up our modest Nissan with her, our two chihuahuas and off we went on a cross-country drive to Canada.
We saw places I had previously only flown over from ground-level: canyons and mountains and desert ranges that looked like sets from spaghetti westerns interrupted only to stop for gas, Monster energy drinks ( I quickly discovered gas station coffee ranged in quality from drinkable to paint-thinner) and to sleep at Quality Inns (which were dog friendly)
Our two dogs adapted amazingly well to the sudden change of routine. They were used to relieving themselves in our grassy backyard; the “dog park” at the New Mexico Quality Inn consisted of cacti, rocks and dirt. The pups looked at me like: “what the hell is THIS?” until I found a grassy patch behind a nearby cafe. They relieved themselves and all was well.
We crisscrossed New Mexico, Colorado, Utah Idaho and Washington State and crossed the border into Vancouver, I was worried about how the dogs were going to act for the two hours we were on the ferry to Vancouver Island but they slept in the back seat lulled to sleep on the ocean waves.
I dropped the wife off at her sons house, kissed her and our two pups Goodbye, left my Nissan in their driveway and told them I Shall Return. Then I got on a plane and flew back to Texas.
When we left Texas Der Trumples was still telling the press that the Corona Virus was a Democratic Hoax. By the time I left Canada more level heads were taking it seriously. In fact the Canadian government closed the border right behind me the day after I left.
The rest of March was a furious rush to get out of our rental house by the end of the month. Packing and numbering boxes, making a list of the contents and trying to sell our furniture on Craigslist made for a dizzying rest of the month. The weather wasn’t exactly cooperating; it seemed to rain constantly. I spent two weekends trying to get rid of our excess stuff with a moving sale; first weekend NO ONE showed up. Second weekend was a little better; I made three or four hundred dollars selling things for a fraction of what we paid for them. It was a painful process.
After one deadbeat after another from Craigslist wasted my time promising to show up and buy things and then going AWOL I wound up just giving away our furniture to a local charity and what they didn’t want wound up on the curb. This was one of the most heart-breaking periods of my life.
I put the everything else into storage. At one point we had five storage units; after donating unwanted dusty things we hadn’t touched in five years to Goodwill and playing Tetris storage-style, I managed to squeeze everything into three units. Then we started listing things on Ebay. My life became a blur of driving back and forth to my menial job, the storage unit, the post office and back to my Moms house where I took up temporary residence.
As of this writing I am waiting for the Canadian border to re-open and whenever that may be, I am loading up a Uhaul truck and heading to Canada. 62 is a weird age to be starting over, but dammit I can’t survive in America much longer.
My job SUCKS. They always have enough chump change laying around to pay some over-paid stuffed suit to tell me how to do my job but they have been unable to give me a pay raise since 2012. They refuse to pay me overtime. In between this and inflation I am working 40 hours a week for less money than I was making 10 years ago.
So I’m leaving the country. I’m tired of waiting for you-know-who to Make It Great Again. I don’t care if I have to flip burgers or work in a grocery store in Canada; its got to beat the hand-to-mouth struggle that passes for life here in America.
Being separated from my wife and two dogs is a toughie. I miss them more than anyone knows. The stress and emotional roller coaster I have to endure daily would make any of the people on 90 Day Fiance dive off of someplace high. But there is a goal, a destination, a light at the end of this sewer. And I’m heading for the light.
More later
The Roper Files 