Hi,
Let me introduce ourselves. Glen and I have been together for 8 years after both having dysfunctional long-term marriages. Glen had been with his wife for 28 years when she basically told him she didn't love him and I left my husband of 31 years after many, many years of unhappiness loving someone who could not love me back the way I needed it. Sad but determined to make my life better I met Glen in preparation for a trip to Costa Rica where he was coming along with friends of mine who were joining me on my holiday there.
I wasn't immediately attracted to Glen but after talking to him for hours, we realized we had so much in common. Costa Rica confirmed our suitability and we decided right there and then to move in together.
It's been a long struggle to find joy after leaving my familiar life. First, Glen has a son who was only 8 years old when I met him for the first time. My own son was already married so I had been away from having a younger child in my home for some time. Turns out his son was nothing like my own and had been brought up very differently which made matters worse. What an adjustment! But through it all Glen and I still got along well when we weren't fighting about child rearing methods.
Some years ago I started having problems working full time. I was always exhausted and I was coughing a lot (I had been diagnosed years ago with asthma). Meanwhile my father had passed away and my mother was not doing very well on her own. I suggested she should come and live with us and I would be her caregiver. She would pay the same amount she was paying for her apartment and would get a lot more company and someone to watch over her. Another big adjustment in our life! My mom suffered from Alzheimer and was finally diagnosed about 1 year after moving in with us. As her condition deteriorated I found it harder and harder to care for her. I loved so much that I truly thought I could go through anything for her but my own sanity and health were suffering. Also, we had done a lot of modifications to our house and garden to accommodate my mother and her walker or wheelchair which had cost us a lot of money. My mom paid for the things that were directly related to her like the stair lift but everything else like finishing the basement so we could have a bedroom there and redoing the pathway to the garden with a patio so my mom could enjoy time in the garden were our own expenses. Well, we hadn't figured the added cost of another adult living with us and soon found ourselves sinking in debt. My mom moved to a retirement home and we sold the house and moved to an apartment.
My health deteriorated and after seeing a lung specialist I was diagnosed with Interstitial Lung Disease which there is no cure for and is progressive. That made me think how life can change quickly and we must seek to have the best life now. There is no rewind or starting over. Then Glen's job at the Federal Government got cut. He got the package. At first we thought we would be OK but after the money he received was gone - paying debts and just filling in for living, we had to move to a cheaper apartment.
We moved to a fully renovated small apartment in Hamilton across from the lovely Gage Park. We thought it should be quiet there. Well, it's the noisiest street I had ever lived on. We couldn't sleep well constantly being woken up by the noise of buses, motorcycles, loud radios, trains (yes there was a train track running behind the apartment). Meanwhile Glen's diabetes which was not monitored, worsened and he ended up on insulin. Another eye opener as health has so much to do with the enjoyment of life. After a year of not sleeping well, getting sick every winter and seeing my life slipping away, I couldn't take it anymore. Glen's son turned 17 and he was becoming very independent spending a lot of time in his bedroom and not socializing with us much. I thought it was a good time for a radical change of life.
I had been reading about people living full-time in RVs travelling across the country and it seemed like a good fit for us. After researching a lot and calculating a lot, we came to the conclusion that we could live that way without always trying to make money on the side (we walked & boarded dogs, we painted apartments, I groomed dogs and it was never enough). But with low RV payments and variable payments on the truck our meager pensions should cover the cost of living and we could go south for the winter.
So as you see life for us has all been about juggling the lemons that life keeps throwing at us. Making lemonade is good too but why settle for lemonade when you can have a glass of wine?
Thus our journey as full-timers begins.
