The Longest Five Months of My Life

It seems like ninety percent of my waking thoughts and some of my dreams and nightmares revolve around moving. I have bought three houses in the past, but in each of the previous moves from the time I made the decision to move or my employer made the decision for me it took no longer than four months before I was in my new home. This time it is different, and I have had time to really agonize over all of my concerns.

 

For a long time I have known I would have to move from my present home because it has two stories with steep stairs that will not be safe for me as I age. Every so often I would think about the Del Webb retirement community which is north of Austin at Georgetown. For some reason that part of the state never appealed to me. Last August I looked at the Del Webb internet site and saw they were planning a new retirement community to be called Frisco Lakes in the north Dallas suburb of Frisco. I had never heard of Frisco. I had been thinking for some time that I would like to live in Dallas to be near the DFW airport. I love to travel. Since 9/11 the commuter airlines have abandoned Beaumont, and air travel has become increasingly difficult.

 

Then last September Hurricane Rita forced me to evacuate from Beaumont. I went to Texarkana. The weather forecasters said Rita was going to track north to Texarkana, stall out and drop 20 inches of rain. I decided I had to get out of Texarkana. I tried to call the various hotel chains and could not get through on their 800 numbers. I had my computer with me and found a Hampton Inn in Frisco. I made the online reservation. I only got one hour of sleep the night that Rita hit Beaumont. I started out in the dark for the drive to Frisco. I truly thought I was homeless. I told myself I was driving to my new home. I only spent one night in Frisco. Everything appeared to be very new and very nice. The one drawback was there was a tremendous amount of road construction. The next day I drove down to Richardson and spent the remainder of the evacuation there. I started calling Del Webb to get information on Frisco Lakes. There was little information at that time. I finally learned that the first homes were projected to be ready for occupancy in August, 2006.

 

Four weeks ago I went to a seminar at a hotel in Frisco where Del Webb presented the first details of the new community. I liked what I heard. I went on a bus tour out to the site. There wasn't much to see. There will eventually be 2,400 homes. The shells of the model homes were under construction. Some of the main streets are in place and there is a dark red brick wall in place around the perimeter of the community. They passed out a packet of preliminary floor plans for their homes. The dimensions were incomplete, and I did not have enough information to make a decision.

 

This week I heard from my sales representative, Rita. I am to meet with her on March 6. The purpose of the meeting is to "give you an opportunity to tour the model homes, walk the lots, view color selections and buyer selection pricing." She sent me a packet of floor plans with more complete dimensions that arrived yesterday. Surprise, surprise--the two floor plans I was considering just will not work with my furniture. I am going to have to go for a larger, more expensive model. The two models I had considered were the Plymouth and the Monroe. They are not including these floor plans in the models that are under construction. The floor plan that I am now considering is called the Walden. I am going to find out if it is one of the models that I will get to walk through.

 

The latest projection is that the first homes will be ready in late July if weather does not set them back. That gives me five more months to fret. I need to keep busy and stop thinking so much.