SIGNS OF LIFE?

Okay, there seems to be a little bit of movement in the force. There have been tiny trickles of encouragement in the news this week. Obama is seeing "glimmers of hope," signs of progress. For the fifth week in a row, the Dow has been up, regaining 20% since the low point in March.

Here on the home front, we're feeling it too. I'm about 80% recovered (I don't know, I just made that up). I've been listing like crazy. Not tipping over, listing our properties online. The business went on bizbuysell.com Wednesday and has already produced several leads. The boat is back on Craigslist up and down the East Coast. In addition, we're having an open house tomorrow and four people have looked at the house in the last week.

Sure, there are pirates in the Indian Ocean, an earthquake in Italy, a bombing in Iraq and Karl Rove is pissed off, but the sun's been out, it's warming up.

Ah, I love the smell of napalm in the morning!

TIMING

2003
November
Bought Isabella, Downeast 32

2005
May
27th Opened wine shop

2008
February
4th Decided to accelerate our 5-year plan and sell everything in fall 2008

July18th Plodding to Paradise, this log of our adventures, begins

August
Started preparation in earnest to get house and business ready to sell

September
15th Lehmann Brothers files for bankruptcy
15th BankofAmerica buys Merrill Lynch
15th Dramatic drop in global stock markets
16th AIG suffers liquidity crisis
17th Chip and Tammy list business with broker
17th Markets continue dramatic decline, Dow drops 446.92
25th Federal regulators seize Washington Mutual, largest bank failure in U.S. history
26th Chip and Tammy put their house on market
29th House rejects bailout; Dow suffers greatest loss in history of index, -777.68
Car sales in September plummet 27%
284,000 jobs lost

October
1st Senate approves revised $700B bailout bill
2nd Dow drops 348.22
3rd House approves $700B bailout
6th Dow drops below 10,000 for first time in four years, global markets plummet
6th Iceland passes emergency legislation to seize and regulate their banks
8th Global markets experience huge drop
8th Federal Reserve loans AIG $37.8 billion
9th Dow hits 5-year low
10th Stock markets crash across Europe and Asia
10th Dow lost 697 points in first 5 minutes
10th Dow closes 40% down from its record high on October 9, 2007
13th Dow soars 936 points, largest one-day advance ever
15th Dow plunges 733 points
16th Dow falls 400 but rallies to close up 401
22nd Dow drops 514
24th Markets plummet after Alan Greenspan calls the crisis "a once-in-a-century credit tsunami."
28th Stocks rise dramatically in anticipated of rate cuts by central banks, Dow +889
240,000 jobs lost
Consumer confidence hits all-time low

November
GM sales drop 45%
4th Obama wins Presidential Election
6th Dow has biggest two-day percentage drop since 1987
7th Unemployment rises to 6.5% in October
13th Dow has erratic ups and downs ending with a 550 point gain
13th October numbers show foreclosures up 25%
18th CEOs of three automakers plead for assistance from Congress
18th National Assoc of Realtors report median home price down 9% from last year
19th We reduce the price of the house $10K
19th October housing starts a lowest level since 1959
20th Dow loses 445 points
533,000 jobs lost

December
1st Dow drops 680
2nd Automakers report huge declines from 31-47%
4th November retails numbers released showing drops of 12-15%
11th Number of people filing for unemployment hits 26-year high
11th Bernard Madoff arrested and charged with running $50B Ponzi scheme
681,000 jobs lost

2009
January
20th Obama inaugurated amid another Dow plunge on banking news
598,000 jobs lost

February
697,000 jobs lost

March
2nd Dow Jones Hit Lowest Point since 1997
Unemployment Hits 8.1%
742,000 jobs lost

April
3rd Unemployment reaches 8.5%
9th Chip and Tammy list the business on bizbuysell.com
15th Chip and Tammy reduce the price of the house

June
26th Chip and Tammy get the first offer on the house
29th Chip and Tammy sign contract on the house

July
2nd Unemployment reaches 9.5%
7th Chip and Tammy sign backup contract on the house
8th Contingency on original contract officially lifted! July 28th closing.
9th Showed Isabella for the first time
14th House appraised
16th Passed house inspection
25th Moved into our little apartment: Camp III
28th Scheduled house closing
31st Actual house closing and check in the bank!

October
14th Dow closes above 10,000 for the first time in a year

December

15th Made an offer on an Island Packet 380 -- and it was accepted!

2010
January
1st Tammy turns 50
21st Sea trial on GOOD COMPANY
28th Close on Good Company!

March 2010
1st Contract on Isabella
8th Isabella sold!

April 2010
11th Moved our first belongings into Good Company
19th Tammy moved permanently onto Good Company
29th Left Rock Hall to take Good Company to the Outer Banks

May 2010
4th Arrived in Manteo on Good Company

June 2010
14th Sold wine shop!

July 2010
18th Christened Cara Mia

October 2010
23rd Untied the lines and left Manteo
24th Moved to: http://ploddinginparadise.blogspot.com/
With our first entry: http://ploddinginparadise.blogspot.com/2010/10/our-new-world.html

We hope you'll join us on our new adventure. Thanks for reading!

THE LAST ONE STANDING

Could things possibly be looking up? Just ever so slightly? The Dow is inching up tick by tick. The housing market shows signs of having a pulse. Spring is in the air. Bob Barker returned to The Price is Right -- only briefly, but still.

No pain meds today. I'm being held together by surgical tape and ibuprofen. They had to make FOUR incisions, so I'm basically recovering from being stabbed repeatedly in the stomach. They told me today would be the hardest, but I'm up and mobile if not running and jumping. Thanks to Jenniffer for bringing food, Wendy for bringing tulips, cookies and Lily, John for babysitting and cooking a mystery dinner that was delicious, and Chip for, well, being awesome. I consider myself profoundly lucky to have a wide and deep safety net that feels less like a net and more like a warm comforter.

We're starting to get inquiries about the boat. We gave Phase Two numbers to a business prospect.

Yeah, I know, we've been here before. There's no way to measure progress toward a goal that we don't control.

Chip's still using the metaphor of climbing Mount Everest. He says I'm sitting in the snow with altitude sickness. LOL.

I prefer to think of it as a marathon dance competition. All we can do is be the last ones standing. Oh, standing. I'm working up to that.

FLITTING TO PARADISE

A long time ago, when I named this blog, I thought 'plodding' was cute and funny. In fact, I was concentrated much more on the 'paradise' and less on the 'plodding.' It made a good alliteration.

plodintransitive verb
1: to work laboriously and monotonously : drudge
2 a: to walk heavily or slowly : trudge b: to proceed slowly or tediously [the movie just plods along]
transitive verb
: to tread slowly or heavily along

Boy, this movie plods along too. If you start at the beginning seven months ago, it reads less like plodding. It's all happy and cheerful. Somehow, I think I imagined we might be living on a boat by March 1. Was that naivete? Over-enthusiasm? Wishful thinking?

The one major factor that we couldn't foresee was the unexpected economic 'downturn.' Yeah, that plane that landed in the Hudson a few weeks ago had a little unexpected downturn too. Obama has crash-landed this near-fatal economy in the river. We're all standing on the wings with ice water creeping up our ankles while he runs around desperately hailing life boats.

"Oh, no, after you! You need to get to Charlotte. Paradise can wait!"

All things considered, though? I wish I'd used a lighter hand with the blog name. 'scampering' or even 'prancing to paradise' Sounds so much more fun.

UPDATE:
--Spoke to a lawyer this morning about handling business sale and some owner financing. Very encouraging.
--Working on marketing ideas for business, boat and house
--Listed boat on sailboatlistings.com

GOING UNDERGROUND

We had an open house and nobody came.

That's not entirely true. Beth, our realtor's office manager, stopped by. She brought each of our realtors -- Jim and Dana -- a small St. Joseph's statue. As the tradition goes, you bury the statue upside down in your yard and it brings you a buyer.

Not being Catholic, I looked up St. Joseph to see what his deal is. Turns out he's Jesus' stepdad! Mary's husband, the dude who raised Jesus. (I wonder if god paid child support?) Wikipedia has more than I wanted to know about Joe and is totally sketch about what we really want to know: how did little Joe become the upside down, subterranean saint for real estate transfer?

Who thought of this saintly torture? "Okay, Joe, i'm putting you head first in the ground until you sell my house."

My feeling about this and most religious/superstitious traditions (feng shui, sage burning, clapping, etc.) is, hey, they can't hurt.

Dana and I promptly planted the little guy in the front yard, arse over teakettle.

My favorite part of this whole episode is the source of our little icon: www.discountcatholicproducts.com. I bet the St. Joe kit is the only thing involving "home sales" that's booming.

GIVING AWAY MONEY

We gave away $10,000 yesterday. That's what it felt like, anyway. We reduced the price of our house by $10,000.

The theory goes: if we stay in the house another 6 months, we'll be spending $10K++ paying interest. Likely buyers will be around in the next 6 weeks, after that, we'd be stuck until May.

The New York Times is coming tomorrow to do a photo shoot for their column "What can I get for $$$." We'll be the "what can I get for $350,000." they focus on 'destination' locations so their readers can dream of living somewhere else. Maybe someone's dream will come true.

A someone is looking at the house Saturday. We'll spread fairy dust around before they get here.

Both of us have this feeling that everything is at hand ......

TODAY:
--obsessed over staging the house for the photo shoot
--reduced the price of the house
--watched the stock market continue its freefall

PIG STEIN COUNTDOWN: 24 hours

AND SO IT GOES

Wow, this blog could use some happy-ing up.

But, what can I say? We trimmed another 678 points off the Dow Jones today.

A presidential election with no incumbent is four weeks away, and the campaign is taking a backseat.

There's talk of the financial crisis overshadowing Christmas sales. The government of Iceland has seized three of its own banks to avoid bankrupting the entire country.

Our story is getting all intertwined with history.

TODAY:
--shredded more files (I'm starting to feel like I'm in the Nixon administration)
--sanded the bowsprit seat some more
--prepped the bowsprit for painting
--got rid of the last of the wood under the house

STIR IT UP

The Dow Jones continued its plummet today, 508 points. Britain is trying to prop up their banks. The financial world is in a tailspin.

And yet, things are agitating in a good way in our world. Just today, somebody actually looked at our house, we got an email about our boat, and we sold our futon couch, sewing machine and kunga. Our business broker dropped by to tell us he's had a lot of inquiries, even though there have been no offers.

We talked to a kindred spirit today, a friend who is a little bit ahead of us on the road. He has already dispatched all of his belongings and plans to leave for his new life in Hawaii on Sunday. He's the first person we've talked to in months that truly understands exactly what we're doing, the paring, the piling, the gifting, the sacrifices, the joys.

Bon voyage, Shane. lead the way, we're not far behind!

TODAY:
--we clicked through a third of the vendors that will be at the boat show
--finalized plans to see 7 boats in Maryland next Monday
--unloaded more stuff in Wilmington
--moved a dresser out of the house and to a new home

BROKE NEWS

We're in Wilmington attempting to escape for a few days. Instead we're at the hotel watching Wall Street collapse and the aftershocks reverberate in Europe. sigh.

There's no escape.

Our house has been on the market for nine days, and there hasn't been a single call. Not one. Every morning we make the bed, fluff the pillows on the couch, put away all the dishes. At night we come home, and everything is exactly how we left it.

Let's hope somebody looks at how pretty it is before the flowers wilt and the weeds grow back.

Big forces are moving in the universe. There must be something good in store for us. There always is.

TODAY:
--mounted the last dorade box
--started planning our attack on the Annapolis boat show

TIMING IS EVERYTHING

This journal of our plod to the water is meant to remind us of all the trials and foibles along the way, some more memorable than others. When we look back we want to remember not just the bright colors but all the shades in between. We want to remember how hot it was the day of our first garage sale, how ridiculously hard it was to box up that office chair we sold on Ebay, the days and days of labor to varnish the toe rails on Isabella, how long it took to put those CDs on the iPod.

Someday we'll look back and say, "Remember the week we put our business and house on the market, and the entire economy went to hell? Ha ha ha."

"House Rejects Bailout; Markets Plunge"
"Dow Suffers a Historic Drop, Falling 778 Points in Single Day""He [Paulson] warned that inaction would lead to a seizure of credit markets and a virtual halt to the lending that allows Americans to acquire mortgages and other types of loans."

If timing is everything, what does this mean?

We could fret, but we're not. We've done the hard work, the part we can control. The rest will be delivered when the time is right. All we have to do is wait and laugh.

We asked for a sign, and it says FOR SALE.

TODAY:
--put generator back together after repair
--the economy survived another day
--took final pictures of the house for the listing
--got a lot of beer festival stuff done. oh, yeah. in addition to everything else, we're planning a beer festival.