Greetings from Virginia

This is nice. A beautiful home in a beautiful neighborhood in a beautiful city. We got to Roanoke Friday afternoon. Layne and Veronica took my wife home this morning. I'm on my own for a few months.

We installed handles on all the kitchen cabinets, hung a few closet rods for clothes, unpacked all my stuff, hung a mirror, rewired some temporary light switches into permanent electrical boxes, replaced a missing shingle, cleaned out the rain gutters, repainted the chain link fence and the chimney flue cap, installed an extension arm on the downstairs shower head, and raked the leaves in the front yard. I even decorated an unfinished basement wall to hide the studs and wiring. We were very productive in a short time.

I'm not done. The toggle switch to turn the garbage disposal on is inside the sink cabinet. Unacceptable - I'm way too tall to bend over like that, and who wants to open a cabinet door with wet, soapy hands? The sink cabinet has a false drawer front on it. I've ordered a doorbell to install on the false drawer front and I'll run the switch leg from the switch under the cabinet to the doorbell to power the disposal.

I've also ordered a wall protector to cover a spot in the downstairs hallway where the doorknob has busted through the sheetrock and some motion sensor LED lighting for under the kitchen cabinets. My own shadow on the countertop makes it hard to see what I'm preparing. Most people would be okay in the existing lighting but for someone as blind as I am it's a struggle.

I've got four more smart plugs and another Alexa device coming, too. The new Alexa will go in the kitchen. I'll sync them together so I'll hear the timers and reminders go off whether I'm upstairs or down. I don't have a plan for all four smart plugs yet but they were cheaper in a four pack. I have one controlling my electric blanket and one of the new ones will control the lights in my bedroom. The rest will find homes later.

Yeah, an electric blanket. I'm in the smallest room in the house. It's downstairs and doesn't have a single window so my eyes get a break from the photophobia. I've shut off the heater vents to all other rooms and turned the thermostat down to keep expenses as low as I can. This is both the cheapest and the least painful room for me to live in.

The upstairs of this house is perfect. Very elegant. The hardware is all top of the line, the flooring and paint are tastefully done, and as a former professional cabinet maker I can say with confidence the kitchen is excellently made.

Downstairs is a work in progress. Some of it is unfinished and the rooms that were finished were done cheaply. I plan on remodeling the entire basement to bring it up to the same level of quality as the main floor. That will have to wait a year or two until we've paid the house off and got the furniture we want, but I'm going to do everything I can do on a limited budget before my wife moves here. When I'm done with the basement the value of the home will probably push half a million.

Everything feels different here. San Antonio was where we raised our kids but this is where we're retiring. The house is spotless because there's nobody else here to make messes. The microwave doesn't have tomato sauce stains baked into it, the countertops aren't covered in fast food wrappers, the Roomba isn't eating drawstrings of hoodies. I love my kids but it's wonderful falling asleep in a quiet house and waking up to find the kitchen sink as empty as it was when I went to bed. It's much less stressful.

The air is cleaner here. The water from the kitchen sink tastes pure. We have deer in the woods right behind the chain link fence in our back yard. I think I'll get a feeder for them so they'll visit this winter.

I'm thriving here. I didn't realize how much I needed this.

Saturday we hiked Cascade Falls. It's a scenic 66 foot waterfall at the top of a rather steep two mile trail. Yesterday we did another steep two mile walk from the top of the Mill Mountain Star down a beautiful single lane paved road and back up again. We passed a few cyclists on the way and I suggested to my wife we ride our tandem bike down the road once she moves here.

Just got off the phone with my mom. She's worried about me living here alone. She even asked me not to open the door for any trick or treaters this year. Mom's gonna mom, I guess. I reminded her I'm 6'6" and 205 pounds, and once somebody's inside with me all I have to do is say "Alexa, turn off the lights" and whoever came inside with bad intentions is suddenly having a change of heart.

I've remodeled a lot of homes but this will be the first one I've tried while blind. I'll need to hire people to do some of the things I used to do myself but other than that I think I'm good. My sense of design and function is still strong. I'm letting my wife decorate the upstairs however she wants - she's the one who chose the cabinet handles we installed yesterday - but I'm taking an active role in the basement. It needs to be blind friendly and built for our retirement instead of for kids, but I want to stick to changes that won't limit the resale value by being overly specific to the needs of the blind or too hard to convert the small downstairs room back into a third bedroom.

Fiber internet will be available here in March. I'm running ethernet cables through all the walls in preparation so we can plug our laptops directly into the fiber optic router and not get slowed by the wifi connection. The unfinished downstairs walls and the false ceiling will make that easier. The room I'm currently living in will be turned into a game room. I'll finish the laundry room and repaint the whole downstairs to match the light slate blue walls upstairs. The seller left enough hardwood flooring to do the entire downstairs but didn't get around to having it done before we bought the house. Once the walls and flooring downstairs match what's upstairs I'll be 80% done.

I'm excited to get to work but until the house in San Antonio sells I can't afford to do anything big. We're paying two electric bills, two property tax bills, two water bills, and two bills for internet.

In an earlier blog I wrote about how one of the hardest parts of going blind was realizing I'd never achieve some of my dreams. I learned to dream smaller but discovered the size of our dreams is tied to our sense of self worth. Dreaming small dreams made me feel like a small person. Remodeling this basement is my new dream and it's a big one. I feel important just imagining the improvements I'll make.

It's good to dream big.