Tying Up Loose Ends…

First things first. Airline reservations, did I mention ‘One Way!’ ( Whoo hoo!) Before we can book our tickets we first have to confirm that we can get the cats booked into Cargo on the same flight which is a Copa flight from LAX into Panama City. Of course they don’t make this an easy thing to do. There is no local office where we can just go talk to a real live person, nooooo. We have to call and arrange that with someone over the phone. So we leave messages and wait, and wait, and wait some more. GRRRR. It’s kinda frustrating because we are not able to purchase our tickets until we are certain they will be able to be in cargo. We have found flights into Panama City on Tuesday, May 28th. Ok, here’s where a whole weeks worth of clients begin to panic! Yikes! I have a booked schedule that last week through June 1 and now my email, Facebook page and voicemail is beginning to fill up! I’m sooooooo sorry everybody, please forgive me? It’s not a done deal quite yet, still working on the scheduling and booking but that is a date that looks like it would be workable, ( not for you, I know.) . I’ll do my best to get everyone in early so we can say our farewells. try not to panic quite yet, like I said, it’s not a done deal yet.

As we are working through all the possible scenarios, that would work best with the cats. Ideally, we would like to arrange to have only one leg of flights for them . The only nonstop, direct flight we can find is out of LAX. So this means renting a van here and driving to LA. The flight is a red eye which works well because it gets us to Panama City at around 8am which is good timing for connecting with the required vet who needs to inspect the cats upon arrival. Now, Copa only allows pets on flights from Mon-Thurs. We haven’t contacted the pet relocation people until we have a firm date to give them. We are hoping to arrange for them to transport us to Boquete from the airport with the cats and probably a few suitcases. That means the day will include two 7 hour car rides and a 6 hour flight! Yikes! We are gonna be pooped! But We will be there, FINALLY!

You may be wondering, ‘where’ exactly will we be? Well, we too wonder about that at the moment. We are working on that. As I said before, my new, “virtual friend’ Andrea has very graciously offered us lodging in her place when we first arrive. This is an option that we are so grateful to have but we would ideally like to locate a place where we know the cats wont be a problem. We have feelers out and have asked everyone we can think of to please keep us in mind if they have any recommendations of pet friendly rentals. We also have been corresponding with a guy who is well known for helping expats locate rentals in Boquete. We have found a place that looks like it might work at least for the first month or so. Its called Villa Marita. It looks like a nice place and not too far from town so we can walk , which is important given the fact that it may be a little while before we buy a car. Most importantly, it is pet friendly so the cat problem will not be such a problem there, yahoo. Now we just need a firm date to set a reservation! This seems to be the biggest problem we are having so far, setting a date based on getting those darn cats booked into cargo on a Copa flight! Our friend Al warned us early on that the cats would be a major headache , he was not wrong! Although I never thought he was, I just hope we don’t run into any complications that cause problems we cannot find a solution to.

The other loose end we will address is setting up a Trust. We made a appointment with an attorney to set that up. It’s a good idea to have things like that in place before we set off. I’m sure in the coming weeks we will be making lists and slowly working through all the necessary details of shutting down a life and relocating it to a new location. We are moving back into the house until the end of the escrow period which should be about May 23 or 24 or possibly a bit sooner. The contingencies on the sale end about saturday or sunday. Then we may just go stay at a pet friendly hotel for the last little bit. There are also a few more things that we left in the house for staging purposes so those need to be packed into the storage space. We have the washer/dryer the patio furniture, our King size bed, and if it fits we have a couch and coffee table . Of course the storage space is almost too its capacity so Scott may have to unload part of it and attempt to reload it more efficiently so it can fit the rest of our stuff and don’t forget his additional tools that he will be ordering. The very last detail we will need to address is selling Scotts work truck and his trailer. His good friend Brooke called today, looks like he will be buying the trailer so that seems to be done. Once the truck is sold we will just need to rent a car for the remainder of our time here.

There are a few details to tie up at the salon with Stephanie as well. We need to write up an agreement for her purchase of the business. She will be signing her lease with the landlord soon. I only have one more month of rent to pay and then it will be her turn to take over. There are a few more things for me to pack up there and take with me to my new home. I don’t expect I will be taking too much but of course I will take all my tools , you just never know if I may cut a little hair someday. Definitely not as a job but maybe for friends or something. Who knows! As you can see , there are a few ‘loose ends’ to tie up and we are slowly but surly working through our list. Time is flying by and we will look back soon and wonder how it went so fast!

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