Rosa Linda Román (00:29): Hello and welcome to New Mexi-Castaways. I'm Rosa Linda Román and as is usually the case, I will be working while I record this episode. if you're new to my channel, let me introduce myself. I go by Rosa Linda and the mother of three children. Ahava is 13, Ziva is 11, and Samuel is seven. I'm also accompanied by my sweet two-year-old German Shepherd, Nala, who is stretching on the kitchen floor beside me. We are at our new rental home in Austin, Texas, a very far cry from our most recent adventures, starting with our living on a boat for almost the past two years, and then, going on to doing a full-time family traveling stint for about five or six months. And now we are settling into domestic life in Austin, which is not where we're from at all. We moved off the boat a few months ago, and if you haven't heard in some of the previous episodes, we came to Austin because my husband had a job project here. Rosa Linda Román (01:38): The irony is that I'm here way more than he's here because he's always traveling still for work. The plan was to come to Austin so that he could be with us more. And he is, but more is relative. He's still gone this whole week. We just arrived from a whirlwind trip. Let me back up and fill you in. I think I did some recording from the road when we took a camper trip up to Sequim, Washington and that is where we left our wonderful dog, Nala, along with my brother-in-law's camper up in Sequim, Washington, because that's where their third brother, my husband, and his two brothers and his third brother. So, I took the camper with one brother, Ari, from Arizona up to Sequim, and saw the other brother, David, and his family up in Sequim. Rosa Linda Román (02:29): We left our dog, Nala with a… we thought we were going to leave her with my brother-in-law, but that didn't work out. He wasn't comfortable with that. So, we ended up getting a woman named Crystal Stout who's the captain, a balloon pilot and I believe the actual airplane captain. But anyway, she took care of Nala. We hired her to do that and we were very glad we did. She took good care of Nala and it turned out the timing was really unbelievable. I called her because I knew that she had had German Shepherds and when things were falling through with my brother-in-law, I called her to see if she knew someone that could take care of our shepherd. And I found out that she had just lost her beloved dog, Kuma, I think that was her name. I never met her, lost her beloved dog of 11 years. I think it was two weeks earlier. And so, the timing was, I was like, well, I don't want to ask her to watch Nala, you know, that's too much. Rosa Linda Román (03:35): But when I was asking her for recommendations of who might be able to watch Nala, she said, "Well, bring her by. Let me meet her and we'll see." And she met her and she had her other German Shepherd, a male, Charlie, was there and he was 10, I think. So, she said, "Let's see how they get along and I'll let you know if I'm comfortable watching Nala." Well, sure enough, the dogs met and Crystal met Nala, all was well, and she offered to watch dog while we flew to Florida for my brother's wedding. And it's an interesting story. Now, I don't know what your beliefs are, if you believe in fate, or destiny, or divine intervention, but I don't know how else to describe the timing of what happened with Charlie and Nala. We brought Nala the 4th of July, I think it was, or maybe the third, right around there to Crystal's house. Rosa Linda Román (04:36): And then, yeah, that's right, and then, we went to downtown Seattle to catch a flight on the early morning of the fifth. And we tried to watch the fireworks but didn't see a single firework. It was just the kids and himself. It was a weird 4th of July, let's put it that way. Usually, we celebrate in style. But my husband was doing his clinical work starting on the fifth. So, he was heading to El Paso, Texas. And the kids and I were in a hotel in Seattle. We had left Nala with Crystal, and then, you know, flew to Florida. Well, when it came time to try to figure out how to get Nala back with us, because not only was the Florida trip, I think it was a total of three weeks and I guess it was maybe two weeks in Florida. Rosa Linda Román (05:21): We had gone to Jupiter where Ahava had done some training with a gym there, gymnastics, and then, we went to Clearwater area for the wedding, and then, we went to, to Orlando to go to Disney, and just spent some time with my extended family, my siblings, and their kids. And so, by the time we were going to be able to get Nala with all of that going on, which had been planned a long, long time in advance, Crystal clearly was, you know, she's a busy woman. She runs Olympic Peninsula, I can't even remember, remember Olympic Balloon Tours and Dream Catcher Balloon, which is an organization that helps people in wheelchairs or with other mobility issues to fly in a hot air balloon. And so, she's got this great foundation, she's working all the time, and she had Charlie as well. Rosa Linda Román (06:17): And you know, she sent me a couple texts wondering when we were going to get Nala and we were eager to get Nala. Obviously, she's our sweetheart. So, Ari, my brother-in-law simply nicely agreed to fly back to get Nala for us because we just couldn't, with all the timing of all the stuff going on in Florida. So, Ari flew to Sequim, got Nala, my other brother-in-law, David, picked up Nala on the evening that Ari was arriving or maybe it was a little early in the day, but anyway, it was on this particular day he picked up Nala and I got a note the next morning from Crystal's, not roommate, but I guess she kind of does like an Airbnb and she was the person that was staying with her who I had met, said she wanted to let me know that Charlie had passed that night that we picked up Nala. Rosa Linda Román (07:17): So, he was alive and well until the day that we picked up Nala. And then, the reason Crystal wasn't there when David went to go pick up Nala was because she was at the vet and saying goodbye to Charlie who breathed his last breath that same night. So, timing-wise, it's just so crazy to think, you know, I didn't even think there was any, we didn't go into it thinking she was going to be watching Nala and not knowing that she had lost her dog, her female shepherd. And the way Charlie was, he was just so sweet with Nala. Like, she was his little sister and he was protecting her. And so, you know, it just felt like, you know, and then, he kind of held on to be there for Nala and this is my story, this is my take on it. Rosa Linda Román (08:04): Of course, everybody can believe whatever their own beliefs, but this is just my take on it. He was there to do this, you know, kind deed to take care of Nala, and then he, you know, wanted to go, and be with his longtime companion who had already, as they say, crossed the rainbow bridge. So, you know, I just wanted to say that sometimes things happen for a reason and especially when you're a full-time traveling family like we were doing. So strange sometimes how things work out. And I'm just really grateful that Charlie and Crystal came into our lives at exactly the right moment for us and for Nala. So, a huge thank you to her. And if you want to see, I made a little tribute video to Charlie and Crystal on my Facebook page. It's New Mexicast on Facebook. And you can find that video there. Rosa Linda Román (08:59): It's just a little quick video, but I just I just wanted to let them know how much I appreciated what they did for us. Okay, so now fast forward to what is going on in our lives now. We got Nala back, but after Nala left Sequim she went to Tucson where she hung out with Ari for a bit because what we were doing in the meanwhile, we were moving our things from the storage unit, and in fact, I think, I recorded a bunch of the natural sound, so you probably already heard that, of me trying to load and unload things into a moving van, and then, unload it here in Austin. So, you've probably heard some of these stories, so I apologize if you've heard it twice, but, so yeah, we got here to Austin, we were here for like a day and a half, and I had taken that moving van with my daughter Ahava from Kissimmee to here to Austin. Rosa Linda Román (09:55): And we got here, we did like a crazy unloading of the moving van and then the next day we… or maybe it was two days later, we had to go fly to Albuquerque where we were, no, no, no, we flew to El Paso because Nathan's car was in El Paso because that's where he does his clinical work in Alamogordo and he always leaves his car in El Paso. It's the easiest place to fly into for him. So, we went to El Paso, picked up his car, then he drove from El Paso to Albuquerque, got a hotel there, and spent a few days seeing friends that we had in seen a while which was super fun. And then, we dropped the kids off at camp in Albuquerque on Sunday. And then, Nathan and I got on an airplane. Now, we were supposed to go on a trip just us to San Diego, in the camp we went to [indiscernible 10:54] camp [indiscernible 10:56] which we love. They're really wonderful people. Rosa Linda Román (10:57): And so, anyway, we were supposed to go to San Diego. It's a city that I love and we had been to many, many times. We're coming up on our 20th anniversary and we haven't been in many years. In fact, I don't think we've been with the kids. And our oldest is 13, so it's been a while since we've been to San Diego. So, we were going to go and have this great trip to San Diego. And then, two days before our trip, Nathan got a call from his work saying that he needed to go to a meeting in Dallas on Monday of our week. So, instead of going to San Diego, we went to Dallas and it was fine. We stayed, you know, in a nice hotel because we was there on business and we ended up going out to dinner. Rosa Linda Román (11:47): But that was it. We didn't get to see anything of the city and we were there for two days, two days of our one-week vacation without kids. And then, after that, we went to Tucson, saw his brother. We stayed at El Conquistador Hotel, which is lovely. It's one of my favorite ones there in Tucson. And I had a really nice run through the... they have like a golf course and I just love the desert, the Sonora desert landscape where you see like quail running around. They have their little families and it's such a cool place. It's just really special because my husband is from Tucson, so it's just a place that we feel really good there and it was nice to be there. We picked up our van and drove our van down to our condo in Puerto Penasco, Mexico. Rosa Linda Román (12:39): It's in a place called, the Condo is in Las Paloma, which is just one of the resorts that you… we used to just have it as our own private vacation place. But since we were moving onto the boat, we put it into the rental pool and we were renting it out. Now, side note, at the time of this recording, part of why we went to Mexico, besides just the fact that we had a minute to go there, is we've been renting it out since we moved onto the boat. We decided it didn't make sense just to keep it as, you know, our private vacation place because we weren't going to get there very often. And so, we put it in the rental pool and I've been managing it this whole time and it's basically been like my job, like that has been a way that I've been contributing to our family's finances, which at first, Nathan was really hesitant to do that, to put it in the rental pool. Rosa Linda Román (13:33): He just did not like the thought of dealing with renting and all that can come with that. But I convinced him that we should. And over time we have brought in a nice amount of money renting out our condo. And so, we went down there because even though we've been renting it out for two years, we have not been able to get that money to. They put it in like a bank account in Mexico. That's just the procedure, like, in order to own property and rent it out you have to kind of jump through these hoops, which is a real pain, believe me. But it was worth it because we were making a good amount of money and over the past two years, I'm going to just say right now, there was upwards of, I don't know if I should say the amount, well, I'm going to tell you anyway. So, over those two years I rented it out or we rented it and our amount was about $50,000, which is a lot of money, a lot of money. And I was very, very proud of myself right, for doing that. Rosa Linda Román (14:32): And we went there because we wanted to set it up so that we could access the account online because the way that it was… they supposedly had online banking, but the way it worked is they would give us this key card, like a password card or key, and that password card it gave you a number. Like, okay, so I want to sign into the website, it would give you a number that you would have to punch into the website to prove that you were who you say you were. Well, their website was so slow that by the time you got half of the numbers into the area that you had, you know, the input section, by the time you entered like half the numbers, the website would reset because it was so slow. So, you could never actually access the account online. Rosa Linda Román (15:24): So, we said this is ridiculous, we're in go and get the money and get it transferred to our account in the U.S. And so, that was a big part of the reason we went on that trip down to Mexico. So, it was a working vacation. So, we get there, we go to the bank with a woman that we trust. She's someone that has been managing our funds, not just our funds, she doesn't manage the funds. She basically helps like with maintenance-type issues on the condo. Most of the maintenance is done by the rental association that manages that rental property. But we have to have someone like, you know, paying our homeowners fees with our checks because you can't send the check from the U.S. or something like that. I mean it's this whole ridiculously convoluted system, but it's what you do, right? Rosa Linda Román (16:14): So, anyway, long story short, we went down, we opened a new account so that we could transfer it into a bank that allowed much more effective online access. And we went through all this process and the papers were signed, everything was set up. And this was on a week ago, Thursday. So, today is a Thursday, so it's been one week since we approved the money wire, I think, I guess a wire transfer from the first bank to our bank in the U.S. Well our bank in the U.S. has never gotten that money at all. And they said they can't find it and it never arrived. And the Mexico bank is insisting that it was sent and they have confirmation. And so, I'm over here trying not to freak out. Nathan has been traveling since all of this went down because we were in, finished up what we did on that trip, we went from Mexico thinking everything was set, came back, and picked up the kids, went back to Albuquerque. Rosa Linda Román (17:19): So, we drove from Mexico to Tucson, spent one night in Tucson, then drove back to Santa Fe, picked up the kids from camp in Santa Fe, and then, drove to Albuquerque, saw some more of our friends. Nathan flew out from there to go to work in Pennsylvania. And now, he's in Nashville. And then, the kids and I drove from Albuquerque to Austin. We arrived about this time yesterday. So, nighttime yesterday we arrived back to the rental house in Austin, which has our stuff in it but is a hot mess that's really disorganized and crazy. So, anyway, I don't know why I'm telling you guys all this. This is what I call Rosa Linda's Ramblings. And so, basically, Nathan's been traveling and I've been getting these texts telling me about, you know, kind of inquiring about where's our money and he's like CCing me, copying me on the communication between him and the woman that is our liaison there that, you know, by the way, she's the one that signed the check. Rosa Linda Román (18:20): So, then I start panicking. I'm like, wait, did she like write the check to herself? And you know, I mean you can only imagine like all the stuff running through my mind. Like, what in the world happened. Now, Nathan is saying he feels that it's going to be handled and not to panic. So, I'm trying not to panic, but can you imagine if that money is just gone? That's two years of my work and time, and like, I mean, you know, it's not like without a lot of stress to manage people coming in, and renting, and you know, it's been a lot of work. So, that is on my mind. That is one of the things that's on my mind. And next, I'm going to take a break, drink some water, get the dishwasher started, and then, I will come back and kind of bring you up to speed what is going on here on the home front in Austin? Rosa Linda Román (19:19): All right, I'm back and I just went to the garage because that is where the fridge is and that is actually one of the things on my mind right now is refrigerators. So, we rented this house here in Austin. It's basically an empty house, which I don't know why. You know we had certain criteria that we were looking for in a neighborhood to be able to be, and in case you haven't heard the past episodes, basically, we decided to stop the full-time traveling for six months so that we can allow my husband to focus on some work, really kind of shoring up his position in his company and for our oldest daughter Ahava to do some solid gymnastics to kind of get her training back to where he and my husband thinks it should be. And that's an episode for another time. Rosa Linda Román (20:19): I'm not going to go into the gymnastics discussion right now, although, that is a hot topic that I will have to talk about at some point. Oh there you go. The dishwasher just kicked on. So, we rented this house. We normally, when we've been traveling, we rent a place that is furnished. It's like an Airbnb, VRBO, kind of place. And that's what we've been doing and that's worked well for our family because then all we need is [indiscernible 20:45], all we needed was our suitcases, our immediate personal belongings, clothes, toiletries, that kind of thing. And so, we were able to travel in a camper from Arizona to Sequim, Washington. We were able to go from, you know, across to Florida and back to Austin, and we've been to Chicago and New York, and all these different places because we were able to just have what we needed each in an individual pretty large, but an individual suitcase. One for each kid and one for each grown-up. Rosa Linda Román (21:17): But like the daily living stuff that you need in a house, we counted on the rental people, you know, whatever unit we were renting had those things, so we didn't have to have knives, and silverware, and plates, and you know, everything, paper towels, toilet paper, coffee maker, you know, all the stuff that you have in a house in general. We didn't have to carry those with us or have them because we were staying in furnished places. Well, by deciding to stay put here for six months, the benefit is you can rent something for much, much cheaper than you could if you were doing a like, you know, two-week rental or even up to a month rental. Generally, you can rent a place for six months at a much lower monthly rate than you can if you're doing the rental for just a couple weeks or even a month. Rosa Linda Román (22:16): So, that was the plan and that was the thought, that we would stay in Austin, let kind of things settle down a bit now that we've sold the boat, figure out, kind of regroup, use the time to really get clear on where we want to go, what we want to do, and really figure out what dreams we are pursuing at this point. Well, the problem is a lot of the things that we were looking for in a rental, my husband was not having any luck finding anything to rent for six months. Everything he was finding was for a year and everything he was finding was not furnished. Now, I don't know if we were just looking in the wrong places or what, but basically, there's this house we finally went to several houses, they were all unfurnished, and I was kind of in a panic. Like, how are we going to do that? Rosa Linda Román (23:06): When we moved off the boat, I think I kind of shared some of the dilemma I had with how much of the stuff do we take with us, how much do we leave, and all of that. And we ended up deciding to leave most of the stuff that we could have used in a house like plates, dishes, knives, pots and pans, and the bread maker, and the crock pot, and sheets, and towels, and every kind of, you know, all those things. We ended up leaving those on the boat for the next owner, which I'm hoping if you guys ever hear this, you enjoyed those things. But for us at the time, Nathan, I was kind of arguing like, you know, we wanted to be nice and do the right thing, but I also said, "Well, don't we need this stuff if we're going to be potentially being in one place?" Rosa Linda Román (23:53): And he was like, "You know, we're going to want to buy stuff that fits whatever house we're going to be in. And this wouldn't suit that. And so, it's better for us to just leave it with the boat." Which is what we did. And now I am kicking myself every minute of every day we have been here because it just means a ton more work for me. And Nathan is still traveling and not been really able to be here. So, as you can tell by my little, you know, attitude, it's a little bit frustrating, a little bit overwhelming, but I really am trying to stay positive. But the problem is we with the rental unit that we got, they would not do a six-month lease, they would only do a year. Well, we didn't want to commit to a year, but the lady would not budge. Rosa Linda Román (24:43): And so, Nathan said, "Well, you know what happens in six months when we don't want to be here? You know, is there anything we can do? And they said, "Well, you can sublet the place to someone else, but you're responsible fully for the rental until you do that." So, if it turns out we do want to leave at six months, and then, we can't find someone else to rent it, then we are on the hook for the rent as long as until that lease is up. But Nathan felt that as hard as it has been for him to find a rental, he feels like it would be pretty easy to find somebody to sublet if the time ticked or isn't wanting. So, we rented this house and little by little I keep going, then the landlord has been very, very difficult. Rosa Linda Román (25:32): She didn't want us to have our dogs, she didn't want us to, which I get that's not really the reason she's been difficult. It's little things like we had to rent a month before we were ready to move in in order to secure the place. And during that month the place that we rented, which this is all new stuff to me because when you're on a boat you don't have to think about a lawn and there's a lot of household things that you don't have to think about. Plus, even before we moved onto a boat, we lived in New Mexico up in the mountains where we didn't have a lawn either. So, the very first month that we had to sign the lease, and this is all during the month of July where we were traveling for my mom's wedding and the camper trip up to Sequim, we were paying rent here. Rosa Linda Román (26:19): Well, the landlord said she didn't want to bother with the lawn maintenance, but that is a requirement in this association here. I guess they have like a homeowner's association that makes sure the place looks pretty and all of that, which is nice. But we weren't here, and she knew we weren't moving in until August, really. And so, I just came back last night and the grass looks like a hot mess, and it's like patchy, and obviously, nobody watered it and it just looks bad and all of our neighbors have these pristine lawns, and I'm just like, "Oh, my gosh." Like, you know, it's one thing that is a hot mess on the inside but on the outside, it is too. So, that's one thing, but that's a minor thing. The big thing is I get home last night and on my way back, so we had driven from Albuquerque to Lubbock, Texas in one night and then onto Austin so that we arrived yesterday. Rosa Linda Román (27:20): Well, I get here and I'm about, you know, a few miles from home, and I go, oh you know what? Let me stop and get some milk because the kids love cereal in the morning. And I knew we had cereal in the pantry from when we came and dumped everything, you know before we hit it off to our whirlwind trip to New Mexico and Mexico. So, I stopped and got two gallons of milk, come in with all of our stuff, put the milk, and the other few things I got and I go to go put it in the fridge. And I'm reminded of the fact that when we were leaving the fridge that is here in the kitchen did not work, would not work, no sign of it working at all. And so, the day before we left, that first one day that we had there as we were, like, I had unpacked on the moving van then we didn't have a fridge because it wasn't working and Nathan had tried to get the landlord to fix it, or figure it out, and she said, no, she's not responsible, it's on us. We had to worry about it ourselves. Rosa Linda Román (28:22): Well, we were flying the next morning, early in the morning to El Paso, and so, we needed a fridge because we had a bunch of food. We had just bought ice cream, eggs. I'm trying to think what was in there, Go-Gurts, yoghurts, a full like orange juice, and just a ton. We had a whole bunch of groceries. And we usually just keep that stuff in the freezer if we're in a rental unit. So, even if we're traveling the food is fine. Well, now we came back. So, oh, so that day as we were trying to figure out the refrigerator situation, he finally called me. He worked that whole day before we left. And he said, "I've been on the phone, I've been looking for a fridge trying to figure it out. I think I might may have been able to find one, can you look into it?" Rosa Linda Román (29:13): And then, I looked and he was looking at eBay and I said, well I noticed Facebook has a bunch of things for sale. They're always trying to sell me stuff. And it's funny because Facebook can't figure out where I am. Like, most people post, "Oh, I live in, you know, Nashville, Tennessee." And so that's all the ads you get are from Nashville. Well, Facebook has no idea where I am, or where I live, or where I'm from. And so, for some reason it has decided that I'm in Puerto Rico, which is fine by me because all of the advertisements that I'm getting from Facebook as far as like this is for sale in your local community is from somewhere in Puerto Rico which makes me laugh every time I see it except I needed to look up to find a fridge. And so, I got on Facebook, and I did the search, and sure enough, there were several people within a 10 mile radius of this new house that were selling fridges, various, you know, new levels of new, and used, and whatever. Rosa Linda Román (30:15): So, we got on the horn, I start communicating with these people, and this is like literally our flight was at, I think it was at maybe 11 and this is, I'm writing to people about refrigerators at like 6:30 in the morning that morning. Well, three or four of them got back to me right away. Two of them the fridge was not an option but there were two that were, one was brand new and the other had only been used one year and was in great shape, supposedly. So, we scrambled, ended up buying a fridge that morning. Nathan borrowed a truck from one of his work colleagues and had by himself moved the fridge from the guy's place where it was plugged in and you know, he showed him it worked, it was brand, brand new. I think we paid $650 for it and it's a brand new Frigidaire. Rosa Linda Román (31:11): And he said, you know, it was working, it was beautiful, it ran, you know, you could tell it was cold, the freezer was cold. So, that was great. So, somehow, I guess the guy helped him put it in the truck and then he came over here, and then, but just Nathan, and Nathan's like, okay let's unload it. And I'm like, "You mean you want me to lift the fridge with you?" And by the way, the last week before that Nathan had thrown out his back and if you have listened to way back episodes, Nathan has had like total reconstructive back surgery because after we had been together for like, I don't know, 18 years, he went to the doctor because he had some leg pain and had some weird things going on with his leg. And the doctor was like, "Oh, so when did you break your back?" Rosa Linda Román (32:02): He's like, "What?" He said, "Yeah, you need to get into surgery stats." And he ended up within a matter of a few days in surgery and he's got all these like, you know, titanium plates or whatever he has and his whole lower back is just like totally rebuilt. So, really, he shouldn't be lifting refrigerators with his wife. Love you honey. But yeah, sometimes I think about the things that we do and that I agree to and I go, "What was I thinking?" But I did because I love that man so much and he definitely never lets me have a boring life. And that particular morning we bought a fridge and we together along with Ziva, I think it was Ziva that was helping us, my 11 year old, we were sliding the fridge down from the truck bed, and then, luckily it had wheels and wheeled it into the garage where it is sitting now. Rosa Linda Román (32:58): Well, we plugged it in and by the way, I noticed, I'm like wait, the cord looks like you caught the cord when you put it down. And so, it had like a little nick that we saw in the cord, the power cord. So, we put some electrical tape on it to make it, you know, so it wouldn't spark or anything and plugged it in. And I guess I'm assuming he checked it. I can't say that I did. We may not have checked whether it actually turned on, I can't remember because it was such a blur. And we put all that freezer stuff that was kind of soft and never got solid in the kitchen fridge. And we moved it to the new fridge. Well, we left to our airport and we went on that whirlwind. We came back, what was it? Like 10 days later? Rosa Linda Román (33:45): And so, I'm walking in the door that last night with my three kids, tired, and the dog who our landlord didn't really want to have here, and all of that. I've got like, I'm done, I'm done. And by the way, I'm not going to get into this now, but I started a new diet which I'm not great when I'm starving. I get hungry and that's not good for anyone. So, pretty much I'm starving, tired, just drove from, you know, the 10 and a half hours plus from Albuquerque. The kids are, you know, tired, and cranky, and we walk in with two gallons of milk and I opened the fridge in the kitchen because I had forgotten that that was broken. And by the way, the reason we had foods in that fridge is after we moved the stuff into the other fridge, we started noticing, wait a second, one of the ice creams that was in our fridge in the kitchen was frozen, like solid. Rosa Linda Román (34:43): And we thought, "Oh, it's working now so it's fine." And we were so late and so we said, "Oh, you know, we'll put all the freezer stuff in the other one but the regular refrigerated stuff can stay in here. It's fine." And so, things like, you know the orange juice, no, the orange juice I put in the freezer. I'm trying to think what I left in this fridge. Anyway, stuff that, oh I know, the kids had made some cupcakes and they were in like snap wear and so, we had that in this fridge, and I didn't think much of it because we were out the door. So, I come in this fridge, I open it, and it's totally hot inside and I'm like, "Oh, that's right it doesn't work." And I look in and there's the fuzzy cupcakes, they're covered in mold inside that snap wear container and whatever else was in the fridge was ruined. Rosa Linda Román (35:33): I mean, there was like a loaf of bread and that was green, so that was the fridge in the kitchen. But I was like, "Oh, that's right, it's okay. No big deal. We've got our fridge in the garage, that's the main one." I walk out there and it is not working at all. And it clearly had not been working at all because everything had oozed out because it's sitting in the heat in Texas summer in the garage. And I know the temperatures had gotten up to at least 105 this past week. So, the ice cream, the Go-Gurts, yoghurts, [indiscernible 36:11] you name it, the orange juice, everything had like bubbled and turned into a oozy disgusting mess. So, that was our introduction to our Austin house being here supposedly full-time. Let me take a quick drink of water, and then, I'll wrap up that story and let you go. I know this is a long episode of a lot, a lot of Rosa Linda Rambling, so please stand by. I'll be right back. Rosa Linda Román (36:43): All right, I'm back and I'm going to wrap this up but let me finish the story about the refrigerator. So, we basically have several hundred dollar's worth of stuff melted, ruined, I'm sure. We had a guy come. So, this morning I woke up and I was going to take Nala for a run, our first run around this neighborhood. And as I turned on my phone to start my tracker app thing, the phone rang, and it was Nathan calling to say the AC guy has been trying to get in touch with you and he hasn't been able to get in touch with you. And I'm like, "That's because I just woke up and I just turned on my phone." Anyway, so he had arranged for somebody to come and look at the AC because he didn't think it was working properly. I will say that Nathan and I have very different temperature gauges, internal temperature gauges because what is not comfortable as far as being too hot for him is totally comfortable for me and vice versa. Rosa Linda Román (37:43): I hate being cold, hate, hate being cold and he likes skiing, and snow sports, and whatnot. So yeah, so he had the AC guys coming and they checked the AC and they said it was fine. They put in a new thermostat to make it a little easier to regulate it. And I said to them, I couldn't help it, I was like, "I don't suppose you guys know anything about refrigerators." And he is like, "I don't know, what kind is it?" I said, "It's a Frigidaire." I said, "We have two that aren't working and I really need a refrigerator." And the funniest thing is, well not funny, but the, the one quirk is the one fridge in the kitchen that doesn't, like the refrigerator side doesn't work at all, the freezer had, I had put two different gallons of milk in there. Rosa Linda Román (38:31): One was almost full gallon, and then, a like a quarter gallon of another one. The almost full one was frozen solid. And the quarter-filled one was like mushy, slushy, not at all frozen. Which is so bizarre because how can one-gallon freeze when it had a lot more milk in it and the other one didn't freeze it barely had any milk in it. So, in the back of the fridge, freezer had like a one little section of ice along the back and that's where that milk carton was. So, it seems like that this one patch worked and the rest didn't. So, what I did last night when I came in and found all this rotten food is I put the two gallons of milk that we had up against the ice that was still remaining in that one little section, in that one fridge so that the milk wasn't totally ruined when I woke up this morning and the kids were able to have breakfast. Rosa Linda Román (39:29): So, I asked the guy, I said, "Do you know anything about fridges?" He said, "Well I, yeah, I could take a look at it. We can fix fridges too." Or whatever he said. And so, he went to look at it and he right away said, "Oh, it's the cord." Because he tested like voltage and coming out of the wall there was plenty of power and it wasn't getting to the components on the fridge because of the cord that was pinched when we were moving it off of that truck into the garage. And so, that little pinched cord was like a $400 mistake. But anyway, the guy right there, he went and searched in his truck and found another cord that he could splice, like, cut that one that was broken, and then, splice a new one onto that one. And he did that. He plugged it in and I have a working refrigerator. Yay, crowd goes wild. So, I moved everything from the kitchen fridge into the garage fridge. Rosa Linda Román (40:35): Little side note, my kids are a little bit spooked and freaked out here at this house. They're not used to being so far away from me and my husband, right? And so, they don't like the way things are spread out. And the kids' room is on one side. It's actually not far, it's like down a hallway, but they just feel so far away because we've been living on a boat where we were no more than 45 feet away at any given moment. So, they are a little bit freaked out. And when I told them we had a working fridge, I thought they would be excited and they said, "Well, does that mean every time we want to get cereal we have to go into that creepy garage?" Rosa Linda Román (41:17): So, I'm like, "Well for now, yeah, that is what it is." But we have a large German Shepherd that you can bring with you into the garage. And oh, and by the way, when I went out there just a minute ago to move some things into the fridge, I was reminded of the fact that it's a garage and not part of the house because I could see along the edge of the garage door where it was, you know, going up where you raise it with the clicker or whatever, right along the edge there were some huge palmetto bugs coming in and out, checking things out, going to check out the garbage. I was like, awesome. So, as you think about, I get a lot of people say, "Oh, I wish I could live like you, your life is so awesome. And oh, it's paradise." Rosa Linda Román (42:03): And it is, we have a fantastic life and I am so grateful for my family and the adventures we have, but we also have cockroaches in our garage, right? So, for what it's worth, nobody's family or situation is perfect, but my family is perfect for me. All right, thank you guys for listening to Rosa Linda's Ramblings. If you like this podcast because you are crazy, or maybe you're just not, and you just like it anyway, please consider subscribing and you could tell some friends, share the podcast with others. And then, the other thing is, I would love it if you could give me a review on iTunes or whatever other podcast app you use. I would appreciate that. And you can always send me a note that is rlr@newmexico.com. Or if you really love to hear about our adventures, we have a Facebook group, a private one called New Mexi-Castaways. Just go to my Facebook page at New Mexicast and you will find the link to sign up for that. All right, thank you guys so much for listening and I hope you are having good cockroach-free adventures wherever you are. I'm Rosa Linda Román and this is New Mexi-Castaways. Bye.