We're....Somewhere.

Jam Kotenko ·

Hello friends, loved ones, and those who’ve subscribed to this newsletter (that isn’t much of a newsletter) thinkin’ you’d be getting a blow-by-blow account of our exciting life on the road. We’re now over a month into our BNB-hopping, vagabond family adventure and to be honest…it’s currently crickets and tumbleweeds over here. Which, for anyone with young kids, isn’t a bad thing, really. But since I’ve committed to writing about our journey to our next foreverish home, just in case others out there are thinking of doing something similar, I might as well type everything out. That includes the *ahem* boring stuff.

Previously On: Jam On The Road

A lot has happened in the past thirty days, actually. Here are several highlights:

We went camping as a family for the first time ever.

Considering the time crunch we were in moving out of our house, and considering the J-Man’s injuries that made him not quite mobile, it was actually a miracle we were able to make it to the campsite in one piece. The day we were supposed to go was also our last day to move our crap out of the house, and it took longer than expected. We were so tired by the time we were done that we debated on just postponing our weekend plans, but anyone with kids like ours who are old enough to remember promises and fiercely hold you to them will find themselves unable to deny them their heart’s desire…for s’mores.

That’s right. Days leading up to camping weekend, Older Kid kept asking if we were really going to make s’mores like the ones in one of his books that he just started learning to read by himself. When we hinted that we might have to camp one night less because moving out took too long, he came close to crying and said, “But you said we were making s’mores! Can you just…move faster and run faster so we can go camping tonight?” His disappointed face was why we found ourselves pulling into our designated camp spot at 10:30 at night, with our friends already there waiting for us to help set up our tent and get our children into their new sleeping bags.

Camping was fun. Being in nature is always a great reset, both in mind and body. We temporarily turned off our worries and focused on giving ourselves a break from all the craziness of our impending semi-homelessness. We enjoyed the sun, the company of friends, the warmth of a campfire, and yes, s’mores. After a scrumptious dinner of fire-roasted hotdogs, we finally showed Older Kid how to make some and this was his reaction:

S’mores fail! Despite this though, our first family camping experience was a success.

We’ve lessened our possessions quite a bit.

We had to get three separate storage units when we first started because the weather was not great during move-out week and we just wanted to be done ASAP. Happy to report that we’ve offloaded enough items through FB Marketplace that we actually are on our way to having only two storage units worth of stuff. Additionally, J-Man has recovered enough from his bike accident that he was able to get this work of art done by himself:

He thinks he can cram everything into one unit, and given his excellent spatial awareness (which, he says, is more effective when the kids and I stay at home while he moved things around, haha), I have no doubt. I still have those burn-everything-to-the-ground-and-start-fresh dreams occasionally, but the thought of losing all my signed Jason Mraz memorabilia, the kids’ birth boxes, and the wonderful dining table J-Man made from scratch makes me nostalgic enough to take it all back.

Older Kid graduated from kindergarten!

If he were actually enrolled in in-person school, the graduation festivities may have been a little more meaningful to him. (Do they do the toga and cap thing for kindergarten? I’m not even sure.) Since he went through the online learning route, the day was simply Hug Teacher and Get Some Ice Cream Day. Still a pretty excellent afternoon that made momma a tiny bit emotional. Can’t believe he’ll be in first grade (!!!) in just a few months.

Younger Kid got vaccinated against COVID-19.

HALLELUJAH!!! This was honestly a relief and my mommanxiety went down a few notches. We have all been waiting for the day both our kids get to be protected against this stupid f**king virus. Younger Kid wasn’t happy about getting jabbed and had all the feelings and tears, but it gave me much-needed comfort and assurance that my kids will have a fair shot at getting through this period unscathed (I hope!!! Knock on wood!!!). Super duper grateful to science.

Grandma came for a visit.

It’s always wonderful to have some time with extended family. J-Man’s mom came and our kids immediately stuck to her like glue. We had lots of yummy Mexican food and some outdoor time at the beach, the capitol, and the park.

J-Man and I got to go out on a date…our first time at the movie theater in two years! It made me nervous at first, but Top Gun: Maverick was so freaking amazing that I felt like it was worth stepping out of our bubble.

I turned 38.

I actually miscalculated and thought that I had one more year till I turned 40. When J-Man and his mom corrected me, I was too relieved that I “gained back” a year to even register my minor brain skip. 😂 Spent the day just like any ol’ Thursday: Went for a run, listened to an audiobook and some comedy podcasts, watched the kids play in the sunshine, and ate some good food courtesy of the J-Man. I also got a free Starbucks drink and a cake and just like every other birthday since I got together with the hubs, we honored my self-assigned tradition and watched The Princess Bride. Got to end the night with a long bubble bath (a rarity!) and much-needed alone time to just…revel in my 38ness.

Spent time with even more extended family.

One of the things I am going to miss about Seattle is living close to cousins and aunts. Although I don’t get to see them as often as I’d want, it’s always a grand ol’ time being with them, catching up on family chismis, sharing laughs, and again, eating good food. In Filipino families, good food is a given, always.

Saw my favorite band with the J-Man after a super-long hiatus.

The days of me going to multiple Jason Mraz shows in one tour are on indefinite pause. For the past few years, I was lucky to be able to catch one show per tour, if I was able to go to one at all. It has been three years since my last Mraz & Raining Jane show, so of course, I was ecstatic that my favorite band ever was making a stop in Seattle, at a winery, to sing some new tunes and some old ones, too. I just knew it was going to be an epic night.

I was not disappointed. I got to see some concert friends. I got to (silently) sing and (obnoxiously) dance in my seat. I got to drink cheap wine with my beloved. I got to say hey to my friends onstage. I even got to participate in a conga line [watch here]! All in all, it was another date night for the books.

Other Updates

Seattle BNBs are not too shabby.

Our first BNB in Federal Way was adequate, considering we had to book it in a mad rush. While we had everything we basically needed, we only had one medium-sized TV and pretty shitty internet, which was a bummer. It was smaller than what we are used to space-wise, but J-Man said staying in a tinier space was sort of a relief and that we should see it as a motivation to trim our possessions even more. We literally filled the living room with numerous crates of stuff I believed to be “essential to our trip”. It was not going to be sustainable once we leave the Seattle area because we wouldn’t have quick access to our storage units anymore. So yeah, the Facebook Marketplace saga continues. The challenge to only eat stuff we have in our pantry stash and minimize grocery shopping is still ongoing.

We are now in our second BNB in Kent, which is a lot roomier and more comfortable. We were greeted with a welcome basket and a card addressed to the Kotenko family. We have a king-sized bed (once you go king, everything else is just too fricking small!). We have a big flat-screen TV. And more importantly, we have high-speed internet.

Pro tip #1: Make sure to inquire about internet speed when booking BNBs.

Pro tip #2: Compare Airbnb and VRBO rental prices per night. Property owners often list on both platforms and more often than not, booking on VRBO seems to be cheaper.

I am getting ready to race again!

My half-marathon is coming up in less than two weeks, and although I have been running pretty regularly in the past couple of weeks, I don’t know if I trained hard enough to beat my time of 2 hours 38 minutes. At the very least, I am hoping my right knee doesn’t give out and my back doesn’t seize. I am hoping my playlist has enough bops in it to keep me amped up for the entirety of the race. Wish me luck, and lemme know if you have any songs to add:

We are off to Portugal!

We’ve booked flights for September (for three weeks) for what will be our first international flight since arriving in the U.S. in 2020. I am pretty excited about it but also very stressed. It’s going to be a long flight in a small enclosed space with two kids who probably won’t last with their masks on for the entire duration of the flight. I am crossing my fingers and toes that none of us contract COVID mid-air.

On the other hand, I am super hyped because the last time I was in Europe was before I got pregnant with Older Kid seven years ago. And I have never been to Portugal before! We haven’t been able to satisfy our love of travel for quite some time and if not for Younger Kid getting vaxxed, we might have held off hopping on a plane for a long flight even longer.

We are also using this time in Portugal as a recon mission of sorts. We want to know if Portugal is somewhere we actually want to move to. Yes, to live in, because to be quite frank, the U.S. is sort of a mess on many fronts right now and we just need a tiny break. If we decide we like it there, we may opt to take Jam On The Road intercontinental, at least a few months a year. TBD on the living-in-Europe-part-time-or-forever front.

For now, we’re enjoying our last few weeks in Washington State, are excited for our upcoming month on the Oregon coast, and looking forward to making Vegas our home for the next year or so.

See ya later! 🤟🏼

Down The Homestretch

Jam Kotenko ·

We're four days away from needing to vacate the house we've lived in for the last two years. I am freaking the f**k out.

Considering the utter craziness of the past couple of weeks, we're actually in pretty good shape. I kicked into gear about three weeks ago, writing out excessively detailed to-do lists that I was convinced I had to get through as soon as humanly possible. (Thank you, anxiety!) Every day I felt like I was running out of time, and that we had to get everything done that day. Because of my need to get at least one task accomplished daily, we've managed to knock a few off our list pretty quickly. We've sold a lot of big-ticket items that would be potential storage space eaters. We've rented a storage unit to temporarily keep our non-essentials in.

Two weeks ago: Lots of things checked off our list. We've purchased a trailer, which is activating another type of anxiety in me:

I've only ever driven a car, so driving a bigass van is daunting to me. Driving a van pulling a trailer? Absolute panic attack. J is probably going to be the exclusive driver for our entire journey.

We've also been able to move a lot of stuff into the storage unit already (a shit ton of shelves, winter clothes I've sorted, some books, our collection of board games). I started going through everything we own to decide which items we'd be taking on the road with us and putting them into storage bins to make it easier to pile them into the trailer when we leave.

One week ago: The J-Man got into a cycling accident. He was going very fast while checking his bike computer to double-check his route. He needed to take the next turn and upon looking up, realized it was coming up quickly so without thinking, he made a sudden left turn. He assured me that under normal circumstances he probably would have made it, but it was drizzling a bit so the ground was a bit slick. He slammed hard to the ground, landed on his left side, and bounced.

The day of his accident was probably one of the scariest and most stressful days ever, and I’d rather not go into detail about how I felt while waiting for information on what happened and the extent of his injuries. He is extremely lucky that he was on a trail and not on a busy road. He also had no broken bones (WHEW!), but he did sustain some significant injuries that warrant him being on crutches and in recovery for about 4 to 6 weeks. The half Ironman he'd been training for? Out of the question. Him being able to help carry the heavy things we own, load them into our trailer and into our storage unit? Definitely out of the question.

So you can just imagine the level of stress in the air (or more accurately, in my brain). I am thankful we have family and friends who were ready to step in to sub for J. I was able to pack up and unload most of the stuff into the unit on my own (J was OK enough to drive us to the place....I still cannot bring myself to drive the van farther than the grocery that's 5 minutes from our house.). For things that were too heavy for me to lift alone, I called on a couple of guy pals to help me while J stayed at home with the kids. Again, super grateful for the help! Also can't help but feel like a badass myself. 💪

I am happy to report that we are at the point where all we have left to pack are the things that we are taking with us, plus stuff we'd need to put into storage last minute but still need (mattresses, toaster, TV, those sort of things). We've made a Goodwill run and donated what we could to lessen our accumulated crap-we-don't-need-but-somehow-still-have. We've also put together a balikbayan box worth of donations to the Philippines. We have a few days to get things done, like schedule a massive garbage pick up, tend to the garden which we have neglected because of the rain (I just finished mowing the lawn for the first time a while ago! Hahaha!), and basically, just wait for the last day so we can get all our stuff out and do one last sweep of the place.

Four days left. Typing this and seeing everything we've accomplished written down despite setbacks makes me feel a little less panicky. However, there's still a lot of stuff to pack, so...

See ya later! 🤟🏼

Today's Theme Songs

Jam Kotenko ·

I woke up this morning to an email from our landlord telling us he’s thinking of selling the house. He is worried that the market bubble wouldn’t last in its current state and that waiting too long to put it on the market may not be a great idea. Our original lease actually ended in April and we requested to extend a few months to give us time to get our ducks in a row. We agreed to a month-to-month setup until the end of June, when we planned to leave the property and into our first of many short-term rentals en route to Vegas. We didn’t sign anything legally binding, so I guess the landlord was free to do what he wanted. After the J-Man explained how $$$ it would be for us to find a last-minute rental, hiring movers, etc. and asked if they would be willing to pay us to vacate a bit earlier than we agreed, our landlord refused and asked us to consider this our 30-day notice.

Cue Billy Joel, who has been stuck in my head all morning in between frantic thoughts of all the things I have to do in the next month.

The J-Man wasn’t even a little bit fazed, bless the dude. “We are getting kicked out in 30 days,” I told him via FB Messenger, worried he might not have seen our landlord’s response since he was busy setting our eldest son up for his morning school meeting. “I guess we’ll just accelerate some of our plans,” he said. Immediately I hopped onto VRBO (which I found to be a fraction better than Airbnb, IMHO) and found a place for us to stay for the next month. I messaged family and friends who lived close by about the change of itinerary, as well as some of our neighbors. In under an hour, I had two places booked for the days we would have been homeless.

Cue Freddie Mercury and David Bowie because goddamn my veins are thrumming with so much nervous energy!

Anyway, it’s all good. After a panic-stricken morning, we took our kids to a playground in the city, got some sashimi takeout and tried a new Starbucks drink (which I thoroughly enjoyed), then went back home. After stuffing my face with what was meant to be my belated Mother’s Day treat, I went for a run in the sun and now I am writing this, reinvigorated with endorphins.

This is what we have been “training” for, I guess, with all our jet-setting and road-tripping around in the past couple of years. We seem to always have to do things on the spur of the moment, and as much as it can be stressful AF sometimes, we seem to actually thrive in situations like this. The last time we had to leave in an emergency and be somewhere over 2700 miles and 40 hours away, the J-Man went to a car lot, picked out a second-hand van, bought it, and drove it home. We packed 3-4 months worth of necessities and hit the road the next day. This time, we have to sell our second car, buy a trailer, fill that up as well as a storage unit with two years worth of things we can’t get rid of in time, and hit the road in 30 days. By our usually crazy metric, we are actually ahead this time around.

Cue Modest Mouse, because we’ll all float on okay.

See ya later! 🤟🏼

The Perilous Space Called Facebook Marketplace

Jam Kotenko ·

The hardest part of moving is All. The. Stuff.

I can’t be the only one who’s had that dream of just…piling everything into a heap — furniture, clothing, books, toys, and basically anything you’ve outgrown or don’t remember owning — and setting everything on fire. Or taking all your outdated electronics and just running them over with your car or going to town on it with a bat, Office Space-style. It’s amazing how much clutter can accumulate in only two years. I’ve already tried Marie Kondo-ing our closets and it still doesn’t seem drastic enough.

Another obstacle is trying to get rid of items that are new enough to spare the garbage can, but big enough that keeping them can’t be justified, considering the length of time we intend to be on the road. These include couches, bookshelves, beds + frames, and any piece of furniture that can easily be re-bought at IKEA. It can also be things you have many of. Not sure how we ended up with four smart TVs, but we sure aren’t keeping all of them while we town-hop over the next few months.

For this, we decided to put whatever we can sell up on the interwebs. My first instinct was to use Craigslist exclusively because we’ve had luck with it in the past, but these days, the place to hit up for good quality second-hand things is reportedly Facebook Marketplace.

Before anything else, my mild OCD brain needed to fire up Google Sheets and list everything we could possibly sell. I looked up how much they are brand-new right now, how much we paid for them whenever we bought them, and how much similar items are selling for second-hand. This helped me decide on a starting price that made the most sense for every item on our get-rid-of list. This process is incredibly laborious but is definitely worth it if you want to get the most bang for your buck.

My thoughts are often in Excel sheet form

We’ve sold three items so far for prices that are more than what we expected to get for them: a 4-year-old sleeper sofa we bought while living in Singapore, a pair of 6-year-old side tables we got for the first home we bought in Pittsburgh, and an 11-year-old TV we purchased when the J-Man and I first moved to the US from the Philippines. And it’s such a high! Now I understand why a lot of buy-and-sellers do this as a side gig. It makes me want to sell everything we have, honestly. Anybody interested in an old Wii video game console? A treadmill? A 2019 Hyundai Elantra GT? Let me know.

Seriously, we need to sell our car, maybe in two months. Serious buyers hit me up.

The thing is, buyers with good manners seem to be few and far between when it comes to Facebook Marketplace. It may have been my mistake for putting “or best offer” in my item descriptions, as opposed to the J-Man’s go-to, “lowballers will be ignored”. The result is often people offering to pay less than half the price I listed items for.

I’ve always sucked at haggling. As in, I feel uncomfortable asking for a lower price for things. If I do, the most I can do is offer half the price and then immediately say yes to the price the seller comes back with. I guess I’m naïve in thinking that whatever price they settle on — as long as it’s lower than the listed price — is a good deal.

Haggling, I feel, is an in-person skill to employ. It feels weird to do it online because I can’t take cues from people’s body language or facial expressions when they are presented with a price cut attempt. There’s also the element of time to consider — I feel like haggling in real life is only effective for a couple of seconds. Having to wait an entire day for an online seller to get back to you with a counter-offer seems a bit lackluster.

Being on the other side of a haggling attempt (especially online) is equally awkward, in my opinion. As a seller of a used item, it’s annoying to me when someone throws out a seemingly arbitrary low amount, hoping I’d say yes to it. I guess I’m offended mostly because of the amount of time and effort I take to make sure I price my items correctly. I also feel kind of shitty when I have to tell a person “no thank you” to an obviously terrible offer. 

I recently listed one of our newer TVs (bought in 2016 but still in excellent shape) on Facebook Marketplace and a bunch of people tried to lowball it. I just left them hanging. One person agreed to the listed price (I even threw in a newish Roku stick!) so I felt vindicated for not caving into any of the earlier hagglers. Day of pickup, I messaged him at 5 PM (which is the time we agreed for him to arrive at our home) to ask if he was close and he sent, “What’s your last price on everything? I found another seller of the same exact TV for (a lower price than mine) and I am picking it up right now.” I found it incredibly rude! Before I could think of a response, the J-Man grabbed my phone and responded with “good luck” and proceeded to take the TV back to our room.

That whole thing was bogus, right? As a buyer, sure, he is entitled to go with the best deal he can find. He didn’t have to pressure me to match his price. He could have just said, “Sorry I won’t be able to come for the TV, found another deal” and that would have been the end of it, no harm, no foul. What really got my goat was the last minute-ness of it all. I got zero heads up. He could have told me hours before the pickup so we didn’t have to take 30 minutes to clean the TV, test and make sure it worked disconnected from our WiFi, and prepared it for an in-person demo. It was a complete waste of our time.

What is considered good online second-hand shopping etiquette?

As sellers, our plan is to do a reverse auction of sorts, which the J-Man says is a pretty fair thing to do. We’ll set a price and see if anyone bites. In a week or two, we lower it if we get no nibbles. Rinse and repeat until we hit the jackpot. Everybody comes out ahead — they get a deal, and we get a price commensurate with the time and effort it took me to research how to properly price it. Also, I make it a point to take good and detailed photos of the items, and even more detailed descriptions, especially of any defects. Note to self: Edit “or best offer” to say “Price listed is final, no desire to haggle”. Is that too rude? Any suggestions on better phrasing are welcome.

As a buyer, unless the seller says they are willing to haggle, keep watch on the items you wish to purchase and only make contact when it hits your desired price range. Don’t make commitments you don’t intend to keep. Give ample heads up if you really have to renege on an offer you already made. Don’t be late for item pickup.

TL;DR: Facebook in itself is already a complete shitshow. Be a good netizen and don’t be a dick on Facebook Marketplace.

See ya later! 🤟🏼

Jam On The Road: A prologue.

Jam Kotenko ·

Greetings!

For someone who calls herself a writer, I sure do suck at keeping a blog active. But again, here we are, starting a new one.

Why, you ask?

Because once again, my family (who I will be referring to as the J-Team in my entries) and I will be embarking on yet another crazy journey. A journey that I would like to chronicle a lot more diligently if only to serve as a guide of sorts for those who wish to follow our ways and chosen (nomadic) lifestyle. I would like my kids to read all this someday as adults and help them remember our fun exploits together. I also would like to keep my brain running (and not with the usual panic-and-anxiety-induced thoughts that come with being a mom and wife in this day and age) and my writing/typing hands working.

So what’s this upcoming crazy journey?

NEW ADVENTURE ALERT!

🎇

NEW ADVENTURE ALERT! 🎇

The name of this specific blog says it all. We are hitting the road again! This time, it won’t be just me and the J-Man and the open road. We’ll have two super-active young kids and an anxious lovable dog tagging along. For the past two years, we’ve stayed in place here in Seattle, after a crazy move from Singapore that’s an epic story in and of itself. It’s been great. We’ve made new friends and hung out with old ones. We’ve enjoyed the outdoors on the rare occasions we’ve been granted good enough weather. For the most part, we’ve just been vegging out at home. Our older son, firmly ensconced in online kindergarten and thriving. Our younger son, just enjoying being a whirling dervish within the confines of our living room. Our sweet dog, always napping and burrowing into blankets. And me and the J-Man? We’re lucky enough that we can both afford to be flexibly and remotely semi-employed and also have time to focus more on our health and fitness goals. Lucky to have all this time to bond with our kids and occasionally hang with extended family and friends at their homes.

However, as much as we’ve enjoyed our stay in Washington, lately, we’ve been feeling a bit antsy. This sort of thing is normal for us. Every two years, like clockwork, the J-Man and I both feel the itch to be somewhere new, someplace else to explore and live in, to figure out if it is the place to plant our roots and settle down in. We moved to Seattle in 2020 not knowing what to expect, firmly believing that this was gonna be it, the place for us. We were going to buy a home in a diverse community, make lots of friends, send our kids to school where they will make lots of friends, find hobbies and people to share them with, go out and explore the city.

Then of course, the global coronavirus pandemic took all our plans, put it in a hermetically sealed jar (because you know, germs), vigorously shook it, and dumped it all out, leaving us a cocktail of helplessness and uncertainty, with a dash of anxiety and fatigue. We made new friends, but couldn’t really hang out with them out of caution for our unvaccinated kids, one of them high-risk. We couldn’t really go out to new restaurants or bring our kids outdoors because of COVID-19 restrictions (or in some cases, lack thereof) and the finicky and often-dreary Seattle weather. We thought it would normalize after a few months, but after two years, it’s gotten pretty unbearable, especially for a family of people with itchy feet. Lots of edibles have been consumed to help deal with the never-ending anxiety over the potential of catching the virus and the overall depression the thought of being in prolonged stasis brings.

In the beginning of 2020, we rented a house for a year with the plan of eventually buying a home in the area. However, with the end of our second lease fast approaching, we have decided that now is not the time to buy, not with everything in a state of what-if. Instead, in a complete 180-degree move, we’ve decided to take this show (that’s been on a long enough hiatus) on the road. (It’s the title of my blog! Get it? 🤪) After our lease ends in June, we will be staying in an Airbnb in town because we’ve signed up for running races and bought outdoor concert tickets in the area. Once our prior commitments are done here, we’re off to the Pacific Coast for some much needed beach time. The next destinations after that are to be determined at a later time.

The plan is to stay in a new town for around a month, so that J and I can get some work done (he’s going back to full-time, I’m staying part-time freelance), we can continue our fitness training with a little more regularity, and we don’t have to drag our restless kids in a van for hours on end. We’re selling what possessions we can, putting essentials in a trailer we plan to buy, and placing everything else in storage. By October, we intend to arrive in a town just outside of Las Vegas, the next place we want to try and make our own for at least a year. However, we don’t intend to sign a lease to a new rental property until 2023. We might as well maximize our travels till the end of 2022.

If, after a year, we decide that we love Vegas and we can see ourselves staying put for the next 5 years or so (still counting on that 2-year itch, after all), then we may buy a home there. If not, we can always return to Washington or anywhere else we liked and start from square one. Maybe by then things will be a lot different.

For now, that’s it. We still have two and a half months to go on our current living space, so we’re taking our time selling some big-ticket items online (Facebook Marketplace is a revelation, y’all). We haven’t really told anyone about our plans, except our families and some friends, so consider this our announcement of sorts. Watch this space for my attempts at immortalizing our adventure into words and some pictures.

See ya later! 🤟🏼