Final Commitment

What a week this is going to be! It started right off crazy busy with my cousins coming for lunch on the same day my SO left for NM. I will follow him later this week. I had a dentist appointment yesterday that was made clear back in January, and my dentist happens to be in Austin. So I got in a half-packed car and flew up there and back yesterday, stopping only long enough to run into PetSmart and Penney's. When I got back home, at 6:30 in the evening, there was an email with the subject header of FINAL COMMITMENT. Sounds so ominous. But what it means, in a nutshell, is WE GOT THE HOUSE!
It's been so nerve wracking, seeing that email was a little anti-climatic. But now I feel comfortable enough to tell the world.

Today I have to finish packing the car, go to the bank to ease the wire transfer along, the post office, and then to a doctor's appointment this afternoon that I have also had since last October. I'm so scattered, I've been making lists all over the place, then misplacing those. I've already misplaced the gate opener. I really miss my sweetheart and my dog. And today! Today, is the 3-year anniversary of our first date. It seems so much longer ago than that, and now we've made this FINAL COMMITMENT on a house in the mountains.

People who know seem excited for us. All except for Daddy that is. I think he's depressed about the whole idea of us being gone even more than we are already. And as I've stated here before, Daddy is a big dilemma. I think that he's beginning to get really feeble, and he's depressed about it, maybe thinks I should be tending to him on a daily basis. Some women would be doing that, I know a few who would, but I'm not that sort of woman. As selfish as it seems, I feel I have already given up a huge portion of my life for others, have basically put my life on hold for most of the last 40 years, and I'm just not willing to continue pushing the hold button. I don't know how many more years are left. At my age, my mother had just 7 years left. I wonder if she had known that when she was 57, what all would she have done differently. I feel, have always felt, that she died completely unfulfilled. And the other truth is, Daddy has had choices in all of this, too. It's his choice to live so isolated, so cut off from all the people since Mother died who reached out to him and tried to have a relationship with him. He rejected everybody, didn't want to have to make the effort to have a social life, and now he is so alone. But it was a decision he made all by himself, despite everyone's efforts.

And that brings me to another thought -- that we so often do these things to ourselves -- by making poor choices, for all sorts of different reasons. This house in the mountains, this man I am in love with, the way we live, things we do, I feel I am fully engaged in all of these things. I no longer feel when I wake up in the morning that I'm going through the motions, like some automaton. That's not to say all those earlier years were bad ones, they certainly were not. I have many many good memories, and I feel great fondness and love for my ex. It had a bad ending, but lots of stories do, that's just life. But I made choice that were not always good for me, I feel that so much of that time was spent just half-living, waiting for some mysterious better day that would come later, and those are mistakes I'm trying not to repeat now.

It's risky, buying this house. The economy is still struggling, especially the real estate market. Of course, that shakiness is what made buying this place nearly irresistible. We paid way under the tax appraisal, and way under the market value in the area. The house needs lots of work, and I'm going to have to control this impatient urge I have to get it perfect right NOW! But if some things should go south financially, for either one of us, it would be hard to sell either of these two houses quickly if we had to do that. We have made the difficult decision to put the place at the Coast up for sale right after the New Year. We've had so many good times down there, memorable times, but we're in a different place now, and this last year we haven't gone down there enough, or enjoyed ourselves there as much, so it's time to let it go.

And now I need to get back to my crazy busy day, so I can be ready to join my SO later this week to close on our house. I'll post a picture of it when we have the hot key in our hands. Things can, as I well know, always go wrong, so I'll reserve pictures for later.

Onward ....

Learning to Dance in the Rain

“Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning to dance in the rain.”

(Saw that line on a wall hanging. I really want one like it, because the sentiment strikes me.) 

All of us have had tragedy in our life, if you live long enough, you cannot avoid it. At the least, almost everybody has lost a loved one, which is an unavoidable tragic fact of life. Everybody has faced some sort of adversity. We have the choice of letting these things lay us low, or of standing to face these things with determination, optimism, and a dash of humor. 

Most people take themselves way too seriously. I’m guilty of that myself sometimes. I tend to get caught up in my own problems, tensions, matters of the heart, and forget that the troubles I face are troubles that some people would give their arm to have. I don’t face illness, poverty, living in a war torn region, or enslavement. I’m one of the lucky ones.

The greatest tragedy of my life, or anyway, my greatest disappointment, is my relationship with my youngest son, or lack thereof. I can and do dwell on it sometimes, tearfully and with an aching heart. But I also realize that it isn’t something I can change. He has made the choice to live in isolation from his family and from those who love him. I can only hope that one day he will chose to rejoin. I do keep up with him, through other people, as best I can. But I don’t know what goes on in his head and I so much regret our distance. My most sincere hope is that he finds peace, but I worry that he never will. 

My mother was an unhappy person. She suffered all her life with bouts of depression and melancholy. She always felt beleaguered by the world. I think there’s a strain of this kind of personality in my family. I don’t know if Mother ever found peace. I suspect that she did not. She never wanted to face her demons, or to accept responsibility for her own happiness. It must’ve been hard for her -- the life she chose. But she was the type who would never have sought help, and even if she had, she would have argued for the status quo. 

I think so many people have difficulty accepting the fact that life is hard. In the time of cavemen, it was finding food, shelter, a mate, those were the hard things. In reality, those same things drive us now, and sometimes make life seem unfriendly. We hate our jobs, we struggle to make the mortgage, we have tribulations with loved ones. It is so easy to let those necessities of life overwhelm us and sour us, to keep us from seeing the little joys around us.

The sky is lightening outside the windows as I write this. Fog sits heavy on the ground, Trees are starting to turn yellow, a few leaves beginning to fall. Yesterday evening, as we sat out with the pets, we noticed birds are migrating through. Suddenly, white-wing doves are arriving in flocks. A couple of hummingbird stragglers stopped at the feeders, although most have already come and gone. Two cedar waxwings lit on the barn roof. And the moon, as it rose, was just a shade shy of full. 

I don’t remember how city folk unwind, it’s been so long since I lived in a big city. But I do know that there are ways, maybe with friends, sharing a meal, laughter, a good book. I garden. I embroidery. I read. I play with my animals. I cook. I sit in my SO’s embrace -- or maybe just watch the sunset, quietly. It’s the little things that make life worthwhile.

Onward ....

Raspberry Pie, Manuscript Submissions, & a Hot-Tubbing Frog

Made a pie with the raspberries we brought home from New Mexico. They had been in the freezer, and I just thought they needed to be used. The pie is so-so. It thickened up just fine, but the raspberries have an odd flavor to me, almost molasses-like. I think it might be why most of the recipes I looked up used raspberries along with something else, like pears, rhubarb, other berries, cherries. They aren't really a stand-alone fruit in a pie, I guess. It is certainly not horrible, and my SO as been eating it with ice cream and whipped cream and seems to really enjoy it. But then, frankly, he's a sweet freak and would probably like anything with sugar in it. Wish I could eat all that stuff and not get fat, but it's just not in my DNA, I guess.

In the hot tub last night, we found a frog. When we lifted the lid, there floating on the absorber, which is a piece of foam rubber shaped like a smiley face, was a tree frog about an inch long. No telling how long he had been there under the cover, but my SO really got a laugh out of it, said he looked like the frog was hot-tubbing, but I'm sure he got trapped under there and the absorber was his life raft. Anyway, my SO fished him out and put him in the oak tree beside the patio.

Have done no more work on the novel, but I did finally get fed up waiting for the publisher where I had submitted the children's book last spring. I write them a letter withdrawing the submission, and at the same time, made four copies of the manuscript and cover letter, and sent it to four places at once. Hell with it. In another week or so, I plan to send out four more. I'm tired of this "exclusive listing" stuff. Odds are only one would take it anyway, in the best of circumstances. It's pretty much the same thing I did when I sold LILY. I think in some ways I've just become too timid or complacent. That fire-in-the- belly-thing again.

Meanwhile, we're still waiting to hear on the New Mexico house. What a huge hassle this whole thing has been. We feel like we're in purgatory.

Onward ....

Riding the Roller Coaster

Every day there is a new battle, a new goal achieved, and then another set-back with this house deal in New Mexico. I have decided that it's the banking industry that is causing the slow recovery to the economy right now. And it was the banking industry that caused the recession in the first place, giving their liar loans and predatory lending practices. I have a very high credit score, almost no debt, a good salary, and a history with this mortgage company, and still they require me to jump through so many hoops it's beginning to seem like it's just not worth it anymore.

This morning I received an email from my loan officer telling me that the underwriters are requiring more tax information, a termite inspection, an addendum to the original contract exempting the personal property items that come with the house (i.e. furnishings). I've already had to go too many rounds with the seller over various repairs and price negotiation. Now the appraisal comes back valuing the house for more than I'm paying, and I just don't know how many more hoops the seller will be willing to jump through either. It's to the point where the only people who can really buy a house right now are the ones who can pay cash, and how many of those people are out there, after the stock market tanked, after the devaluation of real estate, after everything?

They advertise these low low interest rates, and then you find out that they're only that low IF you are putting up a huge down payment, like half, and financing for just 10 years, or less. So I have decided that the banks are the culprits in this economy that is NOT recovering, and since big banking equals big business. And Big Business equals the Republican Party, I think it could be a conspiracy to keep the economy bad at least through this election cycle, but maybe even beyond this one to the next one, when they can get another one of their cronies into office. I've never been a conspiracy theorist, but I'm starting to become one.

And so the roller coaster continues. Yesterday my SO got a sort of promotion. Today more hoops arrive. Or loopy-de-loops to keep with the roller coaster theme. Now, I guess I have to decide if I want to keep jumping. I will say this, I'm certainly glad I don't have a house for sale right now. Trying to buy one is hard enough.

Onward ....

Hurricane Memories

I'm reading ISAAC'S STORM by Eric Larson -- a bit overwritten, but still I can't put it down. And while reading it memories of my own hurricane story keep creeping into my mind. Mine was not the Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900, the one this book is focused on, but a much smaller one that came into Corpus Christi in 1970. If you've ever experienced a hurricane, then that will be your storm, and it will be the one that makes the big impression on you.

I was 17 years old, still in high school. My brother was in the Army, stationed in Germany, and I was writing him a letter, sitting at the kitchen table, while Mother was putting together some snacks. Daddy had been watching the weather on television since before daylight. I remember so well getting up to the sound of the weathermen. We were not in the habit of turning on the television first thing in the morning like so many people do today. The weathermen were predicting that the storm would turn northwards and head to Galveston, but Daddy insisted that it was coming into Corpus. He kept insisting this because our barometric pressure was dropping.

Mother was nonplussed by his predictions. Excited by the dust-colored sky outside, by the rain that kept falling intermittently, by the wind whooshing up our breezeway, she was determined to make this fun. She had been preparing dips all morning, and had chips out in a bowl. She wished she had thought to invite friends over for cards. She had the dominoes out.

In the middle of this, Mom making snacks and me writing my letter to my brother, the lights went out. No big deal. It was mid-day. We could certainly still see, even though the sky was heavy and dark. Daddy got out his long, patrolman's flashlight. He'd already put in new batteries. Mother went for candles, and matches. We didn't light them, but put them around in handy places, just in case. We'd been through hurricanes before. The lights could stay off for hours. Sometimes even for a few days.

The phone rang. It was my aunt and uncle who lived about two miles from us. Mother talked animatedly to them about the lights going out, about the dark sky, the wind, the rain. Thunder cracked. Lightning lit the room. And then a loud BANG! shook the house. Mother hung up the phone, said "What was that?" I abandoned the letter I had still been trying to write and followed my parents to the front door, which was the direction the bang had come from. Daddy thought maybe a tree had fallen against the door. He opened it, and the wind nearly took the door off its hinges, and him with it. Mother and I both had to help him get back inside the house, and pull the door closed. Once he was safely back in the foyer, we all looked at each other, a little frightened now.

Daddy started up the stairs, and Mother and I stayed close behind him. The narrow upstairs hall was dark. The flashlight beam was our only light. The trap door to the attic was flapping loose in its hole, as if the wind were about to fly off with it. Using his long flashlight like a rod, Daddy pushed at the attic trap, raising it a couple of inches. And we saw the sky.

"Oh, my God," Mother said.

"Our roof's gone," Daddy said. "We better get back downstairs."

But we were too excited, too caught up in the scary circumstances, and it wasn't really registering yet how dire the situation. Mother ran to their bedroom. I went behind her. The ceiling in that room was breathing up and down, ready to cave in at any moment. She raced to the closet for the photo albums. I ran back to my room, peered out the window through the crosshatch of masking tape we had put on to keep the windows from breaking. Roof material lay scattered all over the front lawn. I grabbed my makeup. MY MAKEUP! Not my high school annuals. Not the diamond earrings I had just gotten on my 17th birthday. My makeup. Well, I was just 17. A shallow teenager. What can I say?

The three of us went down to the laundry room (the only one-story part of the house) to sit on the machines and watch the storm take down our home. It was my mother's dream house. She had sat with an architect for hours three years before, planning out the rooms, the direction the doors would open, the placement of light switches and electric plugs. It must've been devastating to her to see the boards lying on the driveway out the taped-up laundry room window. We watched heavy roofing beams turn a complete 360-degrees as the eye of the storm came by us. A time or two I had to hurry in to the little bathroom off the kitchen. Rain poured through the downstairs ceiling by then, as if the whole house was being absorbed by the storm. My letter to my brother was a soggy, smeared, undecipherable glob of paper on the table, beside the dip and chip bowls overflowing with Sheetrock-infused rain water.

That storm changed all of our lives. Profoundly. The plant where my dad worked was damaged in the millions of dollars. Eventually, he was transferred to a newly acquired plant in Mississippi. My old boyfriend, whom I hadn't seen in months -- indeed he had broken up with me when he got drafted by a major league's Triple-A baseball team and moved to Florida -- came home to check on his family. He and I had an intense, emotional reunion that resulted in a shotgun wedding a few months later. And eventually, when that teenage marriage failed, I joined my parents in Mississippi along with my newborn son. I attended university there and met the man who would become my second husband. I have always said that I got my eldest son out of that hurricane, or the aftermath of it anyway. So good can come out of catastrophe, though it doesn't usually seem so at the time.

Onward ....

New Floors and Dad's Birthday

Floor men here today, for the second time. Hopefully they will finish with everything. They came last Thursday but didn't finish, said they would come back on Friday but never showed. It's been our experience that contractors are bad about not doing what they say they will do. Don't know why that is, but the only reliable people we've used are the driveway crew and our plumber, who is exorbitant with his charges, but always comes when he says he will. So, I guess that's what we pay for -- reliability. This will be the last time I use this contracting company. But then it seems that if you hold a company up to too high of a standard, well, after a while, you run out of places to call. Especially around here where we are limited in construction companies anyway. It's one of the drawbacks to living in a rural area.

On anther note -- it certainly has gotten hard to buy a house in the last two years. We still don't have a definite on the New Mexico place. I'm waiting on the inspection report, have only had a verbal report, and would like to see the pictures and written document before we make a decision about what to ask the seller to do before closing. I've informed our real estate agent that we might be asking for some repairs, and it seems that the seller and her agent have put a hold on everything, will not even order the survey until she sees what we're going to ask her for in the way of repairs. It's supposed to be such a buyer's market, and yet it seems to me that between the lending institutions and the hoops that a buyer has to jump through, it's just not an easy thing to buy right now. There's a big difference between now and when we bought this house, the one we live in now, in the summer of 2008. I think part of the problem is the NM house hasn't been on the market long enough. If she had been trying to offload for a year or two, then maybe she would be more willing to go the distance to sell the place.

In the meantime, we celebrated Daddy's 86th birthday on Friday. He came here for a steak cookout. I made a spice cake, which turned out pretty good. Daddy is so limited in food he can eat, between his diverticulitis and kidney disease, most sweets are off his list of acceptable food - nothing with nuts, nothing with seeds, nothing high in potassium. I think he had a good birthday, but he seemed a little odd to me, depressed maybe, or like he wasn't feeling as good as he pretended. I told him about the house in NM, showed him pictures. Maybe that was what got him down. Don't know.

And through all this house business, birthdays, new flooring, I feel the novel slipping through my fingers again. I try not to dwell on it. This is just more of the sort of thing I've been battling for the last ten years. I guess I'm just not willing to give up my life for the work anymore. Time just seems so short.

Onward ....