The Lawyer and the Ladies

I had my legal i’s and t’s dotted and crossed ten years ago. Right after my husband died I went to a lawyer to get a will and the powers of attorney for health care and finances drawn up then promptly put them in my filing cabinet and forgot about them until my dog died before moving into this continuum care complex. There were provisions in my will for Levi’s care that I crossed off the will, signed and dated the change, then back in the drawer the estate planning notebook went. But in recent weeks, it’s bothered me that the lawyer back then said my estate was too small for a trust and my heirs would be better off to let everything go through probate. With my brother’s recent move into the Memory Care unit here on campus I’ve watched my nieces dig into the weeds of their father’s trust and realized how much easier it would for them to “manage me” should my brain not keep up with my body’s longevity if I had a trust.

The lawyer they used practices elder law and has one hour free consultations. So in I go with my notebook for review and my list of assets and income and I let him school me on how trusts work. He used a white board to draw on and let me just say that the guy is so darn cute I had a hard time concentrating on what he was saying. He’s not just cute like a puppy dog cute. He could easily be a print model or movie star. Think Brad Pitt in his thirties. Mr Hottie Lawyer looked like he just came in from doing manly things like chopping wood or skiing down a sunny slope---anything that could put a healthy glow of sun kiss in his perfect skin. He was wearing a cream colored dress shirt under a melon colored, pull over sweater with a pair of sandalwood colored dress pants that matched the color of his prefect hair which was carefully styled to look like he just got out of bed. And when he smiles it's the genuine kind that engages his sparkling eyes and gives you a flash of perfect teeth. And if all that isn’t enough to kick start someone’s dried up ovaries, he was down to earth and has a friendly personality. When I got home I texted my youngest niece about the fact that I have a trust being drawn up and “Boy, is that guy cute.” She texted back that when she and her sister left his office recently, her sister asked what she thought of the guy and my youngest said the first words out of her mouth were, “Boy is that guy cute!” 

My new lawyer is on the board of directors of another continuum care complex here in town and he understands how they work and what people need in the way of assets to get into them, etc., etc. He surprised me when he said that I have an above average estate from what most others living in places like this have. So I guess I will quit my Blue Collar worrying about going over my monthly food allowance or buying something I could do without from a late night binge shopping on Amazon. My latest hot purchases were a third pair of compression stockings made out of bamboo and some tennis shoe cleaner. But you should see my ‘Wish List’ of stuff. When I finish this post I'm going to buy the Christmas sweater on the list. People here are really into holiday dressing. We have a Halloween party coming up on Monday with a special buffet and we’re supposed to wear a costume. I don’t like Halloween---never have as an adult---so I will not be wasting money or time trying to come up with something to wear. I might get a dollar store headband, if the mood suits me over the weekend.

When this post goes live on Saturday and you’re reading it over morning coffee I’ll be sitting out on our piazza where a bunch of kids in costumes from a near-by church school will be stopping by to trick-or-treat the various buildings on this campus. I hope they get my brother out on the deck to see them. The person in charge of his transition say he’s doing well adjusting, by the way. Still asks my youngest niece about going home, but that's to be expected this early on.

I was walking down by the lake a couple of days ago, in front of his building, and I ran into a woman who left our independent living building and was moved into the Memory Care building where my brother is at. She was with her daughter and she looked fabulous, like the move took all the worry out of her. She was constantly walking around our building with a sheet of paper, afraid she was going to miss something on our schedule of classes and she would get kicked out. She did it one too many times in the middle of the night, fell and that was the end of her independent living. When she came home from rehab for the injuries due to the fall she came home to a room in Memory Care. She seemed happy and contented and said to me, "I hear I live in the dementia unit now," and I replied, "I don't know about that but their memory care program has won state awards." I didn't want to use the 'D' word in case she was fishing for information they hadn't told her or maybe they don't use that word in that building? Her daughter looked like it wasn't the first time her mother had trolled that 'dementia line' out and she was getting ready to deliver a canned speech that went something like, "Remember Mom, you need to be where you have some supervision since your fall." 

We said our goodbyes and I'll be seeing you agains and I went back to daydreaming about my new lawyer and his two perfects kids and pretty wife. Yes, I internet stalked him when I thought about using his photo with this post. But I decided he and Brad Pitt really do look like they came from the same gene pool, so you get my celebrity crush instead. He's been my celebrity crush since he did the movie, A River Runs through it. It's still one of my top five movies of all-time. ©