Visting my Not-so-Distant Future

 My mini vacation ended. But that’s okay. I only got one in the first place because my house sold faster than I expected and I woke up the morning after accepting an offer a bit shell shocked with no reason to get out of bed. I did it anyway. I wandered the house looking for things I could do that would get me back to normal living but at the same time would still keep the house as neat as nun’s habit because the appraiser is still on the docket to make an appointment. (Inspections got waved as did a survey so this is the only thing coming up between now and closing day.) I’m sure an appraiser won’t care that my bottles and jars of ‘products’ and my electric tooth brush made their way on to my bathroom countertop or that my In Case of Emergency notebook is back on the kitchen countertop or that I’m not locking up my computer after each use like I was doing when the ShowHome app could request a showings at any time.  

After a few days I walking around in a haze I started the process of getting back into The Great Moving Project mode on Sunday by making a list of everything I need to do between now and October fifth. It’s two pages long and maybe if I’m still in a lazy mood the next time I have a blog post due, I’ll just post the list. Besides making that list the only other thing I did Sunday was to water three house plants and grill myself a steak. I didn’t even get dressed.

Monday I had an appointment to go visit my future home including the parking level of the building. I was the 24^th person to sign up to live in the new section of this continuum care campus and it was just an artist’s renderings back then. The first 25 of us to sign up got a lot of perks and one of those perks was we got to pick our own parking spots in the same order we made our first payment. If I had been number one I probably would have picked the same space I scored. How cool is that! It’s directly across from the elevator doors and when the doors open, right in the line of sight, is a huge picture window with a view of the lake---one of only three down there. I can't believe my luck! I got my lakeside window! Why did 23 others passed it up? Maybe to put in a bigger storage unit in front of their car than the one that comes free? I'm hoping I’m not missing something because I love the joke of being able to say I have a unit with a lake view and I truly couldn't see any downside to that space.

The other views in my actual unit frankly suck and I’m going to mourn the loss of solitude and peace I get when looking out my back and side yards---the wildlife, the flowers, the birds, the grass and trees. The amphibians coming out of the cattail bog in the spring. At my new place I’ll only have a few feet of buffer between my deck and the sidewalk where “landscaping” will go---shrubs and flowers, according to the woman who took me on my the tour this week---but the buffer isn't enough to give you any sense of privacy. 

Across the street from my windows is a field that will be turned into a butterfly and flower garden, with mature woods in the distance maybe the length of a football field away. Sounded good on paper but directly in front of my den window across the street before the garden space starts are 5-6 pipes/vents coming out of the ground that stand 2 to 4 feet high. Supposedly they’ll have evergreens planted around them to cover them up (and block my view beyond). Touring other continuum care places, before buying into this one I’ve seen far worse views, though, and I’m happy I’ll only be a half block away from paved two walking paths that go around the lake or through the woods. The campus itself is tucked off the main road, making it feel “countrified” without it being in the country. The very first time I drove down that entry road I said, "This is where I want to be" and that road through mature trees still calls my name, connects me to my youth when we'd go to our summer cottage.

I’m not good at taking photos with my cellphone (my hand is too shaky) and my new computer and my decades old digital camera aren’t speaking so please forgive the quality of the pictures below. The lights are not working in my apartment yet either so these pictures will have to do for now.

The photo at the top is of the window at the end of my main room which is a living room, dining area and kitchen combined down the center of the apartment. The master bedroom and bath are on one side off the main room and a laundry room, half bath and den on the other side. The walls (except for the master bedroom and bath) are bright white so these photos are deceptive.  ©

Den/hobby room

 

kitchen - on the left not in view is the door to the common hall, to the right out of view is the refrigerator and where the workman's cart is in the foreground is where my Amish oak table and chairs will be.

bedroom wall with pocket door to the maser bath - the color here is stop on.

other side of the bedroom

laundry room - originally I was going to take the doors off the lower cupboard to create Levi's cave thus the stacking water/dryer instead of the standard set. Side-by-sides looked better but by the time he died it was too late to change it. Right now my washer and dryer are so large I only have to do three loads a week. I'll be doing far more with these playhouse sized machines.

half bath

This is the master bath with the closet door on the left and a vanity with two of the smallest sinks I've ever seen on the right. They cracked me up and I joked about having a sink for each hand because they are too small to wash them both together in one. The vanity itself is big though, bigger than I have now.

Below is a very bad photo of my masrer closet.  Seeing it made me go home and downsize a large trash bag full of clothing out of my current closet. AGAIN! The room itself is big on paper but the closet system doesn't take advantage of what could have been a better use of that space. I had about 40" of things on hangers to downsize. In addition to the bag for Goodwill I had some were easy choices like sweatpants, t-shirts and PJs that can be folded and put on shelves not in the photo. Other choices were painful like some good quality, classic Pendleton wool clothing that was slightly too small. I'll put on Facebook Marketplace when the weather is cooler. I had no trouble getting good money out of my husband's Pendletons. 

Passion and Parents

“Old people talk about the past because they have no futures and young people talk about the future because they have no pasts.” I’ve probably shared that Ann Landers quote before because it’s one of my favorites. The older I get the more I understand the scary truth in those words. Sure, I’ve got plans that go beyond daily living but none of those plans go beyond where my 2016 day planner ends---unless we count my 2017 colonoscopy, assuming I can find a ride by then. With so many decades in my rearview mirror and only one, maybe two decades in front of me, thinking of the future doesn’t come with the same optimism that it did in the past. Ya, I know it’s all in my head. There are people my age who are doing exciting things. Climbing mountains, jumping out of airplanes, running for political office, traveling the world, helping to solve the world’s problems. Developing a passion for projects and adventure can happen at any age. On the other hand it’s very First-World, New-Age of me to wish I could find my muse and live happily ever after wallowing in a passion project---that certain something that lights my fire every morning and makes me quit thinking about the fact that I’m drifting. How long should it take to retool a widow’s life? 

My dad always gave credit to my mom for the assets they were able to accumulate in their lifetimes. Not that accumulating assets is what anyone should use as a measure of success. However, setting aside the obvious----the love and caring my parents gave to whoever came into their lives, the examples they set regarding good values, humility and humanity---I’m amazed that they managed to accumulate not only a house in a middle class neighborhood but a cottage as well and all the creature comforts that went with them including two cars and a motor home. Both of my parents grew up dirt poor in hard times and without mothers in their lives from an early age. They both entered the work force before their teens and when they got married Dad was a machinist and Mom was a waitress. They lived in an apartment, often taking in my mother’s father who from all accounts was a penniless drunk dating back to the time his wife died fifteen years prior. 

My parents bought their first home at a time when the banks were eager to sell off all the houses they’d accumulated during the depression and couldn’t sell until the WWII came along, so they were able to buy it without a down payment. My mother was a long-range planner. She convinced my dad to turn the house into a two-family and rent out the upstairs apartment. I don’t remember that house but over the years I’d heard plenty of stories about it. My brother used to tell about all the mice that were in it when they first moved it. It was his job to whack them with a board when they came up through the heat register while my dad was in the basement making them scatter. Mom hoarded the rent money for a few years until she had enough for a down payment on a house in a better neighborhood, just in time for me to start first grade. And while they were landlords, my parents also bought a lot on a lake, contracted to down a house and used its lumber to build a cottage. 

When I look back over the first twenty-five years of my life, it seems like I was always living in a house that was either under construction or a project was in the works. Mom had remodeling plans running in her veins and Dad, over the years, taught himself how to do the plumbing, electrical, roofing, carpentry and cement work involved. And when my folks were winding down from their remodeling---they’d just finished upgrading the cottage for year-around living---Don came into my life with his newly acquired, little run-down house with a pink stove, another rental house and a four family apartment house and remodeling came on the my stage, again, for the next fifteen years. A lot of our earlier “dates” involved putting up drywall and painting. The pink stove, by the way, was the first thing Don moved out of the house and he never replaced it. The kitchen in his little bachelor pad was just a room he walked through to get to the garage and where he kept his coffee maker and a massive collection of coffee cups. It was a big deal to pick out a cup because it reflected his mood. If he used the “Don’t Let the Turkeys Get You Down” cup I knew something on the news was bothering him. But I digress. The point is my folks could see the same Remodel-the Nest genes in me that they had. 

Parents probably spend less time than me obsessing about the legacy they'll leave behind. They can see their families before them---their passion projects, so to speak. The years of work it took to guide their kids and how those traits and values are getting passed down to the next generation must be gratifying to see as you age. That gives me an idea. I wonder if I could find a vet to reverse Levi’s vasectomy. There’s a sweet Schnauzer that comes into the groomer on the same day as Levi. They could make cute little grand-puppies that I could train, spoil and knit sweaters for next winter and I’m not too old to accomplish all that before I die. ©

NOTE: The circa 1947-8 photo above is the front of the cottage my folks built. The boy on the tree on the left is my brother, the woman on the right is my mom and the guy kneeing is my dad. They were taking down a huge tree so they could add a porch on the cottage.

Old Arguments and the New Cuba

Before my husband and I met, he bought an old Victorian house that had been split into four apartments that shared two bathrooms. He owned it for more years than I like to remember because it was a lot of work to keep it up and that’s not counting all the remodeling we did to add two more bathrooms teaching ourselves plumbing, electrical wiring and sheetrock application along the way. Once when we painted the outside we hired three 15-16 year old fatherless boys to help and they ended up to be factors in an infamous fight that Don and I had. They were kids from the neighborhood whose mothers---for various reasons---didn’t pay a lot of attention to them. From the time they were 9-10 years old every time Don was outside working on a piece of equipment the boys would be there watching and getting what we nicknamed their “Fifteen with Father” talks. I can’t tell you how many times ‘the three musketeers’ would be in the back of our yellow convertible being our shadows during Don’s and my early years together. The beach, carnivals, car shows, music-in-the park, the rodeo and the races---we introduced them to a lot of things they’d never done before.

Back to the Victorian house: One day we were all busy bees painting on the exterior when Don sent me to pick up lunch for the crew. When I returned, I parked the car opposite the driveway. No big deal. It was a busy city street and parking was at a premium. Later on, Don backed his truck out of that driveway and hit my car. A normal person might have apologized. A normal person might have taken in the fact that I was in a legal parking space before he started chewing me out. “Why did you park there?” he yelled. “You know you’re going to get nailed when you park opposite a driveway!” I pointed out that HE was at fault for the accident---that I wasn’t even in the car. But he still had a full head of steam and when I asked him why he was yelling he waved his arm towards the teens who were watching the exchange and shouted, “To teach these boys where not to park a vehicle!” 

“That’s just great!” I was yelling by then, too. “All you managed to teach them is it’s okay to yell at a woman for something you yourself did! Is that really the lesson you want them to learn?” And just like that, the steam left Don’s head and he got a look on his face akin to that of a little boy who’d just got caught teasing an alley cat into a frenzy. Game. Set. Match. The little woman won one for womankind when Don then told the boys that I was right and “a guy shouldn’t take his frustrations out on a woman.” Don would have made a good father. He wasn’t perfect but he was quick to admit when he was wrong and he rarely forgot that the three musketeers were like sponges who took in everything he said and did. He was a role model by default.

Change of topic: I have no plans to travel to Cuba but I went to this month’s 'We Travel' event anyway. It was one on the most interesting hours I’ve spent in a long time and before it was over I was longing to be the type of person who is adventurous enough to sign up for trips like that. One of the things I learned is that although the country has been recently opened up for travel between the U.S. and Cuba, there are many regulations and restrictions on who can go and why. People who have family there or who once lived there can go. Journalists can get in if they engage in interviews on a daily basis and average people, like those in the audience, can get in if they are take part in a program called People-to-People---cultural and educational exchanges. You have to sign a contract that you’re going to interact with the Cubans each day from nine to four and keep a journal of how much time you spent where and what you talked about. 

The company who organizes these cultural and educational exchanges schedule three-four events a day and they sound interesting. You go in groups of twenty-four and you learn about the Cubans as they learn about Americans. The interactions take place at tobacco or cocoa farms, cigar factories, Hemingway’s house, with a baseball team and the American Car Club. You visit schools and historical landmarks that go back to the days of Columbus. Art, music and dance are a big part of the exchanges, too. One thing that I thought was cool is in the cigar factories they have someone who reads the news to the workers while they work. The speaker said that travel to Cuba could close back up depending on who gets elected next time and if it doesn’t American investments into the country is going to change its character and charm. In other words, the ideal time to go is now. Sometimes I wish I was younger with a better working blander, and seeing that 'We Travel' presentation was one of those times. Oh, well, maybe in my next life…. ©