The Widow Woman has Landed!

 

I’m sitting in my new home at the kitchen table with my laptop because I’m not unpacked enough to get my new desk delivered. It’s Thursday and I decided I need to get some normalcy back into my life and since this is the first day when no one is scheduled to pop in it’s a good day to figure out if I’ll still enjoy writing with my first cup of morning coffee. It’s seven o’clock and I’m looking out my nine foot wide window at the other end of the great-room and I’ve set my blinds so that the top two-and-half feet are permanently open since no one can see down in them and I love the light. That view is totally filled with the tops of trees doing their fall best to look awesome. The middle third of the window is covered with honeycomb blinds and for the bottom two-and-a-half feet of the floor-to-ceiling windows I have the blinds open and I can just see people from the knees down as they walk by. And in case you’re wondering I’ve already put a table and chair down at the end of my parking space with the huge picture window so that I can sit and watch for the swans on the lake.

Back tracking now: Tim (the-son-I-wish-I-had) and his two sons packed the van last weekend and it took three hours. Tim alone is crazy-funny, a class clown kind of guy and you can tell his sons have an even measure of him in their personalities. The sons at one point made a rule that neither Tim or I could talk but that didn’t last long because we were both verbally wrestling for who got to be the boss of the crew. By the end of the packing I only had my bed, an overnight bag and small plastic box labeled ‘Temporary Kitchen’ which I’m still using. It’s got one spoon, knife, fork, coffee cup inside plus paper plates and drinking cups, a bowl and plate for the microwave and a cutting knife. My goal is to get my kitchen unpacked today. Hopefully. I’m proud of the fact that of the 167 boxes I moved in with I’ve only got 30 left to unpack.

Monday Tim and I came to my new place to pick up the keys which involved going through the process of finishing the paperwork and get my packet of information. Then we moved stuff into my underground cage storage and another storage unit at the end of my parking space. Cage storage turned out to be bigger than the spec sheet said and it’s climate controlled so that’s pretty cool.

Tuesday I left my old house with the van following behind and I didn’t get more than a half a mile away before I burst out crying. The enormity of what I was doing and the long road I was on to accomplish the task hit me hard. But it passed quickly as we pulled into the parking lot of my new home and I got hooked up with my on-site Moving Co-coordinator. We'd made it and my relief was palatable! My niece met us there and Tim had his worker with him, a kid in his early twenties. At one point in time, he and I got to laughing so hard I literally peed my pants and that hasn’t happened in decades. We were in the cafe` on campus having lunch at the time with lots of staff walking around. One of them came over and said that we were their first party. I guess if you're having as much fun as we were (being punch drunk on silliness) it's a party.

We moved a lot of stuff in by handing it over my deck railing and at one point the CEO of this place and its sister in town stopped to ask how things were going. I told him the toilet was leaking and that I’d already told the concierge desk, but he wanted to see it. Standing in my bathroom he called maintenance and within ten minutes two guys had replaced the leaky value. The IT guy stopped by to hook up TVs and devices, too, but I wasn’t ready for that. Later on the activities director stopped by with a miniature orchid plant in a gift basket that also had in it a roll of toilet paper, a coffee cup, some apples and energy bars. 

By 6:00 my niece’s husband came up and they made some order out of my kitchen so that my table, at least, was in the right place and the kitchen boxes sorted out to unpack. Then we went out for dinner after which I got a shower and fell into bed (with over 17,000 steps on my step counter watch app). That’s when I discovered I’m going to have get used to wearing a sleep mask because the parking lot lights give my whole place a neat, romantic glow inside but I’m used to a lot less light for sleeping and I refuse to get heavy black out curtains…or drapes of any kind. All our windows have the honey comb blinds and we have to keep them but we can add anything over them if we want.

So far, the people who work here and who are only in their first days on the job are super friendly and eager to help. The food has been amazing. I’ve got thirteen days to get totally moved in before I have cataract surgery and wouldn’t you know it, I’m going to miss their first field trip, a cider and wine tasting at a famous apple orchid in the area. It's the same day as my surgery. ©

This is only the first layer of my sitting area. I need an area rug and knickknacks, probably in the form of sea shells on the coffee table. My new mid-century La-Z-Boy when it gets here will go to the far left in this grouping, facing toward the coffee table and windows.

This is my art area which may or may not change. At night I can pull that blind at the end down but for daytime I like the fact that I can see people coming and going in my building and into the main building. That aqua foot stool was meant to go in front the settee and I was going to use something else in front of the easel. I used to stand mostly when I painted but I was decades younger back then.

I've Got my Running Shoes On

June is coming at me like a freight train and I honestly don’t know why I’m taking the time to write a blog. I take that back. Writing is my go-to method of working through whatever nonsense or otherwise that is filling up my head. It’s my pressure relief value to see my thoughts belched out all over my monitor screen where I can cut-and-paste them in to a better order or delete some thoughts altogether and expand on others. Like now, I’m having trouble wrapping my head around the fact that I’ll have to break down my desktop computer and move its wardrobe by the middle of the month and switch over to using my hated laptop and I hope to hell-and-back that I don’t need my printer until October. Aside from to-do lists about the only things I've been printing lately are e-Bay related and if I list anything over the next few months it will just be a lone piece of art and I can easily handwrite a shipping label for.

My deadline for Operation Laptop is the week of the 14th, that’s when the-son-I-wish-I-had will be over with a helper/college kid to power wash my house, driveway and white picket fencing and while they’re here they’ll move the computer wardrobe (pictured above) out of the kitchen breakfast area. That end of the kitchen hasn’t been just a place to eat since we moved in. It’s also been my office, my dream station, my view of a cattail bog and three large pine trees that are magnets for wildlife. After I rip my computer setup out of the area I'll put the leaf in my oak table and stage it as an eating area for a normal family who can enjoy the view without typing their fingers to the bones at the same time. The wardrobe will go in the garage and up for sale on Facebook Marketplace and my desktop computer will go into the tech shop for a good cleaning and reformatting before I box it up to store for the move. I read there are some internal batteries inside computer towers that should be taken out when you store them so I’ll have to check that information out as well.

I spent a day with my family over the Memorial Day weekend---vaccinations have freed our bodies and souls, thank goodness!---and I was telling my niece about how all three of my TVs are dumb TVs (as opposed to smart TVs that have Wi-Fi connectability) and after I move I’ll only be able to hook one up to their cable and if I want a TV in the bedroom and den/craft room/office---I decide on a what to call my all purpose room yet---and she showed me a little six inch thing called ClearTV. They use it on their dumb TV at the cottage and it brings in a surprisingly good picture. It's like a miniature, old time antenna and it picks up all the local channels and the three major networks. I went home and put that on my Amazon Wish List. Sometimes it pays off to lament your disappointments in public. That conversation saved a least one of my TVs from ending up at recycling. The other one might be too far away from a window to work, but I’m not replacing any TVs until I’ve tried it.

My new best friend, The Cushion Guy, called me with the news that the fabric I wanted for my wicker furniture is on back order and won’t be available again until September. At first I said it was worth waiting for but by morning I had changed my mind. I stopped back at his hole-in-wall shop and asked him if there was a chance that the company would cancel that fabric order before September and he said, “Highly likely. The pandemic has touched the supply chains of every single company he deals with.” So I looked through his fabric books from a local wholesaler and when I found two that I liked he called on their availability. One was in stock and unless they sell 20 yards of it between now and when I take the sample book back tomorrow, I’m back in business. (I borrowed the book over night to check the fabric it against my flooring sample.) The fabric is similar to the first fabric I had my heart set on only it's a darker gray and white pattern. The bolder contrast will actually look better---grounding the furniture to the dark floor. I feel lucky that the pandemic backlog delivered me what I need instead of what I thought I wanted.

While looking through fabric sample books in the shop an elderly and very obese-butted woman came in with complains about an eight year old mattress she bought there. It had a ten year warranty and she said it wasn’t comfortable anymore. She kept saying, “It sucks my butt down into a groove.” I wanted to ask her if she’d seen her butt lately in a mirror but, of course, neither Mr. Cushion Guy nor I said anything remotely like that. He offered to replace it free of charge but it would be the same mattress which was on the lowest end of the price scale or he could give her a full, store credit to use toward a better quality mattress. “If I have to pay extra for the upgrade,” she said, “then, I don't want to do that.” 

“Would I get the same ten year warranty if you replace the one I got?” she wanted to know. “No, you’d get the balance left on the warranty you’d be using to get the free replacement mattress...unless, when we take your old one apart to see what happened inside, we find something defective in the way it was made. In that case, I could give you another10 year warranty.” She left the shop after a good half hour saying she needed to think about it and his parting words were soft spoken and sincere: “Let me know what you want to do. We want you to be happy and I’ll work with you.” 

He was the most patience guy I’ve run across in ages. While Obese-Butt was trying out mattresses and I was still looking at fabrics another customer came in, a guy who looked like he lived in his van, and he needed a piece of foam rubber to sleep on. Mr. Cushion Guy treated him with great respect and dignity. He sold him a day-bed cushion with a cover on it that, he said, was made by mistake and he charged him less than a throw pillow I was ordering to go with my settee. Plus he helped the old guy repack some stuff in his van to make room for the cushion. Oh, yes, I'm happy that I decided to spend my money locally, to support a small independent business with a heart. ©

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The Meeting - The First of Four

 

Yesterday was a Red Letter Day in the life of this blogger. I went to the first of four future residences meetings to get orientated on the move to the continuum care campus. The other meetings will come once a month from now on with topics like covering the Handbook of Rules & Safety...things like where to go for tornado warnings, in case of fire, using our panic buttons, etc. At one meeting we’ll learning how to active the underground parking door, get into the buildings and buzzing our guests in, get maintenance. Another meeting will cover tech issues and how to use the trash compactor, the intercom, run appliances, how to get IT to fix any TV, phone or WiFi issues.

They have their BIG inspection for occupancy certification coming up starting mid-June and until every single one of the 52 units plus the restaurants and public areas all passes that inspection no one gets to move into the buildings. City inspectors have been following construction monthly every step of the way and the construction company doesn’t expect that certification process to be anything but routine, but it's time consuming and thorough. They started scheduling move-ins appointments and mine is October 5th at 8-12:00. Note: no one can actually move in until October 4^th. That has to do with the elevators having to pass a different-from-the-certification test first but they've built a lot of time into their schedule in case they have bugs to work out. Not sure when landscaping happens. 

The move-in calendar is going to be a logistical, complicated process fit for a military commander to manage 52 of us spread out over October. We’ll get a four hour window of time to use the elevator all to ourselves and two people will be moving into each of the two buildings at the same time. Being in the first wave of those who move in is going to be creepy that first night, sleeping in a huge buildings with just eight occupied units. And noisy for the first few weeks. If all doesn't go according to plans I can push my move-in appointment back but I would hate that.

Because of social distancing we sat with only two of us at a table for this meeting but when they asked for a show of hands on who has been vaccinated, every single person in the room raised their hand. The masks came off and the wine and cocktails flowed. I didn’t have a drink because I have enough trouble concentrating when I drive so I’ll wait until after I move in before getting into social drinking. Haven’t done that since I lost my designated drive to my husband’s stroke in 2001. I’ve probably turn into a lush which is okay, you’d like drunk me. I get really silly and how much trouble can I get into when I'll just have to walk the distance of a half a city block to get back home? As always with this group the food was both pretty and delicious. The chef in my future home is going to be one of my favorite people on the campus.

My table mate turned out to be a woman I hadn’t met before and we will be living in the same building, on the same floor. We clicked right off the bat and our conservation was organic and easy. She’s a widow, was a teacher, loves to read, she and her husband never had kids (like Don and me). And she’s moving into the continuum care campus for the same reasons I am: 1) to make it easier on our nieces who are named as our powers of attorney, and 2) to make our own decisions, now while we still can, about where we'll live should we ever need more oversight, skilled nursing, a memory care unit or Hospice…which are all on this non-profit campus and part of the CC promise we’re buying into.

Things we learned at this first meeting: We’ll have two WiFi accesses. One will be just for our personal space with 30 Mbps (most homes have 29) and the other one will be for all the public spaces and for our guests to use with 10 Mbps. We’ll get 62 channels of free TV. With both the TV and WiFi we can upgrade if we want to pay a monthly fee. We’re getting a free 3’ x 3’ “cage storage” space plus a locking storage unit at the end of our parking space. We can get a landline for a fee if we want, but we won’t be able to keep our existing phone numbers. And the director of the CCC is going to ask the bank that is keeping all our deposits in escrow if they’d do bridge loans for those of us who might need or want them. That would simplify things greatly! Most of us seem to be in the same catch-22 of needing to sell and close on our houses to finish paying off the new unit and we can’t move in until we’ve made that final payment.

June is going to be a busy month of getting my house ready to list. Already I’ve had an electrician come out to swap out a light fixture that decided it didn’t want to work anymore. Power washing the siding so I can get the windows washed inside and out is scheduled as is vacuuming down the basement. The biggest job left is dismantling my e-Bay shipping area in the garage, selling off shelving out there and maybe move some furniture out there to sell on Facebook Marketplace. I also have to get my computer wardrobe out of my kitchen---not looking forward to that. Getting the carpets professional cleaning will come near the end of June. The photo shoot of my house will take place the first week in July. Things are moving right along.

The photo at the top is the artist's rendering of the lake side of the complex. I'm on the opposite, cheap side of the building without the great lake view and without the extra 208 or 344 square footage that would have cost me an additional $250+ a month and an extra $15,000+ to buy into the campus. When I picked out my unit my thought process was that not having a great view will force me to spend more time in the public areas or outside walking. $250+ a month is a good chunk of change and by saving that I won't have to worry as much about my budget. It was a trade off and I'm still not sure I made the right decision but I made it all by myself without asking for an opinion from anyone else. Whether it turns out to be the right or wrong decision, I wanted to own it, not blame anyone else if I come to regret not having a lake view. I did the same thing when I put the first deposit down. I didn't tell a soul that I was thinking about buying into the campus until after it was a done deal. Anyone else like that? When I make major, life changing decisions I want to be sure my voice is the only one I hear.  ©

P.S. Writing this made me realize when we get to pick out our parking units I might be able to score one with a window facing the lake. I'm in the low 20s in the picking order. That would tickle my funny bone to be able to brag about my lake view. I could even put a chair down there in my underground parking space just to add to the humor. 

The Desk Delimma

 

I have three desks in my house and a drop-leaf table that also doubles as a landing place for my laptop. I don’t use that laptop much, mostly I keep it for back up in case my main tower with my attached ergonomic keyboard and large monitor goes down, but I think that will change after I move. There will be plenty of public places on the campus---outside and inside---where I’ll be able to sit and write guilt-free without the worry that I'm taking up space a business needs to make a living. When I write in public places, now---or rather in my pre-pandemic world---I’d write long-hand, always careful to make sure others aren't waiting for a table. But even with the new freedom I'll have on campus, most of my computer time will still be spent in front of my curved keyboard. I’ve used it for so many years that I find other keyboards painful and clumsy.

Then I have my husband’s oak roll top that I wrote about before. I dearly love that desk but it’s got to go. I also have a desk and chair that I refinished in the 1960s during my Fruitwood Period and all things Early American, a secretary where I used to sit and write long-hand penpal letters, round robin letters and letters to Vietnam service men---boys, really, mostly just out of high school who got drafted with a few gun-ho, committed-to-the-cause guys sprinkled in who enlisted. I haven’t used that desk in many years but I still love it and enjoy looking at it when I pass by it sitting in my art & crafts room and hopefully I can find room for it in my future bedroom. If so, I’ll press it back into service as my center for charging devices, keeping my day planner and paying my bills. The bedroom is the only room that will have a door I can close when I want to keep prying eyes out of my business. Ya, my half bath and laundry will also have doors but they will protect a different kind of privacy….

Then I have the quality-built oak, computer wardrobe that I’ve been using for the past 15 years. I’ve logged so many hours sitting at the wardrobe that I wouldn’t be surprised if we shape-shifted into one, inseparable entity. She and I have a love/hate relationship though. I love her doors that can swing closed and lock off my business very quickly. It’s got a ton of space for everything and then some. But I hate that I always have the inside of her trashed out with dozens of Post-a-Notes, a cluster-muck of pens, pencils, rulers, papers to file and dust. If I didn't have those doors, would I keep a neater desktop? Absolutely. I am a vain person when it comes to the impression my house makes on others. When my realtor opened my walk-in closet door, I died ten times over. That place and my computer wardrobe show the stormy side of how my brain works---the messy, careless, get-it-out-of-sight, everything-piled-haphazardly-on-top-of-each-other side. It kills me that my new place will not have a door on the master closet. Where will I hide my messy side and where will the bogyman hide? My bed is too low to the floor so maybe the universe will send a bogy-child instead?

I also hate how hard it’s become for my old bones to thread the wires and cords through the computer wardrobe to the cable manager. I don’t have to do it often---only when I need to take the tower into get serviced or I need to replace it or a printer---but I just can’t get down on the floor to do it anymore. Well, I could get down, it’s the getting back up that’s the impossible part. This wardrobe has to go for that reason and because it’s too big for the miniature office/hobby room I’ll have in my new place. Thus the late night online shopping for a smaller unit to organize my office area.

Shopping for a new computer desk has taught me: 1) No matter how much you plan to spend you can’t find a quality built desk configured as well as the cheap ones; 2) The cheap ones come in a box like a giant puzzle that you either have to spend three hours putting them together or hire a service that specialized in that kind of thing; 3) Because of Covid-19 several companies I've contacted thought their chatlines no longer offer shipping to the room of your choice for an extra fee. They park the 100+ pound box at your front door; and 4) because so many people are working from home now, computer desks are selling like snow cones on the desert and are out-of-stock almost before you can save them on your Wish List.

But the most distressing thing I learned is that most desks these days are built without pullout keyboard trays as more and more people are using laptops. It took me two weeks of bedtime shopping to find out that for us dinosaurs we can buy monitor shelves to solve the no-keyboard tray problem. And most of the smallest desks being sold also don’t have places for a printer. It also took me two weeks of shopping to figure out why. They want you to buy a separate printer stand on wheels that you’d supposed to tuck away in a space I won’t have. 

I’ve debated about ordering a desk after I move in like I plan to do with some of living room furniture and area rugs, but they take 3-4 weeks to get delivered and the son-I-wish-I-had thinks it would be nicer to be able to set up my computer and it get working with Wi-Fi, etc. on move-in day and that would be my dream scenario. I found the ideal set up for a computer desk---at least for me---but I want to take the photo of it out to the Amish built furniture store to see if they’d custom order one configured like I want only made with better wood. Those the particle board made desks they sell online won’t hold up more than a few years before they get saggy. The Amish place custom-made our kitchen table so my husband’s wheelchair fit nicely under it but they only had to modify an existing plan. If it took them a few months to build, I’ve got the time to wait. Fingers crossed they'll do it at a price I'm willing to pay which is pretty high, let me tell you, since the majority of my time is spent at my keyboard and I don't see that changing after I move. I have a dozen projects lined up in my head.

Next week when I take a trip to the Amish place, and while I'm on that end of the county, I'll stop at the PODS place to get information on using one for packing up my life after the house sells. With the listing timing my realtor and I mapped out I'll be homeless for a couple of weeks but that will save me having to waste time and money on getting a bridge loan. During that time I plan to take up niece's offer to let me stay at her cottage. The POD, in that scenario, will go in their indoor storage facility and I will just have to worry about keeping two house plants alive. My niece would have welcomed Levi to use the cottage, too, so I'm pretty sure she'll let me litter up her place with my plants even though she's not a "plant" person.

I have a third house plant, a Hoya, that I've had since I was seventeen and it was tiny cutting given to me by an elderly friend when I visited his greenhouse full of Hoyas in every color known to Man, but it's showing its age and not in a good way. I'm kind of hoping it will die this summer so I don't have to move it or murder it. It took it over 38 years for it to have its first flowers---duh, the old guy didn't tell me it needed full sun for that to happen---and when it blooms twice a year now, the flowers are truly beautiful but SO stinky sweet it fills up the entire house and I have to pick them and throw them out or they'll give me a headache. That plant is a metaphor for my life in a way; I'm good at waiting and planning for beautiful things to come along but when they do I can only enjoy that anticipation fulfilled for such a short time before I'm asking myself, "Was it worth it? Would I do it again? What's next?" ©

That's the Hoya plant back in the corner and below are what the flowers looks like.

 

 

P.S. From an earlier post you may remember that the-son-I-wish-I-had wanted to do a barter on the roll top desk and he thought he could talk his wife into it, but she was firmly against it. So I am now getting ready to list it on e-Bay---what a job trying to empty it out! It has 29 drawers and seven cubby holes plus a secret hiding place. Big things like that do sell there for local pickup. I sold 6-7 restored antique gas pumps on e-Bay after my husband died and the buyers each arranged for a freighting company to pick them up and prepare them for long distance shipping on their dime. Crossing my fingers that the desk will sell as easily at those old pumps did.