2008 March « FiftyBogue

Archive for March, 2008

Selling the family “farm”…

Posted in life on March 22, 2008 by FiftyBogue

We recently put our house back on the market. And when I say “we” I mean my sister and me. Although I’m considerably more emotionally bound to the house than she is, having lived there for the last 7 years, we have owned it jointly since our dad passed away two years ago.

I spent most of last summer focused on moving. A year after Dad died, we found unexpectedly that we would be able to keep the house instead of losing it to the state. Since Missouri has estate recovery laws that exempt homes of those on Medicaid only until their deaths. But they didn’t make a claim by the one year and one day time limit. So I started thinking about moving and decided it was time to live closer to B. What followed was an intense round of apartment hunting, garage sales, packing and simplifying my 3-bedroom-basement-and-garage life into a two bedroom apartment. This was ultimately accomplished with some overflow going B.’s basement.

I’ve said a lot of goodbyes to this house already: when I moved out at 18, when I moved to Illinois for grad school. Then when I lived there again, I said goodbye when I changed my parents’ arrangements. I said goodbye when I sold stuff that had been there forever. And as I took pictures of the house, first with my furniture, then empty, then with our realtor’s staging. When the moving van pulled away with my stuff, and again when I was scrubbing it clean. I said goodbye when I went out to check on it week after week as it stood unsold and vacant. It sort of lost its intensity.

The house went back on the market Tuesday and we’ve already had two offers. To my surprise, I’m feeling stuff again. I thought I was prepared to part with the family home? Not so much, I guess. Don’t get me wrong; I’m ready. After all, I want to get my teeth fixed and take a nice vacation with some of that money. But you can’t always ward off feelings, I guess. I mean, it’s OUR house. My mom’s house. My dad’s house… No one else ever lived there except us. Sorry to get mushy on ya, but hope someone loves it…

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On a tear

Posted in rants on March 18, 2008 by FiftyBogue

OK, so maybe having a blog is just an excuse to occasionally vent about something inane. So be it.

Does anyone besides me wonder just what’s been going on in the public bathroom product market in the last 10 years or so?

Don’t even get me started about all that “touchless” stuff out there, and how our fear of germs caused a techno chain reaction in the industry that has somehow resulted in me waving my hand in front of a black box to get a towel, but never mind. (I remember the day I was in my first completely touchless bathroom: toilet flush, water faucet, soap squirt, towel dispenser. Equal parts puzzling and charming…)

I was in the bathroom at a Wal-Mart the other day (I know, best avoided on many counts). This was the environmental prototype near my old house that Wal-Mart calls HE-1 (for high efficiency). There’s a lot of good improvements in this store, environmentally speaking. But it’s only been open 14 months and the bathroom looks terrible! Doors won’t latch, toilet paper dispensers duct taped together, etc.

But here’s my point: who decided we need those giant rolls of toilet paper? There are so many things wrong with this:

They’re so low, it’s hard to reach the paper.
They’re so low, the end of the tissue often drags on the dirty floor before you can get it.
The paper isn’t perforated, but the tear bar isn’t always at the angle you need to tear it right. Because it’s so low.
When the dispensers break, they often hang open, and the enormous roll falls off, and sits on the floor. And if you pick it up, it’s unperforated, so just try and tear it.

And those round paper towel dispensers – who decided it was OK for us to wipe our hands on a little rope of paper?

I don’t know what to do about it. I just wish everyone would go back to the old fashioned little rolls of TP. They need to be changed more often, sure, but that means someone’s checking on the bathroom more often, right? Fer cryin out loud, find a system, keep it in good shape and stick to it. It’s getting common to see several different systems in one bathroom – 2 empty soap dispensers that are SO 2 years ago next to the latest model.

As an environmentalist, I should be putting in a plug for hand dryers here. But I don’t like most of those either. If they’re strong enough to do the job, they’re strong enough to remove your nail polish. Lately, if the choice has to be drying my hands with trees or with coal, I choose my shirttail…

Paradoxically, I’m also seriously grateful to live in a country where we have so many (relatively speaking) beautiful bathrooms to choose from and the above is the whine of an admittedly spoiled, privileged person. So, uh, never mind. God bless America.

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Timeleft

Posted in fifty on March 14, 2008 by FiftyBogue

About a year ago, I downloaded a little widget to my computer desktop called Timeleft. Timeleft counts down the days to something, so I set it to count down the days until my 50th birthday. It was always there, sitting quietly in the corner of my screen, inconspicuously saying “Happy Birthday” with, you know, 301 days, 3 hours, 24 minutes and 16, 15, 14… seconds left.

I didn’t think to turn it off after my birthday, so at the moment I’m able to tell you that I’ve been 50 for 63 days, 8 hours, 27 minutes and 1, 2, 3… seconds. Is this too much information? I’m still kinda diggin it, although maybe I should go ahead and set it to countdown for my sixtieth birthday? I mean, that party’s gonna rock.

(I know, you thought I was going to say, like, “Can we really know how much time is left…?” Ha!)

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The Dance

Posted in contra dancing, fifty, life on March 11, 2008 by FiftyBogue

I’ve been doing contra dance for some time, and have had some interesting thoughts about special dances I’d like to try. One is, of course, the X-Treme Contra, done in the dark with glowing bracelets and necklaces, and the one where everyone wears animal slippers. The one I told the most folks about was the all-black dance, which I have always thought would be done in my honor when I die.

Last year, our dance council started talking about having a free dance to thank our wonderful dance community for their devotion over the years, and I had also been talking about my “memorial” dance idea. Our council chair, Linda, said, “Hey – aren’t you turning 50 next year? Why don’t we combine these ideas and have the LB Memorial Contra dance?” So we did. I hired the band and caller, and the council paid for the hall, and we promoted it by saying that anyone who wore all black would get in free. I also bought maybe 20 articles of black clothing from thrift stores, in case someone showed up who didn’t know (it was one of our regular dances, after all, and there would be beginners) and wanted to change clothes.

And what an awesome night! We had the biggest turnout ever. I think we had 104 dancers, and 90% of them wearing black! Free pays off, doesn’t it? Everyone also took the opportunity to wish me well, and were willing to listen to my nearly-weepy halftime “what contra dance means to me” speech, and it was altogether the most fun dance EVER!

The band and Jim, the caller, gave it their all and it was a wonderful time. Afterwards, we had a party at a nearby clubhouse with wonderful chocolate cake ever, an oddly dirge-like birthday song, and another round of too much champagne. Otis brought the massage chair, so I got yet another massage.

To recap the fabulous birthday weekend:

hot stone massage/lunch/latte/reading/shopping
greeting loved ones with presents
very fun party/dinner/games
art museum/lunch/dance/party
pancake breakfast/talking with friends/movie with my sweetie
latte/lunch/shopping/hot tub/pedicure/movie

Is that not the perfect long weekend? I’m blessed with friends, family, love and fun! I’m already enjoying the 2nd fifty years!

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The Party

Posted in contra dancing, fifty, life on March 8, 2008 by FiftyBogue

I’m finally getting around to posting about my 50th birthday party – two months later!

I turned 50 in January and had a wonderful weekend. Friday the 11th, my actual B-day, started off with a 90-minute hot stone massage at a local spa! I KNOW…! Every day should start like that! I went out for a nice lunch, lolled about a Starbucks and read with a latte, did a little shopping then went home to await my house guests. My sister and brother-in-law came in from Maryland for my birthday and my friends Jeanette and Bruce came in for the festivities as well.

That evening, after the four of them arrived, we hung out and talked and I opened some gifts – amazing earrings from L&G, wonderful necklace from J&B, and my sweetie gave me the most beautiful quilt rack every made (see at left). Then, we got ready to receive our dinner guests.

I really wish everyone I love could have been there, but I had about 23 of you in the house, and it was a perfect blast.

I dithered about whether to have it at a restaurant, rent a party room, or have folks over to my apartment. Since I moved in August, and haven’t had that many people over yet I thought it would be fun to invite folks over, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to do all that cleaning. But since I was having houseguests anyway, I finally landed on having folks over to the apartment.

I wanted to keep it simple, though, but still needed to feed and seat everyone – plus accommodate my vegetarian and vegan friends. I finally opted for frozen lasagne (veggie and meat) from Costco, a big tub of salad and 6 desserts. You heard me. The desserts were important. Despite being perpetually on Weight Watchers (or perhaps because I am…?) I wanted to have a taste of all the desserts I love, so I had a wonderful key lime pie, a vegan chocolate cake from Whole Foods, a chocolate banana cream pie, and three kinds of ice cream: Haagan Daz coffee, B&J Karmel Sutra and B&J peach cobbler.

But of course it really WASN’T just about the food! We had a wonderful mix of people, with my worlds colliding – family, friends from dance, college, work, and wherever mixing it up. Not that many folks knew each other – at first – but there was a lot of talk and laughter and fun. After dinner – and lots of champagne – I insisted on a big game of Taboo. Not everyone could hang around, but we had 18 people playing in one big game for a couple of hilarious hours. A truly stupendous evening, my 50th birthday. Folks are still talking about it. And in a good way, I mean…

Next time – the LB Memorial Contra dance!

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