FiftyBogue

I’m gearing up to spend a wonderful weekend with some old friends. College friends, but that makes it sound so plebeian… We were in the Art Department fer crissakes, and a freakishly talented group, too. So out of the ordinary, we need a better, more descriptive designation, right? Art Rats. Visually Trained Humans. Aesthetes. Hmm. Not nearly cool enough. Oh, and I’d have to add “& friends.” Not everyone was an art student. Some were just cool in their own right.

Anyway, my friend R. and family are already here and we’re having a blast, hanging out, swimming, shopping, dining. And tomorrow kicks off 2.5 days with others of the gang (alas, not everyone could make it), hanging out, eating BBQ, looking at art, laughing, eating some more and generally having fun.

A nice thing to do, reuniting. I’ve been doing this a good bit lately. Against all odds, I, a formerly not-so-popular, non-cheerleader choir nerd, am now heading up my high school reunion committee, and we recently got together in a non-reunion year to celebrate turning 50. The party was fun, but the committee meetings leading up to the party were perhaps even better. I LOVE catching up with friends from my past. And the older I get, the more past I have. Awesome.

Advice of the day: I recommend going to a high school reunion, even if you didn’t have a great high school experience, and even if you didn’t know many of your classmates. It teaches you a lot: That all that stuff that mattered SO much back then – how popular you weren’t, how snooty the cute girls were, how unkind life seemed – all evaporates with time. Time is the great leveler. The handsome jock may be scraping by in a dead end job, while the guy nobody noticed has the brilliant career (but you already know this if you watched Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion). There are time-worn yet relevant lessons to be learned from this, folks. Like:

• don’t take yourself too seriously
• appreciate what you have now
• don’t judge a book by it’s cover
• don’t follow every fashion trend, especially if you’re going to be photographed

Reuniting with pals (or even enemies) from the past isn’t only fun (and anthropologically fascinating), it gives you perspective. And that’s never a bad thing.

I would imagine that many new bloggers struggle to find the balance between the blog being a joy or a task on the to-do list. This blog hasn’t become an automatic part of my day yet. It gets added to the list of pleasurable activities that I have trouble getting to. But I won’t expend energy writing about the ubiquitous time crunch – there are blogs dedicated to fitting more life into our lives and they speak more eloquently than I.

There’s always a “hump” to get over before you get to the fun stuff, right?

Suffice to say that I enjoy posting here and am trying to do more. I like to think a few of you read this and care. I’m always yearning for time at this keyboard, the same way I yearn to work on quilts, travel with B., exercise more and have a cleaner house. Instead I work late, shop for groceries, drop things at Kinko’s, return printers to Best Buy and go to meetings. Well, and fun stuff too – dancing and quilt shows and the like. It’s not bleak or anything. Just busy.

I keep making lists of things I want to blog about, so there’s no shortage of material. So more, soon. In the meantime, I’m trying not to blow all the house money on new Keens.

Our house sale closed on Friday. We still have a couple of hoops to jump through to get the money – nerve wracking, since my sister leaves on vacation in the morning. I hope the new owners aren’t complaining too bitterly about all the layers of wallpaper and are settling in comfortably.

I pick up my check from the title company later today, but I’ve already been shopping unrestrainedly all weekend. Don’t worry – I’m not going to blow all the money. I’m going to invest most of it wisely. But first, I’m going to invest some in clothes. And electronics. And a cute little rug for my kitchen. And maybe a pair of shoes. New teeth. A bike. Jeez. I’m really shallow.

Last Thursday, I put together a memory book for the new owners – a brief history of my family in that house, along with a dozen pictures. That afternoon, I went there and left it and my keys, and stood in our home for the last time. I’m too sentimental sometimes. I’ll think, “Remember this! Remember everything!” But there’s only so much you can absorb when you’re trying to feel everything. I can never soak up all up – I’m only human. And I have to walk away in the end anyway.

So, I expected to be stressed when I was there (for THE. LAST. TIME.) but it was actually peaceful and relaxing. Lots of visual memories floated through my mind – my rocking horse in the basement, playing dress up in the fruit cellar, swinging on the swing. The last dreg I slurped was this: as I was locking up the garage, I simultaneously saw the handle on the door frame that my dad installed after my mom started having trouble with the steps, and the piece of black electrical tape on the garage wall that he put up to help him park the Bonneville so the garage door would close. Beautiful.

…yet I’m doing nothing today, thank god. And today, nothing = bliss.

I flatter myself that some of you kind folks may have bookmarked this site and check in on me once in a while. And I hate to disappoint my readers, even if they’re only imaginary, so I apologize for not having posted for two weeks.

As my friends and loved ones know, April is the cruelest month* for me, due to Earth Day. Yesterday was the big event, so I’m ready to kick back a little. Or a lot. But I mean to clean the kitchen and take out the trash. In a minute. Really. In a minute.

So I’m just going to hit the highs and low of the last two rather exhausting weeks here, and offer more detail in future posts.

HIGH/LOW:
The Earth Day event was good; very tiring as usual. We also launched two new campaigns at ED, so that’s made my workload more intense than it’s been for a long time. Earth Day IS every day, but you wouldn’t know it by the requests we get at work… So I’ve worked many long days, some 12 hours or more, doing my little part for the planet.

HIGH:
I’ve been helping B. with his vegetable garden, as time permits. He’s been doing a lot on his own lately, obviously, putting in rabbit-proof fencing to keep the future lettuce safe. (Or should I say “lettuce futures?” We’ve invested in lettuce futures…?) It’s been too wet to get all the early stuff planted, so I’ll probably go over there in a while too. Really. In a while.

LOW:
There’s a snag in our house sale. I’m not worrying about it yet, mostly because I’ve been too busy, and I’m letting Super Realtor handle it. Haven’t even talked to my sister, who is busy with Passover and getting ready to go to Hawaii. And who has already signed and returned the closing papers, I might add. So, if you’re reading this, LG, don’t worry, yet. If not these buyers, then others… I’ll call tomorrow. Really. Tomorrow.

LOW:
Avid, my 13-year-old cat, is no more. She’d been getting pretty thin of late, and last week started getting very weak. It turned out there were too many things wrong with her to fix – liver, kidneys, thyroid – and when they started talking about force-feeding her, I balked. So I chose eternal rest over prolonged discomfort, and she went to sleep for the last time on Tuesday. She was persnickety to the end, but is sorely missed by Grace and myself. Grace took Avid’s usual place in the bathtub Tuesday night in memoriam.

LOW:
This is embarrassing to admit, but I got another speeding ticket last week. I got it at exactly the same spot I got the first one in March when I was going 42 in a 30 MPH zone. This time, I actually had my cruise control set to 30 MPH (I’m not kidding!) and was totally thinking what a smart and prudent a driver I was! That’s when he stopped be for going 30 in a 20 MPH school zone. How did I miss the flashing light? I’ll never know. I threw money at the problem this time, paying a lawyer to fix it for me. What a deadbeat I’ve become.

LOW:
I’ve got a cold AGAIN. I think it’s the other half of the cold I had a month ago, which was entirely in my head (in my nose and sinuses, I mean; not imaginary). This one is entirely in my throat and chest. I don’t get sick very often, but NEVER this often, damn it. Too much work + stress + a virus = coughing, I think. Which is why…

HIGH (hopefully):
I plan to take some time off this week. And I really don’t want to take it as sick time. I want to take it as shopping and pedicure time. Cleaning the house time. Reading books and drinking lattes time. Posting to my blog time. You get the picture. Cough. Cough.

HIGH:
I’m still scheming/dreaming about things I want to do once the house sale goes through. Besides taking a trip, I think I’m going to buy a new, more comfy bike. B. just got a beautiful new bike and I have visions of us riding the trails together this summer (him waaay ahead of me, but still…). My old bike makes my carpel tunnel kick up, and my hand goes numb after about 5 minutes, which is no fun whatsoever. So I’m looking at a “comfort” bike, where you sit very upright on a big, cushy seat (for my big, cushy seat…).

I’ll close with a movie review, to reflect my day. I just watched Possession with Gwenyth Paltrow and the exquisite Jennifer Ehle (best known for the BBC Pride and Prejudice). I tried to read this beloved book once, but found it too slow for my taste (although it has a rockin’ pre-Raphaelite cover). My friend KR, with whom I share my love for all things Jane Austen (a rather plebian obsession these days), told me that parts of this movie are a little like watching Darcy and Lizzie’s wedding night. And she’s right: it’s a little like that.

* I’ve always loved this line. I first came across it as a reference in a Woody Allen essay, of all places. My more literary friends will already know that this is from T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. And no, I haven’t read the whole thing, but I sure like how it begins:

April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.

The house-selling saga continues. We have interested buyers! Yay! The guy who did their mechanical inspection thought that the south wall of our foundation had settled. I seriously doubted it, since I had 2 rounds of foundation work done in 01 and 03, and have had a dry and beautiful basement ever since. I think the guy saw the patched cracks and got worried. However, those cracks were where the foundation had been pressure-grouted with epoxy. (Just wanted to slip in the phrase “pressure-grouted.”) That room also has 5 huge metal braces on the walls. So I was skeptical.

I called a guy my realtor recommended, a semi-retired structural engineer, who looked at the basement and chuckled over the inspector’s assessment. He said, “I don’t mean to laugh, but he thinks this basement has settled? How the hell would he know?” After an hour of measuring, he pronounced, “No foundation remediation is currently necessary here.” His wise council for the new owners: provide proper foundation maintenance – the house isn’t getting any younger. Hey, good advice for all of us, right?

So, I guess we’re back in the game with these buyers, as soon as we get the written report, at least.

The engineer was a guy about my dad’s age who quite possibly served in the same Army Air Corp regiment with my dad – they’d been at the same places at the same times, at least, and he said that “the 9th” was the only one in Normandy at that time. I’ll have to check my dad’s papers. I had a great conversation with this guy, however brief. I’m increasingly drawn to the men of “the greatest generation” and their war stories – when they deign to tell them. Most of them just keep quiet about it. I wish I’d appreciated my dad’s stories better when he could still tell them.

Something interesting always happens when I spend time at the house. Just a couple more times left, I’m thinking…

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…