August, Already?

 Yes, we all still live. No, I will not say anything about the shitshow that is now our country, because there are far better voices out there worth listening to, and hey, brain aneurysm survivor here. I'll let the people who don't have a clip in their brain produce the words about this shitshow. 

 I have always thought of the little clip in my brain as Clippy.  Clippy has been quietly hanging out in my brain for nearly two decades now, but yeah, after that experience one tends to get way more protective about one's stress and all that. 

I may choose to occasionally blog about happy clappy shit, but that's not because I've tuned out. It's because I want to sleep at night and stick around to watch my newest grandchild grow, and hopefully see the first two through to college graduations. 

I'm not disconnected from our national disaster at all, I am tuned in but I don't have the bandwidth to write about it. I still have that pesky day job. 

Anyway, we shall stipulate that everything is awful and nobody really knows what will happen next, and all we can do is what we can do, and find our joy and sanity however we can. 

So, other than the shitshow:

The Prince is officially walking and climbing and determined to maim himself in his adventuring. His first word was "gato" because he's obsessed with their black cat.  He's not being raised to speak only Spanish, so it's it's interesting that he went for "gato" before "cat." His dad's bilingual, but I don't think he's seriously working on teaching him Spanish, it's just naturally thrown into the word mix he's learning. He's a Florida kid, he'll speak Spanglish. 

One of my closest work friends is Puerto Rican by birth, grew up in NYC and came to FL after years in the Bronx, and when I reported that The Prince's first word was gato she was tickled. Her adult kids were raised bilingual, but the grandchildren are learning Spanish in school. She said she looked at their Spanish schoolwork and said, "Nobody talks like that." 

Which is what I've concluded about language education in our schools. In most places it simply sucks. You can get straight As and be unable to converse with anybody. I joke that I can meet The Prince at his level, we can name things like gatos and perros, and maybe foods and colors. In a year or so he will leave me behind and can teach ME. 

I took Spanish (and briefly French) in HS and college. Here's a crazy story: I "tested out" of my last semester of Spanish to finish my BA by taking a written test, and scored at "native proficiency." I CANNOT FUCKING SPEAK SPANISH. I can sometimes get the gist of the conversation around Spanish speakers, but couldn't assemble words into comprehensible sentences for a million dollars. Yet a respectable state university said I did just fine on a written multiple choice test! As I recall, it was structured like the SAT, there would be a written paragraph on a topic followed by questions, and we had to select the multiple choice answers. So yeah, I could take a written test like a native, but couldn't order lunch. That's hilarious and also awful. 

The Prince is already demonstrating his smarts, because at 14 months he understands pretending. My daughter reported that she was trying to get him to settle down to sleep, and he was jumping around like a little maniac. She ordered him to settle down to go to sleep, and he flopped on his belly and began loud FAKE SNORING!! He cracked himself up after a few seconds and resumed jumping around, but yeah. This baby is already a comedian at not quite 15 months. He also shakes his finger for "no-no" though he doesn't actually think it applies to HIM. He's already quite a kid.

The older granddaughters are starting 10th, 8th, and 5th grades. And I'm thrilled to report, "WE GOT US A KNITTER!!" WHOOP-WHOOP!!

The 5th grader reached out via text a week or so ago to ask how to calculate how much yarn to buy for a project. I found and sent a couple of online calculators to get her started. Apparently she's making an afghan for a friend, and they're planning together, while the friend will buy the yarn. So far she's the only crafter of the 3. The eldest is the writer, the Kid is the triple threat athlete, musician and math whiz, but the youngest girl, who is also academically gifted, is a yarnivore. 

Why yes, I do have a fine crop of grandchildren, and I am highly motivateed to be around to watch how they turn out.  

Recalibrating, Planning New Route.

So, yeah, That Olde House is sold, closed, gone, bye-bye, and I have more money than I had, but do I have enough to just retire and not work anymore and feel safe and secure for the next 20 years? Given the insanity our country is in right now?? Definitely not. So not feeling safe and secure. So, I'm recalibrating. 

I'm very grateful to have sold the house for the price I got. I know how to analyze a market and what I got was definitely fair. No complaints at all. But as the annoying phrase goes, "It is what it is." It was a nice chunk of money, but didn't fill the retirement bucket to the no worries point.

I have my Disney job searches set, am prepared to jump on any part-time opportunity. I'm not kidding about parking cars, it's a running joke at my current job, but I could do it. A few years ago I had to do a state MOT (maintenance of traffic) course for a role I had. I didn't have to actually stand out there in the sun, but I had to be trained in it to deal with the permitting side of the role.

Anyway, I know traffic management, at least on the basic level. This means I could at least get their lane closure cones spaced properly at Epcot, because every time I hit the parking bottleneck where they filter the regular parking rabble from the ADA spots I wanna leap out of my car and ask who's in charge of MOT because you could mark that lane back THERE and then everybody wouldn't have just 100 yards to zipper in to the regular parking. I may have given this some thought. 😂 It's not what I really want to do of course, my dream remains chatting about any animal in Animal Kingdom, but hell, half those people have been there since the park opened and the other half are getting their hands on zoo experience for their PhDs. I'll recalibrate as needed.

It's weird to be 67 and still have no idea what retirement will look like, but as I said I know I'm luckier than a lot of people. I have a good job, I'm appreciated by my boss, though honestly I really do want to be doing something else, but I can do this a while longer if need be. 

My birthday was on Saturday, and my daughter and the guy who needs a blog alias took me, The Kid and The Prince to one of our favorite restaurants: Chef Art Smith's Homecomin'.  I've been there a few times over the years, but my daughter pointed out that it had been 2 years since our last visit and she scored a hard to get reservation, so I needed no persuasion. 

Chef Art Smith is a Florida boy and still lives in Florida, though in an entirely different part of the state. For those who may not be familiar with him, he was chef to a couple of Florida governors in Tallahassee, has restaurants, and was Oprah's personal chef for years. His thing is Florida farm to table food, and Homecomin' serves a lot of his family recipes, including a chocolate pecan pie that I swear I've had ONE bite of in the last 5 visits, because we are always so stuffed from the main courses we share desserts and I'm usually all about the shine cake. 

He does visit the restaurant fairly regularly, though on an irregular schedule.  We've never seen him, though we have heard of sightings: "Chef Art was here yesterday!" etc. My daughter said she was just about to tell the guy who lacks a blog alias that he does visit the restaurant but we've never seen him, when...yes...Chef Art walked up to our table. 

I did not fangirl and make a fool of myself. I was fogged by a moonshine margarita and it took a beat or two for me to process that yes, it actually was him. He did pose for a picture with The Prince, who I think was the reason he stopped at our table. He made friendly conversation and posed for a quick pic, and moved on, but yes, for a Florida foodie this was a foodie Elvis sighting. 

And so I slog onward, into another storm season, with no firm plans for the future, because that's our world now. It'll be okay, eventually, I think, maybe.
 

 

 

 

 

The Deed Is Done.

And I was copied on the instructions to the escrow agent to record the deed and launch the wire transfer tomorrow, which is the official closing date. 

I am no longer The Reluctant Landlady, we have all moved on. My daughter is in a wonderful relationship and in a much nicer house, everybody's happy and thriving, and I am no longer burdened with an "investment property" that never made me any income but was The Money Pit. 

There's a loud thunderstorm launching overhead right now, and I don't have to think about a tree falling on that fucking house. It's NOT MY HOUSE. It will take a month or two to adjust. 

I'd been responsible for it since the early 90s, but I haven't lived there for over 14 years. I walked through it last week without the teeniest bit of nostalgia for anything. Well, except for the remodel job I'd done on the kitchen 20 years ago, because it has two lovely deep pot drawers, and I do miss them. Oh, and the giant master bedroom closet. Oh, and I did pay to remodel the hall bath, after a plumbing incident that required some major fixing, and it's really quite nice. The rest of the floorplan was never that great, and I vastly prefer my condo's layout. It's nearly as large and much nicer, even if I do have to stagger out at 6 am to walk the dogs in my pajamas because no yard.

No yard is not an issue for me. I was walking my two small dogs this morning when our large resident owl flew by at about 8 ft. off the ground. We were unbothered, but would I ever trust my dogs out in the fenced yard unsupervised in this neighborhood? We have critters. I love that owl, it'll hoot from a tree right behind this building in the early morning hours, that's how I know it's a Barred Owl vs. a Great Horned Owl.  We have both in the neighborhood. Yes, I know an owl couldn't get either dog off the ground and carry them off, but in Gidget's case they could kill her trying, she's under 10 lbs and could pass for a small rabbit in the dark. All of these calculations went into "Do I sell this condo and move back into the house, or stay in the condo and sell the house?" It really was a no-brainer in the end.

I do think I'm going to spend the rest of the week in a sort of disbelieving decompression. We have finally, finally moved on, and it's all good. 

 

It's Finally Here!

 Closing Week! And there's no hurricane on the horizon and I should be done with That House on Wednesday. 

In also amazingly fun news, that last box of photographs that have been sitting in the heat of the garage in FLORIDA for 20 years, carelessly stored in ziplock plastic bags and shit?  An amazing number of them are in great shape. I have inherited a thousand or so amazing vintage photos from the WWII era and before, and several antique cameras, and now I am inspired to create a display: the cameras and a digital frame slide show of the photos from the first half of the 20th century. There are photos I've never seen before, and bless my mom for carefully writing the names on many of them. 

This stylish, handsome dude is my maternal grandfather, who died when my mother was around 5 years old.

And this is a true prize: my mother at around 2. She was born in 1926, so this would be from 1928-ish? Anybody else getting a vague Paper Moon feel from her outfit and that bonnet? 

Anyway, I have about eleventy billion photos to go through, pictures of actual people, not trees, as well as funeral notices and wedding notices and basically I need to renew my Ancestry subscription to put it to use. The slides were mostly garbage, but this is the freaking motherlode of family history. 

So, when it's too godawaful hot to be outdoors, I'll grab a random plastic bag of old photos and do a first cut, pitching the unidentified and the faded, etc., then figure out how to organize them for scanning. Then, a nice 8x10 digital frame will be big enough to put a little slide show display with the old cameras.  I'll put it on my mother's hope chest which currently just fills an empty wall in my living room. 

 Yep, that's me. I was tortured into those curls for every occasion as a tot, because DAMN YOU SHIRLEY TEMPLE! (Not really, not her fault, she was a lovely human.) I HATED having my hair curled like that. My hair was wavy but disobedient, as it is to this day, and the process of creating those curls hurt like a mofo. I finally rebelled when I was about 5, and my mother stopped the torture. Here I'm 3. That might have been the last year of the Shirley Temple look. 

It's insanely hot. I've been drafted to Uber the flute player to band camp tomorrow and I don't have any meeting conflicts. God willing, the house will close this week.  

 

And now you know...

 the Rest of the Story. 

Sorry, I had to do it. I was a kid when Paul Harvey was on the air, but he was as ubiquitous as the Kool-Aid man for a long time. 

ANYWAY...I just had to share the funny outcome of the work thing. 

My very first email of the morning was from the guy who got dragged into the Drama, telling me that this person apparently really needs what she's asking for. (Well, she's not fucking getting it, I have other deadlines. She has not explained to me why she needs it in the first place.) 

I did not respond, I did some deep breathing, and saw that my boss was back from her vacation and online. 

I messaged her: Hi, welcome back, do you have a minute for a quick call? She called me immediately. 

I started the conversation with "I'm not calling to tell you I'm quitting." (Although at going on 67, it's retiring, right?) 

She yelled, "OH THANK GOD! I was sure that was it!" And we laughed.

I then filled her in on what transpired on Friday. She agreed with me that this was not normal or okay, and added a third person to the call, who confirmed that I had not hallucinated and had provided exactly what was asked for, and even added details I'd forgotten. So it's all good.  

Skipping to the end: a Call Was Scheduled between me, the guy referenced above, the guy who got dragged in, and the source of the drama. 

God it's hard to do this without getting too descriptive, but, say somebody thought there was a thing in a museum. Your (my) job was normally to catalog things, but in this special situation, you were told not to bother doing the completely detailed catalog. So you gave the people asking what they asked for, and called it done. She was asking me to go back and catalog the entire museum. It's a big museum. The project in question was to start way too soon to make that even possible, hence the abbreviated schedule.

So I asked her if she was aware that the item(s) she needed to know about were definitely in the museum?

She paused and said she'd had a conversation with her boss, waffle waffle, corporate speak, but finally admitted that she had not even looked at the museum yet. She wanted me to do a catalog for her before she began. The guy she dragged in said a different catalog of sorts had been shared with the team, had she looked at it? She had not.

I'm very glad we were not on camera, because at this point I was mouthing many variations of the word fuck.

After a bit more back and forth, I told her that after she reviewed the museum and identified the items she cared about (AKA doing her fucking job), I'd be happy to help her obtain the information she needed about THOSE items, if they exist. I was NOT going to catalog the entire museum, but I'd be happy to help with her specific questions about specific things she cared about.

And we all thanked each other for finding a solution!  Umpty emails and meetings between parties was finally resolved when the self-important drama queen finally fucking told us what she actually needed. 

If she'd said this up front, without dragging God and Everybody into it and making it much more complicated and mysterious than it actually is, we could have worked this out in an exchange of two emails: "Hey, how can you help me with..." "Here's what we can do..." But no, she just repeatedly insisted I do something for her that the project didn't require.  There, I think I told the story vaguely but accurately.   

 God, I really must retire this year, I'm just over this.