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. 

And there's ANOTHER box of photo albums.

 These are in an ancient U-Haul box, and I honestly have no idea what they are. ARRRRGH!!!

So far, my diligent quest to find and preserve important family memories has resulted in...a few random pictures. We earnestly saved about 100 lbs. of mostly shit for DECADES. Out of focus pictures of unidentifiable places and people. I mean, we are talking THOUSANDS of images, and so far there's less than 100 actually worth keeping. SOO many duplicates, so many WTFs. So many duplicate WTFs. Zero OMG amazing treasures. There are some cool pictures of my parents, the great-grandparents, looking all glam in their 50s finery, and a couple of pics I must scan of me and my cousin in our  teens, as proof that yes, we really were once quite hot. But wading through the drek is just tiring.

One of my absolute favorite things about this modern age is the ability to take and share photos with the gadget in your pocket. No need to drop off the film, pay to develop, wait and see what you have, and discover there are two decent photos in a roll. BUT you paid good money for those photos, and dropping them in the trash feels like throwing money in the toilet. So you put them in an album and 40 years later go WTF and peel out six that are actually worth scanning to bring them into the 21st century.

Yeah, it kinda was just throwing money in the toilet, but we did it because that was the only way to "preserve those precious memories." BTW, WTF ever happened to Kodak? They're still around, they evolved and good on them, but damn, their ubiquitous commercials had us all desperately snapping and paying to develop "memories" that in retrospect weren't precious, and all their point and shoot cameras were shit. 

Taking rolls and rolls of family photos was just expected, and we all did it. We bought cameras and film and then paid to have that film developed, so we paid at both ends, all without knowing if we'd captured the moment we wanted. 

At least "wasting money" on avocado toast is actually buying food. 

My Friday began bright and early with a new work WTF, that seriously had me ready to announce my retirement before 10 a.m. 

How to tell this story without identifying details?  

Okay, so I was asked to provide information for a project. It was a very short deadline project, and they didn't need all the information I'd normally put together, so I gave them what they asked for and considered it done. 

Approximately 6 weeks later, someone I don't work with or answer to in any way asked me for the more detailed information that would be standard in a normal duration project. I explained that we didn't do that for this one because tight timeline and the people needing the info told me they didn't need it, so no, I didn't have the information requested. So okay, asked and answered, I moved on to my current projects.

 So TODAY, that person emailed me and God and Everybody associated with the project and asked WHEN I'D PROVIDE THE INFORMATION AS DISCUSSED.  

And seriously, I had to get up from my desk and walk around and load the dishwasher and stare out the window and breathe deeply, because my first reaction was to explode. I had carefully explained to that person that the information wasn't part of the scope for this project. Happily, our prior emails were attached, and it was clear that I'd never agreed to go back and redo my part of this project. I do not answer to this person. This person can use the information I provide to the entire team, I don't care, but she's not part of the two teams that need my work product and I gave them what they wanted. 

Oh, and my boss was on vacation this week and I like her way too much to bitch to her while she's off, but it'll be on the list for our next one on one. 

Apparently the complainant raised the issue with another party, someone I have worked with for years, and he very nicely asked me about it. I explained what had happened and he said thanks and was fine with it. I'm not "in trouble" - not that I have the teeniest mouse turd to give at this point.  

I'm just too old for this shit. 

Hey, It hasn't QUITE been a month!

 May has been a LOT on all fronts. Work has been crazy busy with ridiculous demands: 

PM: "Hey, we forgot to involve you at the start of this project, our bad! We're really sorry. Now, how fast can you get your part done?" 

Me: "Normally a project of this size would take 10 weeks," (explains the calculations).  

PM: "Can you do it by May 16th?" 

Me: "That's a little less than 4 weeks." 

PM: (wheedling like a kid who wants ice cream before dinner): "I know, but..."(insert schedule woes here).

And that's just one project. And they wonder why I threaten to go park cars at Disney.

My retirement date remains "Somewhere in the future...." 

Meanwhile: That House will be under contract this week and will close mid-June. My time as The Accidental Landlady is coming to an end, a decade past when I'd thought it would. (I was so young and foolish in my 50s.) I am not getting enough equity out of it to retire this summer, so yeah, looks like I'll be doing what I'm doing for a while longer. I'll evaluate after the next quarter. 

Meanwhile, I've got job searches set up for Disney and Disney-adjacent opportunities, because you never know. If a role I really want at Disney appears, you bet your ass I'll apply.

My employer offers financial advice through a 3rd party company, and they had a "Planning for Retirement" online seminar the other day, so of course I signed up. Apparently I'm already doing everything they advise, so that's both reassuring and totally not. 

Not, because the main thing that struck me was how their advice started: "You need to think about what you're going to do next, after you leave your current career." They weren't talking about traveling, hobbies, etc. They were talking about getting a "retirement job."  

Basically, these financial planners told their audience that yeah, if you want your retirement funds to last to the end of your days, you really need to think about at least part time work for a few years after you leave your career. Do consulting, get a part time job doing something different (my plan) but stay in the job market as long as you can.

I know this is true and good and sound advice, but damn, it's sobering to have financial planners saying, in the nicest way, that they strongly recommend that you don't totally retire when you retire, so you can survive whatever happens in the economy and won't outlive your money. 

This is of course far easier said than done. 

The cleaning out of The House was eye-opening, for sure. It made me want to get rid of all my worldly goods now. It has been depressing to see how much shit was still stored there, in closets and in the garage, that had been stored for decades and which, when hauled out into the light of day made absolutely no sense to hold onto, and I'm finally more than ready to trash. 

It has made me a rabid proponent of Swedish death cleaning. Not that I'm planning to die anytime soon, but because I'd really love to live in an organized and decluttered house NOW. I've been on a binge this weekend, and it feels really good. 

I've said it before, but my inability to get rid of shit is hereditary. I'm really aware of that now. When I see something I don't need my first thought is always, "Somebody could use this!" and I stare at it for a while and then put it back where it was. 

I did it this weekend: I was purging cabinets of duplicate and unused kitchen stuff and discovered that I have THREE identical Pyrex glass pie plates.

No, I do not know why I have 3.  So I texted the above picture to my daughter asking if she could use one, and her answer came back almost immediately: "I have 2." 😂

A much needed reminder that nobody really truly needs your shit; they have their own.

Except when they do need your shit. I've had a small table and chairs against the wall in my kitchen, I am not kidding when I say I think it was used twice in the last decade. It just took up space, and I kept telling myself it had to go. So yesterday I posted it on the neighborhood FB page, free to a good home, and I swear to God within 5 minutes a couple who live around the corner DMed me and claimed it. It was exactly what she'd been looking for, and I was so happy to give it to somebody who will actually use it. The only creature who ever utilized it was Ellie, it was her perch to look out the front windows.

I'd been meaning to get rid of it for literally years, but never got around to it.  It was gone to its new home within 20 minutes of my offering it.

 

Likewise, Ellie's "dining table" had been in my office for the last decade. She eats on a super basic IKEA end table to keep the dogs out of her food. It had been in my office because there was no room in the kitchen. I also had a cat bed/tree in a box since Christmas, because I'd been intending to make this change forever. Yesterday the table and chairs left, the cat perch was assembled, and the cat dining table replaced the unused human table. The transformation took about 45 minutes from posting on Facebook to the cat checking out her new spot. 

I'd put it off forever because, because I don't know why. 

Anyway, multiply that by everything I own, because I'm on a roll.