In the mirror the other day, I noticed that my belly was sticking way out, while my butt has become increasingly flat: They have swapped the ideal characteristics, which makes it look like my head is on backward.
A couple of days ago, the woman who is putting on our estate sale came over to discuss details and answer questions. I’m sorry now that we donated so many things earlier on. I’m afraid this sale is going to just barely be worth doing. The estate sale lady said the tools in the basement and garage are what is making it worth doing. She said she might bring some of her own stuff over to include in the sale, which is very kind of her.
The sale will happen after I leave here next week. Unfortunately, the after-sale cleanup can’t be done until after I get back, so I will return to find a house that is forlornly empty except for recognizable family items that no one would take even for free, plus maybe some things belonging to the estate sale lady, which might create a moment of perplexity: I didn’t know we had one of those.
I had a perplexing phone conversation with a mortgage loan officer who helped a friend of mine. She said that the only funds that can be considered when issuing a mortgage are a paycheck and / or a 401(k), and that I might do better just to sell some stocks and pay cash for the house, if possible. After we hung up, I realized there must be a missing piece in there somewhere: Don’t retirees buy houses? Indeed they do. You can potentially get a “portfolio loan” or a “pledged asset credit line.” A portfolio loan is like a HELOC—home equity line of credit—but secured by your hillock of stocks and bonds rather than by your house.
It was odd that this person didn’t mention any of these possibilities. She works for a particular bank as opposed to being someone who might approach any number of lenders on behalf of a client, so maybe it is just that her particular bank prefers to lend based on income-related assets.
Yesterday I went to the monthly lunch of my father’s high school classmates at Knight’s. I was finding it extremely difficult to hear in the noisy restaurant, which I think can be an early sign of hearing loss. I intend to be an early adopter of hearing aids, as difficulty hearing is associated with dementia. I asked Kay, to my left, if I was going deaf faster than usual or if it was just very loud in there. She said she had just been asking herself the same question and said it was that there was a very loud group of lunchers near us; she said it appeared they were about to leave.
A bit later, she said, “Oh, no!” I turned to see a herd of children trooping in, about six years old, eight or ten of them. However, I noticed later that they didn’t seem to be making it hard for me to hear. I told Kay that the children didn’t seem to be very loud, after all. Kay’s face lit up as she said, “That’s because they’re gone!” Sure enough.
Kay often has a joke or two to tell at lunch. A couple of months ago, one was slightly off color. The following month, I said, “I’m going to sit next to Kay so I can hear another X-rated joke.” Tom, formerly of the military, said virtuously, “I don’t listen to those. I cover my ears.”
I had met with a couple of painters, one who by the accounts available to me is very meticulous but who thought the whole thing might take him three weeks, and another who said his crew could get it done in four days or so. I decided to go with the zippy painter, but over the weeks found that communicating with him was rather frustrating; it could take him 24 or 48 hours to answer a text message with, “What is it you need?”
Time is somewhat of the essence because I’d like to get the painting done and preferably also have the house cleaned while I’m away, which will be for about two and a half weeks, but then I remembered that the three-week estimate included doing the basement and garage, which had to be eliminated due to a checking account whose balance for some reason only goes down (the one for the estate), so I texted the meticulous painter to ask if he would give me a call.
He called ten seconds later. I said, “I’m crawling back to you,” which made him laugh. Thank goodness, he has taken us back and he is also available at the needed time. He came over again today and we walked through the house discussing types of paint and colors and repairs he said he can do. I asked what he does about window coverings and he said he takes them down temporarily. I asked him to just put a couple of them in the trash after he does that.
Right after I spoke with him yesterday, I texted the speedy painter to say I had decided to go with someone else.
It is painful to get rid of my mother’s stuff, but at the same time, every area that is cleared out is suddenly a space with any number of possibilities and makes the house feel more like it’s mine. I could have a couch! I must have tried 50 times to figure out how to fit a couch into my studio apartment in San Francisco and have never been able to do it. Tom, right above me, has a small one, but he doesn’t have an easy chair and two bookcases. I want a nice long couch that you can read on until you fall soundly asleep on the couch with a blanket over you. We had a couch like that when I was a child.
Also, it is a choice to get rid of the things in the house. There is nothing stopping me from getting a storage space and putting every last item in it.
I read yesterday that we are apparently on the verge of a stock market crash. The warning signs are supposedly flashing. It crossed my mind that maybe this isn’t the best time to quit my job, but I reminded myself to make decisions based on what I love rather than on my fears.
I called my friend who used to work for the Humane Society of the United States to ask her about one of my cat-related anxieties. As soon as I got the first two words out, she said, “Everything will be okay, everything will be okay, everything will be okay.”
In an earlier conversation, she said that there are no wrong answers. I think there indeed are, but that was still helpful in that it made me realize I have been approaching this as if there is a right answer—because I’m an Enneagram One, I assume everything has a right answer, from where to put an apostrophe on up to whether to continue with cancer treatment—and completely disregarding that it might be fine just to do what I want. (You can just do what you want?) (Though let’s not forget that my Zen teacher did say it is not cheating to use our brains to foresee the results of our decisions.)
With the stock market on the verge of crashing, I decided I’d better extract some cash on this very day, and soon realized I had absolutely no idea how to go about liquidating any asset nor any idea which one I should liberate. Liberating an asset sounds better than liquidating it, which suggests someone tying a stock certificate to a brick and dropping it in the lake. Sell what? Using what cost basis? Should I stop reinvesting dividends? What’s a settlement fund? Do I need one? My financial adviser was just going out of town and can’t talk for a couple of weeks, so I decided to let it go for now. Alcoholics Anonymous saying: When in doubt, leave it out. If the stock market crashes between today and two weeks from now, that isn’t a sign per se, but it will affect my choices.
It was a cold, windy, gloomy, overcast day. I had to wear my winter coat when I went out walking. It was so dark overhead that it looked like it was going to rain at any moment, but it never did, so I watered the new grass in the yard.
Yesterday at lunch, one person asked another an odd question: “Did you put your boat in?” Context revealed that this is a question to be asked in the spring and pertains to the relationship between one’s boat and the lake, which varies by the season.
As for what I’m going to do here after my financial adviser helps me liberate enough money to get started buying the house, I plan to volunteer two afternoons a week, once with old people. If possible, I will do this at the memory care unit where my mother lived. The other afternoon, I’d like to volunteer with children, perhaps teaching reading and the right place to put an apostrophe. This will be while I’m looking for a job in my field; this job, if it turns up, might be a hospice job, which are way more plentiful than hospital jobs. Then I will keep my eyes open for a two-day-a-week hospital chaplain job. If I can get one, it might well require a commute, maybe into Detroit, but the hope is that eventually I could have a two-day-a-week hospital chaplain job in Ypsilanti or Ann Arbor.
Holy crap! I almost forgot the most important thing, which is that when I was coming back from my walk several days ago, I saw my tree guy walking toward his giant car from the 1970s, which was parked at the curb. He introduced me to the three new neighbors whose house he was just leaving; they’re friends. He said they’re in a metal band, and he told them what my license plate says (MTLHEAD), and we exchanged devil’s horns. These people live together, are in a band together which is actually findable on Spotify, and all of their cars are the same color. They looked like very interesting people. They must have a rehearsal space elsewhere, as I have not heard a note. This is good; I don't want groupies camping on my new grass.
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