Since the last post, I have found a new profession, photographer. My work has been at the DC Auto Show, a private party, and various unpaid photo shoots to gain more experience, the favorites being shooting friends' family reunions and church events. 

Greater than that has been family changes: both of the remaining children were married this year, one in April, the other in October, so, now I can say that all of my children are married. 

The best news, however, was the birth of my first grandson, Russell, in August of 2011. I was able to see him, first, photograph him, first, and experience being in the delivery room for his Caesarean birth. Now he is walking, tentatively, and sports the most amused personality I have seen in a youngster. 

Russell at ten months

Post Christmas 2009

The Christmas Holiday has come and gone, and we are living in 2010. Tampa is having lower temps than normal, as is the rest of the Eastern Seaboard. Our 30 feels like their 5 because the homes here are not insulated for low temps: result is that the inside never gets over 65 no matter how much the heat pumps pump. I don't know what other people wear, but I wear long johns, multiple layers, two pairs of socks, and sit under a blanket in the living room.

My baby boy has just moved from his large apartment in Astoria, Queens, to a teeny one bedroom in Manhattan, in Hell's Kitchen. He and his sweetheart are so excited to have a place together, and all lights are green, for them. Living in Manhattan is such fun because everything you need is within a block or two, and you can shop all through the night, and even have things delivered anytime. If you go somewhere, you can, usually, walk, but, if it is cold or rainy, or you need to get there fast, you can take a cab, and for five dollars, be there in a moment. If you have a distance to go, there are buses and subways, so it is a very convenient, and fun, place to live. I am so happy that they are able to live this life.

I just returned from ten days in Indianapolis: the snow was beautiful, my daughter's home is a big, white historic place with pillars in front, six bathrooms, three fireplaces and lots of room to grow--and redecorate. My younger daughter met me there, and we enjoyed some "girl time" while, also, welcoming a new puppy. Indianapolis is a very sad place, as there is high unemployment, but we can all hope for something to replace the loss of jobs from the discontinuation of the automobile industry, and most factory jobs--they went overseas. So people in third world countries are, finally, able to provide for their families, while Americans mourn the loss of manufacturing.

This is boring me--but better days are ahead. I really believe that.

Oh dear, and here it is June 21st. It is 97 degrees outside, so I guess I will go swim in my pool by myself. Last night I was awakened at around 3 am to the smell of something burning: seems my upstairs roommate decided to cook something but forgot about it, and left it in the oven. I can't wait to see the electric bill, but, fortunately, he shares it with me. Just one more interesting aspect of being a landlady.

I had a wonderful morning, yesterday, swimming with my son and his family in their new pool: it has these neat fountains, and a waterfall, and now I want that stuff, too. I, probably, won't get them, but I will check it out. I am still hoping to get solar heating for my old pool so that I can use it more than just a few months in the summer. I do hate to swim in cold water, and seldom do it, like never.

My home updating program is ongoing, and I have a guy replacing my floors: he is taking more than two weeks to do it, however. I wish I had gone with a larger company, paid a little more, and had it done in a few days: this has been way too long with no furniture to sit on, a stranger working in my home, and a bunch of tools in my garage forcing me to park outside: I am a very frequent "garage parker" person. This week I am getting estimates for the countertops, and then I think my money will be gone.

This will leave me with a lot of painting to do. I did have a sort of boyfriend who was helping me, but his interest in painting has progressively waned to none, and the relationship, or quasi-relationship, is in the process of dying a natural death. During these death gasps, no painting got done, so I am faced with finishing it myself. Yuck. And I borrowed a tall ladder from a friend, and I have to give it back as soon as I can.

And the yard just keeps on growing--and it is too hot to even go outside. So I keep spraying it with grass killer so that I won't have to mow it.

I need a vacation.

Oh the heat is coming

So it appears that tomorrow is May the first, with Mother's Day coming up in ten days. As I am no longer talking to my mother, this causes a slight decision: I will buy a card and mail one. They have made no attempts to contact me since they moved on March 10, so I feel okay about returning the same non-attention. It is a sad ending to a troubled parent-child relationship. But I will always be grateful to my father for the financial help he gave me after I became a single mom of four children who struggled to provide her kids with what they needed. I see his help as making the difference between abject poverty, and the genteel type of poverty that we managed to enjoy.

The current state of my life is still "Limbo in God's Waiting Room" as I do more physical work than I ever imagined I could, while, at the same time, less than men do in a tenth of the time. A simple task like bringing a tall extension ladder can take me an hour, as the ladder is too heavy for me to lift, so I pull it along on a dolly, and then, getting it to make the turns needed to get inside the house is challenging to my understanding of physics, as well.

So, hallelujah, the ladder is inside the house--now to get it to stand up against the wall and, also, to get it to extend to the height required (24 feet). It is not easy to do, as pushing up on the ladder is too strenuous, so it has to be on the ground, extended, and then stood up. This requires moving much of the furniture to make room for the long ladder, and so forth.

Oh, none of this is major: it just keeps me busy until the house gets rented or sold. I have decided to have solar heat put into the pool because being able to swim will make my time here more pleasant. It should, also, make it more appealing to renters or buyers. I am cleaning out my IRA, but I am not one to hold money away for a future that I do not anticipate enjoying. So I am going to make my home comfortable, in the unlikely event that I am STUCK here.

OMG.

Still wondering WTF

It was going to be perfect: I was going to do some off-color standup stuff at the local open mic yesterday night. But, alas, I was in the recuperation stage of a stubborn sore throat, and then lost my voice. I still considered going as a spectator, but had some guilt about possibly giving my infection to someone else, and I am not exactly Mother Teresa, but I do care enough about strangers to not give them an illness that is extremely painful. 

The sad thing for my former family is that they needed me more than I needed them: I already had a large extended family, including my four children, their significant others, my granddaughters, plus two of my aunt's families which are large (both had six kids), so I have enough family to last me. I even am close to many  members of my former husband's family. These people who were part of my nuclear family have only a very few family members to care about them. Why do people shoot themselves in the foot?

Even though my lawyer friend has, by mutual consent, left my life, I see his advice about taking bad things and people, putting them into a box, and tossing them out, to be appropriate for me at this time. I get messages from two older friends urging me to make it up to my parents, but it was they who hurt me: I didn't do anything wrong, so what is there for me to say?

Back in the world of doing things, I am still trying, but not so hard, to get my house done--am still finding new holes in the bathroom to plug and sand, but it will happen when it happens. 

I kinda want to get another car, a sedan, to have when I don't need the truck. I can probably afford something used, so long as it runs, and does not require repairs.

Cancel that Family

 After my dad had allowed me to write checks on his bank account for about 20 years, one of my brothers went through the statements and told my parents and the other brother that I have been "stealing" from him to the tune of six figures. My parents are senile enough that they don't even know what is going on, and they agree with whoever is with them, lately being that brother. So now I am completely the villain of a family where I reigned as the Queen Bee all of my life. It is completely out of my control, and I have decided to let them all go.

 A week ago I phoned my parents, my mother answered, and she immediately began yelling at me that it was all my fault that they had to move into a smaller apartment. I told her that I had canceled their reservation because she and Dad had decided to move in with me. She said in a mean voice (I am sure she has early-stage Alzheimer's) "we NEVER had decided to move in with you--we were just considering the possibility (not true: they called me two days after deciding to move in with me, to tell me that they had changed their mind (lol). 

 So they don't remember anything, and are completely under the control of my brother. I cannot stand to be in the same room with him, and now he has convinced my parents that I am a thief, and that he and his wife are integral to their survival. 

 I have a nice friend who is an attorney who counseled me to let things that I cannot control go, put them in a box, and throw the box in the trash. So I had to put my creepy family in the box, even though my dad was so good to me for all of those years. Well, maybe I won't put him in that box yet: but I know that I cannot see him so long as my brother and his wife are around, and I have no way of knowing when they will return to their sty.

Maybe Next January

I didn't make it to nursing school, after all. A few things did not fall into place: they did not give me enough financial aid to cover the expenses of maintaining two residences, a few new medical tests were added at the last minute, and then my daughter's wedding on Feb 7 in Indianapolis kinda meant that I would be furiously driving or flying, starting the semester missing classes and clinical days, and I don't do chaos well.

Then, after deciding not to go to school, I suddenly got two new roommates: so, briefly, I felt kinda badly about the financial issue. However, then one of them decided that he was not happy living here with a cat in the downstairs room, so he is leaving. And, my young girl roommate gave me her notice that she is moving into an apt with her boyfriend on March 1. So, I had three roommates for just one month.

It's not as bad as it sounds, because the girl roommate will be vacating the master bedroom downstairs so I can live there, and renovate it. The guy who is leaving is very obnoxious, talks all of the time, and has filled the refrigerator with a lot of food--he likes to eat. The other roommate seems like a keeper: he works as a handyman at an extended-stay motel chain, so is a "fixer" person who is anxious to do yard work as well as housekeeping tasks in the house. He even has a pressure-washer at his work that he wants to use here to clean the pool screens and the driveway. So, even though I will just have one paying roommate, it could turn out to be a very good one.

I am watching A FEW GOOD MEN, my usual movie that I let play when I am in my room--no cable up here. I have to go to the library to get some more dvds to watch.

I am hoping to go to nursing school next January: there is a nurse with whom I can stay, and, I hope, I will have another roommate or two to cover the expenses here. Of course, ideally I will meet a wonderful fellow with whom to share a life with, but, at least I have a Plan B firmly in place.

In the meanwhile, I am working on writing a book about mid-life dating, focusing on internet dating, honing a stand-up routine with the same topic, and getting this house updated as much as my tiny income can handle. I am going to try to get a grunt job at the hospital just to get more comfortable in that setting, but I also do not want to spend the summer here. I have an interest in going to Ireland, staying a long while, and just doing the whole UK before I die. Otherwise, I still want to go to NY, or Maine, or Canada or anywhere but Florida in summertime.

I am recovering from my daughter's wedding which was very stressful for me: for some reason, nothing I did was right, and I felt just awful the whole time. She had asked me to NOT bring a date, so I found myself to be the only single person in every circumstance. This might work for some people, but I have had some guy to lean on in every situation since I was five years old. My hotel was downtown but everyone else stayed at the same hotel in the suburbs, so they were all bumping into each other at breakfast and so forth. I had made my truck available for people to be ferried back and forth between airports and hotels and gatherings, and when it was time for me to leave, the steering had gone out, so I had to take it to a garage for a four-hour repair before I drove back home.

At the last minute I was asked to write a poem for the wedding, which I did: I brought 30 candle holders and candles in my truck, which I set up before the wedding, and spent a lot of time around my daughter and the bridesmaids, feeling left out, just like at my hotel. Every suggestion I gave was not good, and the shrug I bought to wear over my dress was not acceptable, so I had to carry this black stole to put over me because "strapless" was not the uniform of the day. I spent most of the reception dancing with strangers and other people's escorts, husbands, and even with some women.

It was good to head home in my truck with the newly-repaired steering (375 dollars), stopping at my friend, Don's, house outside Pittsburgh, then my cousin Barbara's in Kentucky, and finally in Atlanta at my cousin, Dave's home. Dave had attended the wedding with his wife, but was in Ethiopia by the time I got to his house. Barbara and I had fun: I cooked dinner for us, and we chatted. She and my ex-sister-in-law both told me that I was very cordial at the wedding, and gave no indication that my heart was breaking. They said I was a "class act" and that helped, a little. 

My cousin in Kentucky has remodeled her little farmhouse into a seven-bedroom Farmhouse with a capital "F." It is just great, roomy: the upstairs has five guest bedrooms and a bathroom with a huge bathtub that I enjoyed so much. She has invited me to visit anytime, and we have already talked about me spending several weeks there during the summer. My aunt and uncle live with this cousin and her husband. It's a fun place with acres of growing things, a huge garden, a tractor, and barns. She even has a big patio with a firepot that we can sit by at night.

Now I am home, still very tired, but, I suppose, I will get a renewal of energy tomorrow. It is Valentine's Day, and my sweet sons set me flowers, and my baby daughter and her boyfriend sent me Godiva chocolate, so I won't feel completely blanked on Sweetheart's Day. I guess I will go to the library tomorrow for more dvds to watch, and then get some blueberries, eggs, and fish which is on sale at Albertson's.