Yes, it's another of my seemingly endless stream of "where have I been lately?" posts. I haven't written a post for a while. Nor have I been checking anyone else's. It's not that I don't think about you or don't care about you. But ... my own life is complex, and I've had some long and difficult weeks lately.
I can get wordy, but I can break down the main news in a few simple sentences:
My mom's house has finally been sold.
My mom seems to be slipping away.
I have been mainly healthy but feel harassed by various duties and responsibilities, and it's getting me down.
Now, a closer focus.
Yes, the house was sold. The closing took place last Friday. But it didn't happen without excitement and nervous times.
The last time I wrote, I said that the closing was two days away, and since the train hadn't gone off the tracks yet, it probably wouldn't. The next day, it went off the tracks.
The title company discovered that part of what we thought was our land (slightly over 2 acres) had been deeded over to someone else in a land exchange. That led to the discovery that the someone else has his house/trailer on our land.
It's a mess, but I shouldn't have been surprised. When this county was originally surveyed, it must have been very ineptly done. If you have ever looked at a plat book, you have seen the townships and ranges in very neat and orderly squares, all lines parallel with each other, both vertically and horizontally, with all 90-degree angles. Well, that sure isn't the case in this county. I am sure the goofy dimensions have made title companies a lot of money over the years.
It postponed the planned closing for one week. To cut to the chase: We sold the buyer one acre of land (getting less money for the sale) and will deal with the occupants of that trailer separately--probably by selling the land to them after we agree upon a price. Meanwhile, the sale of the house, garage, etc., was officially closed last Friday. We got a check that was noticeably smaller than we had hoped.
A couple with three kids (three boys, 6, 7 and 8 years old) bought the house and are busily making repairs and painting and stuff. After four years of being empty, the house will be a busy, happy place again.
It had been empty since a bad fall four years ago put my mom in the hospital and then the nursing home. In September, she had another bad fall and broke her elbow. She was in the hospital for a week, but the experience seems to have taken a lot of the life out of her. Granted, she is 87, but she has changed a lot since before the fall. She sleeps an awful lot now and is getting harder and harder to understand.
All this time, she has been thinking clearly, but when we visited her last week, she made a motion to her head with her good hand and said something to the effect that her mind isn't working so well anymore. Today, we went down there to ride with her to a doctor's appointment (the nursing home van was taking her in her wheelchair). We got there about noon, and I went down to her room to get her and her wheelchair. I said hi to her, and she looked at me with a confused look. She said something that sounded a lot like "Who are you?" That's the first time that has ever happened, and it caught me by surprise.
Later on, though, as we sat in the waiting room at the doctor's office and I was holding her hand, she was holding my hand, too. The doctor unwrapped her arm, felt the arm, wrapped her up again, and we called the van to take us back. But she was getting very sleepy again. Once we got to the nursing home, I called for a nurse to help put her back in bed. She was asleep within minutes.
It's like ... like a science fiction movie, where someone is partially in this dimension and partly in another, and they look semi-transparent. That is my mom. She is here, and yet she isn't. And she doesn't want to be here any longer. Let's be honest about it. She wants to be with her parents and her husband and my brother and her older brother. The doctors told me she is hardly eating at all any more, and she lost six pounds in a recent week. I think you can tell what I am expecting to happen before too many more weeks pass. The arrangements have already been made.
What with the drama about the sale of the house, my mom's health and ongoing busy weeks at work, I am doing well just to maintain an even keel emotionally. I had planned to visit N this week, but I had to postpone it--too much stress. The doctor's appointment with my mom was today. Thursday, I have an all-day meeting two hours away. My weekend will be very busy--football playoff games Friday night and Saturday afternoon.
I am trying to stay healthy. What I need to do is get more sleep and watch how much I eat--I tend to eat more when I'm feeling tense or depressed. So far so good. Since I am aware of it, I think I can deal with it OK. Basically, I am a healthy guy. Sturdy. Dependable. Or trying to be.
But the load on my shoulders has been pretty heavy lately. I know that. Under the circumstances, writing blogs and reading blogs has had to be put on the side for now. I hope you understand.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Big news and colorful trees
I've got some updates and pretty pictures to share with you.
First, though, there's something more important to share. Big news. For a while I was leery about writing anything about it, for fear of jinxing everything or gumming it up in some dreadful way. But now it seemingly has built up too much momentum to be stopped.
Here it is: My mom's house is being sold. Exclamation mark. This week. Double exclamation mark. Really. Triple exclamation mark.
The house has sat empty for the last four years, since my mom had her first bad fall and wound up in the nursing home. My wife and I went through all the contents during the summer of 2007 (after it became clear she wouldn't be returning), going through everything, throwing some stuff out and keeping others.
If you aren't aware, I am her only descendant--my brother died over 20 years ago, and he had no children. That means there was nobody else to do the tough work of managing my mom's affairs and going through the household items (aside from my wife, who worked as hard as I did). It was all on our shoulders.
First, we hoped her neighbor's son would be able take the house. He had served in Iraq, and his mother had called me, asking what plans we had for the house and to keep them in mind. We definitely did that. We would have given him a very good price, too. But he got injured in Iraq (his back, I think), and couldn't take the house. Back to square one.
Early this spring, we finally went to a local real estate agency and got them involved. We had a few bites and a few showings during the summer, but nothing very serious and no serious offers. As time went on, I got pretty discouraged. We lowered the price (and it was pretty low in the first place), but nothing happened. A few people were interested, but no real offers were made.
Then, late in September, the agent said a couple had visited the house and was interested. A day or two later, we got an offer. We made a counteroffer. They made a counteroffer. We thought about it for a long time and decided to say yes.
It's a lot less than we had hoped to get, but with the housing market the way it is and with how much the house is costing me (property taxes, insurance, heating oil, power, maintenance, anxiety), I finally said yes. Their offer sheet said they were planning to close the sale on Nov. 12.
Halfway expecting the process would break down somewhere, we started preparing for the transfer. That involved getting the last big items we wanted from that house to ours. But things changed about a week ago, when we learned that the buyers now wanted to close the deal on Oct. 16. Four weeks earlier than originally stated and just nine days later.
Now, it's just three days.
I already had an appointment on Thursday morning to ride with my mom to a doctor's appointment, and my wife found two guys who would go to my mom's house that day to pick up the heavy furniture. I met them at about noon. Rather, I met him at about noon--just one guy made the trip, not two. So I was the other moving man, helping him load the items into the pickup truck and trailer.
He drove everything back home by himself (eventually finding a second man to help him unload), so now we have another sewing machine table, more bedroom furniture, kitchen chairs and a nice rocking recliner in the living room, among other things. I stayed behind, because my day was hardly over.
The doctor's appointment was the first task, and that took quite a while. After we sent the furniture on its way, my to-do list included: dropping off a key so the buyers could get inside the garage; closing out my mom's safe deposit box (where I found some title documents I had been looking for); meeting with the real estate agent; returning to the nursing home to meet with the caregivers about my mom's care; and getting a copy of my dad's death certificate, which, I was told, is absolutely necessary to closing the sale.
In short, it was a day of jumping through hoops--very busy, stressful at times, but in the end I think I got everything done that I wanted to. (I had made a list that I consulted from time to time.)
We had a potential problem about my mom signing off on the deal, since our title says she has a life estate. Since she broke the elbow of her writing hand in her most recent fall, she can't write at all. But the real estate agent (after consulting the title company) said we can work around that. There will be a space for her to sign (with an "X") on the deed, with witnesses and a notary public confirming that she made the X and thereby agrees to giving up the life estate (which preserves her right to live in the house--fat chance that can ever happen now).
The required inspections have now been completed, and all the lights are green. I have my dad's death certificate. Fewer and fewer things can go wrong now.
The situation with my mom is sad, and she is not doing that well. But at least she understands what is happening and was happy to hear of the impending sale.
So that has been filling my life with anxiety and worry ... which is now less than three days away from ending. This morning, I called Wisconsin Electric about switching the electric service to the buyers. I told the fuel oil company the same. At 11 a.m. Friday, the final papers will be signed, and the house will officially belong to someone else.
I still have some final expenses. Several connected to the sale process. Property taxes for 10 1/2 months of 2009. The real estate agent's cut. And income taxes on the sale price--it's regarded as taxable income. Even with the sale price, I'm still in the 15% bracket.
****
Not much else to report. The news about the house outweighs everything else, anyway.
But I did manage to get some fall photos in recent weeks. Here are a few examples ...
Here is a frosty morning. The temperature was about 25, but the sun was melting the frost except in the shadow of my car and a nearby garage. Interesting effect ...
I drove north to Baraga last Friday night for a football game, and the leaves seemed to be at maximum brilliance--except that the sun was behind the clouds for most of the trip north. I only got to see the leaves in full color from a distance. Thank goodness for 24x lenses ...
I made a mental note to make the same trip over the weekend. Saturday was mostly cloudy. The clouds moved out early Sunday afternoon, and my wife and I made the trip. But ... the peak color was now obviously past, even though it was just two days after my last trip. The brilliant color had dimmed and darkened.
It was a nice drive on a sunny day, anyway.
First, though, there's something more important to share. Big news. For a while I was leery about writing anything about it, for fear of jinxing everything or gumming it up in some dreadful way. But now it seemingly has built up too much momentum to be stopped.
Here it is: My mom's house is being sold. Exclamation mark. This week. Double exclamation mark. Really. Triple exclamation mark.
The house has sat empty for the last four years, since my mom had her first bad fall and wound up in the nursing home. My wife and I went through all the contents during the summer of 2007 (after it became clear she wouldn't be returning), going through everything, throwing some stuff out and keeping others.
If you aren't aware, I am her only descendant--my brother died over 20 years ago, and he had no children. That means there was nobody else to do the tough work of managing my mom's affairs and going through the household items (aside from my wife, who worked as hard as I did). It was all on our shoulders.
First, we hoped her neighbor's son would be able take the house. He had served in Iraq, and his mother had called me, asking what plans we had for the house and to keep them in mind. We definitely did that. We would have given him a very good price, too. But he got injured in Iraq (his back, I think), and couldn't take the house. Back to square one.
Early this spring, we finally went to a local real estate agency and got them involved. We had a few bites and a few showings during the summer, but nothing very serious and no serious offers. As time went on, I got pretty discouraged. We lowered the price (and it was pretty low in the first place), but nothing happened. A few people were interested, but no real offers were made.
Then, late in September, the agent said a couple had visited the house and was interested. A day or two later, we got an offer. We made a counteroffer. They made a counteroffer. We thought about it for a long time and decided to say yes.
It's a lot less than we had hoped to get, but with the housing market the way it is and with how much the house is costing me (property taxes, insurance, heating oil, power, maintenance, anxiety), I finally said yes. Their offer sheet said they were planning to close the sale on Nov. 12.
Halfway expecting the process would break down somewhere, we started preparing for the transfer. That involved getting the last big items we wanted from that house to ours. But things changed about a week ago, when we learned that the buyers now wanted to close the deal on Oct. 16. Four weeks earlier than originally stated and just nine days later.
Now, it's just three days.
I already had an appointment on Thursday morning to ride with my mom to a doctor's appointment, and my wife found two guys who would go to my mom's house that day to pick up the heavy furniture. I met them at about noon. Rather, I met him at about noon--just one guy made the trip, not two. So I was the other moving man, helping him load the items into the pickup truck and trailer.
He drove everything back home by himself (eventually finding a second man to help him unload), so now we have another sewing machine table, more bedroom furniture, kitchen chairs and a nice rocking recliner in the living room, among other things. I stayed behind, because my day was hardly over.
The doctor's appointment was the first task, and that took quite a while. After we sent the furniture on its way, my to-do list included: dropping off a key so the buyers could get inside the garage; closing out my mom's safe deposit box (where I found some title documents I had been looking for); meeting with the real estate agent; returning to the nursing home to meet with the caregivers about my mom's care; and getting a copy of my dad's death certificate, which, I was told, is absolutely necessary to closing the sale.
In short, it was a day of jumping through hoops--very busy, stressful at times, but in the end I think I got everything done that I wanted to. (I had made a list that I consulted from time to time.)
We had a potential problem about my mom signing off on the deal, since our title says she has a life estate. Since she broke the elbow of her writing hand in her most recent fall, she can't write at all. But the real estate agent (after consulting the title company) said we can work around that. There will be a space for her to sign (with an "X") on the deed, with witnesses and a notary public confirming that she made the X and thereby agrees to giving up the life estate (which preserves her right to live in the house--fat chance that can ever happen now).
The required inspections have now been completed, and all the lights are green. I have my dad's death certificate. Fewer and fewer things can go wrong now.
The situation with my mom is sad, and she is not doing that well. But at least she understands what is happening and was happy to hear of the impending sale.
So that has been filling my life with anxiety and worry ... which is now less than three days away from ending. This morning, I called Wisconsin Electric about switching the electric service to the buyers. I told the fuel oil company the same. At 11 a.m. Friday, the final papers will be signed, and the house will officially belong to someone else.
I still have some final expenses. Several connected to the sale process. Property taxes for 10 1/2 months of 2009. The real estate agent's cut. And income taxes on the sale price--it's regarded as taxable income. Even with the sale price, I'm still in the 15% bracket.
****
Not much else to report. The news about the house outweighs everything else, anyway.
But I did manage to get some fall photos in recent weeks. Here are a few examples ...
Here is a frosty morning. The temperature was about 25, but the sun was melting the frost except in the shadow of my car and a nearby garage. Interesting effect ...
I drove north to Baraga last Friday night for a football game, and the leaves seemed to be at maximum brilliance--except that the sun was behind the clouds for most of the trip north. I only got to see the leaves in full color from a distance. Thank goodness for 24x lenses ...
I made a mental note to make the same trip over the weekend. Saturday was mostly cloudy. The clouds moved out early Sunday afternoon, and my wife and I made the trip. But ... the peak color was now obviously past, even though it was just two days after my last trip. The brilliant color had dimmed and darkened.
It was a nice drive on a sunny day, anyway.
Friday, October 2, 2009
A new letter to learn
I'll tell you why I haven't been writing that much lately. It's fall, and I've been busy at work and covering fall sports at night.
Then, my mom's injury stole a lot of free time from me, what with driving back and forth multiple times per week--it's a one-hour drive each way, you know, plus all the time in between. Besides sucking up a lot of my spare time, many of you know that dealing with this saps your mental and spiritual energy.
(An update on my mom appears later. She's back at the nursing home and getting better very slowly.)
Plus, I've been writing B regularly, and I've been writing S regularly ... and I have a new letter of the alphabet to tell you about, too.
This name starts with an N. I've been writing her, too. I have even visited her a few times lately.
Unlike B, N doesn't live thousands of miles away. In fact, she's only about a hundred miles away, which isn't so far in these wide-open reaches of the Upper Midwest. She lives in a very rural area. That's good because the love of her life are her dogs--she takes in rescue dogs, and some of them like to bark. She has about 10 dogs right now, though that number goes up and down as she adopts new dogs and others go over the Rainbow Bridge. Her oldest dog is about 18. That's even older than our elderly kitty, Maggie.
What else can I tell you? She is three years older than me and a widow for the last three years. Works part time. Has a DirecTV dish. Doesn't have a DVD player, which really limits the movies I can bring along when I visit. Methinks she will be getting a DVD player as a gift sometime soon. She doesn't have a lot of money but is wise enough to know money never can buy happiness. And she enjoys my visits.
I have visited her several times, once while my wife was gone on her trip and twice since. Both of the latter visits coincided with football games I covered in her area. The first time, I drove over for a visit, late supper and sleepover after the game. The other time, I visited her before the game--she cooked a steak for us over a grill. That time, I didn't return after the game--I made the two-hour drive home.
There are no more games in that area this fall, so our next visit has to wait until some time in the future. Best guess: maybe mid October.
We write each other about once a week. B and I still write each other about every day. B knows about N, and N knows about my wife, and my wife knows about N, and B knows about my wife, etc. In case you were wondering ... no secrets.
****
Let's move on to the news. My mom has been back in the nursing home for the last two weeks. She was in the hospital for a week after breaking her elbow. When we visited her last week, she was awake only for a few minutes during our one-hour visit. Maybe, suggested B when I told her about it, it's because of the meds they are giving her.
We went again this Wednesday. She was more awake but complaining that she wasn't feeling well. Her forehead and hands did feel warm--but later, before we left, they felt more normal. She's still sleeping a lot.
My wife went with me to a football game in Houghton a week ago--a really nice day for a fall drive, with temperatures in the low 70s and the leaves really showing color. Last Saturday, I took her to a quilt show at a little town about 70 miles away. The colors on the maples were really vivid under the September sun, but it later clouded up and started a light rain.
We had a spectacular September, with temperatures into the 70s most of the time. No rain, sunny days, warm weather. A much nicer month than July was. But as the final week of September started, a front went through, with rain, cold and a chilly wind out of the northwest. For the last two nights, we woke up to temperatures in the mid 20s and heavy frost. Won't be so cold for my football game Friday night--instead, heavy rain is moving this way.
OK, it's getting late again, and I'm still typing. Time for bed. But I wanted to say hi and let you know I'm still alive. At least I think I am. I must be. Dead people don't yawn.
Then, my mom's injury stole a lot of free time from me, what with driving back and forth multiple times per week--it's a one-hour drive each way, you know, plus all the time in between. Besides sucking up a lot of my spare time, many of you know that dealing with this saps your mental and spiritual energy.
(An update on my mom appears later. She's back at the nursing home and getting better very slowly.)
Plus, I've been writing B regularly, and I've been writing S regularly ... and I have a new letter of the alphabet to tell you about, too.
This name starts with an N. I've been writing her, too. I have even visited her a few times lately.
Unlike B, N doesn't live thousands of miles away. In fact, she's only about a hundred miles away, which isn't so far in these wide-open reaches of the Upper Midwest. She lives in a very rural area. That's good because the love of her life are her dogs--she takes in rescue dogs, and some of them like to bark. She has about 10 dogs right now, though that number goes up and down as she adopts new dogs and others go over the Rainbow Bridge. Her oldest dog is about 18. That's even older than our elderly kitty, Maggie.
What else can I tell you? She is three years older than me and a widow for the last three years. Works part time. Has a DirecTV dish. Doesn't have a DVD player, which really limits the movies I can bring along when I visit. Methinks she will be getting a DVD player as a gift sometime soon. She doesn't have a lot of money but is wise enough to know money never can buy happiness. And she enjoys my visits.
I have visited her several times, once while my wife was gone on her trip and twice since. Both of the latter visits coincided with football games I covered in her area. The first time, I drove over for a visit, late supper and sleepover after the game. The other time, I visited her before the game--she cooked a steak for us over a grill. That time, I didn't return after the game--I made the two-hour drive home.
There are no more games in that area this fall, so our next visit has to wait until some time in the future. Best guess: maybe mid October.
We write each other about once a week. B and I still write each other about every day. B knows about N, and N knows about my wife, and my wife knows about N, and B knows about my wife, etc. In case you were wondering ... no secrets.
****
Let's move on to the news. My mom has been back in the nursing home for the last two weeks. She was in the hospital for a week after breaking her elbow. When we visited her last week, she was awake only for a few minutes during our one-hour visit. Maybe, suggested B when I told her about it, it's because of the meds they are giving her.
We went again this Wednesday. She was more awake but complaining that she wasn't feeling well. Her forehead and hands did feel warm--but later, before we left, they felt more normal. She's still sleeping a lot.
My wife went with me to a football game in Houghton a week ago--a really nice day for a fall drive, with temperatures in the low 70s and the leaves really showing color. Last Saturday, I took her to a quilt show at a little town about 70 miles away. The colors on the maples were really vivid under the September sun, but it later clouded up and started a light rain.
We had a spectacular September, with temperatures into the 70s most of the time. No rain, sunny days, warm weather. A much nicer month than July was. But as the final week of September started, a front went through, with rain, cold and a chilly wind out of the northwest. For the last two nights, we woke up to temperatures in the mid 20s and heavy frost. Won't be so cold for my football game Friday night--instead, heavy rain is moving this way.
OK, it's getting late again, and I'm still typing. Time for bed. But I wanted to say hi and let you know I'm still alive. At least I think I am. I must be. Dead people don't yawn.
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