Exile's End
Monday, June 17th, 2024 10:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snoozefestaudio |
88F and sunny this morning, on it's way back up to 94F.
I got a call from Mr. Taylor first thing, right after making my coffee.
He said the report came back and nothing looked too crazy, so they're gonna go ahead to the next steps of negotiating payouts and partering with contractors or whatever.
19th of July is still the official closing date, but he thinks it's possible we can close sooner, like before the 4th.
I asked what he thought about it being an Air B&B.
He said ususally to make money on an Air B&B, the place has to be extremely unique with very interesting features.
It'll most likely be flipped as a normal single family home, but at least I tried to plant the seed.
I moved back here on September 1st 2014, and will be leaving July 1st 2024, so... two months shy of ten years.
I bought a laptop that fall, and named it, Exile, because I didn't want to leave Autumnwood.
Mom was clearly dying, and she & Dad had been married for almost 60 years, so it seemed likely Dad would die of a broken heart a year or two after her.
None of us kids wanted the house... not even me... so I really thought all I was doing was saving up money to move out on my own again in a couple years.
Mom died on Feburary 16th of 2015, but after the dust settled, Dad seemed to be doing okay.
Their old dog, Bella, and old cats; Shawn & Derica were still around, and Dad was still driving their old white Sebring.
In the fall of 2015, I got into playing Ingress, Niantics original AR mobile game.
In 2016, Dad got a new lease on life.
Bella died, and he got Yvette.
The Sebring died, and he got the Dart.
And I think that's the year he struck up his friendship with Terry.
They were both extraordinary ministers at church, and both had spouses who'd recently died.
And I think Dad may have picked Yvette specifically because she was a Husky, and Terry already had her husky, Alaska.
Meanwhile, I was getting super into Pokemon Go, like everybody else.
But the final thing that completed Dad's new lease on life was Donald Trump's surprise victory in November!
New friend, new dog, new car, new Republican President in the white house!
I remember thinking that Trumps victory meant Dad would make it to the end of 2020, and live even longer if Trump got a second term.
Through 2017, Dad and I continued to have our own separate lives.
I worked my job, and often played Pokemon Go downtown after work for a few hours.
We only saw each other briefly in the morning before I left, and again after I got home... though we did go out to eat on Sundays, and we had a few beers together on Saturday & Sunday nights, when I'd do my laundry downstairs.
I think he may have had one brief stay in the hospital in 2017, around Easter... like two nights, but he came back home on Easter Sunday?
It seemed like a big deal, but it was nothing compared to what was coming down the line.
2018 was the year I let go of the idea of moving out and started to care about the house and the yard, and pictured living here the rest of my days.
Specifically, it was because I realized I could record crickets in stereo with the new Galaxy S8 I'd bought in late 2017.
That lead me to start clearing some of the overgrowth in the back yard.
But later in the fall, when I tried to listen to my recordings in headphones, I would turn off my fan upstairs to hear it better... which pissed off my cats, because they didn't like my cigarette smoke in their faces while in my lap being pet... while listening to crickets.
So I came up with a plan to install an exhaust fan in the bathroom window... but the sink was too close to the window, so I had to buy a different type of sink to make room for the fan.
But I wasn't sure how to safely mount the new sink because I didn't know what was behind the shitty masonite of the wall.
So I tore out all the masonite.
And before you know it, I had ambitions to renovate that whole little bathroom!
But for that I needed power tools... and some place to use them, because the upstairs was too small, and packed with shit already!
So I came up with a plan to turn the basement into a workshop for fixing up, not just the bathroom, but the entire goddam house!
By March of 2019 I was champing at the bit to get started turning the basement into a shop, and also to make more progress with the back yard, because the cricket recordings were kinda shit, with all the bush crickets.
This kicked off a five year effort to improve the house and the back yard!
But 2019 was NOT just another happy year at work and home, like 15 thru 18 had been!
In April 2019, the hospital fell to a hostile takover and all the upper management were canned, along with several of my work peers, putting my job in peril.
And that same month, Dad was diagnosed with bladder cancer.
So 2019 saw Dad going into the hospital, first for a procedure, and then two more times for UTI related complications, each time, for an entire week, and very weak when he got home, requiring home therapists.
This tried the patience of my new, asshole manager... me taking off all this time to stay home and walk my dad's dog, and visit my dad in the hospital! How dare I!
2020, of course, was the pandemic... the George Floyd protests... and Trump at his absolute worst, because it was an election year!
Dad, magically did not go to the hospital a single time in 2020.
But my hospital had become a dystopian nighmare where everybody was wearing masks, face shields, and gloves, and all visitors were banned, and the last of my cool coworkers had left for greener pastures.
I did still continue to take a lot of PTO to work on the house, which did still continue to piss off my new asshole manager.
And all of that conflict came to a head in January of 2021!
It's not a coincidence I was forced to resign just one week after the Capitol Riots.
The new management, as well as my remaining work peers, were all super MAGA, and they knew I'd voted for Biden.
They were pissed off that the Capitol Riots failed, and Biden became President Elect... and they wanted to take it out on people like me!
Meanwhile, Dad was also quite upset that Biden had won, and his beloved Trump was only a one term president.
He started kinda giving up on life right after I resigned from the hospital.
And though it was the one last GOOD year with him... where we celebrated every single holiday together, and he didn't have any big hospital episodes, as I continued working on the house and yard... he was slowing down, getting more frail, and getting a little touch of dementia.
2022 was the last full Calendar year with Dad, but I'd call it anything but, "good."
His UTI issues returned, and he had a procedure to get a stent into his eurethra so he could clear his bladder better, but it required him also taking some new prescription to help him pee, and he wasn't taking the pills!
He was hiding his prescriptions so I wouldn't know he wasn't taking them.
He was going crazy blowing all his money on Good 'N' Funs for Yvette.
And he was very heartbroken about me taking a part time janitor job!
He nearly died in August, before I could even start that job!
Then the tree fell over!
And no matter what I did to save him, deal with the tree, clock in at the job, pay the bills, and care for the cats...
Everything just kept trying to fall apart!
Until finally, on December 2nd... Dad fell at the DMV and broke his hip!
Dad only made it seventeen days into 2023.
I was only four months into a part time job.
And that balloon payment was due to hit in three and a half more months!
I'd only been full time with GeoStaff two months when the balloon payment hit.
There JUST... WASN'T... TIME... to prepare for an impact like that!
It was the iceberg that would tank all the plans I had for living out my days here with my puppy, and two kitties!
Plans I'd been pouring money and sweat into for five years!
And I continued to pour more money and more sweat into them all through 2023... thinking there was no way the worst could happen, and I'd lose the house!
All that came of those five years' work was a big night with the extended family here, last October, with a fire in the back yard, and the house wide open for everybody to enjoy.
And we did all enjoy it, because they and I, were confident I'd be able to refinance the house in November and get BMO off my back!
We were gonna have reunions at Melody Manor every October, from now on!
This first half of 2024... nearing the 10-year mark of when I moved back... has been a slow torture.
Snoop must've seen the handwriting on the wall, when he left in late February.
And I was very upset about that, and held out hope he'd return, just like I held out hope I could prevail over the foreclosure, through March and April.
But in late April, the reality sunk in, that there was no keeping the house.
And when AmEx cut my credit limit on May 1st... that was it!.. no money left to keep paying the defense lawyers while I searched for some rental house in a market where nothings for rent!
I had to get Yvette to safety, drop the lawyers, stop paying the main mortgage, and fucking go wherever I could find to go, as soon as possible!
I was at least blessed, to get the job at Potawatomi HS, with a five buck raise!.. and to find a studio at Allerton for only $985, that was available on July 1st.
And I'm glad Colleen was able to pony up the money for a storage unit for the family stuff.
Mr. Taylor and his inspectors were also a kind of blessing.
I mean... at least I know the house is sound, and at least I'll get 3K out of the whole mess... and prevent a forecloscure from going on my credit record... and get off the hook for insurance and taxes.
That's not, nothing!
As I finally began to pack myself, and move my own shit downstairs on Sunday, I got reacquainted with that younger self who had a life beyond this house, long before September of 2014.
I had done a quick stay upstairs in 2000... moving myself out in August of that year.
And I stayed out for 14 long years... with 12 of them at Autumnwood.
I had romantic entanglements, recorded albums, worked a couple jobs, owned several different vehicles, and had friends both at home and at work, and had long term relationships with four different cats!
That was the guy who came back here and named his new laptop, Exile.
And he turned out to be right!
As things go, ten years is kinda short, for the run of different things...
- 18 YRS: Life span of Mauli.
- 17 YRS: Life span of Jet.
- 14 YRS: Total time away from Melody Manor.
- 13 YRS: Total time employed by hospital.
These things overlapped to some extent with the 10 years I've been here, but the point is that, in the grand scheme... 10 years here really was on the brief side!
The younger self who moved back was right, but just off by a few years, give or take.
And in that light, a lot of this year's torture was kinda self-imposed, because I got all starry eyed about the house in year five... just as it was all taking that inevitable turn for the worse.
This is another example of how a younger self was the wiser one, and present day me is the guy who needs to learn something from them.
My 18/19 year old self has also had a lot to teach me, the past year.
And all younger selves either wanted to live in the tower, stay in the tower longer!.. or return to the tower at some point!
So... yeah!
Let's get the fuck back to the tower and record music, while working at a high school!
And let's walk around downtown catching Pokemon, and leave the snow-shoveling, and lawn mowing to some other chump!
We were very good to Dad, and very good to this house!.. and we didn't deserve the bullshit abuse and torture we got as our reward, after he kicked the bucket!
Godspeed to Prowly & Snoop, but we're better than this shit!
°¦}
