My Karmic Retirement
Tuesday, June 18th, 2024 10:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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79F this morning, on it's way up to 90F.
Ace of Club week begins today, with the summer solstice on Thursday.
It's also garbage day and payday.
Unfortunately it was a hybrid paycheck today... last of the janitor wage, augmented a bit by the maintenance wage.
But after paying PNC, I only have $330.00 left.
Next paycheck is the 2nd... out of which must be paid the bills, but I also need to get the rent paid on the 1st!
House sale may not close until the 19th, so... that money won't save me.
Thus, I need to either put rent on a credit card or sell a ton of shit real fast!
No time to worry about it this morning.
I'll think about it at work and see if I can't find the motivation to get some stuff on Facebook Marketplace this week.
I'm sweating just from taking the garbage out!
It's humid as hell out there!
Only two bags wouldn't fit into the bin, but I had two stickers already.
I just ordered some stuff on Amazon... some vacuum seal bags for packing blankets & stuff... and a fold-up luggage dolly.
I'll be using that dolly every day to get things back and forth from the apartment to the parking garage, which is a block away.
Hmmm... might also finally have a use for that backpack I bought back in 2015!
Backpack would be good for my lunch box and small stuff like smokes and whatnot.
The dolly, however, will be for beer, groceries, and things I may move in and out of the storage unit.
I may have to pick up groceries ordered via instacart, rather than having them delivered.
It's only two miles from here, but it's gonna be much more of an urban lifestyle... parking in a garage, and carting my 30 pack down the urban street to the highrise and taking an elevator up to the little flat with the view of the city.
In the winter those sidewalks will be cleared of snow immediately.
And in the spring that little park by the building and the trees on the streets will be pruned and maintained by city workers.
Dad held the record for LONGEST OCCUPANT OF MELODY MANOR, at 88 years.
He also holds the record for LONGEST CONTINUOUS OCCUPANCY, at 80 years... because when he was 8, he and his parents and grandmother had to stay in Elmhurst for 9 months, to take care of an ailing aunt.
He holds the record for LONGEST TIME AT THE HELM, as it's owner, at 64 years.
Nobody even comes close to these numbers!
However, I hold some records of my own.
- I am the ONLY PERSON TO HAVE HAD ALL 5 BEDROOMS AS THEIR UNSHARED BEDROOM at one point or another.
Because he outlived Mom, Dad did sleep in three of the five, unshared.
Brian ties with Dad at three unshared.
Everybody else has two or less... Kevin, for example has had zero unshared bedrooms in this house. - I hold the record for the LONGEST SOLE OCCUPANT of the house, at 16 months.
The only other person who was ever a sole occupant was my great great aunt Margaret, whose father built the house, after both her parents had died, for less than a year... before her older brother John moved back in with his wife and two kids, and she went to rent a little house on Fox Street.
Dad was technically the sole occupant for a matter of days, between when Mom went to rehab the final time, and I moved in upstairs. - If the deal with Mr. Taylor closes, then I'll be the FIRST PERSON TO EVER SELL MELODY MANOR.
My 2G Grandfather built it.
My 1G Grandfather intherited it.
My Grandmother inherited it.
She & Grandpa gave it to Dad & Mom.
And Dad left it to me in a Transfer on Death.
However, Dad & Mom did try to sell the house, and failed!
This was in the late 1970s, when it was over a century old, so I'm sure it was the same situation as now, where the only offers are rock-bottom... because it needs so much work!
They probably couldn't get enough for a down payment on another house.
But this is what turned them into the first people to ever mortgage the house!.. and they did it four times!
Cuz it was worth a lot more on paper than it was on the open market!
They played that game so hard, they forced me to sell it... at a huge loss, compared to how much money I put into it, and how much debt I'll take with me when I go.
But if this deal does close, with Mr, Taylor, then it's the best thing that could've happened to the house!
King's man thought it should be bulldozed, and that's probably what anybody BMO auctioned it to, would've thought... because assholes who bid on foreclosure homes, sight unseen, aren't just flippers, their gamblers!
Whoever got it at auction would've bid way too much, and been unable to turn a profit off it.
But Taylor's a smart guy!
He spent the thousand dollars for some good inspectors, and based on their report, knows he can fix the place up, and sell it for a profit.
Because he knows the markets, and margins, and the foreclosure game, and everything else.
He's not just some speculator, looking to make fast money.
So it could well be that this was my cosmic mission... to save the house by selling it to a guy like him... because I'm the only one who possibly could!
I mean... okay, let's look at the scenario where there was no Transfer on Death to me, from Dad.
Mom & Dad did make a will, back in the 1980s, but the lawyer who drew it up died before Mom did... and his whole law firm went away!
That will, became null!.. which wasn't known, and wasn't a problem when Mom died, but would've been a problem when Dad died!
We have copies of it, which would've held no legal standing... being just copies of a null document... but it does say they wanted Colleen & Kevin to be the executors of the estate, and so Colleen & Kevin would probably have assumed those roles... with Kevin doing most of the work, because he's a loan officer, so he knows the business.
But the house would've gone into probate, and it would've been in limbo for a long time, and over that span of time, Kevin would probably have figured out that it wasn't worth much more than was owed to BMO!
So he would've broken it to all of us that there was no inheritance money to be made off selling the house... which is the truth.
And we all would've agreed to just let BMO take the deed and auction the damn thing.
And then the highest bidding idiot... would've payed too much and had buyer's remorse... and either bulldozed it, or abandoned it.
It's important to note, that in the above scenario... I still would've been the biggest loser.. having put so much of my own money into the house.
I still would've had to do everything I'm doing now... re-homing Yvette, and scrambling to move into a studio apartment with a ton of debt.
But thanks to the TODI, there was no probate, and I'm the sole exectutor, and I have the unassailable authority to sell it... until BMO gets their foreclosure through the system.
But it puts me into the unique position to be able to save this house... by selling it at a loss!
Everybody else just saved it by handing it down... until it got to Dad & Mom, who couldn't afford to bring it up to market standard, or sell it at a loss!
All they could do was mortgage it, and use the money to keep it sound!
It took an idiot like me... unmarried with no kids... but also a handyman... to take one for the team and just sell her at a loss!
For God's sake, just sell her at a loss so she can get the renovation she so desperately needs and move on into the 22nd Century!... as a house with actual market value!
...is what one would imagine the ancestors are all saying, in the afterlife.
That's a big ask!
But I guess that's who I am right?
It was a big ask to look after Dad the past five years too!
The fallen mulberry was a big ask!
I mean, for God's sake, packing four boxes of china for Sheila, when I'm racing the clock to save my own skin... was kind of a ridiculously big ask!.. given that she's never gonna figure out how to ship it back to LA, or ever use it.
But... I'm the sole executor, so it's my responsibility to make sure she gets her inheritance, right?
I was the only surprise baby of the family... coming six years after the four established siblings.
I then also was neary killed by a drunk driver when I was 18, but miraculously survived by leaping to safety at the last split second.
I also was the only kid in the family never to get married, or have any kids of my own.
So, here in the autumn of my life, I think it's safe to say all three things were true, because I was sent here to be the, "big ask," guy, who would have to make the above mentioned sacrifices at the end of Mom & Dad's lives... for the good of them... and for the good of the old family house.
This past 10 years of my life was the only period in it, that seemed to have a clear purpose.
For all the years before it... I was just fucking around.
And it's quite likely that for all the years I have left... I'll just be fucking around.
In fact... however many years I have left to fuck around?... will surely be the result of how well I managed to do my cosmic job, in the ten years that are just now concluding.
And I think I did a pretty bang-up job of it all!
I stole a gait belt from Strive, shoving it into my pants like a shoplifter, with Dad, in his miserable rehab room, saying, Yah know Dad?.. Sometimes things like this just go missing right?
And that's how I got his ass back into this house, when the nurses refused to help me get him into the car, after Strive kicked his ass out, for not getting a G-Tube!
You can't tell me anybody else, living or dead, would've had the balls!.. or known that Dad had the balls to work with me... through his hip pain... to get back home!
That was the finest hour of my life!.. the reason the drunk driver didn't hit me, when I was 18.
July 1st will be the seventh time I move out of Melody Manor.
I think that means I have the the record for MOST MOVES BACK.
I never could get very far from this place, and even when I thought I was out for good, and stayed out for over a decade... I got pulled back in.
But this time is different, because both Mom & Dad are gone.
The only way back here now... is to buy the old gal back!
I truly don't think it's in the cards!
I'll turn 55 in July, and I'll be 60 before I'm in a position, if ever, to do that!
No... I'm pretty sure I was only put on Earth to do what I did between 2014 and 2024... and from here on out I'll just fuck around like I did before.
Even if I live 30 more years... to 85?..
Well, I'm still trying to record songs now that I wrote that long ago!
There won't be any point, when I'm 60, to buy back the house.
The next 30 years is best spent fucking around with the bullshit I got going while I was fucking around in the past 30... just tying up the loose ends of a lot of fuckery... for whatever it's worth... and for fun.
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