7 to 10 Days?
Wednesday, July 17th, 2024 10:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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77F and sunny this morning, only going up to 79F.
Not sure what to expect, the rest of the week, here.
This Friday, the 19th, was the original date, Mr. Taylor projected for closing.
Will that be the case, or is everything gonna drag on into August, making a huge mess of my finances as I scramble to pay rent, and also to insure and electrify the house for another month?
Well anyway, Sheila confirmed her docs have arrived, and I know Tims have too, so it's probable that everybody's will be in today!
Because even Brian's... only coming from DeKalb, could get here today.
In other news, I vacuumed this morning, and wiped down the counter.
Stopped at the house on the way to work.
Prowly's food from yesterday had been eaten, so as I ran the hot water, I opened a new can for him, topped off his dry food, and brought the garbage bins back into the dog yard.
The house also has an odd smell now... not a bad smell, just strange. So I cracked the kitchen window to get some air in.
At work I got a call from the lawyer's assistant.
She was preparing the payout request for the HELOC and wanted my social security number... trying to make double sure everything was perfect before sending, because she didn't want it kicked back to her.
Unfortunately, she told me it normally takes seven to ten days for a bank's lawyers to get the payout numbers back to them!
She didn't say whether that was calendar days, or business days, but if it were ten business days?.. that's the goddam 31st of July!
Seven calendar days, is July 24th, next Wednesday.
So, we're talking next Wednesday at the absolute earliest... for closing... but goddam August 1st or 2nd could be just as likely!
And if for some reason BMO sends the request back, because of some clerical error... we're talking middle of goddam August!
So this was incredibly distressing news today... especially after going to all that trouble to rally the siblings to jump through all the hoops to get authorizations in quickly... and thinking that was the final snag!
It's distressing for a lot of reasons.
ComEd is a big one!
I tried to call ComEd today to push the kill date for the power ahead to August 5th or whatever, but... we fucking just had two nights of severe thunder in a row, with tornado warnings both nights!
So as of right now, their CSRs are only taking calls related to outages!
I'm also very concerned about the lawn!.. because it's growing out of control both in front and back... because the fucking sale was supposed to close LAST FUCKING WEEK!
So I called a local place to see if I could pay for a one-time mow, and they said they only do three-mows minimum, at $55.00 per mow, but will discount the first mow to only $20.00.
Well, that's still fucking $130.00!
I can't afford that when I'm gonna be paying a full month's electric bill, and may have to pay into August, and insure the house into August too... with no goddam sale money!
So fuck the lawn!
But the really distressing thing is just having to go back there every single day for the rest of the month, to feed the cat, and run the hot water!
I feel like if I run into Prowly again, in the house, it's gonna break my heart all over again!
It's hard enough just seeing that empty plate every day, and knowing he still comes in every night to eat, and no doubt still snoozes upstairs during the day!
And it's also hard just to be inside that empty house with bare windows every day!.. and see the lawn all overgrown... and... it just sucks!
If I'd known, on May 1st, that I was gonna get the job at Potawatomi on June 1st... and that I'd have until goddam August 1st to move!.. I'd have tried harder for Autumnwood!
But this whole experience has been nothing but, woulda-coulda-shoulda!
I wasn't psychic! AmEx cut my limit! July 1st was two months away, and seemed like the absolute longest I could remain in the house!
And this studio was my only choice for July 1st.
But, with the way things are playing out, I cannot help but wonder if there isn't some higher plan at work!
Maybe it's just the trauma talking, but if I had managed to take Prowly with me to Autumnwood... or convince him to live here with me downtown... I'd have left that house and never looked back!
I'd simply have stared a new life, either here, or on the west side... and settled into it... and avoided even driving past Melody Manor... in the name of moving on!
It's only because I couldn't get prowly to give up his beloved turf, that I decided to keep feeding him up until the day the demo crew shows up... and resolved to try and buy the place back immediately, if it's possible.
So... let's say that it is possible... and I do buy he house back this fall... and I do reunite with Prowly & Natalie, and we live happily ever after... because it was all part of the cosmic plan!
The question then becomes... why the fuck would the cosmos not simply make sure I never lost the damn house in the first place?
The only possible answer to that question would be... so that the house could be totally renovated, top to bottom, all at once, over the span of ten weeks.
Because my plan was to half-ass fix her up on the cheep, kinda okay... over the span of ten years
So then, the question becomes... why would the cosmos want me to stay there... but also super care that it got fixed up quickly and professionally?
Cuz, if it's just me puttering around there the rest of my days with nobody to hand it down to... then who cares?
And the only answer to that would be... either the house itself cares... or the spirits of my ancestors who built and/or owned the house care... or a combination of both!
Let's just say it's the ancestral spirits, to keep this simple.
So, we're talkin... Daniel & Ellen Donavan, John & Celia Donavan, Eleanor Donavan & Patrick Melody, and Mike Donavan Melody & Barb Melody (Dad & Mom).
After Dad dies, they're all up there in Heaven, looking at the house, with just me living there.
It's the first time in the house's history where it's been this vacant.
And from their perspective they know it's still sound, and can survive generations longer... if it has a thorough renovation!
Not a room-by-room, budget fixer-upper patch job!.. frankensteining in a breaker box to the old knob & tube system... and doing a bunch of other crazy shit, as the old furnace and appliances start to quit one by one, and the roof starts to leak again.
They may well have assessed that... it's not gonna fall down on him or anything, but he's just never gonna be able to keep up with all the problems!.. not at 55!
To them, it'd make sense that I'd be much more capable of simply maintaining a renovated house... than renovating it myself.
Then you have to think about the exile factor!
Every owner of the house was exiled from it, for some period of time, before getting it back.
Daneil & Ellen are the exception, but they spent their lives in exile, first from Ireland, then from New York City, then from Chicago, before they built the house!
So for them and their kids, that house meant the world, because it was the end of their exile.
But John, their oldest son, was exiled from the house for almost a decade, with his wife and two kids, over on Homer avenue, due to a dispute with his sister who was living there taking care of their mother in her old age!
And John goddam built the house along with his dad!
So when he got it back, that was a big deal!
That was not lost on his daughter Eleanor, who endured that first exile with her parents, on Homer Avenue.
But Eleanor and her mother were exiled again during WW2, to Elmhurst, to take care of that same problematic sister of her father, Aunt Margaret!
And Dad was a grads school kid for that experience, and it was the defining trauma of his life!
Nine months in Elmhurst, for an 8 year old boy, and it was not known at the time how long that exile would last.
When he got back home, he vowed never to lose it again, and he didn't!
So in all the cases above, we're not just talking... a spell away from home... we're talking a full blown emotional trauma, type of exile!.. which is exactly what I'm experiencing now!
I mean, yes, I've only been out for a few weeks, but it's been heartwrenching for a year now, trying and failing to not lose the place... and parting with the pets!
I'd admit, it seems pretty cruel for these ancestral spirits to be enforcing this exile trauma tradition on me, in the fifth generation, after all I did for Dad at the end... especially getting him back from the rehab center to die in his room on home hospice!
Maybe that counts?.. Maybe it reduces the sentence?
But maybe it can't eliminate the sentence, because the exile trauma isn't something they are enforcing... but something Daniel built into the psycho-emotional framework of the house itself!
And maybe he did it unwittingly.
Like casting a spell... doing all this work to build a house with his own hands... but with every nail driven in... he's thinking about the famine in Ireland... and about the draft riots in New York City... and about the Chicago fire...
He's processing all of that trauma... all those years trying desperately to keep his wife and children safe, while on the run from disaster... as he builds the house that he intends to be the END of all that!
Consciously, or unconsciously... he may well have thought, No descendant of mine shall ever be worthy of inheriting this house... who takes it for granted!
And now, up in Heaven, he can't change that... it's just something that was baked into the timbers at the time!
The exile curse, then would've manifested in 2013 as Mom & Dad getting duped into taking out the Home Equity Line of Credit, with the balloon payment they didn't understand... and didn't worry about... because it was probably gonna hit after they were both dead... and at the time, none of us kids had any intention of taking over the house.
I became the unlucky fool to suffer it's tortures, due to another long-standing... curse if you can call it that.
And we'll call that, the, "Last Kid in Town Upstairs," curse... where since the beginning, the last family member still living in town moves upstairs to care for the aging owner of the house.
Ellen outlived Daniel, and their daughter Margaret was the last kid in town... living upstairs to take care of her.
John did come back to help out with that, but was exiled because there was no room for him, his wife, and two babies downstairs.
So he had to let Margaret live there alone with Mom, until Mom died.
He did win the place back after Mom's death... exiling Margaret forever... but he had the better argument for taking over, because he'd not only co-built the place, but had a family, whereas Margaret was single.
But she did mary right after that and leave town... making John the new, last kid in town.
Cut to the depression, when John's wife Celia was the old person owning the house, because John had died... and her daughter Eleanor, and Eleanor's new husband, Patrick, were living upstairs to look after her!
Their son Mike, also lived upstairs, in the back room... helping to care for her until she died in 1953, when he was graduating high school!
Dad ended up marrying young enough, that his parents gave the house to him and Mom before they were in their old age, and they raised us six kids there.
However!.. Grandma did move back in her old age, in the 1980s!
And at the time... Mom & Dad occupied the upstairs!
And they did look after her until the end!
With Mom's death, the old cycle repeated itself, when I... the last kid in town... moved upstairs to look after him!
So... exile curse accounted for... and I was sucked into it because of the last kid in town curse!
These would both be things that are just part of the energy of the house itself, in our secnario... that Heaven cannot change.
But given all that... the ancestral spirits may have conferred about what they could and could not do to affect the outcome... and what would be the optimal solution, given the circumstances...
And determined that, Okay! Pat needs to sell the house before BMO forecloses... let the flippers flip it while it's vacant, and then buy it back! Snoop can adopt the Gonzoles family on Watson. Yvette obviously goes to Terry. And Prowly... obviously just rides out the storm on Jackson Street.
Place get's fixed up!.. Pat's competent to maintain it after that... and, it's a win-win!
He's gonna hate us for a while!.. but... he'll get over it.
The endless delays with the closing, then, would be to give me time to rescue as much shit as I can before the demo-team arrives... and would also provide time to establish a kind of covenant with Prowly.
Like... this will wind up being a ridiculously long time that I'm gonna be still leaving food for him every day, and keeping the power on for him, and driving past the house every night, with that noisy spare tire I've never been able to deal with... and it's distinctive, whomp-whomp-whomp-whomp...
Prowly's gonna have had like a MONTH or more to get used to the idea that, I'm gone, but I'm close by, and I haven't forgotten him, or the house!
But you know... if spirits can talk to cat's he'd know that anyway!
I kinda think the ancestors just love the fact that right now, the only resident of Donavan Manor, is a tomcat!
As I said in a recent entry... he's not only got the place to himself, but he enjoys central air, and sleeps on a queen bed!
As I said at the outset, above, this could all be just the trauma talking.
And I may read back on this next year and cringe because no, I never stood a chance of buying that house back!
And there was no cosmic plan, and it was all just a horrendous mess with no rhyme or reason to it.
But I'm gonna remind myself here... that the point of a journal entry is not to be right!
The point of writing is to get out the demons of the day... and also to record what the situation was... both externally and internally.
That said, I'm gonna be leaning heavy on the, Cosmic Ancestral Spirit Plan, concept for the foreseeable future!
It may be bunk... but if it gets me to sleep at night, and helps me navigate this living nightmare by day... without giving in to despair... then it's a delusion of great utility!
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