![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snoozefestaudio |
63F and partly cloudy tonight.
I saw two vans in the driveway today, backed up to the house, both with their rear double doors open wide.
It's still baffling how the dumpster's been gone for nearly two weeks.
Like... shouldn't there be tons of trash and debris coming out of there on a regular basis?
They're not leaving the bins out on Tuesday nights for city garbage pickup so what are they doing?
Are they just drywalling straight over the old plaster?
Are they just putting flooring straight over the old layers of linoleum and shitty peel & stick tiles?
Even then, there'd be left over scraps of the new materials to throw away!
Without going into a long rant... it's looking like they don't have a serious plan, and are just half-assing everything as cheeply as possible.
Like, instead of fixing any problems, they're just hiding them, to try and make a quick buck off a desperate buyer who can't afford an inspector.
But then, the fixes for those problems they hid, become far more expensive, because you now have to undo all their cover-up work!
So, I'm starting to think there won't be any point in buying it back, because...
- The mortgage payments will be very high.
- The upstairs won't be rentable, because it won't be up to code.
- I'll have to pay for all new furniture and lawn equipment.
- The problems will all still be there, but far more expensive to deal with than before.
So, you're talking about a bottomless money pit!
A Mexican family could probably absorb the insane costs to get the place truly habitable, however, because their whole strategy is to pool resources over a large extended family, and a long period of time.
So you might have two generations under the same roof, with four or five adults bringing in money, and meanwhile they're pooling resources with relatives in another household who have five more adults.
And then they're doing the home improvement themselves, which makes it less expensive.
And they have the advantage of deep time to get it all done.
So a Mexican family might be fine with buying the place for 2K, despite all it's hidden problems, because they'll just suffer through the electrical issues and the frozen pipes the first year, and slowly but surely tackle it all, while still making that monthly mortgage.
But little, old me?
Unmarried me?.. with no kids?.. at 55, with no hope of ever marrying or having kids?.. with no hope of even renting out part of the house, because nothing's to code?
No!
I don't stand a snowball's chance in hell of making it work!
Still I do take solace in the fact that Prowly does stand a solid chance of just... sailing right through all of this and becoming the family cat of the new owners... having lived there through the entire rennovation.
Like, Oh, and this is the cat who comes with the house, and that's his cat climber, and he eats this brand of cat food.
Because old houses in that neighborhood all have mice.
And it's also well established culture in that neighborhood to have outdoor cats, and free roaming little dogs, and... kind of these community pets that everybody encounters and knows.
And Prowly himself was a product of that world... and came up in that culture... as did Snoop.
He'll be able to adapt to whoever moves in, with whatever pets they bring along.
Probably the best thing I could've done for him was to keep his cat door functional over July, and come back to feed him every day, because it made it very obvious to Torres, the day he bought the place, that there was this cat still attached to the place... and he seems to have picked up the responsibility for Prowly without missing a beat!
And whoever buys the place will probably just take that baton and keep going!
But I didn't set that up!
Prowly set that up!
Cats know how to negotiate the human world, and maintian their agency!
And Mexican American culture recognizes that a LOT better than white culture does!
So it's fine!
I think it's all gonna be fine for him!
As for Dad's ghost?.. I dunno!
I think he did, as a ghost, take a snine to Prowly... so he'll have that!
And he did always make a big deal about having taken Spanish in High School.
And Mexican's typically are Catholic... and the older generation is often, even politically conservative.
So... he'll struggle for a while, with the changes, but with time he'll get sucked into the daily drama of their lives and come to know everybody like a new family, and probably be fine!
If I can get them a brief of the house history, with photos and anecdotes, and such... then he'll come to be known as, "Miguel."
Did the door pop open?... that was Miguel!
Are the pipes in the basement rattling for no reason in the middle of the night?... That's Miguel!
Flickering lights?... Miguel wants you to go to bed!
So he'll be fine... because he'll like that!
As for me...
Today I paid up my parking garage pass until the end of the year.
I got the bill from the city in my box this morning... $105.00, due October 1st!
They only bill quarterly, and the hundred bucks covers three months.
The hundred I paid on July 1st covers to the end of September, but I went ahead and paid up today to New Year!
It's a good deal, because I can come and go as I please at no extra charge... in and out of the garage 10 times a day if need be.
My laundry app's also charged up with enough money to cover me to New Year.
The washer and dryer are cheep, and the dryers can thoroughly dry a big load in one 45 minute spin!
Classes started today at Potawatomi.
The building will now be thronging with teenagers for the first two and a half hours of every shift... with after school groups and athletic practices going on here and there until I clock out.
The Paramount's started it's season too.
The parking garage was packed the last two nights, and I had to park up on Level 4.
The lights of the sign in full blinky mode for me, as I settled in after work.
I'd like to use that 5K that's coming as a down payment on a sightly newer vehicle.
And I'd like to buy myself a slightly better mattress than I have right now.
A twin XL will fit on the frame I have, and maybe one of those memory foam boxed deals will be more forgiving on my bones, than the current one.
I'm gonna be in this studio apartment at least until the end of next June.
If I fall in love with the downtown life... I'll try to upgrade to a 1BR here in the tower.
Otherwise, I'll be shooting for a 1BR at Autumnwood, where I can be back on the ground, with my feet in the grass, owning a new cat.
In the mean time, the focus is gonna be on the album.
That, and just stabilizing my life and paying down my debt.
Back in January, I honestly could not see out to August.
I was living off credit cards and wasn't sure how I'd make it beyond May.
The last two or three years have been that way... just flying by the seat of my pants as the world crashes down around me.
The last six months... I've cried more tears, and on a daily basis, than ever in my adult life!
But it does feel like that chapter of madness is finally ending.
It's not the happy ending I was fighting for... where I held on to the house, or snatched it back from the jaws of history at the last minute, and put everything back to rights.
But it's not the worst ending either.
Other than Miguel, everybody survived!
Yvette, Snoop, Prowly, Natalie, and me... will all pick up in the next chapter, survivors of a disaster, all adapting to new lives.
Miguel, of course will also be adapting to the absorbtion of his storied Irish home into Latin culture.
But it will stay true to it's roots, as a working class immigrant household.
And maybe he'll gain all the perspective he avoided in life.
°¦}
