Fare Well Good Neighbor!

Well, it turns out my neighbor really IS moving!  I'm glad I was out trimming my lawn this afternoon, because it turns out he was making his last trip.  I saw him glance over at me and I waved.  He waved back.  I went over and asked if he was moving.  He said he was.   I told him I thought he might be, but there was no For Sale sign, so it might have been his daughter was leaving for college or a place of her own.

It turns out that after failing to refinance his mortgage twice recently, he was turning it back over to the bank and just walking away!  That is very sad...  He says he has rented a place across town.  Says he never really liked the place; his wife chose it.

Not to be gossipy (I can't; I never KNOW anything), but that was a real mess!  I only found out a year later.  And I didn't know that I didn't want to know until AFTER I was told about it by a neighbor woman.  But YOU will never know any of them, so I suppose it doesn't matter. 

About 8 years ago, my neighbor guy had an affair with the woman next door, her husband found out and filed for divorce, she shot herself, and and his wife left him.  Unusually, the daughter stayed with him.  Tragic all around.

Of COURSE he didn't "seem like the type".  Who ever does?  I knew so many guys who cheated (and wives who made passes at ME) that little of that surprises me.   But it is still sad... Whenever I hear about stuff like that, I'm glad I am happy living peacefully alone!!!

But I do not judge, not knowing the situations.  He has been a good quiet neighbor (at least since he got rid of his motorcycle years ago), no loud parties, no barking dogs, etc.  The next residents may be loud and annoying.  He said I had been a great neighbor (I merely helped out with a couple small projects, but I suppose I'm quiet myself and keep the house and yard looking decent).

I asked him why he couldn't just sell it himself and he explained that he owed WAY more than he could get.  Personally I think he is looking at things short-term, as housing prices are rising again, but I don't know his finances of course.  Divorces and child care can be brutally expensive.  I mentioned that I was thinking of a rental property and it couldn't be more convenient than next door.


But since he was just abandoning the house and the mortgage, the bank will be selling it free of the old mortgage, and cheaper.  I would have an appraiser go in and estimate renovation needs and current real value, of course.  And of course it might not make financial sense.  But I'll see.  I mean, since he's gone, it all starts fresh.  I wonder if the bank knows yet?

I did ask him about some troublesome trees along our property line.  Mostly a mulberry tree that started from seeds from one *I* had and cut down years ago.  The roots and sprouts and shade are causing me grief in my main flowerbed.  Then, just before I asked if I could come over and cut it (and 2 other saplings that will only grow larger) down he offerred to come back this weekend and cut it down himself and haul off the debris.  WOW!

It will certainly be interesting seeing what happens...

Good and Bad Day

Discovered I could transact business with my far away credit union through a different local one.  They call it Credit-Union-Sharing (real original, right?).  But it beats driving an hour and back.

Picked 22 ripe cherry tomatoes and 3 large heirloom tomatoes in the garden. YUM!

Raked 10 piles of rocks out of the new leveled backyard.  Not sure what I will DO with the rocks yet.  But they have to go before I can plant anything there.  And I have a cool tool for raking rocks.  Get ready for the name - Rock Raker!  Maybe "Stoned Today, Gone Tomorrow"?


Actually, it works.  The front tines are curved slightly backwards, so it catches rocks and lets soil slide through.  I suspect some clam-digger adapted it to New England farming.

Fired up the charcoal offset smoker.  Cooked pork ribs and chicken.  The ribs are delicious; I'll have some chicken tomorrow.  And I have enough leftovers for 10 more meals.  Those hickory chunks make great smoke and flavor.

Watered the flowerbeds.  We aren't technically in a drought, but the recently-removed ridge soil was dry as dust 4' down and that's not good.  We we forecast "heavy rain" Thursday/Friday, but I got less than 1/4".  That doesn't even register on plants.  In fact, it's bad for them.  It encourages the roots upwards, where they dry out faster.

So I try to water deeply once a week.  We aren't low on water supply here (for the hoses), just not much rain  and lots of plants transpiring it from the soil even deep down.  Its the lack of water deep in the soil that worries me.

Watering is easy.  I have this thing I built...

 I bought 2 plants that I want more of.  One is a Knock-Off Rose and the other is a dwarf butterfly bush.  I hate buying plants that cost $25 in a 3" pot!  But I know how to take cuttings and root them.  So each of those plants will be 5 plants at least next Spring.

Call me cheap, but its the fun of doing the rootings I like...

And the cats are loving being outside.  Marley misses his mousies (destroyed when the ridge was leveled) but he accepts my promise that the new plantings will probably bring even more mousies around and he will have more hiding places.

I better deliver on that promise...

Dad Update

I've been asked how my Dad is doing.  He is not real happy, but there isn't much I can do about it.  He lost the ability to take care of himself about 2 years ago when he turned 90.  Some of you may remember that I had to fly down from MD to FL to retrieve him from a rehab hospital where he had been held for a month due to doctor-judged incapacity.

I and my brother got him up to my house where I took care of him for a year as he gradually became less able to manage daily affairs even with my help.  Last April, my sister found a good assisted-living facility near her where she and my brother and assorted nieces could visit him regularly.

We got him to sell the FL house Fall of 2012 and 2 condo investments he had in NH this past January.  They were decent investments, but he kept saying he should move to one of them, so we had to get them out of his thoughts.  He doesn't recall either of those places anymore, so that is something less for him to worry about.

Dad gets regular visits from local family.  I hate to drive, so I mostly write letters every few weeks telling him things I am doing.  He likes to read about "accomplishments", as he was a very dedicated D-I-Y type himself (more than I will ever be).

I get the impression that he his generally happy except after family visits.  I know that sounds a bit of a contradiction from above, but it's timing.  Left alone, he is generally OK, mostly complaining he doesn't get to watch all the Fox News political talk and Golf he wants.  Well, that's because there are more ladies there and they like to watch Soaps and Shopping Channel shows and they outnumber him.

We tried a TV in his room, but he can't manage the channels and mostly forgot it was even there.  So he sits quietly and watches whatever is on.  There are scheduled activities, but Dad was always bored by arts and crafts and socializing, so he retreats to his room.

I feel sad about it all.  He wishes his body would just give up and stop.  He's in better physical health than mental health.  Physically, he could live to a 100.  He can sometimes express a fear that he will start living physically without any self-awareness.  I understand that.  He can't do anything about it (personal decision).  By which I mean that *I* hope I can just crawl out on the deck some cold Winter's night and end it all when I think the time has come for ME.  But he doesnt think that way.

He isn't religious in the organized sense, but he does have a residual idea that deliberately ending his own life is somehow "wrong".  I don't agree, but I have been very careful not to say anything about that.  I don't want to influence him in any way.  He is confused enough about his life as it is.  I am not wise enough to give him advice about his last years, and he wouldn't pay any attention to my advice if I gave it to him (I'm just a "child" after all, so what could *I* know).

So I write letters to him that I suspect are barely read and little understood.  I avoid anything complex and (back to the top) about DIY things he might still understand in general and that might give him the reminder that I am DOING THINGS, hoping he likes that.

*sigh*

Living With Dad, 11

Mail time is ambiguous here.  Mail addressed to Dad keeps him occupied for an hour.  But afterwards, it keeps ME occupied for a couple hours explaining it to him.  Most of his mail is irrelevant (monthly investment statements, some is true junk, but some is important.  I won't filter his mail [well, I trash some donation requests that hit him up for more money every month just because he gave them money the previous month; he thinks the requests from the fire and police departments are "bills" and they are taking advantage of his confusion].

But it's the legitimate documents that cause the hardest problems.  Monthly bank statements, investment statements, actual bills for services to the previous FL house...  It can take an hour per bank statement, a half hour to pay a single bill, and something like a property tax bill is good for a day (because he wants to ask really odd questions that have obvious answers to ME but he doesn't understand).

Dad has resigned himself to accepting my "novel idea" of filing folders by subject ("water". "electric", "property tax", etc), bank names, investment company names, property locations, mainly because I simply went and DID IT one weekend.  He still doesn't understand it, but then, he can't recall the names of his electric or water company, so generic is the only choice...

So I've taken over the organization of his records.  I had little choice.  He had them all by month (sort of) and couldn't find anything.  When he first had his duffel bag, briefcase, and two fat folders of documents, I asked him to find his birth certificate,  It took him 2 hours.  Now there is a file for that.  And of course, files for about everything else.

Today was the 4th or 5th time I've shown him the file folders I made "for the first time" to his mind.  I'm getting used to the idea that some things are new to him every time I mention them.  Well, maybe I should say "getting resigned to the idea".  I'm still always surprised by what he forgets from even one day to the next. 

I do want readers to understand that I do not take this lightly.  Sometimes with a bit of tolerant humor (beats crying out loud), but never "lightly".  I understand that Dad's present is my future...  It doesn't look like a lot of fun.  Mine may be worse.  Dad has me (and 2 other children and some grandchildren.  I don't.  When I, and my brother and sister, are Dad's age, they will have adult children but I will only have nieces and a nephew.  Adults don't take care of Uncles like they do Parents.  I better hope for some major medical or technological advances (like mind transplants to robots).  Or I am going to have to just go to sleep on the deck some Winter night and not wake up.

Today's odd moments:  Dad received junk mail from some investment firm, and assumed that meant he had an account with them.  He couldn't figure out how to fill out the enrollment form (since he assumed he was already enrolled).  I had to go through all the files, one by one, to show him there wasn't a file for that company.  Then HE had to go through all the unsorted junk in his briefcase searching for a reference to that company.

THEN he decided maybe he should take cash out of savings and invest with them.  So I had to spend a half hour reminding him that he just cashed in some decent CDs in order to have "cash on hand" for medical emergencies, so he shouldn't make new investments.   Its tiring, and I can't get anything useful done around the house while he is fussing about this kind of stuff.

I should filter his mail, but I can't get myself to do that yet.  He has a right to open and read it; it is my responsibility to guide him in deciding what to do.  But I will probably have to do that soon.  His memory for even simple daily things is going. 

Multiple odd events:  Tonight, he couldn't remember how to make a martini, his several nightly drinks for decades.  I knew, though I never liked a martini in my life.  His is equal shot gin and dry vermouth in a small juice glass, over ice.  Doesn't seem like the James Bond martini, but whatever he likes is his business. I took a spoonful of one a week ago; it was HORRIBLE!   I like my self-named Cavebear Slings (shot gin, shot Pomegranate Liquor, 2 shots real pomegranate juice over ice, fill with ginger ale).  If you like fruit-oriented drinks, try it. 

But he couldn't remember how to make the drink he has liked for 60 years!

Another odd event was that I put his tossed salad on the table (I always make a tossed salad).  He asked if I had put gravy on the salad (yeah, he confuses words like gravy and dressing, and sometimes he says "sauce").  Anyone would look at it and know I hadn't, but he can't think of doing that these days.  That's a bad sign.  On the other hand, at least when he uses the wrong word for something, it is a related word.  It would be worse if he had asked if I added "marbles" to the salad.

And I'm not relating these confusions on his part to make fun.  It's serious.  I'm writing about this so that I have a record of them.  I need to understand where his memory is failing and where it is still functioning.  Partly, I want a dated record of such confusions, but mostly so that I can understand where I can trust his memory and where I can't. 

That matters because I don't have the best memory in the world.  I never have.  Do you recall math  and science classes in high school where you mostly memorized formulas and diagrams to use them on tests and then mostly forgot them afterwards?  I could never remember the formulas.  I had to mostly figure them out each time from scratch and a few recollections. I got "Bs" in spite of that.  I'm also not very good at remembering names or what I said in the previous email.  I remember faces very well.  I can pass someone and know that I "know" them.  No name comes to mind though...

I bet my memory is worse than Dad's before I am his age.  I see it coming...

So I am probably going to lose my memory sooner than Dad.  That's scary, but probably inevitable.