Welcome to Dullsville

What Can I Say?

And I mean that literally.

I thought that once we got into the new place and got reconnected, there would be much to write about.

There is, actually, but all this other stuff is getting in the way.

I can't really write about family because of all that is going on with the daughter. It has been a roller coaster ride, up one day, down the next.

She is living back at home but nothing has changed. Lots of lip service, but no improvement. I really can't say much about this right now for numerous reasons. I don't know if she visits here, but I have no desire to hurt her, so I am trying to be very careful about what I say.

The problem is, it doesn't feel right talking about other things. I mean, there are a lot of good things going on right now, but writing about them would seem like denying the huge pain that is dominating my life.

I wanted to do a post on all the comments I got from the last one. I appreciated all of them , and wanted to respond to each one. But each time I sit down at the computer, I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

Recently, I awoke in the middle of the night remembering an incident that happened in the Grand Tetons during the summer of 1977. It would make a great post, but I just can't find the motivation.

Well I'm going to try to write  about what is going well in my life and see how that feels.

Maybe someday I'll be able to write about what has been happening with my daughter, but right now, it just all hurts too much.

Poetry

Well, we're back on line, with the broadband making things easier. I wrote a long post last weekend and just as I was about to add pictures, the computer locked up. I got so mad that I hadn't saved as I went that I stayed away until tonight.

Anyway, there is much to show and tell since moving in to the new place on January 3rd, finally. I have many pictures to show and joys and some serious heartaches to share.

But tonight, I'm wanting to talk about an incident that happened last night.

As I said above, some serious heartaches have transpired since the first of the year. The most serious has been the moving out of our 18 year old daughter. She graduates high school this June, but on her 18th birthday two weeks ago, she informed us that she was taking the car my Dad left to her, and her bank account and was bidding us adieu. I don't want to get into this in great detail this time, but some very bad decisions are being made, and our rules here at home were too restrictive for the lifestyle she wants to live.

Needless to say, there have been lots of tears around here. My wife has needed lots of consoling, and so have I. My emotions are so damn close to the surface, which is not typical for me. It also makes it difficult to do my job, where a thick skin is a tremendous asset. A week ago, I was getting a royal ass chewing by a rough project superintendent. Although I knew that I was just a convenient target for this man to vent his frustration on, I was just too sensitive after a night of anguish with my daughter. After about 40 minutes of criticism, I was looking at the ground, and realized that I was starting to tear up. I struggled to compose myself, and looked up at this guy. It was amazing, he shut up immediately and started to apologize. I almost felt bad for him.

So all of this is by way of explanation for the way I was feeling last night.

We had decided to go out for a Saturday night dinner of fish and chips. The place we go makes the best I've ever had, and George, our son, loves it. On the way, we got a call from the daughter, seems she was getting off work shortly, and wanted to join us. She arrived after we had finished eating, which was no problem, we hadn't seen or heard from her in 10 days. We sat and listened to her tell us about her doings as she ate her Irish Nachos. Needless to say, it was disturbing. Needed a single malt scotch with my pint just to keep my tongue in check. Outside, we hugged her before she went off on her merry way.

On the way back home, my wife was driving, I was talking to my son. The subject got on to school and various subjects, finally leading to his well-liked English teacher. We started talking about poetry, and specifically Robert Frost, at which point, this great, lovable, confusing, moody, exuberant, happy, morose, wonderful 16 year old starts to recite:

"Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

And I'm sitting in the front seat, with  tears in my eyes at the beauty of it  all,  fighting them back, while reciting the parts with him that I remember from so long ago. That this boy should recite a poem that so moved me when I  was young seemed amazing to me.

We proceeded to tear the poem apart discussing the meaning. How the phrase "good fences make good neighbors" has more than one meaning in this insightful poem. We got into Frost's economy of phrase, how much he says with so few words. What an incredible talent. We even talked about how other artists use this technique, with me reciting one of my favorite sets of rock lyrics by , of all people, Lynyrd Skynyrd:

"Whiskey bottles and brand new car;
Oak tree you're in my way."

A story in two lines.

Which of course just brought me back to thoughts of my daughter.

Ah well. it's all too much for me to fathom.

But I'll leave you tonight with a copy of my favorite Frost poem which I find extremely moving. (but then, everything seems to move me way too much these days, have to get control of these feelings)

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

            

Whose woods these are I think I know.
              His house is in the village though;
              He will not see me stopping here
              To watch his woods fill up with snow.      

My little horse must think it queer
              To stop without a farmhouse near
              Between the woods and frozen lake
              The darkest evening of the year.            

He gives his harness bells a shake
              To ask if there is some mistake.
              The only other sound's the sweep
              Of easy wind and downy flake.            

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
              But I have promises to keep,
              And miles to go before I sleep,
              And miles to go before I sleep.

The Move Part 5 or Honey? We're Home.

There is so much to write about, but my time here is limited. I am "borrowing" a customer's web access since we are still not connected. That should happen by early February, if all goes well. But even then, my time will be limited, because there is so much to do.

We took possession of the house the night of December 30th. Got our painters started the next morning as we reviewed the house. Bathtub still not installed in the master bath. Place very dirty. Gas man came that morning and installed a meter and started the various gas appliances. Left the two furnaces running as a test and then he took off. Thirty minutes later, the house filled with smoke, all the smoke detectors went off and one furnace shut down and locked out. Got the installer's on-call service guy out late that afternoon and he found that the fan wheel had fallen off the motor shaft and caused the problem. Fixed it and left. Obviously, none of these things had been tested by the builder before turning the house over to us.

The path to the front door had a 12 foot section that had been cut out 3 weeks earlier due to a chip on the side. That night (Saturday) it started to rain. Front yard flooded due to improper grading and the big hole where the path was turned into a huge muddy lake. We had planned on moving furniture in on Monday, but it would not be possible to get to the front door. So on Sunday, I bought 2 sheets of 3/4" plywood and three 4x4's and built a rather nice little bridge. The rain got worse on Monday, so we put the move off until Tuesday, which also gave the painter time to finish up. Washer, dryer and refrigerator got delivered on Tuesday as we moved the furniture in. A wild day, to be sure. The new kitchen table and easy chair finally showed up at 7:30 that night.

Meanwhile, the back yard also flooded, due to no drainage. I mean it really was a lake.

So, last week, as we started to get stuff unpacked that we have not seen in 6 months, the builder had people all over the place trying to get the major problems sorted out. We still have a huge list, from many carpet stains, to tile grout already cracked, to ceilings patched and unpainted. It's just amazing. I would never buy a new house again.

Having said all that, we love the place. My wife is in heaven (which is always a good thing for me). All the windows in the open plan family room/kitchen face west. Most of the wall is glass of some type (windows and doorways). There are no obstructions to the views of the mountains and the distant LA Basin. The back neighbor is down about 30 feet below us. The sunsets are fantastic.

The kitchen is spacious, lots of counter space and a huge granite island in the middle with a counter area for sitting. Absolutely love the layout of the house.

I have pictures, but not with me at this time. Hopefully, I'll be able to post some in February.

The amount of work to be done both inside and out is staggering. It makes me tired just thinking about it. The landscape designer has done some very cool things, but implementing them will be time consuming and costly. We'll be working on this place for years.

The TV guy is coming tomorrow, so my kids have reconsidered lynching me, for the time being. Seriously, my son loves his new room, and I may have even heard an approving grunt or two from my daughter. She turns 18 in about 3 weeks and will be the topic of another post. Bottom line is, college is out, she wants no part of it. Her alternatives are......well.....interesting.

Life has gone from the dull holding pattern of living in the rental, to "damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead".

Whew.

The Fuse Is Burning

...and I'm the powder keg.

We are getting down to the wire. Final walk through on the house is scheduled (tentatively, like everything else these jackasses have scheduled) for December 14, and they are insisting we close a couple of days before Christmas. I am seething with anger at these people. I wake up at night and lie awake for hours thinking about how sour this whole deal seems. A couple of nights ago I awoke with my heart beating like I had just run a marathon. Never did get back to sleep that night.

The idea of closing on the 23rd or 24th is absurd. We won't be able to move in until after Christmas. This on top of 3 months of delays, shoddy construction, incredibly poor response to my concerns and total disorganization on the part of the developer, has just gotten to be too much. I have reached a point where I won't even acknowledge the greetings of the saleslady who is the rep we deal with. I detest all involved, and I know that at the next meeting I'm going to tell them exactly what I think.

In my job, I regularly deal with customers who are spending a great deal of money for the services I provide. Most of these customers are very demanding, and some are quite difficult. It is my responsibility to respond to their needs and make them feel comfortable with me and the company I work for. That may be the most important part of my job. After all, it is these customers who make it possible for me to receive a paycheck every week. I make it my business to like them, and have them like and trust me. It is not the least bit insincere. I am very grateful to these folks.

I have not at all felt that the people I am dealing with in buying this home have these same feelings of obligation or gratitude. It irritates me to no end to have to give my money to them. They simply don't deserve it.

When I tell them about my dissatisfaction with their lack of professionalism, I fully expect them to offer me my deposit back. I expect this because they have done the same thing with the people who are buying next door, who are also extremely unhappy. If they make this offer, I think that I just might take it. Now, I know that I will be shooting myself in the foot since they can sell the house for significantly more than I paid for it back in February. This, of course, is why they are making the offer in the first place. Also, I fear that if I back out, I will break my wife's heart.

This shouldn't be such a miserable experience. This should be a happy time.

And So it Goes

Feeling rather Vonnegut-ish these days.

We are still in the rental. Latest move in date is the first week of December (they wouldn't want to be any more specific than that). We were up at the house a few times this past weekend meeting with some design people, and it sure doesn't look to us as if there is any way on God's green earth that these morons will have the house ready by then. I have reached a point where I won't even speak to the sales lady. Darlene is still nice to her, but I think that is starting to change. I'm starting to have violent fantasies about the development company.

The kids are hanging in there. George went to Homecoming dance for the first time. He and his date looked incredible. I have pictures of that and the house, but access is so infrequent that I don't have the pictures available to download. Someday...............

Emilie's grades are up, much to everyone's joy. It seems the lack of TV and internet has increased her focus a bit. She's also on severe restriction with her cell phone due to going WAY over her minutes twice now. We all four now have cell phones, since we no longer have a house phone. Life sure is different.

Darlene hates it. Her commute is long, she takes the train, but that doesn't really seem to be the issue. She says that she just wants to be "home". In this case, that seems to mostly mean the ability to unpack all our stuff. It has gotten to be a daily occurrence to look for something we really need, only to realize that it is packed away in the mountain of stuff out in the garage. It's been 3 months now and I expect it will be at least one more.

We spoke to the folks who bought the house next door to ours, and, boy, are they pissed. They've been living with their son and his family after selling their home in another state. I think things are beginning to wear on all involved after this has dragged on much longer than anticipated.

I bought an extra car, since both kids are learning to drive. We needed one for George to drive when he gets his license. I have been planning a post on cars in general, but with lack of access....well, you know. Anyway, it's a cool car, a 1962 Ford Falcon station wagon in amazing condition, with a straight 6 under the hood(didn't want anything powerful for the boy). It's a one owner car, just sold after his death at the estate sale. We don't have it yet, it's on the east coast and is waiting to be shipped. I do have a few pictures on this computer, so here it is.

I love American cars. Might be dumb, or sentimental, I know, but I just love 'em. They're just so.......well.....American. I can just see old George in the old wagon with his surfboards heading out to the beach.

All for now, back to work.

The Move Part 4 or House Sold

I can't imagine that anyone is still reading this, but here's a new one.

The old house sold in 72 hours for our asking price. The new owners wanted a fast escrow, less than 30 days. We went crazy trying to get everything out of there, but had everything out in 28 days. In the end, it didn't close until last Tuesday, about 36 days after we opened escrow. Not bad. So happy to be completely done with that house. One big load off my mind.

We had movers come in and move all the big stuff. One big truckload. Most of it is now in the garage of the rental. Just the necessary things are inside. No television or internet. Just using cell phones for now.

The current move-in time for the new house is the end of November. That house is coming along, but it still seems like forever until it is ready. We all feel like our lives are on hold. My daughter keeps saying she wants to go home. I do too. The kids have good days and bad days, depending on how their social lives are going.

My wife and I have started to question whether this was such a good idea. We never figured on two moves and this limbo we are currently living in.

I do like the new town. Very much a small-town feel. I doubt that it will be like that in 10 years, but right now it's great.

Will try to post from time to time, it should get better after the final move.

The Move Part3 or Now it Starts Getting Crazy

I don't have much time. This house went on the market Thursday, and this is our first weekend. We left the house all day yesterday (Saturday), and will do the same today. We had some folks look at the house both Thursday and Friday, and it appears that yesterday was busy. We've been told that an offer is being made by a young couple who saw the house yesterday. This is a perfect first home. It's small and manageable, with most things a couple starting out would want: garage, 3 bedrooms, big backyard with a pool. Apparently, the father of the couple met my daughter yesterday afternoon when she stopped by to change after work. He asked her what was wrong with this house, why would anyone want to leave it? She said that 4 full size adults living in this house makes it feel crowded, and we just need a little more room. Good answer, Em.

The big news, and the thing that has kept me away from the computer, is that we discovered some things regarding the kids schooling that has changed our plans radically.  We were planning to transfer them from their current school to the new one in late November, early December. Then we found out that the new school works on a block semester schedule. In other words, 4 subjects run for two semesters, ending in January, and then another 4 subjects start which end in June. The school the kids attend now just runs all the courses for the entire year. Therefore, if we were to transfer them in during December, they would be coming in to 4 courses that were almost complete. While my son, as a 10th grader might survive this, it could result in Emilie not getting the credits to graduate (she's a senior). The school would not allow us to enroll them and commute them without an address in town. We showed them the address on our house-to-be but that didn't work unless escrow was closed. No inter-district transfer either.

We deliberated over this for a while, and then finally decided to rent a house in town until ours is ready. I'll live there with the kids, Darlene will commute to her job from the old house in order to keep an eye on it until it sells. Darlene has already been offered a teaching job near the new house, but has committed to this school year at the old school, so she will have to commute for a year.

Besides the kids schooling, the other benefit to renting is that we will not have to ask buyers for a long escrow. At this point, I'd like to see this place go quickly.

What we are doing, is moving the necessities to the rental tomorrow and Tuesday. I'm taking the time off work, and Darlene and I will rent a truck and do the move. Then, when the house sells, we will hire a moving company to pick up all the big stuff and store it until the new house is ready. Whew! I never imagined it would get this crazy.

I have spent every evening after work fixing and improving stuff around the house to get it looking nice. Darlene has been packing everything and filled our storage space with boxes, the remainder of which will go into the garage at the rental house. Because our garage has been the staging area for the boxes, there hasn't been room to tear the garage apart and get it ready for the move. I'm dreading that task. I'm sure there will be a truckload of stuff going to the dump.

Anyway, here are some pictures showing the progression of the house. It's starting to look like a house from the inside. Walking around it is exciting. I really like the layout and the piece of land it is on.

Posts will be scarce, as they have been, and when this place sells, I'm sure we will be off line for at least a couple of months. I do have a laptop to make occasional visits, so check back now and then.

Grizzly Man

Werner Herzog's (anybody besides me remember "Fitzcarraldo"?) new film .

We were out all day yesterday, after finally signing with the real estate agent. We've been scrambling all week, working every day, painting, changing out ceiling fans, working in the yard, trying to get all the details worked out for selling the house. So after signing the papers we decided to take the day off. Sunset magazine has an "Idea House" they just opened up in Orange County, so we went down to see that, then went to dinner at the beach. George went with us and we celebrated signing the papers and our 19th anniversary (August 23rd) at the same time. Emilie was off to a Toby Keith concert.

Afterwards we went up to Pasadena to look for a sleeper sofa to use at the rental for a few months. More on that later. Driving down Colorado Blvd. I saw a theater with "Grizzly Man" playing. I had heard an interview with Herzog on NPR and the movie sounded very interesting. We got tickets for the 10:15 show. Now I am an early riser, and also have an early bedtime, so it is unheard of for me wanting to see a movie this late. My wife and George were looking at me funny. But we went, although I was worried that I might fall asleep during the film. I needn't have been concerned.

This is one of the most riveting movies I have ever seen. It probably appears to be a nature documentary to most folks, but this has very little in common with a movie like "March of the Penguins". Now, I liked "March", but compared to this film, it was like watching grass grow.

If you enjoy nature, or photography, documentaries, or studies in human psychology, GO SEE THIS MOVIE.  Do not bring little children, but my 15 year old son couldn't stop talking about it afterwards.  Be prepared for some colorful language from the main character, and while there aren't any gory scenes, there are some gory descriptions.

The story is sad,  fascinating, hilarious,   pathetic and, in places, quite touching. It is the story of Timothy Treadwell, who spent 13 summers living alone with the grizzlies in Alaska. Treadwell was a very troubled man, and in the end the bears killed him. No, I didn't just wreck it for you, his death is mentioned in the first scenes of the movie. Herzog interviews people who knew Treadwell and intersperses it with the footage that he shot of himself and the bears. Treadwell left behind hundreds of hours of film. For years he traveled to schools and gave presentations during the winter months. He believed that he was saving the bears from humans, although, as the film brings out, these animals aren't much in need of saving. In fact, it becomes obvious after a while that it was Timothy who was being saved by the bears.

In some ways, this film is like watching a train wreck, at times you want to avert your eyes, but can't. I guarantee you won't be bored by this movie.

Why Do I Read Blogs?

I mean, it rarely makess me happy. I'll be looking at a blog that amuses me, and follow the link from someone who commented, and stumble into a big pile of nonsense with idiots commenting about how true and insightful the drivel really is.

Case in point, a blog I just looked at by a woman, pontificating about how awful and unnecessary the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings were.

Now, please understand, I see the horror of humans killing each other in these numbers. But that wasn't what she was saying. No, she was making the point of how evil the United States was to do such a thing when "Japan was ready to surrender". Ready to surrender? Then why didn't they? Granted, according to all accounts, Japan was a nation on it's knees. But they refused unconditional surrender. The leadership was fanatical. The statistics on ships sunk by kamikaze planes bear this out. No, it was going to take an invasion of the mainland to secure the surrender.

Look at the death toll at Normandy, and tell me this would have been preferable from an American point of view. The invasion would also have included a continued bombing of Japanese cities with conventional weapons. Probably an escalation of this bombing would have been necessary. We were already bombing the hell out of Tokyo. This was somehow better than what happened?

So they were warned, and turned it down. Then they were bombed, and turned it down again.

Want to place blame? Place it on the shoulders of the Japanese leaders.

But now we have blogging, where these fools can rewrite history and collect an "amen corner". Other like minded boobs who will agree with them.  Why are these people so eager to hate their own country? So eager to slant everything to make this country look as bad as possible? Are they some kind of self destructive lemmings?

They literally turn my stomach.

This past week there was a show on PBS radio in which the use of the atomic bombs on Japan was analyzed. Many people involved in the bombing were interviewed. Every one I heard said that they never lost any sleep over it. They believed that they did what was necessary and even saved lives with their actions. The commentator followed up with a serious analysis of the rewriting of history that appears to be going on regarding this incident.

I just don't understand it.

March of the Penguins

After a couple of days of meeting with real estate agents (an activity I strongly recommend against), we needed an escape.

So my wife and I and George went off to the movies. A nice escape from the heat that has been roasting us with temperatures over 100 every day for the last 3 weeks, and no end in sight. It has also been uncharacteristically humid, just to make the summer really special.

We went to see "The March of the Penguins". As you can probably tell from previous posts, I enjoy nature. Wonderful film, narrated by Morgan Freeman, fantastic photography of some very beautiful creatures. 

Quite a few thoughts bounced around in my head during the film. The first was how lucky I feel to live in these times. That there are people who have the desire, ability and the technology to enable me to see the reproductive cycle of the Emperor penguins is truly wonderful. How many people have ever been able to witness this amazing event.

These animals are great to watch. They look so much like people I know, that it's hard not to attribute human characteristics to them. Their funny walk and the noises they make seem silly and comical. But then the film shows the graceful, dignified and aesthetically beautiful process of their mating and you get a completely different feeling about them. Watching what appears to be tenderness between the male and the female, and the struggles they must endure to produce one offspring, gets me thinking about what put all this here. Seeing the anguish the birds express over the loss of an egg or a chick, makes me wonder if animals really do feel emotions like sadness and love in the same way we do. It sure looks like it.

If there is a God (and nature is the thing that most convinces me that this must be so), I imagine that God put all things here on earth for us to explore, enjoy and learn about. God would have known that it would take us thousands of years to figure many things out, and get to see and understand all the things in creation. I imagine God, upon creating something like Emperor penguins for us to see, chuckling and thinking, "Just wait until man gets a load of these. He's going to love them." The same way we are delighted watching our children discover things for the first time. Really, this is what I don't understand about the fear of science that exists in many organized religions. I believe that God means for us to figure all this stuff out. This is our purpose and our destiny. Hopefully our wonderful curiosity helps us to do this before our hatefulness and greed cause us to self destruct.

The other thought that occurred to me was how lucky the penguins are. Oh, yes, they have predators like the leopard seal and birds of prey, not to mention doing their business in the most hostile environment on the planet. But, fortunately for them, humans have not found them good to eat, or decided that their internal organs bestow special powers, or that a penguin coat would be the height of fashion.  So the biggest predator on earth just wants to enjoy watching them. Lucky birds.