Month: March 2013

03/28/2013

Like an Ocean…

waves

For the most part, I love my Tuesdays.  Typically I spend the morning hours working on a yacht.  I don’t mean swabbing decks or polishing banisters…other folks take care of that.  To clarify, I work part-time for a variety of clients doing primarily office management type work, mostly for high-net worth individuals.  In addition, I also do bookkeeping for a few non-profit organizations as well.  On Tuesday mornings, my hours are spent working for a client who lives on his 60 ft. yacht.     I open the mail (he opens NOTHING in between my visits), pay bills, handle light bookkeeping and occasionally bird-dog other task management projects that he asks me to look after.

On beautiful mornings, there is no better place to work than in the luxurious surroundings of a custom designed yacht, docked in a charming marina where tourists from all over the world wander leisurely along the piers.   Aside from the fact that I have an issue with motion sickness, there isn’t much for me to complain about there.  I tough it out with the never-ending motion of the boat and occasional dizziness that follows because I love the setting. In all fairness, I should also say that the client is truly a very nice guy to work with, and expresses his appreciation for my efforts quite often.  So, who’d want to walk away from that?

Well, quite honestly…some days, I do. Especially when the weather isn’t so picture perfect, or when the tide is low.  On those days, just getting on and off the boat are a challenge.  The access off the main pier is no big deal if you’re a cat.

But this morning I didn’t go there, because my client gave me an 11th hour notice that he’s away this week.  Was I disappointed?  Not really.

So, instead I went to my Tuesday afternoon client, which is a local school district. I do the bookkeeping for their non-profit Foundation, which raises money to bridge the state funding gaps.  The office manager there is a highly efficient, detail oriented, one-woman band. She does it all.  Well, almost all.  I do the bookkeeping, but she does all the rest.  I like her a lot and really enjoy going to work in such an efficient and well managed office.  She’s a divorced mom raising two boys, one of which is a freshman in high school, and the other is a fifth grader who attends the grade school adjacent to the Foundation office.  He stops in after school to say hello to his mom, and then heads on home with his buddies if she’s not yet ready to leave.   He’s very personable and the kind of kid who converses easily and comfortably with adults.

I’d never have guessed he has any learning issues, had his mom not shared a poem with me today that he’d written for school.  It turns out that his brain has difficulty zeroing in…he can’t interpret what he visually sees, such as groups of letters in order to grasp the words that they form.  He also has difficulty with his fine motor skills, like writing and navigating a keyboard.  Yet, intellectually he is extremely bright. If he’s tested verbally, he’s a very strong student at grade level.  If he’s tested with written exams, the result is very different.  His  reading and writing abilities put him at a low first grade level.  So, throughout his grade school experience, he’s been placed in classes with other learning disabled children, some of which are autistic.

His mom thinks a friend actually did the typing while her son dictated the poem, which is titled ‘My Disability’.  What really got to me was the very first line, which reads ‘I am disabled and still happy’.  Disabled.  That word to me would imply a detectable physical disability of some kind.  But in this case, he moves and sounds and interacts just like a normal, happy and well-adjusted fifth grader.  His only ‘disability’ is so invisible to the rest of us, that only his educators would be aware of it.

He writes about the wild sound of his brain, and watching success disappear before his eyes.  He writes of his desire to be like everyone else. And he writes about his sense of frustration and feeling annoyed. He expresses his wish to be successful in life, and to make his parents proud, knowing that he touches their hearts when he succeeds. His mantra is ‘If I don’t succeed today, I will tomorrow’.  And, he hopes his disability will go away.  But until then, he is disabled and still happy.

The insight he so poignantly expresses seems beyond his ten years of life on this earth.

It’s made me stop and think about the journey we all must take in life.  We all have challenges to face, and no one navigates the turbulent waters blessed by skill alone.  Life has its ups and downs, just like an ocean.  But this young man has already figured out that the best way to ride it out is with a happy heart.  His glass is half full, in spite of ‘the wild sound’ of his brain. Half FULL.

He’s not even my son, but I already know how very special he is.  As he approaches his teen years and adulthood beyond, I hope he can hold on to that happy heart with a tight determination, so he can teach educators a thing or two about being ‘disabled’.

03/16/2013

Where you can just get into your own head…

tahoe garage

I’ve been driving my Chevy Tahoe for 12 years now.  With 108, 098 miles on the odometer, it still runs like a top.  I take it for service every 3,000 miles like clockwork. While having it serviced yesterday,  I expected to be spending my time in the waiting room of the service department by catching up on emails.  I’d brought my laptop specifically for this purpose, but turns out the internet service in the building wasn’t working.  After initial irritation, I decided to plug in my headphones and hunker down with my writing.  Not my blog writing, but my writing…the memoir project that has been looming over me like a cloud.  It hovers above me, a shadowed reminder that it’s ready to be unleashed.

The problem is, the emotion of getting it pounded out into words creates sudden halts in my progress. As my vision clouds with tears, I find myself jumping up and walking away in an effort to get an emotional grip.   But, surprisingly enough, sitting in the Chevy service department yesterday with folks coming and going, mechanics clanking away just on the other side of the large window that looks into their service  garage,  I got so sucked in that I missed calls on my cell phone, stopped just briefly to respond to text messages, and only finally snapped out of it when the service agent tapped me on the shoulder to tell me my vehicle was ready.  I glanced at my watch…several hours had elapsed.

Who knew that a busy service department smelling like, well.. like a GARAGE, would be the place I could finally push beyond my emotionally gated entry into the next segment of the story? Although I’m sure this hurdle was just one of many more yet to come, I feel like I have crossed that big threshold at last, allowing me to finally just get on to the heart of it.

Maybe by the time my car has 200,000 miles on it, I’ll be coming down the home stretch.  I just hope the writing journey smooths out and carries me along dependably,  just like my Chevy Tahoe, no matter how many miles accumulate.

I guess the best writing places are those where you can just get into your own head.  I challenge you to find a list anywhere in this world that suggests an auto service department might be the environment to consider when looking for that special spot all writers actively seek out.

Who knew?

 

 

03/12/2013

It’s been just that kind of day…

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It wasn’t until early afternoon that I suddenly realized exactly what was going on with my hair.  It’s been just that kind of day.

What little time I spent behind my eyelids last night was not nearly long enough.  I had a hell of a time getting to sleep in the first place, because my mind was working a mile a minute.  I woke up at 4 a.m. this morning, unable to clear my overactive brain.  I tried to distract my thinking by playing around with my iPhone.  I checked emails, I checked Facebook, I played my word games, I perused the ABC News app.  I did everything but get sleepy.  So, finally I just got up, showered, and got on with my morning.

I left the house at 8:30 a.m., after a forgettable yogurt and granola breakfast.  Eyelids heavy, but feeling energy highly compressed, I drove out through thick fog, which rolled in sometime during the night. (I know when I finally did drift off to sleep in the wee hours, I was listening to the fog horns out in the bay).

On Tuesdays, I go to two offices in one day.  My morning client lives on his yacht.  After parking my car and changing into my boat shoes (read: rubber-treaded Mary Janes with Velcro closure) I walked on down the main pier to his boat slip, then cautiously worked my way down the narrow wooden plank that connects to the lower floating dock, where his 60 ft luxury yacht lives. That plank was ridiculously steep this morning with a low tide. I made a special point to be very careful using those handrails, which are nothing more than old 2 by 4’s loaded with splinters.  I’ve had more than my fair share of those nasties in my palms.

Once on the lower dock, which floats beneath me as I walk on it, I actually have to jump onto the boat.  It’s not a huge jump, but it’s just awkward enough that I could potentially not make it.  If you’ve never had Vertigo before, count your blessings.  I had it once.  A severe case, which then took years before all the residual effects went away.  But, what continues to remain is a slight equilibrium imbalance whenever I’m not on firm footing.   So, the minute I get on that wooden plank which also shifts under my weight as I work my way down, my lack of steadiness begins to send red flag alerts to my brain.

BUT, never mind.  I pushed through all that this morning, like I do every Tuesday morning, made it onto the boat without a splash arrival, and then spent about 90 minutes sorting mail, paying bills, and making calls.  Afterwards, while preparing to leave, I noticed the beauty of the scene all around me and snapped the photo above.  The water was like glass, the winds were calm, the temperature was perfectly perfect and the fog circled around the boats on the opposite dock, completely blocking the spectacular scenery behind them.

It was like The Secret Garden, except it was The Secret Marina… and for a moment I wished I lived on that yacht too.  I sighed pensively, and just stared for a bit.  Well, maybe for more than a bit.  I wanted to curl up and take a nap right there, like a house cat in a window seat.

Then, I snapped out of it, fluffed my damp hair around a bit.  Odd….it seemed to be still wet from my early morning shower.  Huh…maybe the unusual fog was having an unusual affect on my hair.  No matter.  I cautiously made my way back off the boat (that water leap was even wider because the outgoing tide was pushing the boat further off the lines).  But I made it, safe and sound.  Two years running, and so far so good (sometimes I imagine our local paper having front page news: WOMAN DROWNS LEAPING OFF OF YACHT, CRACKED HEAD AGAINST THE DOCK GOING IN.)

Back in the car, I removed my boat shoes, and slipped into my normal footwear.  I ran a few business related errands, and headed on to client # 2 for the day.  This is a non-profit office that supports a public school district.  I love going there, because the office manager is a delight, the work space is wonderfully organized, and the bookkeeping is straight forward.  Sure, there are investment accounts, but unlike some other clients, these folks set their bookkeeping up right to begin with. There’s no smoke and mirrors going on.

I settle in and stay focused.  Then my cell phone rings and because my husband is clearly the caller, I answer it. Haphazardly, I run my free hand through my hair.   SERIOUSLY? My hair is STILL wet…and kind of heavy, like it’s coated with something.

Okay, back to my husband.  He’s asking me if I’ve checked my emails, because I need to ‘electronically sign’ the counter offer we are about to submit to the purchase offer we received late yesterday afternoon on our very recently listed home (for background, read my blog post titled ‘Time To Turn The Bend’: https://lifeandotherturbulence.com/2013/02/).

Stupid me for answering my phone…because the whole reason I lost sleep last night is now back to front and center.  And, this unfortunately ruins my brain haze that had miraculously managed to cloud out the highly charged emotion that overcame me last evening, as we both pored through the 11 pages of an offer that was….well… NOT OKAY.

I know what you’re thinking now…we must have listed too high, right?  Absolutely not.  Our listing agent insisted she bring in 5 other ‘high visibility luxury property specialists’ to give their opinion on a ‘list/sale’ price (not that this is a luxury property, but it is a unique property for sure).  We agreed.

Then we took the average of the 5 ‘list price’ suggestions, and put our property on the market just BELOW that average, in hopes of garnering multiple offers, given that the real estate market here is hot right now.  It’s a sellers market.  There’s loads of buyers, and minimal inventory. This property really is unique. It’s an anomaly, and has huge potential to investors who want income from the cottage, or homeowners who want their parents or college grads living on the property but not under-foot.

So, was it a full price offer?  NO.

Was it close to full price?  NO.

It was 10% lower than our list price…  TEN PERCENT!  That’s not a solid offer, that’s a bargain hunter sniffing around to see if the sellers just fell off the turnip truck.

You may be thinking an offer at 10% below asking doesn’t sound too awful…but I’m telling you: our property, which includes a main house and a cottage, is in MINT condition. This home has character and charm going back to 1918.   Everything has been done and redone. Beautiful landscaping, new roof, new furnaces, new hot water heaters, new windows, gorgeous hardwood flooring, remodeled bathrooms, remodeled kitchens, new appliances, and the list goes on.

AND, in addition to wanting a bargain price, these people, these greedy arrogant house-stealing buyers, want everything I explicitly stated was not to be included in the sale.  This includes all the furnishings inside our gorgeous fully furnished, fully equipped 2 bedroom, 1 bath cottage, which commands enough rent to pay our mortgage each month.

And, no it doesn’t stop there!  They ‘offered’ to allow us to rent the main house back for 60 days (SIXTY DAYS?  Who finds a new home in just 60 days?!) at the mere cost of their new house payment upon closing, which we calculate will be over $6000 per MONTH, based on their mortgage pre-approval letter.

SERIOUSLY?  AND…wait!  There’s more! They want us to pay to have both the cottage and the main house professionally cleaned after we move out.  Did you say Professionally Cleaned?  Ummm, no.  You purchase the home, you Professionally Clean.  I’ll vacuum, dust, Windex and mop.  That’s as far as I go.

Upon receiving that call from our listing agent (“Congratulations!  Just 12 days on the market and you’ve got an offer!”) I listened to her Cliff Notes version of the offer she was emailing our way. I became livid.  They’re offering just 90% of list price?  They want everything I explicitly said was NOT included?  Well, here’s my Cliff Notes response to that:  I DON’T THINK SO!

This is where you have to just imagine me stomping around the house, wide eyed and smoking mad.  Talking to myself, lecturing THEM, ranting and raving like a lunatic.  My poor and wonderful husband, who I love and adore, knew better than to try to appease me.  He let me have my melt down.  He let me carry on like a kid having their first full-blown teenage tantrum.  I became Italian, waving my hands wildly as I raged on.

And, then the email with contract in tow appeared in my in-box, and moments later the follow-up phone call from our listing agent once again, wanting to go over the full blown offer, line item by line item.

“You talk to her”, I whispered to my husband.  Relieved, he was more than happy to keep me out of it.  Until he wasn’t, and then he put her on speaker phone so I could listen in.  She advised us to write up a counter-offer, meet them somewhere in the middle.  Are you kidding me?!  Have they been anointed recently?!

Hell NO.  So, she tried again.  “You have to counter this offer,” she said.  “Otherwise they’ll think you aren’t motivated sellers.”  I wanted to scream:  Motivated sellers? Where the hell is the fire?

Frustrated, I turned on the television and turned off my ears.  The Bachelor.  Sean is proposing to Catherine.  I’m visually taking it in, while internally seething as I think back to just a month or so ago, when we ambled around to the decision to move.  This is a lot of property and there is just the two of us most of the time.  Well, the two of us, the loyal pupster, and our youngest of 3, who is living a life I like to daydream about…ski instructor half the year, sailing adventures the other half.  Don’t get me wrong, she works crazy hard and long hours all year round.  And mostly she’s not under our roof while she’s doing it.  I miss her, and maybe that’s the reason downsizing appeals now.  Her tidied room remains too neat.  It’s a reminder that she’s not here.

We only listed in the first place because we thought this might be a good time to size down while it was a sellers market.  We were told ‘This IS the time…interest rates are low, buyers are plentiful, it’s a feeding frenzy out there on any home in decent shape and your house is showcase ready…well, it will be after it’s staged, which is a cost to YOU, by the way.’

So, we went ahead and packed up most of our household goods, put it all into storage out in our garage, and let the professional stagers come in to work their magic.  The result? It looks transformed, spacious and wonderful.  It’s not reality living, it’s stage living.  There is no comfortable seat in the house.  I envy the dog, who just sleeps in a ball on the carpet.

….wait.  Hold on a sec.  Where was I?  OH!  I was still at work this afternoon, answering my cell while running my free hand through my hair.  MY HAIR…what in the hell is IN my hair?   And that’s when it dawns on me.  Shampoo…that’s what’s in my hair…it’s shampoo, doofus.

While I was bleary eyed in that early morning shower, I was still seething, thinking about what I wanted to write in a fire-missive email to those greedy, arrogant, house-stealing buyers.  And while I was picturing it all in my mind, I lathered, rinsed, shampooed, rinsed and shampooed again…then stood in that steaming hot shower letting my imagination run rampant, until the water turned cold.  About 25 minutes later.  I stepped out, toweled off, combed my sopping wet hair, got dressed and marched onward.  Just me and my shampoo-head.  Out into the foggy day.

The good news?  My hair should just lather right up the minute I step into my next shower…which is moments away.  The bad news?  I’ll be thinking about that old adage:  The first offer is usually the best.

Looks like there’s going to be a lot of bad hair days ahead…

 

 

03/07/2013

Searching for the Happiness

It’s rather unusual for me to have the time to actually pay attention to the notices I get from LinkedIn with regards to the various ‘groups’ I’ve joined there.  But, today I’m home earlier than expected. With a cup of tea by my side, I decided to peruse one of those emails which reports recent discussion activity on the LinkedIn group for Aspiring Writers.  Interestingly enough, Wendy from Michigan has offered a free blog critique for anyone interested to link her personal blog, called ‘Searching for Happiness’ to their site.  Now, it may seem somewhat odd that I would care what a random person truly thinks about my blog, but in reviewing hers, she comes across as someone I would enjoy getting acquainted with, who happens to be blogging about her own personal experiences in life, and would like to share what she’s learned along the way with others. And, besides, she has 3 children.  I have 3 children.  She has 4 pets.  I have, well I have just one pet…at the moment.  But I’ve had several MORE pets in the past.  I suspect we have a whole bunch in common …and look forward to finding out.  You can too, if you want to see what she’s up to.   Just click here:   http://searchingforthehappiness.wordpress.com

P.S.  I can tell you already, she’s way cooler than I am.  She tweets, she posts on LinkedIn, and she’s won blog awards.  She has a ‘following’.  I’m not sure I even aspire to have a ‘following’.  Doesn’t that suggest ‘expectations’ laid upon you by your followers?  I don’t want anyone else’s expectations laid upon me.  I only write because I like to, and I don’t want to write to an audience, but I do want to write for any followers that like to follow along.  Like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, I cover a lot of territory.  And, what I choose to write about has no preconceived agenda.  It’s just who I am, where I’ve been and what’s on my mind.

03/01/2013

There’s nothing more irritating than when someone YOU BARELY KNOW wrongly calls you out!

I ran into a friend at Trader Joe’s this afternoon who was telling me about an issue with a crotchety old neighbor that was unwilling to accept an apology she’d offered over something she wasn’t even convinced was her doing.  As I listened, I recognized something familiar; that unfounded sense of shame that comes from being chastised by someone you barely know.   Which led me to think about an essay I wrote a several years ago, relaying a situation which had left me stewing for weeks (until I finally sat down and vented to my computer screen).

Not that this will brighten your day in any way: ‘When I’m Sorry Doesn’t Resonate’ is the essay that resulted, and I’ve uploaded it here:  https://lifeandotherturbulence.com/when-im-sorry-doesnt-resonate/