Wednesday, February 23, 2011

I've lived at the beach house for over 32 years. Richard and I bought it. Then He died. I made all the mortgage payments...sometimes out of unemployment compensation. I sacrificed to stay afloat...something many people are doing now in the light of all the housing foreclosures. I lived bare bones...no holidays, cut my own hair, no movies, no cable, heat turned down to so cold I wore my coat in the house. Many people can relate to living this way. One does what one has to do to make mortgage payments. As a result, I am proud of this house, proud of paying all the mortgage payments...not late once. I am now in a good position: no debt at all, no car payments, no mortgage payments. I don't even pay interest on credit cards. I am a little smug about this.
So, this house is important to me. I want to keep it in good shape, as it was well designed to start with and has a good location, location, location. The house faces the water. The builder must have run out of money as the project progressed, because He put in cheap utility grade windows and patio doors.
The house needs good windows and doors. Over time, I've replaced the windows with Owens Corning fiberglass windows. My parameter was to address exposure to water, rust, rot and insect damage. I think I chose the right windows. They are expensive, but work very well.
The patio doors had to wait until I had the money and found the right contractor. My friend Carol used Ted for her addition. He is a designer as well as a meticulous craftsman. I will hire Ted. Now, what type of patio doors do I want? I went through the home stores and window stores. My ideas began to gel. I want doors that are clad on the outside so they are weatherproof. I don't want to look through screens. I chose roll up screens. I like the idea of blinds between glass. This gives privacy if needed, a clear view if that is chosen, or some combination. The blinds between glass makes it easier to keep them clean...and prevents dog paws from getting at the blinds. Final choice was Pella patio doors. There are THREE layers of glass with this type of door.
Before the doors went in, I had a structural engineer look at the house. There is a problem with the slab in the basement. There are crack lines in the Sheetrock. The engineer did a survey and said the reason is that the house is settling at 2 rates: The center of the house is 2 stories high. The front and back are one story high. The extra weight in the center section is the cause of the crack. There is essentially no construction flaw. On that good news, I went ahead with the project. The doors are in. I am finishing the inside of the wood doors with tung oil...a slow and laborious process, but the end result will be worth it.

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My neighbor, Butch, suffered damage when the tree fell. See previous blog entry. I had submitted bills to the city for the damage done to my property. Butch did not. I felt the city was responsible , as there were two previous warnings to the city that there was something wrong with that old tree. My claim was denied. I filed in small claims court.
Butch came with me to testify if needed. I was astounded at so many people that came from the city. There were two attorneys, the claims clerk and the city's tree warden. How much salary times the time spent in court is this costing the city? and by extension, the taxpayer? My claim was for under $2,000. Surely the wasted salary sitting there was much more.
In the end, I won. I got the cost of filing back and the cost of replacing the weather vane that the city destroyed when it pulled branches off the roof of the garage. I forgot to mention the pear tree they pulled up. I was not reimbursed for the rest....which was a considerable expense to the garage and lawn. The judge ruled the tree falling was an act of nature...ignoring the two warnings.... I did not submit bills for the sidewalk, as I know that maintaining the sidewalk is the home owner's responsibility. Add this experience to my experience with courts in New Jersey and Connecticut for my mother's care. The result is that I have lost confidence in the system, especially attorneys who seem to have sold their soul for money. That's another story. At least Butch saves the cost of filing by watching my experience.

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So much has happened . I was so busy I did not record any events. This blog is a "catch up" on family news.

Last summer, my sister in law died. She was a life long smoker. She developed emphysema and lived the last years of her life connected to a machine. Carol and Phil moved out of Buffalo ...to Kentucky where her son lived. She needed to be closer to family for the care she needed.. I got the call from her daughter in law that Carol died of a heart attack. I felt sad for all that We had missed. There was no socializing between us. We were very different people and lived in different parts of the country. Carol was the most beautiful person I've ever seen. She looked like Elizabeth Taylor...only more beautiful. All her beauty was lost to cigarettes.
I can't figure out the person she was. She never learned to drive. How does one function like that in a civilization based on roads and cars? Perhaps she used her own mother as a model. Her mom never learned to drive either, but that was in an earlier generation when people could walk to where they wanted to go...or take the bus.
Carol never held a job . She didn't graduate from high school, but got her GED later. She never did volunteer work that I know of. She spent her days in front of the television, watching CVS and buying clothes from the program....and smoking.
I am tempted to write that her life was useless, but that isn't true. She was deeply loved by her husband and her family. Her family was everything to her. She raised two very successful children...a son and a daughter...my niece and my nephew...both with graduate degrees, good emotional and physical health and contributing to our society. She was an artist and a gourmet cook. Her husband loved her very much and was devoted to her, even in the last difficult days of her illness..
Her mother, my mother in law was a stay at home mother. She was superstitious about writing a will. She put it off, reasoning that if she did write one, she would die. But reasonable persons convinced her that since she had property and some assets, she needed to write her will. She finally did so. She got the call from the attorney that it was ready to be signed. She died a day before signing the will. That ment that her assets were divided according to the laws of the state and not according to her wishes as stated in her will.
Carol was the executrix of the estate. Carol told me that she gets half the estate and the other half goes to Richard's heirs...her brother's children...my daughters. I get nothing. That was OK with me. I understand the rules. Carol told me that her mother's will gave something to her children.my niece and nephew. The new system does not. Carol called to ask me to convince me to get my daughters to turn over their half of the estate to her children...as Oley wanted that. I was stunned. I could not convince my sister in law, that her own children will inherit from her...if she conserves the assets. I asked her to contact her nieces directly, as I was out of the loop. She did not speak to me again from that day forward to the day she died.....not a post card or a Christmas letter. Go figure. I guess I do not know as much about being human as I thought I did. Her daughter in law stayed in contact with me...bless her...so I kept up with the Kentucky branch of the family. Last fall, there was a memorial service for Carol in Buffalo. It was a long delayed reunion and wonderful to see how the children had grown up into successful people. There are new grandchildren and in laws. The clan has grown. My daughter and her husband and I went to that memorial service. There were pictures of my sister in law as she was...in good health and as beautiful as ever. My feelings were Carol's life didn't accomplish anything. But I am wrong. ..and I am not her judge.

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