Moving On

This has been a whirlwind week. After touring scores of homes this summer--and bidding on two that we didn't get--we snagged one in under 24 hours. My head is still spinning.

On Monday, while a specialist was scanning my corneas, Mr. W was on his phone scanning the homes for sale in our desirable zipcodes. He drove me to the appointment thinking that my eyes would be dilated for the exam, which would have blinded me for hours afterward. As it turned out, dilation was not necessary and the female Doogie Howser cornea specialist diagnosed the tiny nodes on the edges of my corneas as the result of aging. Chalk up one more annoying condition to Father Time!

When I returned to the waiting room with that news, Mr. W was waving his phone. 

"Do you want to see our next house?" he asked excitedly. 

This sounded very ominous to me. We had disagreed on--I mean "seen"--so many homes, there was no telling what was waiting for me on that screen...

Well, it was a large ranch home with a good amount of e-curb appeal, listed just minutes earlier. It was located in our most southern target zipcode. He saw it before the interior pictures were posted and had already texted our Doogie Howser real estate agent, Tim, about scheduling a showing.

Moments later, when Tim texted him back, the interior pictures were miraculously available. Tim said he could schedule a showing and meet us at the house within an hour! The interior pictures were acceptable. At 21 years-old the place needs updating. On the positive side, it has a good floor plan, spacious rooms, a great back yard, a somewhat oversized garage, and a lot of potential. 

Thus, we were the first buyers to tour the house. The subdivision is off a major artery at a traffic light, so that was good, especially since the house is on one of the back streets. The houses are very nice and well-kept. Many huge (in my opinion) ones and many with three-car garages. This was a good sign as most of the subdivisions in our target area were in the 50-year-old range and were not wearing their age well. It was shocking to see such run-down, tattered, outdated properties that fetched ridiculous (in my opinion) prices. The main thing they had going for them was being located in the most popular areas of the county.  

Anyway, long story short, we liked the property. Our agent gathered some intell from the seller's agent that helped us come up with a mildly generous offer, and it was accepted by 10:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning. I was walking the dog when Tim called with this news. It took a while to wrap my brain around this. 

I forgot to mention previously that it cuts the distance to Dan's house in half. I would have liked to have gotten a little closer, but feel fortunate we "won" this one. According to the seller's agent, there were two other offers in progress and the showing schedule was crammed full, yet the seller decided to accept our offer. 

With Dan and Carlene having the baby in February, we should be somewhat settled in and ready to care for our-grand daughter one day a week, as requested. It is going to be very difficult for me to leave our present house and certain neighbors, but that's the only way we can move on... 

  

Farewell to Trixie and the Bob-Whites of the Glen

Earlier in the week, I dropped a box of books to be shipped from our local post office to a wonderful woman who lives in Louisville, Kentucky. The books were numbers one through 37 of the Trixie Belden teenage detective series written in the late 1940's through the mid-1980's. Trixie, her two older brothers, and four friends formed a club that they named "The Bob-Whites of the Glen." They lived in the Hudson River Valley in New York and had many adventures as tomboy Trixie was always leading them down the trail of a mystery.

I can remember the day my mom brought home book #2, The Red Trailer Mystery, for me from the grocery store. In the fourth grade, I was an advanced reader. And, yes, back in that ancient era, before B. Dalton, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon there was actually an aisle of books and magazines in the larger grocery stores. 

Why book #2 and not book #1?  I don't know; supply chain shortage? I read book #2 in one day and was hungry for another one. The characters and their activities were so interesting. The Belden family lived in a cozy old house on a bucolic small farm. Trixie's bestie, Honey Wheeler, lived a short distance away on Glen Road in the Manor House mansion with stables, horses, and a staff of servants, including a governess, a maid, a chauffeur, a gamekeeper, and a groom for the horses. Neither lifestyle was like my family's: six people and a large dog squashed into a two-bedroom, one bathroom apartment on the bus line in the city.   

The Wheeler's gamekeeper patrolled their immense wooded property on horseback to make sure poachers were not hunting on their land. Wow! On our cramped city block, we called the men who patrolled the area "officers." 

The Bob-Whites were upstanding young citizens, always respectful and supportive of each other and to others. They had good parents and adult role models. They worked together to help people in need and to benefit good causes. And they were all on a path to go to college with ambitions for their future. There was no smoking or swearing. "Gleeps" was the strongest word of surprise or regret in their lexicon. 

It wasn't long before I had the 15 Trixies that were initially available. Along with being so fun to read, they were beautifully illustrated with a detailed color picture in nearly every chapter. The Bob-White's solved intriguing mysteries throughout the Hudson River Valley, in New York City, in Arizona, Iowa, Missouri, Virginia, and a fake island likely near the Hamptons. The key to being able to travel was that Honey's dad was a millionaire business man (if you haven't already guessed that) and the father of the third female friend, Diana, was also a millionaire. 

Today, "millionaire" would not be that big of a deal, but it was back then, prior to Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos. 

I had a friend at school, Mimi McGuire, who was also consumed with Trixie and the Bob-Whites. She pretended to be Trixie and I was Honey. It's embarrassing to admit this, but I actually cross-stitched BWG in red on two patches of white material, because the Bob-Whites had jackets that Honey made and cross-stitched similarly. (Sewing was one of her many talents.) Mimi and I had matching blue sweaters to which we attached our patches. Then, for fifth grade, Mimi's mom moved her to a school for gifted kids and I never saw her again. I went from being the daughter of a fictional millionaire to being a friendless geek.....

There was a gap of time between the original fifteen books and numbers 16 through 39. I was about 16 and hanging out at the mall when I spotted #16 at B, Dalton. I had to have it, and then I would stop in regularly to see if there were more. Eventually, I accumulated the next 20 and thought that #37 was the last one. It wasn't until I did some sleuthing of my own--checking Ebay thirty years later to determine if my collection had any value--that I learned there was a book #38 and #39. Of course, those are the rare ones that are worth a couple of hundred bucks!

Also, due to the internet, about twenty years ago I learned there is an on-line Trixie fan universe in which scores of Trixie aficionados, many of them fan fiction writers, communicate and share stories. There is a central site that is organized and maintained by several super-fans who also organize an annual Trixie camp for those who would like to meet and reminisce in person at a luxury hotel.

Fast-forwarding to current times, as I will soon be 65 years-old, I do not need an obsolete nearly-complete set of dog-eared teenage detective books from my childhood. My Trixies had been surviving in a corrugated cardboard box in a closet for over 30 years, with me not having the heart to get rid of them. But with each of tick of the clock, I realized that they were a second closer to being thrown in a dumpster by my husband or son, whoever would survive me. 

That's how the wonderful woman in Louisville, Kentucky, enters this story. I posted the set of 37 books on Facebook Marketplace for $50, which was to include the postage to ship them. I was hoping someone who truly appreciated Trixie would give them all a good home. After 13 weeks, the right person stepped forward and--I'd like to say--adopted my Trixies. We chatted back and forth before the transaction actually occurred. Her mom is an original Trixie fan who introduced her to Trixie and the Bob-Whites. She has even attended Trixie camp with her mom! She said she only had a few books of her own, so that's why she was interested in my collection. 

In my posting, I was truthful about the condition of the books: several broken spines, major page yellowing, scribbling on the inside cover pages, etc. In particular, I pre-apologized to her about the childish scrawls in some of the books. She responded that the scrawls would make her like them more.

Gleeps! Could I have found a better person to be a steward of my adolescence?  Makes me want to tweet the Bob-White whistle for joy. 

Bye, bye, Bob-Whites....

Wryly Wreturns

Testing one, two, three... Testing one, two, three...

One was: can I sign on after nearly a year?  Seems so.

Two was:  can I still type on a keyboard? Somewhat.

Three was:  do I have anything to say?  Hard to say, and I mean that in the most really sense.

My wrytirement has been a bit rocky. Some health hits and misses for me. I now see more doctors than I did in the 63.5 years of pre-retirement life. The big Medicare supplement decision I must make in the next two months is looming over me like a black cloud. 

My mom died a miserable, lingering death shortly before Christmas. That followed a move from assisted living to a full-care nursing home and a year of going in and out of the hospital for various ailments. The only positive about the whole ordeal was that she was fairly unaware of her condition and surroundings. Alzheimer's is a terrible, heart-breaking disease.  

Mr. W and I have been searching for the ranch home of his dreams with no luck, just lots of in-fighting. This house must have a three-car garage, a generously oversized garage, or must be arranged such that a garage addition can be built as he needs accessible space for yard equipment, a variety of machines and tools, and, most importantly, a golf simulator. He retired three months ago, purposefully hanging on until the spring when he could golf when he was not at the driving range hitting golf balls, lurking in the aisles of Lowes, or slurping soda while burning money on lottery tickets at Quik Trip. A golf simulator will keep the golf going in the cold months. 

While I'm glad and grateful when he is out of the house and on the greens, the acute attraction to a game that boils down to hitting a ball with a stick into a hole in the ground baffles me. Obviously, I'm in the minority on this as golfing is a multi-trillion dollar industry supported by Saudi Arabia...based on the ability to hit a ball with a stick into a hole in the ground. 

I get some say-so about the new house, too. It needs to be closer to the home of our son and his wife. Currently, we live about 35 minutes away, and I would like to cut that in half. They don't have children yet, but I am hopeful they will and that they will need a battered old retiree to help them out once in a while. Unfortunately, the housing stock in the geographic areas that meet this requirement is on the older side and garages didn't need to be huge in the 1970's, because SUVs and not-so-mini vans had not been invented yet. 

Also, I would like a house with a nice kitchen that has an island or peninsula that is also a breakfast bar. We have that now and I don't know how I could do without one, which I understand sounds a little dramatic when talking about a wooden box with a countertop overhang. Equally as important, I want a window above the kitchen sink that overlooks a nice yard. Mr. W is still stinging over a house I rejected because the kitchen was buried in the middle of the square footage and the cabinets, floor, and walls were brown. It would have been like working in a jail, not that I have ever done that. 

This housing market is so crazy and competitive. We have been on numerous wild goose chases, one particularly this past weekend. Maybe I will write about it the next time I log in. I gave the best years of my eyes to the office, and now they bother me if I stare at a screen for too long. 

Adios.