31 March 2012

As mentioned previously




Time flies

Still moving forward: more stuff brought to storage, more stuff put in garbage bags in advance of a dumpster arriving, will call a local charity that serves homeless women and children on Monday when the guy there that deals with donations is back in his office to arrange pick-up of furniture and housewares I'm not keeping.  I'm not working as diligently or fast as I might be, but stuff is actually getting done in spite of it all.

I was at a lovely wedding in St. Louis last weekend, and with the frighteningly early spring weather we've been having (well, I find it frightening - nice, but wrong, and I fully expect whatever neighborhood I move to in NY to be under water soon after I arrive), there were cherry blossoms in bloom as I walked around and checked out what seems to be a nice city.  On the other hand, the wedding did make me feel old, as will the wedding of the groom's brother in May: when I first met them, they were closer to this age (although this video was shot about five or six years before I first saw them).  The smaller of the two got married last weekend:


(Reminder: that's Jerry on the left in the front seated row they're facing.  Six years before I met him, too.)

OK... back to sorting, tossing, packing.  I know I'm going to look back on all this in a few months and be amazed it got done.

22 March 2012

The Most Important Product

Jerry liked to quote the old GE line "Progress is our most important product" (as always with Jerry, it was with a large dose of humor that he said it).  Well, more of the product was churned out yesterday.  Two trips over to the storage unit with more books, furniture, even the large Cerwin-Vega speakers I bought in 1986 (just in time to leave them behind for years at my parents' house as I moved first to Minnesota and then to the Soviet Union): I wasn't going to keep them, in this age of much more portable mini-speakers, but Steve convinced me they're "classic," and since they still work, I relented.  Steve is in the enviable, and probably also unenviable, position of having been friends and worked with Jerry: enviable because he was friends with Jerry and that was a fabulous thing to be, as I'm sure all his friends would say; unenviable because I probably talk even more about Jerry with people who knew him, and I'm sure people get tired of hearing all my Jerry stories.  But Steve has been and continues to be so incredibly kind in helping me with the house: I didn't actually know him except to say hi before Jerry died, but I hired him and his company to take care of house repairs and eventually he started doing favors - lots and lots of favors - and refusing to let me pay for most if not all of them, except for materials or if the work was done by an outside contractor.  So grateful, so thankful... so guilty-feeling, of course.

I've packed up a box of books I've sold online to Powell's and will bring it over to the post office today (if you have books you don't want, I recommend them: they pay postage for books they've accepted, and you get store credit with them in return - not a lot, of course, but it's easier and faster than dealing with eBay, for which I don't have the patience right now); other books I'll take to the library for their book sales.  Still lots and lots of stuff to go through.  This weekend I'm attending a wedding in St. Louis, but next week when I get back Steve will arrange to have a dumpster brought to the house, and a lot more will be cleared out.  He also told me that Habitat for Humanity recycles electronics, which I didn't know, so I'll see what needs to go there, too.

I realized something last night.  I was showing Steve the horizontal fir paneling in the bedroom as we were moving out a pine dresser that Jerry made... and I was telling him that the paneling was made from skids that had been piled in the shop, and that I had stained them with a pale white stain that just lightened them and also lacquered them... and it suddenly hit me that while I keep saying I'll be so sorry to leave behind all this gorgeous woodwork that Jerry did, it's also woodwork that I did.  He sprayed the dye stains on the maple paneling in the living room and the maple cabinetry in the living room and kitchen, but I did the power sanding before that and the lacquering and the hand sanding and the second coat of lacquer, I sanded and stained and lacquered the paneling in the bedroom, I sanded and lacquered the parts of the pine dresser.  I don't know why all of that hadn't entered my mind before, but the fact is, I can say with confidence that I'll never again live in a place where I've been involved in actually creating some of the furniture.  Well, I will: I've got pieces I'm taking with me that we - we - made.  But it's not just that it was Jerry's design and creativity and craftsmanship and talent: it was our collaboration, our work together.

20 March 2012

The Redhead

To Anonymous: This is my boyfriend.



The one who's sitting, that is.  Someone on Facebook said she didn't know I liked redheads.  (I've noticed there seem to be a lot of women expressing love online for the Chicago Bulls mascot - I wonder if that's unique to him, and I have to say the other NBA mascots seem like a weak lot.)  Basically he wanders around Bulls home games creating mayhem and acting sort of like a three-year-old or Harpo Marx, which is the same thing I guess, and that's not usually the style of humor I go for, but I just love watching him.



So that's my boyfriend!  In the real world - nah.  For a while there I thought it would be nice to meet someone, but recently I haven't felt that - I just haven't cared: I'm going to go back to my favorite topic and say I would guess Zoloft is having something to do with that too.  Which is just fine with me.  Other things to worry about, other things to do.  For example: today I empty out various chests and stands that I want to take with me to New York and tomorrow Steve plans to come help me move them into the storage unit - as the clearing out continues.  Yesterday I brought something like 10 boxes of books to storage, and can now say I see the charms of a Kindle more clearly.

18 March 2012

Green Hat

Benny wasn't doing pictures at the Bulls Market at halftime yesterday, so instead of me with my boyfriend, you get me in the green hat they were giving away at the game.  Bulls beat the Sixers 89-80 after spending the first half making me think they were going to lose my second live game in a row.  D-Rose sat.  Of course.  But it was still fun to be there, as usual.  A much better way to spend my St. Patrick's Day than sitting around being sad would have been, for sure.

Must work on the house today.  Don't wanna.

17 March 2012

March 17th, again

12 years ago today, Jerry and I put rings on each other's fingers and repeated words in front of a judge in the Kane County Courthouse, the only other person present a lawyer sitting in the back of the room going over papers, and lived happily ever after.  Well, not "ever."  But for sure on the "happily."  It just all ended way, way, way too soon.  To state the extremely obvious.

Storage unit: rented.  Three small carloads (small car, small loads) delivered to storage unit.  Steve on the case.  House in more disarray than before as I go through things and make piles (give away, sell, throw out, recycle, keep).  All of this done in a state of disconnection, to some extent, and with no crying.  Cheers to Zoloft.

Tonight: Benny. Bulls. D-Rose?  Probably not.  Meaning I'll be 0-for-3 seeing the MVP live this season.    Ah well, still, will be fun.  Might see how silly a grown-ass woman looks standing on line to get her picture taken with a man in a furry red bull costume.  Maybe.

(Comment: I keep mentioning Zoloft in every post.  It's because I'm just stunned at how different I feel compared with a month ago.  It's not that I'm really happy, it's that I'm not hugely miserable.  I'll take it.)

11 March 2012

Moving forward

The real estate agent, Sherry, thought the house was "adorable," but because of the horrible housing market and the number of foreclosures and short sales, it's going to be offered at something less than what we paid for it in 2000, when it was butt-ugly, before Jerry made it beautiful.  Which makes me furious and sad, but there's nothing to be done, and, as so many people have said to me, the important thing is to move forward with my life, and selling the house has to be part of that process.  Assuming it is going to sell.

Sherry also wants 90% of what's in the house out of it before it's shown.  Yikes.  This will mean getting a storage unit, since she wants a minimalist look that includes removing most of the furniture.  This will mean getting rid of stuff, which right now seems to me logistically impossible - how do you get rid of stuff?  I'm hesitant to list things on Craigslist or Freecycle because it means having people come to the house to pick it up, and I'm nervous about doing that with me being on my own.  Anyway, I'm sure I'll figure it out.  My old buddy Steve the Contractor is coming over tomorrow, and I'll ask him about the three things Sherry specifically wants done: deal with the mold in the basement, fill some holes in the private dirt road the house is on (she says realtors might not want to show it if their cars are going to sink into potholes... I guess that's a fair point!), and paint a corner of the house exterior where there was a leak before I had a dormer repaired last year and the paint is peeling.

Yesterday I got some cardboard boxes and bubble wrap at a Home Depot ("the Despot," Jerry called it). There was a strong wind blowing as I wheeled them in a shopping cart across the parking lot to my car, and, despite my best efforts to hold on, three or four of the flattened boxes took off and flew over several parking rows.  I wonder if anyone was watching as I ran here and there to retrieve them and wrestle them against the wind back to my car.  Highly entertaining, I'm sure.  If I show up on America's Funniest Home Videos, do let me know.

Today I spent 2 1/2 hours going through boxes and drawers and shelves in the bedroom Jerry used as an office.  Lots of paper.  Lots of paper there was no reason to keep in the first place, Sweetie - you never were very good at throwing things out.  Some I kept, though: some copies of our homemade wedding announcement (a photo of us on the front, inside a photo of our marriage certificate and the phrase "What we did on St. Patrick's Day..."), the stub from Jerry's ticket on Aer Lingus when we had our three-years-later honeymoon trip to Ireland, a slip of paper on which he'd written, in his tiny tiny little handwriting, my New York address and phone number, back when we'd first met.  I suppose the fact that I didn't cry at all, that I haven't cried in days now, is thanks to the Zoloft: I feel mostly kind of tired and numb rather than despondent, which I suppose is useful in getting things done.  Especially since we're (sort of?) aiming to get the house on the market before I leave for my next trip to NY on April 18.  Again... yikes.

Anyway.  What would have been our 12th wedding anniversary is coming up on Saturday.  I'm going to spend it with 20,000 of my closest friends (I may have used this line already), many of whom will no doubt be the better or the worse for St. Patrick's Day celebrating, watching my Bulls take on the 76ers and my boyfriend Benny the Bull being his big red furry self.

05 March 2012

Deep breaths

I just spoke to a real estate agent.  She'll be here on Wednesday to look at the house... the first step.

(Good thing I'm taking Zoloft.)

01 March 2012

Things I've Learned Lately

Thing 1: NY is home.  Just returned from a week there, and that old feeling I always got when Jerry and I were there, of not wanting to leave it, was in full force.  A good sign.  A very good sign, and I had no idea going in whether or not it would be there.  It was.

Thing 2: If you miss a morning Southwest flight to LaGuardia, the next one isn't for another five hours.

Thing 3: I can actually afford an apartment there... it just depends on which part of there I look at.  My old haunt, the Upper West Side?  Not so much.  Sunnyside, one of my ancestral homelands?  Yes indeedy, and Sunnyside turns out to be a neighborhood I can see myself living in.  It beat out Washington Heights (the other one I looked at in the past week) - the Heights were nice, and I thought that would work until my father and I went to his old neighborhood in Queens, which just seemed more alive, more diverse, more like a place I could call home.

Thing 3: My legs still work.  I walked more in the past week than I have in the past two years, and it felt really good.

Thing 4: The Zoloft might be working.  I've felt far less despondent in recent days than I had been feeling.  Zoloft + NYC?  Zoloft + a major decision really made now?

Thing 5: I'm still feeling totally overwhelmed by all that I have to do, all those minor things like getting the home I shared with Jerry onto the market, packing up and moving halfway across the country, finding a place in NY and going through that entire fun process, oh, and finding a job.  And doing those things in the proper order.

Thing 6: I'd better be able to get local coverage of Bulls games once I'm in NY.  Can't do without Neil and Stacey.

Anyway... I'm planning to return to NY in April for apartment-hunting.