Day 145, actual parking and stuff

Friday, 4/26/2019

Went for a run, fine. Killed some items from the every-growing to-do list, starting with reviewing the draft documents that lawyer Nancy sent. One of the documents is a complete rewrite of the “Cortesi Family Trust” which will now be named the “David Cortesi Survivor Trust”. The change of name, I suspect, will mean that I have to get my three Schwab Accounts, my bank account, and who knows what else, changed, because their nominal “owner” has changed name. We meet next Wednesday and do a whole lot of paperwork.

Second item was to arrange to get rid of a mattress. Back-story: when we first got our McCrosky mattress, Marian wasn’t happy with it. We added a padded mattress cover. Still not right. Noting that the foam mattress in the RV was just to her taste, we went to the foam store in Palo Alto — does that still exist? yup, Tallman’s House of Foam on Hamilton is still a thing — and bought a 3-inch thick queen-size piece. That, on top of the McCrosky and under the padded cover, was just right.

So now, I have after extensive dithering, decided to take the bed with me to CH. It’s a pretty piece of furniture and it’s here, no shopping needed. I don’t really need a queen size, but there’s plenty of room. But… somehow I felt I didn’t want to transport that foam sheet. I don’t need it; the basic McCrosky is fine by me. And it looks hokey. So, when I changed the bed linen last, I pulled it off.

Well, that left me with this very unwieldy, 3-inch thick queen-size piece of foam that weighs about 20 pounds and is very awkward to carry; it really wants to flatten out from any rolled or folded position. And it won’t fit a trash can. And it looks like shit leaning up against the wall of the house. So I went on Yelp and they have this marvelous way of getting quotes from multiple vendors, and quickly had a bid from JunkX to come and pick it up Saturday between 3 and 4.

Glowing with accomplishment I collected the new padlock for my storage unit, and a suitcase and my toolbox to store in said unit, and drove to CH. Parked in front, went in, picked up the magic sensor for the driveway, and drove around to the garage entry. The gates responded to my sensor and I went in and parked in my new stall. Schlepped the tool box and the suitcase through the winding corridors between the new building, where I park, to the basement of the old building, and to the Residents’ Storage section.

Used a tool from the box to cut the zip-tie on my storage cage, put the stuff in, and applied the new padlock. I had intended to eat lunch at CH but forgot all about that plan and just reversed my path to the house.

In the afternoon I went to a Stanford Baseball game. They weren’t doing well, committing four errors in the first five innings; I got bored and went home and caught up on some TV. Although I’ve been so busy, evenings, that I’m way behind my DVR.

Day 143, parking, filing, house ad, fopal

Wednesday, 4/24/2019

Opened the day with a run. Then I was about to set to work organizing files when I remembered getting an email yesterday evening about parking at CH. Checked the email, it was from a staff member named Payal, saying to call her to look over available spots. Oh! There are available spots? I called, she was at her desk, and we arranged to meet at 10am, it then being 9:40. She said, good, she had another person to show around at 10am also.

I zipped over to CH and said to the desk person I was there to see Payal. Desk person picked up the phone and called and said, “Mr. Cortesi is here to see you…” She knew my name! This is kind of neat.

Payal is a tall, 30-something woman with a pleasant manner (like every other staff member I’ve met). The other person looking for a parking space turned out to be Tammy, a diminutive Japanese(?) lady who like me is just moving in, to the third floor in her case. Together we descended to the garage to look at available spaces. After reviewing several, Tammy settled on one, asked my opinion on it, I concurred it was a good one. It’s just on the right of a pillar, and I pointed out she would always have room to open her door, nobody could get close on the left.

After Tammy left, I explained to Payal how I really want a spot within a few feet of an electrical outlet so I can keep the car charged. I would just hate to go back to driving a “normal” Prius, getting the ordinary 50mpg and toting around 100 lbs. of batteries I don’t use. So we looked at the available spots in this, the Tower garage (under the main building), and there was one that would do. However there is also the option of the Lee garage, under the new skilled nursing annex. OK, let’s look at those.

It’s something of a long and winding road through the basement of the Tower to get to the Lee garage, so that’s a bit of a drawback. OTOH, the Lee spaces are $10/month cheaper. And it turned out that there was a 110v outlet in reach of almost every space there. I picked #10, a wide spot with a wall on one side and an outlet right next to it. So that’s settled, and a great relief to my mind.

Actually I’m feeling better about CH for several reasons. Night before last I had a middle of the night tossing session, feeling some buyer’s remorse about this large step. But after the very friendly floor meeting yesterday, and yet another pleasant and productive interaction with the staff today (plus getting the exact right parking setup), I’m feeling happier about it all. It ain’t cheap — it’s about the daily fare of a cruise ship, which offers about the same level of service — but I have to remind myself that not only am I getting a comfortable residence, food, and service out of it, I have the assurance of lifetime care if (when!) my health deteriorates. Never to be a burden on, nor dependent on the good will of, my few relatives? Priceless.

So home from that to finish up the file organizing. Penda-Flexes in a banker’s box, but all ready to drop into the file cabinet I bought, which is still in its cardboard box over there, waiting to be unboxed after it gets moved to my unit. Whenever that happens.

Chuck called saying he’d just emailed the copy for the house ad! I made a few comments, and asked that he change the specific street address to just “Old Palo Alto”. This is very exciting. I am expecting he will be bombarded with queries. I hope I won’t be disappointed in that.

After a quick lunch I was about to leave for FOPAL when I checked my calendar and realized I have an appointment for a hair cut at 12:30! Glad I looked, off I go for that. Chris was enthusiastic about Channing House. From there I went to FOPAL and spent 90 minutes pricing and shelving books for the Computer section, and another 90 minutes doing sorting. Home to chill and hydrate and perhaps nap.

Day 141, ‘nother day of doin’ s**t

Monday, 4/22/2019

Began the day by watering the plants. There are only six, but they are all doing well. I haven’t managed to kill them. I look forward to having their company at the new place.

Then I went for a run; 38 minutes of steady (if slow) jog, felt good all the way. God bless podcasts, though. I doubt I could do any kind of exercise if I had to do it without distraction in my ear.

Settled down to the killer to-do list. First up: apply for a residential parking permit for downtown Palo Alto. Have to upload a picture of my driver’s license, which of course has Tasso Street on it, plus some document that shows the new address. I make a PDF of a couple of pages of the CH contract I just signed. Upload these, click “apply”, it comes back and says, that address isn’t eligible for a parking permit, or no permits are available. Uh-oh. Do the whole process again just to be sure; same result.

Call the number given, get nice woman who says, “Yeah, Mister Cortesi, I was watching you upload these, I was just waiting for you to call.” OK, that’s weird. Bad enough I have Google looking over my shoulder at every email. But whatever; she takes my email address and says “OK, you’re all set” and gives me some directions on how to download and print a temporary permit.

I email Craig asking how to get a login for the CH resident’s web portal. He replies almost instantly, get one from the front desk. I email Kim asking what I need to do, to get the process of applying for a parking space started.

Friday I received a long letter from my lawyer. I’ll call her Nancy because in fact that is her name. Anyway, it had endless details on how as an executor I should go about making an inventory and valuation of Marian’s estate. So I wrote an email back saying, in short, “She owned nothing that wasn’t part of the trust, why I gotta do this?” More nicely phrased with specifics of course. But in fact I found our “Community Property Agreement” in which we each said, “whatever’s mine is yours, too”; and also a separate agreement in which we both said that whatever possessions we had or would get, clothes, jewelry, whatever, was part of the family trust. Plus her will making me her heir. So if I’m satisfied with no detailed inventory, shouldn’t nobody else need one. We’ll see if Nancy agrees.

Cleaning out the garage, I found an old iPhone 5s. Apparently when I got my newer 7s, I put the old one in the box. OK, now what to do with it? Search for “donate old iPhone”, find Secure the Call which repurposes old phones as 911-callers for homeless people. They provide an address label, but clearly I need a padded envelope too. So, time to go out and stuff.

Stop one, the local CVS to buy a small padded envelope. Stop two, the hardware store to buy a padlock. Stop three, Channing House. Talk to the girl on the front desk. She doesn’t remember how to create resident logins, and who does it out for lunch. We arrange she’ll email me about it. Then I go in to the dining room and have lunch: salmon, and a nice mixed-veg sauté.

During lunch I get an email from Chuck; they are going to put up an ad as we discussed Friday, would I please take some pictures to use in it. OK, another thing for the list.

Then I go down to the basement to see if I can find the Fitness Director, so as to sign a waiver, so as to be able to use the gym excuse me, Fitness Center. Fitness director appears to be out. Also, oddly, the door to the gym appears to be locked, although I can see someone inside using equipment. My room key doesn’t fit the door. What’s the deal there? Well, next time.

I go into the garage and check it out. There are 51 spaces, about a fourth are empty in the middle of a weekday. When I try to go back into the basement, the door is locked. My room key fits the handle but doesn’t operate it. Then I spot a camera and a button and a sign, “please stand on the yellow spot when pressing the blue button so we can see you.” I stand on spot, press button, almost instantly the door clicks.

I take the elevator to the top, the 11th floor, and have a quick look around this public space. It’s a large-ish room with a rather large (72-inch?) TV at one end, lots of armchairs, and some tables. Windows on three sides with a view of the hills to the west and the east. Big open walking decks on each side.

Nothing left to do, so I head out and make stop four, my bank to deposit a Via Benefits check. They promised to send a direct-deposit form to me; it hasn’t come yet.

Back home I take pictures of several rooms. Unfortunately I got rid of my wide-angle lens some time ago and I can’t get a picture of the inside of the bathroom. I use the iPhone’s panorama feature to get the kitchen, but the bathroom is just too small, the panorama looks bizarre. I do not take a picture of the outside, because at this stage I don’t want people to be able to identify the house and come knocking.

I set up the new padlock, it has a four-letter combination. I had planned to set it to DAVE but alas! it has no V! So I set it to DALE instead. Now I need to go back to CH install it. Later!

I rewrite the much-shortened to-do list, adding a couple of items. I print the mailing label for Secure the Call and tape it to the padded envelope and put the old phone in it and seal it. Aha! In the mail is the deposit form from Via benefits. I fill it out, put it in a stamped envelope, address it. Now I need to go to the P.O. and also, wash the car. Out again!

I drive to the Post Office and mail the Via Benefits envelope and the old cell phone. Drive to the car wash and buy the Prius its first bath since it got polished on day whatever? And to the grocery store for a few necessaries. And home. I need to put together the pictures I took to mail to Chuck. But I want a nap, too! What will I do?

Day 136, realtor, sale manager

Wednesday, 4/17/2019

First item was a run. Started early, 8:15, so as to be back in time for the 10:30 arrival of Chuck the realtor, Vassily his contractor, and Amy the stager. Before they arrived I had a talk with Richard the gardener about adding new bark mulch to the landscaping. We’d done that twice in the seven years since the 2012 landscape makeover, and the mulch was again looking thin and gray. He reminded me how I’d set down a big tarp in the driveway so the truck could dump two yards of mulch and he could get it up clean. Oh, yeah, it comes back to me now. And that big tarp is still in the garage.

So I priced bark mini-mulch at local garden centers and we decided to do it a week from Friday.

Then the realty crew arrived, and I introduced Richard to Chuck as a reliable gardener, and then Amy said, about the mulch, hold off on that until you know when the house will be on the market and do it just before so it looks its best.

There were extensive discussions between the three of them about how to re-do the kitchen and the bath. I tried to keep my mouth shut, with mixed success. Vassily wants drawings to work from. I was surprised that Amy said, “I don’t do drawings”, so that is something that somebody (not me!) will have to organize somehow. Anyway it was left that Vassily will get Chuck “some numbers” next week. So at least we’ll have an idea of how much renovations will cost, which Chuck can balance against an expected higher price for the house.

Possibly the most significant conversation happened in the driveway, after Amy and Vassily had left. I pointed out how good the garden was looking, with the iris all in bloom, and if we could just let people see the house it might sell as-is. Chuck said, well we can do that. And we agreed he would put up a local ad, without enough detail that people could find the house on their own but would have to go through him. And he would coordinate with me to let selected people, if any were interested (Hah! thinks I), see the house as-is.

Coincidentally that afternoon I got my monthly email from Zillow.com, giving their “Zestimate” on the house of 2.9 million. I am only hoping for 2.5 clear, or about 2.7 going into escrow. So. I have hopes this will all happen without the need for fussing around with construction mess and delay.

At 1:30 Deborah the estate sale lady arrived with Thor her son, to take some pictures. She shot pics and took measurements of the major furniture items.

Two items I still vacillate about: the bed, and the big room divider that is my media stand. Of the bed, Amy emphasized to me that my queen-size is about 6 inches longer than a “full” which I had planned to buy. In the night, I stretched out and my toes touched the footboard and there was about a hands-width between my head and the headboard. Hmmm. I’m just not sure. The queen width is much more than I need; I still sleep on exactly half of it, from long habit, and the other half is unused. Maybe if it was in the new location, turned a different way, I could get used to sleeping more in the middle. Fret fret fret. If I keep it, I am spared the hassle of trying to buy a bed, mattress and new linens.

After Deborah left I headed out to FOPAL and spent 2 and a half hours finishing the cleanup and reorganization of the Computer section.

Day 134, planning the unit

Monday, 4/15/2019

Started with a run, very comfortable. On return, showered and dressed, I spent time on the phone with Via Benefits. For the third month in a row they had ignored my information on direct deposit and had sent me a check. The phone rep said she would send me a paper form that I could return to request direct deposit. Hopefully that will be more effective than repeatedly putting the bank numbers into their web site and clicking “submit”; that hasn’t achieved anything.

Then spent an hour doing stuff–triage of the “shop”, the enclosed room in the garage building. That’s where the brown steel cabinets are that I emptied over the last two weeks. Now I worked on the cabinets up the right side, primarily paint and related chemicals (paint stripper, thinner…) and plant pots. Lots of plant pots. Those I left for the sale manager to price.

I spent some time with decorative pebbles. Back last summer, with Marian in the hospital, I tidied the three big “porch pots” of bedding plants by pulling the dying plants and, rather than replant, I put in rounds of green netting and covered them with the shiny decorative pebbles Marian used to discourage squirrels. In the winter, I moved the pots to the garage.

Now, cleaning out the shop cabinet, I found a half-bag of shiny pebbles and remembered the others, so I gathered all the pebbles together, and then noticed they were dirty and had leaves mixed in, so put them in a plastic tub and washed them.

Well, such fussing brought me to noon and shortly Amy the Decorator appeared right on time. We walked around the house and I pointed out the few bits of furniture I meant to take, or that we could take. She took pictures and noted dimension on her iPad.

Then we went to Channing House for a scheduled meeting with Angela the Upgrade Manager. She and Amy got along great and we all spent nearly two hours in unit 621. Much of the time was spent choosing materials from Angela’s stock of carpet and counter-top samples, paint chips, and photos of cabinetry and sinks.

One problem emerged: Angela just lost her in-house cabinet maker, and is not sure whether the bathroom cabinetry that I want can be done in the next few weeks. Possibly it will have to be delayed until the 6th-floor upgrade late this year. To be determined.

Amy dropped me off at home. After she left, I drove up to Bol Park where the tree planting for Marian is to happen Saturday. On the map it had looked unfamiliar, but in person it was “Doh! of course!”. I had ridden my bike along the edge of this park many many times; it’s the bike-path from Oregon Expressway over to Arastradero.

It was easy to identify the place for the tree planting; I could see the clear signs of Canopy having prepared the ground for one of their community plantings. It’s just in front of the pen where for years a donkey lived that everyone treated as a Palo Alto mascot.

From there I drove less than a mile to Hobee’s, where I am thinking people can have brunch after the planting. Unfortunately they close early on Mondays so I couldn’t get in. I’ll have supper there tomorrow and make a reservation if I can.

Day 129, cleanup, forms, FOPAL

Wednesday, 4/10/2019

I woke up with a lot of anxiety, based I think in the general level of upheaval going on. Going through all the memorabilia yesterday, and scheduling the estate sale with Deborah, left me feeling that I’ve got a big, vague, mass of things to do in order to get my possessions in order, and the “keeps” separated from the “sells”.

Then there was the realization that Deborah had suggested a sale the weekend of 12 May, while my (still tentative) move-in date for C.H. is 18 May. Where will I be in the meantime?

Then, in the middle of the night, I woke up and fussed for half an hour about how both the entry price and the monthly fee that I’ve been quoted to enter C.H. is around 20% higher than I’d anticipated. I eventually worked out that, even without the sale of the house, I have enough assets to pay that monthly fee for… about 40 years. But still it was a worry.

So I was fussed. I deliberately went to bed early, and got up early, so I could get a jump on … something. I pulled together two or three to-do lists and made a merged one that encompassed all the shit I need to get done. Then I went for a run, which improved my mood.

Back home I tackled the number one item: to set up a clear “sequester area” in the back of the garage where I can store boxes and objects that I am definitely taking to C.H. I moved some things into it; and moved sellable things (garden tools, etc.) out of it. This alone, getting some definite physical sorting done, had a calming effect on my mood. In the rear of the garage is a big shelf where I’ve always stored the original boxes for products we bought. Most are now irrelevant, and I spent an hour breaking them down and putting them in the recycle. Boxes for things I’m keeping, like the scanner and the iMac, I dusted off and set aside.

While doing all this, Richard the gardener was working, and I gave him the update, the news that his services will be needed through May but probably no longer. In the course of this it emerged that he wasn’t aware that Marian had died! I’m embarrassed that I hadn’t thought to tell him. Anyway, we agreed he would be adding a new layer of bark mulch, as he has in years past.

I boxed up the scanner (don’t plan to do any scanning for a while, but I mean to keep it) and put it in the sequester area. Now I really felt like I was getting on top of stuff, so I took a break. Shortly after, Chuck arrived with lots of realtor documents for me to sign. There’s an amazing number of disclosure statements that realtors use for legal CYA. We talked further about possible dates for staging and selling the house. It will probably get pushed into June.

While we were chatting, Deborah called. She was worried about the sale date she’d set. “I’m thinking, I’m going to sell your bed, where are you gonna sleep?” I said I’d been having the same thoughts, and we agreed to push the sale date to a week after 18 May, the 25th. This took another load off my mind!

The most interesting thing Chuck had to say was a very intriguing fact: he has had a casual discussion with a woman who’s getting divorced. She and her soon-to-be-ex live in a 5-bedroom house about seven blocks away from mine, which they’ll sell. The woman wants to find somewhere smaller to live, but would like to stay in Palo Alto. Helloooo! He let her know he might have something that would suit. It would be fabulous to have a private sale, possibly with minimum remodeling. But this is still just a vague chance, not least because the divorce proceeding complicates the financing.

After Chuck left I took a box full of empty three-ring binders (from yesterday’s memorabilia triage) to FOPAL and did two hours of sorting.

Back home I worked a while on a more fun project. I have a stack of nice color prints I’d made over the years from our best photos. On impulse I ordered a pack of simple frames from Amazon and they came today. I had in mind making a matched set of nice pictures to decorate a wall at C.H. I quickly found that I’d have to reprint them to get them to look right in these frames. Or buy different, smaller, frames. Easier to reprint the pictures — or is it? Because as usual, it’s a struggle to get Photoshop and the printer to agree on color values. But a fun challenge. I got one picture printed the right size and good color, in a frame by supper time.

And now, in the evening, I feel remarkably less anxious, more comfortable, than in the morning.

Day 127, history triage

Monday, 4/9/2019

Began with a run, 37 minutes, felt good. At home, suddenly wondered, all those paper manuscripts from the 80s — don’t I have those on disk? Sure, I must do. They were computer files right from the start, typed into Word Perfect under CP/M and saved on 8-inch floppy disks. At some time in the 90s, I remember getting ready to shut down my CP/M system for the last time, and cobbling up a serial connection from it to my then-new Mac, and moving the files across. I must still have these files.

And of course, I do, or most of them. They are sitting quietly in the Documents folder on the Mac. One story appears to be missing, and one major fragment. I’ll key those in today. Then I can recycle all the paper. I plan to keep paper only of the two stories that sold to a major magazine, along with the copies of the magazine itself.

Next project: dumping the slides. I decided to take some pictures of this process. Concentrating on that helped avoid excess emotion.

pics_dump

The slides more than filled the can and the slides from the last boxes went into bags.

pics_in_can So that’s done. Major check-mark on the to-do list. Major milestone in The Transition.

There remains a large shelf of saved memorabilia that I need to triage but I think I will wait on that until tomorrow. I am really close to being done with clean-outs; close to the point where I could walk through the house filling a few boxes and pointing to a few bits of furniture to be packed, and know that everything else is for the sale.

Today I am going to type in two stories that I want to preserve digitally, and then go have a look at FOPAL, make sure the Computer section is squared away for the sale this weekend.

Later: I did type in one of the stories. Of course as I was entering it, I couldn’t help myself improving it with lots of little tweaks. So I made the copyright line, “Copyright 1986, 2019 David E. Cortesi” which is kind of cool.

Day 124, finances, docent, cleanup

Friday, 4/6/2019

Began with a run, which makes this the first week in a long time when I’ve actually run three times, M-W-F, which is my nominal goal. I cut the route a little short because of impending rain, but still, over 30 minutes of jogging.

Spent a little more time going through the box of old notes and files from my career as a free-lancer in the 1980s. Most significant were the notes and other items from my attendance at Clarion West, a six-week residential science fiction writer’s workshop. I took some very nice pictures of my classmates, who I now barely remember. I had saved notes from talks by several visiting lecturers, established authors like Norman Spinrad and Suzy McKee Charnas. The primary thing I now remember from that intense six-week immersion in writing and critiquing is that it ruined me for reading for enjoyment for a long time. It was more than a decade before I could pick up a science fiction book, or any fiction book really, and just read it. Well, it also taught me that I didn’t have what it takes to write fiction, although that didn’t stop me trying (and hasn’t yet).

Next up, I sat down with my laptop and updated the Portfolio spreadsheet I created on Day 31. This meant opening the Schwab month-end statements for the four remaining accounts (two accounts for Marian’s IRA now having been merged into mine), and copying figures from them into the spreadsheet.

This was the final thing that I had been using Marian’s iMac for. I have demonstrated that I can use Godot to open all financial websites and update the portfolio info, so the machine on Marian’s desk is now superfluous. The obvious next steps are to format its disk, and put it into the nice Apple return box that’s waiting on the floor by the desk. I stuck the Mac OS boot USB stick into a USB port on the back of it and then stopped. I was starting to cry, and damn it I have to go and do a Docent tour in an hour.

This shit is not getting easier with time and practice. Bleagh.

I went to the museum and led the noon tour. Attendance was light and my tour group had just four people!

On return I spent some time reading more of my writing from that mid-80s period when I tried to be a science fiction writer. I did some good thinking then, and came up with some interesting ideas. What I didn’t produce was any good characters or plots. Nor do I like the prose style I was using to describe my ideas, stuffy, pseudo-academic.

Driving to and from the museum I was recalling how Marian would have felt about my sentimental regard for her computer. I believe she would have said, “That’s pretty silly.” So, channeling her pragmatic personality, I booted the iMac from an install USB stick and formatted its drive. Then I packed it up. The Apple return program provides very nicely designed packaging with a clear instruction sheet. It took five minutes to have the machine securely boxed up and ready to go.

I got an email from Channing House: my walk-through and meeting with Angela, the manager for upgrades, will happen at 10am Tuesday. After that I should know for sure when I can start moving in.

I planned to go to a Stanford Baseball game starting at 6pm, leaving at 5:15. To pass the time I read the first three chapters of On the Road and for fun, read it aloud, which suits Kerouac’s prose. Then I left, stopping at the FedEx office to drop off the iMac.

I stayed at the game to the seventh-inning stretch, but the Candlestick-like chill had me shivering and yawning so I left with Stanford ahead 1-0, listening to the game on KZSU going home and at home. The rubberized drawer liner I ordered was on the porch, so I lined the drawers of the new toolbox while Stanford got ahead 2-0, and then UCLA tied the game in the top of the ninth. Now it’s after 9pm, and the bottom of the ninth, and I’m so glad I left early… ok, it’s a tie game, bottom of the ninth, two on, two out, full count. Here’s your live play by play: foul… ball four. Bases loaded, winning run at third. Ball. Ball. 2-0 count, hit into left, it drops! Stanford wins, 3-2.

Still glad I left.

Day 122, anxiety, discards, cardio

Wednesday, 4/3/2019

Woke up to some anxiety this morning. Odd, because I had a very good night’s sleep, up once about 2am then slept to 6:30, eight hours total. Six-thirty is unusually late; all through the winter I woke up when the furnace fired up. The thermostat is set to start heating at 6:15. Yesterday and today, the furnace never started. Why? Because for the first time in months, the internal house temperature at 6:15 was 69º, the set-point for 6:15am. This is the true mark of the changing seasons, that no heating is needed in the morning. Another month and it’ll be time to switch over to cooling.

Oh, wait… another month and I won’t be here, probably.

So I arose to anxiety,

a vague feeling of wrongness that I think is associated with yesterday’s final acceptance at C.H. That’s a big commitment to a whole new mode of living. Am I doing the right thing?

To “not be a home-owner” was, as I’ve written before, probably the first decision I made when I began thinking about becoming a widower, a year ago, when Marian was first diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. My thoughts then were theoretical, speculative, but this stood out as a firm conclusion: if she goes, and I’m a widower, I won’t stay in this house. Researching ILFs and choosing Channing House is all the natural consequence of that decision.

I didn’t analyze it at the time; it just seemed right. I’ve explained it to other people since as not wanting the responsibility of a house, tired of worrying about maintenance and insurance and property taxes. That’s all true, but not complete. Analyzing it now, as the coffee water heated this morning, what came to mind was that I really wanted to break with the past. I don’t want to occupy a truncated partnership was the sentence that bubbled up out of my subconscious. (Whoa! Go my subconscious!) To unpack that sentence, I don’t want to continue to live as half a couple, alone in the shell once occupied by the tight little corporation of Dave’n’Marian. The house is the physical representation of that shell.

There are other life styles I could have picked. I could live in a regular apartment. I could become a world traveler, flitting from hotel to hotel with the seasons. I could buy a nice RV and become a “snowbird”, traveling to Alaska in the spring and Arizona in the winter. But C.H. has many practical advantages: it is comfortable; it offers a new community in which I’m pretty sure I can come to be an influential and helpful member; and the continuing medical care means I will not have to be a burden on any of my relatives as I age. The one time I talked with Marian about my “being a bachelor” notions, her only concern was to urge me to keep in mind that I wouldn’t have someone to take care of me the way I was taking care of her. C.H. answers to that issue.

Mulling all that I went for a run, which felt excellent. After a shower and shave, I did some

more cleanup.

I tackled two more shelves of the big steel cabinets in the shop. Here’s what I saw first.

check_boxes That’s right, two nice banker’s boxes labeled in Marian’s neat hand as you see. Seriously, we have been saving cancelled checks from 1965??? Oh yeah; and old IBM pay stubs, too: old_pay_stub I was getting $405.95 each pay period, which I think was bi-weekly, so over $800/month, not bad for 1965! (Plus, I see, $25 for “local travel”, i.e. mileage for driving around SF.)

Ignoring the wails of imaginary historians appalled at losing all that good data on the spending habits of mid-century Yuppies, the whole thing went into the recycle bin. in_the_box That exposed two shelves of my published books, multiple copies of each. my_books I won’t throw all of them out, but I fetched a box and put one copy of each book in it. The rest will go into the blue bin tomorrow.

About 1pm I went off to do three hours of sorting at FOPAL. One perk of that job is getting first look at all the donations. I pocketed a copy of On the Road, which I’ve been meaning to re-read, and one of Vonnegut’s Mother Night. I’ll read them (or anyway sample them, I’m not sure I’ll want to read all of Kerouac) and put them back in the stream another day.

At home I found an email containing the standard

Channing House contract,

a 51pp PDF. Sent copies to the financial guys and also to Chuck, who was curious about it. Need to read it carefully myself! Here’s the meat of it, from article I:

In consideration of the Entrance Fee, Monthly Fee and other fees payable by you under this Agreement, Channing House will provide you with residence, care and services at the Community for the rest of your life, subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement.

Also got a notification that my

Ziopatch results

were back, and: no Afib detected. I have rare PVC’s (pre-ventricular contractions, which I’ve had since the 1980s) as well as rare “premature atrial complexes”. But these little blips of irregularity I notice are not of concern. That’s a relief.

Day 120, day of doing stuff

Monday, 4/1/2019

Monday tends to be a “day of doin’ stuff” because I think of things I need or want to do over the weekend, and write them down on a list on the kitchen windowsill to tackle on Monday. I think I will just describe all those things.

First up, a run. That went and felt well, which was good news. The slight arrhythmias that I’d noticed, and were the reason for wearing a Zio-patch last week, were more noticeable over the weekend. As usual, I don’t feel them at all when exercising, and in fact didn’t notice them anytime today. But it is a relief that a heart symptom is not exercise-related.

Next, started

laundering

the towel and bed linen. It’s been two weeks (which I know because tomorrow is the day for the cleaning lady) so it’s time for that. With the bed stripped, decided to rotate the mattress. Funny story here. When Sheri the estate sale lady was here, she and I and Chuck were talking about estate sales, and she mentioned that you could sell a bed, but by law you can’t sell a used mattress. “So you strip the bed and leave your McCroskey mattress on it and say, well, you can have that with the bed if you want it.”

I goggled at her and said, “How did you know?” Chuck was puzzled; he’d never heard of McCroskey mattresses. Sheri laughed and said she hadn’t known, it was just the kind of expensive mattress people in Palo Alto often had. Guilty as charged, I guess.

Anyway, that conversation reminded me that you are supposed to turn your McCroskey every three months, which Marian had marked on the calendar and insisted on. I’d skipped the last turn, which came up in December, on the general principal of ISMISEP. But if it was a sales asset, I might as well take care of it, so I heaved the heavy thing around 180 degrees. This might have been the turn interval at which you are supposed to flip it over, but that’s way too much work.

With the laundry in process I watered the plants. That takes only a few minutes; so I turned to the first real task, working out the IBM

SHAP issue.

One problem is the number of agencies involved. My pension is paid out of Via Benefits, who administer the IBM benefits program. But the SHAP is administered and paid out of Acclaris, who apparently manage that particular piece of IBM’s benefits. But I needed first to know if I was in fact eligible. I called Via customer support; the very pleasant rep put me on hold for several minutes while she consulted, and finally said I had to call IBM directly, and gave me that number.

So I called IBM and that customer service rep looked up my and Marian’s accounts and said yes, as a survivor I was eligible for SHAP. But she couldn’t advise on how to fill out the SHAP form, which I some questions about. So now I called the Acclaris help line and that person (again, very sympathetic and helpful) talked me through it. I must say that the phone reps for all three agencies came across very well.

Now I filled out the SHAP form, and made a copy of the completed form to use for reference next year, assuming this one is accepted (we’ve had them bounced before for some minor omission), and put it in an envelope with stamp and address. Phew.

By now the bed linen was dry so I made the bed, then turned to two more items,

two “nudges”.

I sent a short, polite email to Kim at C.H. asking how the process was going. She replied a couple of hours later that she should have an update “in a couple of days”. I sent a ditto to Howard at the financial advisors. They had advised a meeting with the attorney who prepared our Trust documents, and had sent an email to said attorney on March 20th, and I’d heard nothing since. Howard replied later suggesting that I contact her directly, so I sent an email to the attorney.

Now it was early afternoon and everything on the to-do list had a line through it, so I drove down to FOPAL and spent an hour culling and pricing books for the Computer section. Came home and made some supper and sat down to watch

Stanford playing Notre Dame

in the Elite Eight game.

Very much against my expectations, Stanford started well, stifling the Irish offense and holding a small lead in the first half. Alas, Notre Dame found how to break through the Stanford defense in the third quarter and went on a run to take a ten-point lead that Stanford couldn’t close. So Alanna Smith’s college career ends (as does Shannon Coffee’s). Next year’s SWBB team will be quite different but likely even more exciting with a great recruiting class.

It pleases me that I remain interested in the team. Following SWBB turns out not to be one of the things, like TV cooking shows, that I enjoyed primarily because Marian liked them and I enjoyed sharing her enjoyment. My emotional involvement in the Cardinal is not as deep as hers, but I do still like watching them.