31 March 2004, 12:49 peeyem
The car is still in the shop. They don't know what's wrong with it. I don't either, though I've suggested replacing the piston rings. I don't even know what the piston rings do, but it sounded kinded of knowledgeable when I said it, back when I could talk in my actual voice instead of this one I've got now that's all scratchy and low and sounds like I've been slugging whisky all night.
Which I have. Been slugging whisky all night, I mean. I have some bizarre respiratory agita that requires that I break out into coughing spasms at random hours of the night and stumble around the house trying to stop them. I tried drinking the rest of the Delsym out of the bottle, and the rest of the Robitussin, but that didn't seem to be doing it. I finally got out of bed and made my way into the kitchen to Dick's liquor cabinet and poured myself about an inch or so of something and tossed it back. I suppose it stopped the coughing; at the very least, it put me right back to sleep.
I'm not much of a drinker, you see.
Which is why I'm especially not happy to have vertigo as a side effect of my respiratory agita. I do not like feeling like I'm going to fall over. I do not like feeling that I might shouldn't drive myself.
That said, I went to dinner with the Georges on Friday night. I had a glass of wine, not uncommon for me, and by the middle of the second glass, I realized I was just pasted. Fortunately, they had picked me up so I didn't have to get myself home. But now they know my dirty little secret. I'm a lightweight. I was moving like the waves in the ocean.
My closing has been moved up one day to April 15, tax day. Some might consider that a not-so-good thing, but I don't mind tax day. I've never made enough money that I felt like it was all being taken away from me. Of course, I'd prefer if I got to choose where my tax dollars went, but then wouldn't we all?
Ah, well, like my aunt Hilda says I'm just as happy as if I had good sense.
23 March 2004, 4:20 peeyem
Well. I am going to close on the new house on April 16, the day after tax day. Then I am going to commence painting inside the house. I have chosen colors. I need to buy brushes, and then I will be ready. Aside from needing to own the house before I go in there and start painting walls.
I keep taking people by to look at it. I don't have a key, but the windows don't lock, so whoever's feeling friskiest goes in the window. This past Sunday, it was my tennis buddy Sherry. Who got hung, ass and foot on our side of the wall, the rest of her inside. She couldn't go either way and we couldn't help, owing to the fact that we, Carol, Brenda, Katie, and I, were bent over double, laughing so hard that we were near tears.
I need to get back in there and get the windows measured because what's in there has to come out, so I'm calling around for people who do that sort of thing. I don't trust myself to measure for them, let alone know what to order and how to install them.
Aside from that, there's nothing to see here. It's finally spring and it's still kind of cold, but the skies are blue and tennis is being played and soon I and the bank will own another house together.
12 March 2004, 3:36 peeyem
Lord Godamighty. I am so tired I can't see straight. I feel like I've been moving for forty days and forty nights and don't even have an ark to show for it.
My things are scattered from pillar to post and I can't find a thing, which is why I missed tennis practice on Wednesday night, owing to the lack of a racquet.
My friend Kelly came over last night to move things along and help me get out of there. My friend Kelly also crawled in the window of the potential new house to check it out. Just before she went in, she turned and said, "I'll be needing to go to the hospital."
Yesterday I found at some point that my underwear was on inside out. I didn't even care enough to remedy the situation. I was mostly happy that my rather eccentric assortment of clothing for the day (kind of) went together. I will be extremely happy when I actually find all of my clothes, but I suspect that I might have put the summer clothes in the pod and kept the winter clothes out, so my outfits are likely to only become more eccentric.
Still haven't registered the car. It's just going to have to wait until in the morning, and I'm just going to hope for the best.
But I did go to my closing on Wednesday and eventually it all went well and I no longer own my little Graceland over on Orchard, though I still have possession and still have a few things to remove from it.
Tonight, I sleep. And read. And sleep some more.
9 March 2004, 2:16 peeyem
It has been a busy, busy time for me.
Last Wednesday morning, I got stopped for my car registration being expired. I tried to explain to the very nice officer that that was not, in fact, possible, since I had been down to the tag office not once, but TWICE, to try to pay it, both times being told it was wrapped in the price of the car, tax, tag, title, like that. She gave me a ticket anyway.
Later that day the POD arrived, and the process of getting it off the truck was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. I mean, I've never seen a baby being born or anything, but this was just remote-controlled craziness. Once on the ground, it appeared very small.
Panic set in. I walked around it. I went back in the house and looked at my things. I walked around it again. I called the pod people and expressed my concern. They told me they could deliver one the next day, but they didn't know what time they could bring it. I explained that this would not work, as the movers were expected at 1 to pack it up. Still no help. I finally got the gentleman on the phone to promise to have another gentleman call me.
Then I called my fantastic mover, Earl White, and told him what my problem was. He asked me what I have and how big the thing was. Then he pointed out that he makes things fit in spaces all day, every day, and said it would fit, so don't order the bigger one.
My friend Kelly came on Thursday with her excessively cute child to help finish up and to regulate the funkiness. After they got there, I really just wanted to play with the baby, but the crap floating around me was overwhelming.
The movers finally came and everything did, in fact, fit in the pod, but it was close. I could not have done it myself, no matter how long I spent figuring it out.
Sunday I went and looked at houses and last night I made an offer on the second one I looked at. They countered and I have accepted their counter, so now all that remains is for the Credit Union to work out the finances, and if all goes well, I will close on April 16. Then I will spend a few days painting, and then I will move in.
As for the house, it's about a mile from my old house, but in a better neighborhood (my daddy cracked that I wouldn't have to move far to live somewhere better than my old neighborhood – subtlety isn't his strong point). It's 4 sides brick, and downstairs there are 2 bedrooms and a bathroom and a living room, dining room, and kitchen. Upstairs (upstairs! I have never had an upstairs!) there is a rumpus room. So I can rumpus, I guess. For those wondering, there will not be beanbag chairs in the rumpus room unless I can find some nice suede ones, and probably not even then.
The kitchen will have to be redone. I think that's just my lifelong cross to bear. I'm never going to move into a house and just think the kitchen's dandy.
In other exciting news, the West Laurens Varsity Men's Basketball team won the state championship Saturday night, 67 to 61, at the good ol' Macon Colliseum, a feat done only once before, in 1981. This year's team is under the guidance of Paul Williams, who is the son of Dorathy Williams, one of my heroes. That team in 1981 was coached by Ed "Dizzy" Ford, of whom I was also mightily fond, despite the fact that he thought it was so damn funny to make me guard Ricky Brown in PE class.
Dorathy has managed to embody the Shel Silverstein poem "Put Something In" by her raising of three children into exemplary adults. Dorathy also caught some gentlemen breaking into her house to steal the television and had them put it right back where they found it and wait for the sheriff.
Anyway. That's all. That's what I've been doing. Driving around in an unregistered car, packing my things, and buying and selling real estate.
Before I forget, a paraphrase of a paraphrase from Trace about Martha Stewart. I don't know where she heard it, but I thought it apropos: Congratulations. You have managed to apprehend and convict a 62-year-old woman who makes her own scotch tape. Where is Osama?
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