Travel has the benefit of making one appreciate, well, just about everything more, particularly when you get return home after visiting the crib of origin.
I spent the past week in Iowa sifting through my parents' house and doing what was necessary to get the dwelling up for sale, in "as-is" condition. We moved into the 1940 era house in 1966, and aside from a kitchen remodel in the 1970s, an attempt at creating a rec room in the basement, and carpet, my parents didn't do much except the most mimimal maintenance... they replaced the ac/furnace and put in new windows, and replaced the roof when needed, but Dad let the garage fall down (using the excuse of his disability from heart trouble when the real reason was he was simply too goddamn lazy to do anything about it) and the interior wasn't painted after he steamed off the wallpaper when we moved in.
So, the house had TLC issues and I made sure the realtor knew it - along with the leaky basement that would need addressing, and fortunately, we got location, location, location going for us here, as the house was on the market less than one week. BANG! Castle Carson was stormed by The House Flipper.
Did I get a "good" price? I would have gotten a better price if they'd done the maint and care in the first place, but it was fair, and I kind of feel like you do after you've read the Sunday paper during a particularly epic dump. You actually manage to get through the entire editorial and sports pages and have a serene sense of accomplishment when you deploy the final flush. Close is set for June 10th, its a cash sale and no inspection is required, all desireable objectives from my standpoint.
Look, the last thing in the world I need is a TLC-needing house in Des Moines, IA with me halfthehellacrossthecountryincalifornia to worry about. I have plenty of other important things to worry about, like keeping my hot GF happy, and learning enough new arpeggios that my guitar teacher doesn't give me that "you really suck as a student" look.
Honey, I really will take you to a nice beach somewhere in a country where English isn't the primary language, and I promise I won't say we can pretend LA or Miami are foreign countries.
But I gotta learn more arpeggios first.
Speaking of which, I brought the GF with me for the trip. She's cleaned out houses with merciless Irish efficiency (is there such a thing? I don't know if there is, but I have a hot Irish GF that's all freckled and freckled chicks turn me on. Well, in fact, most chicks turn me on, but the freckles are the deal maker, sportsfans) before, and actually likes doing the Estate Thing.
I, OTOH, was completely dreading this trip (other than hoping we'd get done quickly enough that I could make the pilgrammage to Iowa's Garden Spot, Iowa City) and kept up a pretty constant joke to everyone I ran into that "you know, I'm really tempted to get some 5 gallon gas cans and some matches", but, alas, Des Moines is somewhat in the 21st century and banned open burning long ago. I mean, I wasn't that serious, really really (although man, there were some aerosol cans that could have made awesome inpromptu bottle rockets).
I did have Waste Management deliver this monsterous dumpster that is on the vacant lot that's next to the house, and by the end of our week there, we'd filled it about half-full (but loosely compacted). You could WALK inside this sucker from one end. That in and of itself was kind of awesome, and what was also awesome was taking bags of throw-aways/garbage and heaving them superhero-like into the dumpster with loud tennis-player (but far manlier) grunts. I'd change the grunts from time to time, yelling "Oh YEAH!" or "take THAT!" just to make it interesting. There were a few old junky fans and electronics that were really fun to toss and listen to the crash and sight of flying cheap plastic parts.
It was very cathartic, because although I grew up in that house, I really effing *hated* that house, for a list of reasons that's far too voluminous to publish here. Suffice to say my parents should have moved decades ago; instead, they clung barnacle like to the ersatz Cape Cod with painted cedar shingles. Trust me, the Dinosaur Killer Asteroid # 2 could have hit (except our successors would rename it The Human Killer Asteroid) and my parents, if still alive, would be clinging to the house and pickin' and grinnin' and all that good stuff.
I really do have to give a shout out to my Iowa peeps that helped us drag stuff up from the basement and out from under the eaves. You know who you are. You rock. You are true friends and people that I'd trust carrying my semi hollow body guitars through a sandstorm.
If it wasn't for their help, The Blonde (the GF) and I would probably still be there and there's really no good Mexican taquerias in Des Moines (not the same as in California - this is not a knock on Iowa, its simply a knock on reality) and without Authentic Mexican Bean and Cheese Power we'd probably be lying there half-dead and not even half-done. We got a lot of stuff dragged up/down that first Sunday (which made it possible for us to take a trip to Iowa's Garden Spot the following Wednesday).
The following day, Tag Sale Dude came by and told us that aside from sorting through the personal stuff, we didn't have to arrange it in a neat fashion, they'd take care of that. So... that's what they're doing, starting today. I don't know exactly when the Tag Sale will be, but it will be sometime in the next couple of weeks. As of today's blog entry, everything save appliances, fixtures, etc. in the house is in The Tag Sale.
So, the rest of the visit/trip wasn't all that eventful. I returned the tags from Mom's sold car (I'll bet the new owner has got the hammer down zooming around Warren County right now - you rock girl, doing a myth bust that Anonymous Tan Impalas aren't grandma or Men In Black gov't cars) and got a whole $97 back from the State of Ioway (well, its supposed to arrive in 3 weeks or so), and paid the first half of property taxes due on Castle Carson for this year (makes it a lot easier to sell if its not deliquent sportsfans. It was kind of hard for Mom to pay taxes from beyond the grave). Man, Polk County is ruthlessly efficient in terms of making it extremely easy to pay your property taxes. I doubt if we were in the counter area more than 5 minutes in downtown Des Moines.
Speaking of graves, I decided that it would be best to go ahead and inter the rest of Dad's ashes - only half were initially buried in his plot in the veteran's section of Glendale Cemetery (Dad was in the Navy during peacetime in the 1950s - draftee), but there was Space for Mom - so I arranged to have the rest of him and Mom interred in her spot (they don't reopen for ashes, I would imagine its kind of oogy anyway). Mom didn't want a burial ceremony - actually, she wanted to be buried in several spots all over the planet, but I was not able to get through the haze of pain-drug medication to explain to Mom that I don't really have 3-4 months of vacation time available to do a road trip of the Midwest and bury bits here and pieces elsewhere. Besides, the psychic told me Mom is rather happy to be dead; the visual is of her with short red hair, old fashioned sunglasses, a straw hat, and an umbrella drink on a beach somewhere. Dad, OTOH, is a disembodied voice that's not particulary happy with this death situation.
Pretty much accurate, too.
I know I'm being way too flippant here, but both of my parents quit living a long time ago when Dad decided he was too disabled to continue working for a woman manager (he was a bit of misoygnist) and went ahead and early retired. He spent the next 20 odd years waiting for The Reaper, and Mom was on Death Watch the entire time, to the point that she neglected the omnious signs that something really bad was wrong with her. In addition to finding packs of cigs hidden all over the house, we found way too many boxes of opened sanitary napkins for a woman in her 70s to have any good use for. The Blonde found the path report from her back tumor biopsy, and Mom kind of hid the part about "major organ involvement" from everyone else when she was asked about what the docs said.
Even the day before she died - when I came into the house, which was blue from cig smoke (all of the relatives who were care giving are all heavy smokers in denial about their own horrible habit) and threw a shitfit about the stench as well as the fact there was a woman here on oxygen dying from lung cancer, Mom wagged her finger and said "Cigarettes didn't do this to me, cancer did, and cancer runs in my family."
And some people wonder why I moved 1,500 miles away from this. Yes, she was geniunely focused on taking care of Dad, but she also was enough of an adult to make her choices, and she was in a huge state of denial about her health. I'm guessing she was showing all of the signs of the cancer for at least a year, particularly because she was so anemic for so long - and I'm guessing she wasn't straight with her fam doc or the cancer docs about how much she was bleeding (because aside from pneumonia, what killed her up front was bleeding out - I watched it. Its not pretty).
There are not enough hells available in the multiverse for the cigarette makers.
Anyway, we sorted through the pictures, we ate a lot of meals at the Drake Diner by the Drake University campus, which is about a mile from the house, I gave The Blonde the nickel tour of Des Moines, we spent some time hanging out at Valley Junction and the antique shops, and we did a day pilgrimmage to the Garden Spot - er Iowa City. The Blonde really doesn't get Hawkeye fans and has now classified me as a member of "The Bird Cult" - which is what she calls Hawkeye fans now.
I was a little surprised that she found Drake's campus more to her liking than Iowa City, which she said reminded her a *lot* of Bezerkely (its hilly as hell too). IC has changed a lot since the 80s and a lot since my last visit of any length in the late 90s. A bunch of new buildings, development in the downtown area, growth in the Iowa City area in general. The campus is much less laid back than it used to be. I think what blew her mind the most though was seeing people walking around in Iowa tshirts and sweatshirts all the time though. Even at the Drake Diner - and it was Drake Relays week, so all sorts of people were in from all over the country - you'd see more Iowa gear than anything else.
More later... it was an interesting trip... but I did get to have my picture taken outside of the new facade at Kinnick. I kept tellling her "Look, 70,000 drunken pig farmers can't be wrong. Look how awesome this place is."
