Oh, we'll get to that.
Excellent breakfast! I have been enjoying orange marmalade on my English Muffins, which reminds me of breakfasts in Walberswick. It's what Denis had around, something he'd loved since childhood. Perhaps a treat, growing up as poor as he did. I am also pleased to report that the hot dog was better, somehow. Why did you have a hot dog again, you ask. Simple: I have to use the buns. We are not in a position to just squander money willy and/or nilly on buns.
It's not as if I am totally skint. There's the house sale money. Had a conversation with the financial advisor about that today. He starts listing options, and I cut him off: under the mattress. It’s going under the mattress.
Ha ha but not really, but, let us use the mattress as a symbol of security and safety and access. But also, let’s make that money go to work and earn 15% daily, but also, ensure it can never diminish. Got any “instruments” that can do that?”
I am disappointed to tell you that there are not.
Another factor: liquify and access, in case I want to buy a house. And I do. I do love the Fred for all its fredness, but I’m considering something nice and small and cozy somewhere that does not require a seven-story elevator ride to let the dog pee or bring in groceries. I didn’t think this move was permanent. I wasn’t thinking anything at all, except I have to go somewhere. Didn’t want to be pressured into a house purchase when I was in a headspin about everything. Now I have time, and other considerations, like the general and specific difficulties that come from living in dense housing.
This morning I heard screaming. Teen screaming. Female teen screaming. I figured it was enthusiastic youth, but then I heard a car horn blaring - someone was leaning on the horn to make a statement. I went outside, looked down, saw a car with an agitated figure inside, and a woman walking around the driveway on the phone. I went back in. More screaming. More horn. I went back out. Same tableau. Went back in. More screaming. More horn. Come ON what is going -
Hello, the police! The officer gets out, approaches the teen, who is still screaming: she wants to go home. SHE WANTS TO GO HOME. Approaches the officer with teen brio, and she’s in cuffs within the minute. She’s screaming at the other woman: YOU’RE NOT MY REAL MOM.
Her shirt:
If you can make it out, you probably feel the same sadness I did.
That happens anywhere, I suppose; doesn’t mean a neighborhood made up mostly of houses would be immune. I am surprised that my Edina experience has included two murders and a domestic, though.
Sorry, one murder. The victim was alive as of Friday.
A Twin Cities man is accused of shooting his father in the head on Friday using ammunition he stole from a gun store, according to court documents. Mahamoud Farah, 26, of Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, is charged with second-degree attempted murder and a firearms possession violation.
Farah sounds like a real winner, with “prior felony convictions” for drugs and violent threats.
My post-meal Dove chocolate foil-wrapper fortune for today applies to everyone described above:
I don't mean to complain, even though I am doing a lot of that lately. There are compensations, Fred-wise.
Storage closet progress: I took out three boxes from Zork Storage, and consolidated them into one smaller box. Threw out a lot of old dog stuff Wife had bought. Felt a bit of despair when I looked at what remains to be sorted and moved to the smaller closet, which I will attempt to rent in two weeks only to find that there are none available. But everything is going into labeled boxes and consistent plastic tubs, which will sit in the dark for four months until perhaps the day I move them to the attic or basement of a small house, where they can be ignored permanently.
I know it sounds like hoarder behavior, and yes, it bothered Her to have plastic bins of clips and matchbooks and old magazines and the volumnuous family archives, but the total number of bins was, in the end, ten.
Oh: forgot. The funny part about one of those bins. It was in the absolute back of the house, in the "clubhouse" under the stairs. When we got the house they mailed me the title. I put it a bin in the clubhouse and forgot about it. When it was apparent that we were going to sell, against my wishes, I thought: I'm going to need that title. My Gosh I hope it's there. This gnawed at me for weeks. I would get a sluice of dread when I thought about it. Eventually I steeled myself and went down and pulled out the box, and there it was: a package, certified mail, 2001, from the title company. Well then! Your uncle, Bob is. Whew!
But what if it wasn't the actual title title, but something else? I couldn't bring myself to open it. I put it in Zork storage. I brought it to the closing, expecting them to say "okay, last thing, do you have the title?" and I'd hand it over and they'd open it up and say "but this isn't the title" and everything would be my fault.
No that's RIDICULOUS.
I brought it, of course. No one asked. At the end Uncle Gary, Realtor, said I could pick up the check at the title company, and I casually noted that I had the title, and he said "oh you can toss that."
All those weeks of anxiety. There's a lesson here. I am not good at paperwork and forms, but I knew that. I am trying to be better. Opportunity to start fresh with everything now, right? I went through all my folders of important documents last night, sorted and culled, printed off insurance and put pdfs in the cloud, set up a budgeting app, and in a fit of enthusiasm powered my way to inbox zero. If I died in my sleep tonight and Wife had to come back and look through things, she'd be stunned.
Who the hell is this guy?
And why does he still have the title to the old house?
The brutally indifferent stone totem that holds the Obama library got a nice review in the Times. (link to Althouse, who provided a free NYT link.) Oh sure the outside might be something the Eloi would build to keep the Moorlocks in constant terror, but the inside? ART! It has ART!
We have the standard cliche:
There is nothing audacious about any of the art. It is exactly the sort of art you would expect. Some of it is didactic, signaling the approved and permitted beliefs. The Sky Room is attractive, if spare, a bare blue room with a blue structure in the ceiling consisting of “thousands of hand-stamped words referring to President Obama’s Selma speech.” They are illegible; no sense can be made of them. It is supposed to invite contemplation. You can look at words spoken by the president, albeit in reverse.
You know what else invites contemplation?
This was amusing:
Or, as we used to call it in 1965, the middle-school hallway.
Reminds of a conundrum I had on the evening walk. This:
Modernist church, or construction equipment?
It’s 1920.
The design of the 20s catches the eye, and rewards it: there's a lot here!
This wasn’t Versailles, but the US-German Peace Treaty.
The U.S.–German Peace Treaty was a peace treaty between the U.S. and the German governments. It was signed in Berlin on August 25, 1921 in the aftermath of World War I. The main reason for the conclusion of that treaty was that the U.S. Senate did not consent to ratification of the multilateral peace treaty signed in Versailles, thus leading to a separate peace treaty. Ratifications were exchanged in Berlin on November 11, 1921, and the treaty became effective on the same day. The treaty was registered in League of Nations Treaty Series on August 12, 1922.
Again with the seed catalogue. Always with the man in the chair dreaming of seeds. Here the wife attempts to change his focus:
I’ve no idea why the children are so alarmed.
Ah, it’s our old friend Walt.
SEvery day he produced the same amount of rhymes.
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A reminder that there’s an absolutely deadly plague abroad in the land. Otherwise, carry on. |
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Says this site:
In 1920, the Internal Revenue Service reports, the average income was $3,269.40 per year. During that time, men filed the majority of tax returns, and the majority of people filing returns were employees of other companies -- as opposed to those owning or operating their own businesses.
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No record of such a place. Butler had a lot of movie theaters, and the names changed, so I can’t quite tell you where it was.
BREAKING
That will do. Tomorrow: I attempt to leave the dog alone for 2 minutes and 12 seconds.
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