S drove up today to take her S18 to go look at an apartment. It's not available until March and they hadn't heard anything about the other apartment.
S assured me while she was here that S18 would be gone by the end of January. I'm proud of myself - I kept my big yap shut and didn't offer an extension. S18 was to sleep on it and make a decision tomorrow.
After she left S18 was talking to his buddy and got an offer to move in there for 1/3 the rent he'd be paying on the apartment. This is more or less the plan he had about a year ago. This can happen pretty much any time, he'll be in an environment that he's comfortable with with people he knows. His Mom was highly in favour of this plan last year and I could presume is still good with it now.
He's over the moon happy - literally bouncing around the house.
Phew. As I mentioned - things do seem to work out for that crew.
On BD H52, W50 T27, M26 S21, D23 BD-9-Mar-16 D-15-Jan-18 Final-19-Apr-18 I am a storyteller. The story may do you no good. But a story is never for the listener. It is always for the one who tells
Yay - and they're working out for you too! (Not to be morbid, but can you imagine how hard all of this would have been if she hadn't happened to come into an inheritance at just the right moment???)
Yay - and they're working out for you too! (Not to be morbid, but can you imagine how hard all of this would have been if she hadn't happened to come into an inheritance at just the right moment???)
Indeed. As I said it works out. Her rent was going up, S18 aged out of her government support program and there I was ... I will admit that if it hadn't been for her getting that inheritance I would have tried harder to deal with everything and probably taken it in the wallet pretty hard to get her out.
As an aside she did say that she'd been into the bank to change the payment info for her loan but that I needed to keep the joint account open until the loan was paid off or refinanced. It will cost me a couple of bucks a month in fees. No clue what her plans are for it - she put the payment in when she was in the bank. I'm keeping a close watch on it.
I was talking to her yesterday and house prices not only around here but also in the city where her Dad's house are continue to jump up quickly. Due in part I believe to people exiting Toronto having found that they don't actually need to commute to work. In this area I know that we have hit records for house construction in the past year and real estate agents are very busy. This location is ideal for many reasons. We are "in the middle of nowhere" but within a fairly easy drive of the largest urban centres in the country. There is an active cultural scene (outside of quarantine) with at least 3 major theatre companies that I can think of without any effort in easy day-trip distance. There are woods to wander in, rivers to paddle and fish on, beaches to lounge on. The cost of living here is a fraction of what it is in the urban centres as well. Even food and fuel is cheaper here.
I do admit to a level of bias in no small part because my family has been in this area for nearly 200 years but I still believe that this is one of the best parts of the world. And people wonder why I don't want to move and don't travel a lot
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When I was heading out for my evening walk yesterday after having seen S that afternoon I was giving some thought to what would have been involved in trying to make "it all work out". And really - with a partner who was unwilling / unable to do basic adulting I can't see that working out in any scenario that I can think of. If I had a partner who for some reason lost mobility or the ability to do certain tasks I can see making accommodations which is perhaps the slippery slope I got on - but they would need to be aware and also do what they reasonably could to be a contributing member of the household. For the first time in weeks I actually got the stress pain I had been getting. Sigh.
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The bit that got me writing here today was the realization that I'm crossing a threshold. Previously - after I got over the shock of bomb-day I always had a vision that I would create a new life that more or less mimicked "the before times". I need to set that aside. Like I think many here, I had what I considered a decent marriage with someone who I had spent essentially my entire adult life with and with whom I was comfortable. We had our various issues and problems but every couple does.
I think that a good part of the problem with the relationship I had with B was the fact that we each were trying to turn the other into a more acceptable version of our ex-partners. Even to the extent where B was making solid efforts to change the way I dressed. The relationship with S was doomed - in part because she amplified those parts of my ex-wife I was bothered with but it does sour me about even wanting to look for someone.
It does give pause and make me think on the whole idea of a partner. One of my neighbours is a long-standing bachelor who mentioned to me that he's had women move in with him and try to take over his life and he has no interest in that. I'm pretty comfortable on my own although I do know that it will feel a bit empty in here with S's son gone and no actual routine human contact for some time because I expect the lockdowns to continue in some fashion through to the summer. My ex and I ran pretty independent lives with a certain amount of overlap and as I said it was "comfortable".
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Still working on trying to get up to speed on things with work. I had a chuckle today because one of our suppliers noticed my job title and reached out to the company president with a "who is this guy" query. Nice to see that some people are paying attention. Mind you, historically the president was the sole point of contact. I may end up with a new job title - not sure what they would use but I was "scheduler" on a procedure document recently.
My 2 week vacation is in a couple of weeks. I just realized that I'll need to get my valentines cards into the mail to my kids shortly. Not sure if I'll treat myself or not. Probably.
Well - enough for now. The weather here is decent at the moment but we're supposed to have some squalls blow through later.
On BD H52, W50 T27, M26 S21, D23 BD-9-Mar-16 D-15-Jan-18 Final-19-Apr-18 I am a storyteller. The story may do you no good. But a story is never for the listener. It is always for the one who tells
Andrew, I may not take your advice on women... or on dating... or on some other stuff stuff. But your suggestion on the Wyze camera was a fricken home run!!! I cannot thank you enough for you’re mentioning this device here, or perhaps Wyze or perhaps Amazon should be thanking you for the sale. It arrived today, setup was a total breeze, it’s very well engineered from the magnet mount to the easy, seamless setup. Not sure how clear speaking from my phone to the camera sounds but the rest is amazing and for a little over $50 bucks cannot be beat.
Andrew knows technology! Thank you, thank you, thank you!
DonH Midwest Me 56 WAW-EXW 55 Met 11/95 / Married 5/00 Bomb 6/20/05 / She Filed on 6/2/06 / Divorced on 10/9/06 4 who'd qualify as GF since D & dated about 25 women since D
THE MUPPET SHOW COMING TO DISNEY PLUS!!! I am sooo excited. This was a huge part of my childhood.
It's been a busy weekend but I did manage to carve out a bit of "me" time yesterday and hope to again today. I do have quite a pile of work stuff to take care of including a couple of personal side projects. Processes and tools that will make my life easier and perhaps others. I've learned to work on these things on my own time because getting official approval is sometimes difficult but presenting a finished solution often leads to adoption. If you ask for approval before starting you get blank looks and the "we've always done it this way - why would you waste your time changing that".
I also have a couple of special orders to organize - always a nuisance.
S's S18 wanted to go in to visit with his buddy "in town" yesterday - the one he's going to move in with so I dropped him off after I did groceries and then went in to the plant to count drums (we have less than I thought), inspect some containers, check to see how we're set up for next week and do the filing.
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When I was in the bank I picked up some news from the teller who served me who had also helped S when she was in. It seems that she asked for me to just be taken off of the loan which was decent of her and would be the ideal situation however she wouldn't qualify on her own which is why my name was on it in the first place so was told no. She had cash in hand to make the monthly payment though and now has the forms to change where the payment come from. The teller was concerned that I fully understood what was going on and that I still continued to have a liability.
This doesn't quite match the narrative I got from her but the teller's opinion, which I would tend to agree with, is that S isn't really all that well versed on how banking "works". It does make me think that the prior bankruptcies which she put squarely on her ex may well have been in part her own fault too. I know that she really had at least in my mind a poor concept on how budgeting and financial planning goes - a stark contrast to the impression I got that she was good with money living on tight funds and also her narrative on how she helped numerous friends with managing their books and taxes.
BUT - it does mean that she is serious about separating off that loan and taking responsibility for it. The teller said that he tried to explain to her that her best bet was to pay the loan off but that she appeared just baffled by that concept. She would save thousands of dollars but I know that when I talked to her about that myself that she listened with a bare minimum of patience and didn't seem to grasp the idea then either. Not that she came out and disagreed and we would have a discussion on it, just that she didn't "get it" and seemed to feel that she knew best and would just do that anyway without discussion. I'm glad to not have to deal with that any more - she was like that on many things.
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When I picked S's S18 up from his buddy's place I asked about the moving date and he said matter-of-factly that it will (probably) be Thursday (!) It's amazing how sometimes the things you've been waiting and hoping for sneak up on you and surprise you. And of course because we're now down to the wire I'm impatient for it to be done.
He said that his mother will probably come up to help him move. I expect that I'll have to pull out the trailer though to get the hutch moved. It's 8' long, 4' high and rather unwieldy. It wouldn't (likely) fit in the back of her van.
I will be glad to not have to be a taxi driver any more - having to ensure that I am around and on time to drop off and pick up S18 is constraining. Being a single parent to a kid who isn't even mine isn't what I had intended on signing up for. I had to rush through breakfast and not sleep in as long as I wanted to get him to work this morning and will need to pick him up late afternoon.
I was talking to my neighbour who also knows S and the kids and she did say something that was perhaps revealing. I was joking that S18 will text me again if I'm even just a minute late. She suggested that it was undoubtedly his anxiety at work. And in my mind, the fact that historically there wasn't an adult who he could count on - something that frustrated him to no end.
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My new rugs are now in and I'm going out on Monday over lunch to pick them up. For now I'll just put them in the dining room rolled up. I want to give the wooden floors a good damp-mop before I lay the new rugs down. One thing that frustrated me about my ex-wife was that nobody except me would clean up the dog's messes in the bathroom that sometimes resulted in eye-stinging odours in the house. The house currently smells literally like a barnyard with a combination of the stinky rugs and S18's rabbits. Going to be so nice to get that out of the house. I may invest in some odour reducing chemistry as part of my planned big cleaning in February. I know from discussing it with a chemist friend when we were talking about some scented candle business that most effective odour mitigation products are actually based on a sugar molecule which will encapsulate the odour. It's the basis of many commercial products which is why they have a sweet scent themselves.
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I did re-install the two dating apps a while ago but may just pull them off. Looking at the people who are out there, I just have zero interest. I saw one profile recently of what seemed to be an interesting person. Never married, early 50s, a lot of pictures of yoga poses. She's an "entrepreneur" who has traveled a lot, believes in holistic health and is an "artist" and "model". Looking for someone to travel with (read as "pay the bills) who also has to be fit and active but who is also honest, reliable. Yeah - good luck with that. She sounded almost exactly like a sanitized version of S with less baggage but more entitlement.
I have noticed that the lady at the flower shop seems to be getting friendlier and friendlier. I presume she still has a partner even though he never gets mentioned. She's a nice person but again, do I actually want to tie myself up with someone with a young kid, a fair amount of baggage and then on top of that there's the perhaps 16 years age difference. 2 years ago I would have said "sure". But now ... not so interested.
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Well - time to focus on product documentation, do some math about load sizes and then possibly get a walk in. I'm going to do the variation of haggis using ground lamb, liver and various spices tonight for dinner. S18 is having regular meatloaf. The will also be neeps, tatties and a whiskey sauce. There may be poetry.
On BD H52, W50 T27, M26 S21, D23 BD-9-Mar-16 D-15-Jan-18 Final-19-Apr-18 I am a storyteller. The story may do you no good. But a story is never for the listener. It is always for the one who tells
Don’t get me wrong, you should absolutely proceed cautiously, but not decide every woman who wants a travel partner wants a paid way. And honest reliable and fit isn’t a reality? Like only unfit people are honest and reliable? And a fit person can’t be honest and reliable?
I understand your recent experiences have colored the way you see things a bit. But not every woman is looking for their next meal ticket. And some just love a really active lifestyle and like the same for the adventures they enjoy.
What would you want in a woman? What do you enjoy that you would like to enjoy with them?
1) Yes, a woman with a kid is baggage, especially if you’ve raised yours and just had a taste of the potential issues involved. I didn’t pick any guys online who had little kids either, because, being in my 50’s and having raised three of my own, I was not interested in going back to supervising homework etc. I would have considered someone with an older teen maybe. Someone in the same stage of life probably wouldn’t think it was an issue.
2) A woman whose occupations are “artist” and “model” MIGHT be rolling in dough - but there’s a reason the term “starving artist” was coined. So it’s a pretty good bet she’s looking for someone to fund her travels.
I’m actually quite proud of Andrew’s newfound ability to read between the lines! Bravo!
