hey
it's 'going' fine, stop with that dumb joke
hahah ok ok
what's up?
big week - first of all, my poor sister w the mothercare is exhausted, so can you watch over my brother-in-law cz he's taking it in the teeth
noted
and to round out the family news: my dad has cataracts and is wanting surgery even though, of course, that could kill him, so can you watch over everyone he talks to since he's nearly assaulting doctors who thwart his wishes-? he still sees my old family doc, and I fear for his life sometimes
noted
and the house gets auctioned Wednesday and Feist is Thursday
[um, why is there a young woman standing behind you with her arms crossed staring at the back of your head when she's not scowling at me?]
that's my tenant
?
her husband, also my friend, is out of town and I'm cockblocking bc it's raining and she's afraid of thunder . . . it's hard to explain
okeeee then - sooo [that's distracting, her hrrmphing right behind you, just sayin'] if you don't get the house, will you cry?
nope
if you don't get to see Feist, will you cry?
yup
noted

I got the bank to lower its asking price by 10k total and wrapping all outstanding liens into that price, of 130k (the house last sold in 2005 for 163k), but I still can't buy it bc of the rule that you can't get a conventional mortgage on an auctioned property - all these new rules are to keep people like the current owner from buying houses, closing that barn door after the cows have moved to burbs. at this point, bedroom communities empty out and I watch the show from a frontrow seat, basically

meanwhile, I'm noting the burbs aren't perfect (as if that needs noting, eh? Wilson is the town over from Whiteyton, fyi) bc Ears got into the city's Gifted&Talented program, about which I'm also ambivalent. of course, I'm clucking w/ motherpride, as the city placement office calls about Ears in the same week that TJ clocks in with a 9th grade reading level in his last assessment, blabla - but I know full well that the "Olmstead Gifteds" are mostly just the middle-class kids whose families the city wants to keep in their tax base. I understand that that is the very kind of program that cities have to implement to stem the white-flight, which in turn helps the planet w the ex-urb sprawl problems, and all of that. but in practice, Ears will be bussed to the deep east side, herded into the Gifted building, and back again every day, still living in this hood of elderly city residents and upscale grad student rentals. all over the city, the residential hoods are like this, populated by people who pre-date the city's demise or by people whose children are not yet of school-age if they have kids at all. the childhood in which a kid can self-direct his social life by opening the door and walking a couple blocks over is still beyond my boys here - I have to arrange playdates with the other scattered families (and you can imagine how eager I am to do that) so in effect their only friends are each other (and me)

I know that in Whiteyton, the problem would be that they COULD do that, and then I'd be watching their friends for signs of Columbine a'Coming. but the boy-posse that FPH still enjoys as a life-long source of sociality is enviable, and I envy it. since I started in with this Whiteyton idea, I've let my envy bloom clearly in my mind: I'm a hermit, say la vee, it's not the end of the world, but it's not the beginning of the world either. it's not just that I want to move in FPH's direction literally, it's that I have increasingly wanted the boys to move in the direction of what FPH had/has - it makes him a happier balanced man, and Dan also reports similar benefits and good friends he still has and he's another happy/balanced male in contrast to, say, Poke-a-Roo and X, both isolated except for the women in their lives (whom they treat badly). I've been carefully noting these differences and how they seem to play out into male adulthood . . .

welp, I guess the upside of this situation is that it's been (and obviously will continue to be) a thorough questioning: how do I want to live [now that I can move forward without running from anything]? and at this rate I'll have a dowry to bestow upon myself when the answers become clearer, since I've been working like a lunatic squirrel for "whatever comes next" as "next" keeps being the-merely-now