becky haycox

Author: hamblog

  • these lang synes feel auld

    Happy new year! I now celebrate the end of the holidays. This was the first year I had the guts to basically turn my back on all traditions, family, events, etc. Not that I didn’t take time off, and I even received and gave a few gifts and socialized here and there, but it was minimal. I hope to regain some of the spirit next year but I don’t have to think about that for so many delicious months.

    I’m not a total scroogehole. Here are some things that have been good.

    New Yorker subscription from my sister Ann! I feel like I have crossed over some kind of significant threshold, but am unclear on how things will change from here on out. I was warned that this mag may attempt to derail my ongoing book reading attempts, since the NY is so relatively bite sized. We shall see.

    My pals Evany and Jill blogged every day in December. Jill has posted sporadically since the blogging heydays, and Evany went radio silent when her son was born, 6 years ago. And now they’re back!! It’s like ghosts of your favorite people jumped back into their living selves, all ready to be your favorite people again. So satisfying, and it’s one of the reasons I’m writing today — E. has vowed to post at least every other week for the next year, and I wanted to show my solidarno?? by throwing something here. New years, new intentions, et freaking cetera.

    I was cat sitting for some friends in the Bay Area, which was 100% satisfactory — both the situation and the cats. I took good care of Pete and Nina, and they in turn created a mutual body warmth heating system for the surprisingly cold (cold! as in in the 30s!) nights.

    Then I got a surprise visit from the house-owning friend’s relative, and they brought with them a small, energetic pug and my heart was lost forever. This pug’s name was Lil Bean, and was a warm, wiggly loaf of big goofy love. The cats and Bean interactions were hilarious. Before I become some sort of animal anecdote cliche, I’ll stop here.

    My laptop died. It’s not mine to die, anyway, it belongs to work. So, after some coaxing by friends who understand my tightwaddishness well, I bought myself a brand new Macbook. The unboxing and preparing was 100% porny. Or, as my friend J and I joked, Fwapple. Hahahaha!

    Tonight, the first evening of the new year, was shockingly lovely at the beach that I love. My withered little heart started acknowledging that I might be part of something bigger, which is a big breakthrough in refinding me, serenity, and intention. It was THAT GOOD of a sunset!

    sunset so sunset

    swiftly through the years

    better than the real thing

    I literally paused my guided meditation app so I could take these awful iPhone 5 shots. A more annoying modern sentence was never typed.

     

  • put on a happy face

    About six weeks ago, Darling Andrew brought over some adorable balloons as a festive housewarming gift. Here is our exchange from a couple days ago.

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  • thank you for all the patience practice

    Things have been a little rough lately. I received really unwelcome news last week that I can’t discuss here.

    Then, this week. It sure was fun when my home improvement was centered around picking colors and replacing light fixtures. It’s not so fun when a sudden plumbing problem dominos into hundreds of dollars worth of repairs of crumbling, poorly installed, leaky ridiculousness. Not that I wasn’t warned about the dark side of homeownership by lots of people who delight in making people feel bad.

    Add that to the yearly holiday blues (arriving exactly on time two days before Thanksgiving, thank you so much, brain) and uhhhh bluuuuuuurrrrgh.

    Not to mention the sense that the world is spiraling downward fast. How many shootings, erosions of rights, terrorist acts, total injustices, need to occur before we all get off our Facebook-numbed asses and act?

    That is all. Not a good couple of weeks.

    However, the title of this post is not entirely sarcastic. I have been working hard on at trying to co-exist with unpleasantness. OMG, this is just a nitwitted post. Done!

  • back, forward, running in place

    I finally made it to the “test” portion of the application process for a job. Normally I just get a terse rejection letter before this point with other jobs to which I’ve applied. Jobs for which I am perfectly suited, jobs with the exact same title and description of what I do now.

    Who knows why I slipped through this time, but slip I did. This morning I reported, as requested, to the “General Purpose Room” of Depressing Bureaucratic Building. I, along with 30 of the other best and brightest*, was asked to take a Scantron form, a piece of scratch paper, a calculator, and two #2 pencils.

    When we were told to, we flipped our test packets over and began. I shouldn’t divulge anything about the test, but it was nothing surprising. What was surprising and weird was the fact I was, in effect, taking an SAT after several decades of not having to “fill the bubble in fully.”

    So familiar! Someone always has an annoyingly sniffy nose. The ripple of discomfort when the first person finishes so very early (But I’m not even half done!) The gnawing nerves.

    [*I’m sure there are more than 30 applying for this job. This is a tough tough TOUGH market. These times, I tell ya, etc. Here’s hoping I make it to the next retro step!]

    – – – – –

    My new home is looking terrific (I know, I need to post photos), and I’m in pretty hardcore love. Of course, there are frustrations I have encountered while trying to make the place look like I want it to:

    • I made the mistake of not hiring a professional to do all the painting — I tackled two cabinets myself and it did not go well. The painter is coming back tomorrow to finish off the kitchen, and I’ll bet he’ll do it with a lot less swearing and questioning of the point of life.
    • As part of the closing agreement with the seller, I was to receive a gift card for Lowe’s in a significant amount. They gave me a Home Depot card instead, and I should’ve bounced it right back and insisted on Lowe’s. In this region, at least, there is no comparison — friendly, non-judgmental, knowledgable (L) vs. condescending, uninformed, deadbeat (HD). However, money being money, I painfully spent that card, and now I’m free of the Despot.
    • $100 bills just fly away. Fly away. All the time. And no project is simple, predictable, A-to-B easy. Ever.
    • I need a table for my work space upstairs and I’m weirdly unable to move forward on this. The whole loft area is stumping me right now.
    • Picture hanging has been challenging and I’m mad at myself for owning so much artwork and somehow it’s not enough or right!

    But that’s about it! Otherwise, I swan about this beautiful space, and really can’t believe my luck and good fortune.

    – – – – –

    Two new habits trying to be established: daily meditation, and regular reading of actual books of fiction. The meditation is going great, but the other is … oy. I feel shame at how flabby my reading brain is. I did manage 3/4ths of a Civil War era fiction before I had to return it to the library. It’s an okay book, but I have no desire to see how it turned out. I guess I could try again with a different book!

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    I need a level and more pictures in the correct size and shape.

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    View off my balcony. Yup.

     

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    The grocery store one block from my old neighborhood, last week. So much closure going on these days.

  • why can’t we be like they are

    Two moments that made my life a little more delightful, courtesy of some kids:

    I was in Jo-Ann Fabric a while back, and there were two boys, about 7 or 8, who were doing an admirable job of not being bored out of their skulls while mom perused the pattern books. They played an obviously oft-played scenario that centered around a football game. But it was about the drama around the game — the players psyching themselves up beforehand, the roar of the crowd, the broadcasters’ ramping up the television audiences. I’m not sure if they had dolls or figurines or were just acting it all out, but it was epic. Finally, at game time, they were players on the same team. A play went down. Oh, no, bad news — one of the players was hurt! One of the boys, fully in character as the man down, uttered to his compatriot: I’m hurt, bro.

    It was so plaintive, delivered with perfect pathos, that it immediately entered my personal vernacular. Every time I’ve barked my shin, scraped my elbow, or sustained any one of the multitudes of moving related injuries, I murmur softly to myself, I’m hurt, bro.

    Then: I was in 99 Cents Store getting toothpaste (such a deal), when a similarly-aged young man popped out from the Halloween aisle with a plastic version of a gruesome severed forearm.

    Stop, cause I’m armed! he said. Get it? GET IT? 

    The question was aimed at his delightfully slow-burning big sister, who then had to walk through the store with the little brother behind her, rhythmically bonking her on the head with the hand part of the severed limb.

    Being the youngest of five, I was nowhere near as artful with my annoyance of my older siblings. And I’m regretting it now.

     

  • utilities

    Today, escrow closes, and I nervously await the call that my keys are ready in the realtor’s office.

    I have been busying myself with work-work and a lot of fidgety nerves and doing stuff like firing up the ol’ utilities.

    I remember that my gas went out when I first moved back here in ’04, because I didn’t realize that gas and electric were separate things (I came from the land of PG&E).

    The electric people also reviewed the account and asked if I still wanted “John Smith” to be an authorized caller. John Smith was the guy I lived with and was engaged to for a short amount of time in the 90s.

    Coincidentally, I am in the process of having jewelers free the gems that were part of the engagement ring for that ill-conceived union with John Smith. Those gems will be incorporated into new, and much more wearable, jewelry for me.

    It only took almost 20 years but the last of that break up has been dealt with, it seems. A weird little postscript which further underlines the “brand new chapter” of this whole process through which I’m going.

  • cheep

    Yesterday, after backing out of the parking space from the back of my building, I continued down the alley. Right in front of me, and right next to the back of the car wash place, was something I could not identify but it was in my way. Some garbage? A cat hanging out? Some wood?

    Oh, no. It was a hawk atop its freshly killed pigeon pray. As I came to a stop and fumbled for my camera (of course), the hawk rose into the air and dropped the pigeon, aiming it towards the top of the cinder block fence at the back of the car wash but missing and almost hitting my car. I, smartly, moved on and pulled out of the alley. In the air were dozens of ravens, all making a “Red alert! HAWK!” cry — the air was abuzz with it.

    About 15 years ago I was sitting in the living room of our beautiful and serene family beach house, alone and minding my own business, watching the sea and the little sparrows hopping around outside on the patio. Suddenly, a raven descended on a sparrow — and within the space of two minutes, tops, the raven had popped the sparrow’s head off, plucked most of the feathers from the body, and flown off with what’s left.

    AAAAAAAH, two horrifying bird stories, off my chest! It was a pleasure doing business with you.

  • sentient

    As I look up from my growing box-canyon for a minute and will myself not to write a post about packing (oh, but it’s coming), I am feeling very conscious of time passing, life being lived, lessons learned, tick tock, passages passages passages.

    This new condo business is profound, for starters. I have been a crabby habitué of this area, since the second I moved here more then a decade ago. I will never stop feeling like a Northern Californian, a feeling which caused a significant amount of angst for those early years. Now, of course, I will never stop feeling like a Southern Californian, either, and slowly I have learned to let those two identities co-exist and not to quibble so dang much.

    I must disclose here that I came very close to being a Northern Californian again during this difficult year. I almost became an Oregonian, too; I had dead-serious Plans B and C in my pocket if something didn’t give, or if something gave way, or (basically) if opportunity did not present itself here.

    And so it did — Ventura County hasn’t coughed up a new job for me but I managed to my mitts on the last affordable piece of real estate here. And so I stay. Finally, after 11.5 years of dating, this County and I are moving in together. For-reals commitment. And it is weird and good and bittersweet and huge.

    Lessons are being learned. I continue to learn from my family (both biological, chosen, and the ones in-between), continue to manage expectations, continue to be sad and happy and disappointed and proud.

    And so the wheels turn. I have lost friends this year. Suddenly, horribly. And then the ones who let go in the inevitable way of the old. Loved ones have lost loved ones. And then we have the loved ones who have welcomed brand new shiny loved ones, too. Boggling. Dazzling.

    I feel the melancholy of the unavoidable “normal” losses, both passed and in the future. Only a handful of folks left who were contemporaries of my parents, and even fewer were the ones who knew them “when.” One such person is my friend Jo Ann who was good friend to mom and colleague of dad’s from — what? — 1959 onward? She and I have very much enjoyed our friendship over the past few years; I’ve loved having a reason to go to Arizona a couple times a year to see her.

    And then this year came; she’s not doing so hot; she has some complications from a past surgery and it’s been a hard few months. Still, she was able to email me back after I dropped her a note. She is cool as a cucumber about the possibilities of the future:

    At my age I feel I have had a fortunate life and have signed a DNR (Do not Resuscitate) and just let my Karma kick in.

    (She would probably like me to mention here that she’s still playing Bridge every afternoon and not to count her out quite yet.)

    She also had this to say about me, and my new home:

    I can see you are transitioning into the next chapter of your life that is just so exciting for you and the rest of us to hear about. You have always made good decisions so I know you know what you are doing is the right way to be heading. Have fun along the way.

    Have fun along the way. All I can hope for.

  • house hunty part 6: the tears edition

    I’m buying a home! I will be posting my progress here from time to time. Part one is here. Part two is here. Part three is here. Part four is here. Part five is here. 

    Tears! Frustrated, tired, put-upon tears! The ones I let out on Monday were prompted by getting a load of this week in my calendar:

    A glimpse into the first week of September 2015

    It doesn’t look that bad, but let me tell you, those green bombs are lethal. Thank goodness purple (my work stuff) is unusually light, because I can’t even pretend to be working a job right now. Why is there not “Escrow Leave?”

    The red is the Festival, coming this weekend, which I am co-organizing — and it is a very oh so much lot of work. Oh, and I need to help Jared clean. Not to mention a Quilt Guild Board meeting. Who’s on the Quilt Board and has tears running down it? This face!

    I know there will be more tears, and more after that. My realtor, when he texted me with the news my offer had been accepted, included this: “SHIT IS GETTING REAL!”

    The thing that has been hardest to deal with (apart from the bigger, angst-filled “Am I doing the right thing? Is everyone doing their best by me?” one-two punch) is the amazing demands put on me, demands that have a Very Urgent Timeline. My loan officer contacts me by phone and email in these surges — the inbox or voicemail fills up and that means a round of must-need-now scanning, signing, delivering, explaining, remembering, calculating. Not to mention sending rapidly-depleting savings towards paying things of which I only have a vague understanding.

    The amount of paperwork I was warned about, but this feeling of being controlled by a frantic, bureaucratic robot remotely is really stressing me out. The festival controls me whenever the bank ‘bot is done with me for the minute. Ventura Improv Company and Unnamed Bank, my two overlords.

    From best friend Molly: “SHITE! I had forgotten about the endless paperwork and dour scrutinization of bank accounts.” Well said.

    Oh, not to mention I had to file my taxes this week (yes I filed an extension. please.) This system is so screwy. Income only counts as income when it benefits the government (tax filing), but sure doesn’t count towards your home loan qualification! And that bit of extra income sure lets the government know you don’t need that health care subsidy! Yup, I had to PAY BACK most of my health care premium subsidies, thanks to a small amount of $ that was left to me last year.

    Budgets are balanced on the backs of the poor and I have been reminded repeatedly not to forget this as I jump through so many hoops for the “privilege” of borrowing a six figure sum.

    I think I phased from teary into angry. I’m so tired. So tired!

  • Sometimes Facebook is exactly on point

    sometimes facebook is perfect