Helping A Friend Is Good For The Heart And Maybe Lucky For Small Destructive Critters

Last Friday I spent the day helping to clean out and pack up my good friends husbands house.  This was the house of my friend Donna who died one year ago today.  Now her husband is having to add insult to injury as he has lost the house to foreclosure after having no job for two years and not being able to refinance even though he was promised many times that he would be able to, under the it-turns-out-not-so-wonderful-new-government-refinance-program.  (Don't even get me started.)

The poor guy didn't even know where to begin.  He is still grieving (naturally) and he hadn't even touched many things that had belonged to his wife, such as her sewing stuff and personal collections, as he just couldn't bring himself to do it.  Several members of our shared dance club were helping out and he kept saying that he just didn't deserve all this help.  He kept reminding of us of what a gruff guy he had been for so many years while his Donna had been alive.  I know that he was always good to her, if not the most social guy in the room.  And I told him not any one of us is any better than any other and that we all loved him.  He openly cried several times.  I personally felt emotionally exhausted after only 5 hours of working, so I can't imagine how he felt.

As luck would have it, the rest of the weekend turned out to be more than a little irksome for me:  My sister is back in the clink- charges in 3 counties, including a parole violation.  Some evil intolerant person put a virus on the web pages that have information for write in republican candidates for our local election.  And a nasty little mole is wreaking havoc on my front yard. 

But I got to enjoy one of the most beautiful warm Seafair Sundays ever.

Credit: Flickriver.com

And I get to continue helping to make my friends husbands life a little easier by setting up an estate sale for him this week.  Which is much more productive than how much I would love to go all Caddyshack on that damn mole...

motleynew.net

 

Surviving The Crazy... And Seafair!

Lately around here, it's still a little bit crazy.

1)  We've settled into a routine of working especially hard to get my husband through his next actuarial exam by having him 'teach' his papers to me.  He missed passing the last one by 1/4 of a point!  So this new tactic has got to work- since either he needs to make sure he's a valuable enough employee to keep around after his company's coming shakeup or we'll need all the help we can get in selling him to somebody elses company in Texas.  Cuz' we sure won't be able to afford to be staying here if his company shows him the door.  Either way, we're going to be prepared!

2)  I recently survived a 20 year high school class reunion that entailed a strange trip down memory lane with a neighbor girl who was always my friend at home, but never at school.  She was a cheerleader and I the band geek.  I learned that she is now a lesbian who is super down to earth and still as sweet as I remember she could be and she learned that I am now a blond who it turns out had a secret life of competitive dancing and other things that prove I was never really that geeky at all.  Ahh, the lives we lead when we compartmentalize!  It's so much easier to be real and just one person...  And it wasn't half bad to be lumped into the new clique of those dubbed the 'non-agers' at the reunion.  Thank goodness the attendees were mostly different than those who came 10 years ago, so nobody said a word about how much fatter I was last time around!

3)  It's also that time of year when Seattleites go as nuts as any politically correct people can.  It's Seafair!

Credit: news-world.org

Tomorrow my husband will feel his office building shake as the Blue Angels arrive in town.  Many people will go bonkers, either complaining about all the unnecessary noise and hoopla or joining in.  It's really not summer in Seattle without Seafair- rain or shine, complete with people suddenly tearing off clothes to reveal especially bad tattoos and fishbelly white skin, the wonderfully intelligent combination of drunken boaters all tied together to a logboom and women who only pretend to be disgusted when the pirates drag them down the beach and haul them off at swordpoint.

Here's a sample of the raucousness for the out-of-towners to enjoy:  You really have to see it to believe it!