Category: FINANCES

I FAILED IN FINANCE

MOODY BLUES TUESDAY

~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

           MATISSE

Writing somberly is parallel to writer’s block. It’s not a block, really, more like a resistance to engaging feelings. ย If I place all the options on a puzzle board, this leads to the center. A fractured life impacts emotional posture and is not unlike physical posture. We slump or stand tall. We love instead of neutralizing, we are inspired instead of stagnant, we romance our passions, and we live to love. My heart is at the starting gate to love again, but the racetrack is missing. I’m undercover! I watch Blacklist or some foreign film in the evening. Most weekdays, I’m circulating between finance, selling furnishings online, shoveling snow, and researching acronyms because the news uses them so often.

The vortex of discontent is a punctured life. The windows of my home reflect the splendor of nature that plays all day long in the winter. ย I’m spending more time watching sky stage plays: clouds still, clouds moving, colliding, changing colors, sculpted into aberrations of animals and faces, than cognitive thinking. My collection of records and CDs accompanies the scenery. When I’m sorrowful, I listen to Ennio Morricone; when I need a lift, Vivaldi, Sundays it isย Turandot or some other Opera. When I’m a go-go girl, Swing, Salsa, or The Stones, when I feel alone, Sarah Vaughn, Nancy Wilson, and Etta James, for writing inspiration Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, and Annie Lenox.ย 

      I don’t see any remedy commercials for a fractured heart. By tomorrow, the despair could vanish, like the rain that puddled us for the last two weeks. Everything Iโ€™ve experienced is good in the beginning. So, to begin, I will listen to Begin the Beguine. 

“Begin the Beguine” is a popular song written by Cole Porter. Porter composed the song between Kalabahi, Indonesia, and Fiji during a 1935 Pacific cruise aboard Cunard’s ocean liner Franconia. In October 1935, it was introduced by June Knight in the Broadway musical Jubilee, produced at the Imperial Theater.  

    Henry miller writes in his book, โ€œ Henry Miller on Writingโ€ โ€œWhoever greatly suffers must be, I suppose a sublime combination of a sadist and masochist.โ€™  I suppose that a few of my friends have aligned me as such, and now that I write this, as in all writing, answers blink at you, and then the soul receives them like a wafer of wonder. Perhaps I am, but where that evolved and manifested, I have no time to think about it because the sun is out. I must sit in my newly designed sunroom, a small book library alcove that receives the sun at noon.  When I returned with my phone to snap a photograph, the sun disappeared like a footprint in the sky. Every moment needs attention. It’s twenty degrees outdoors. I am modestly adjusted and receive a thousand weekly warnings to get a flu shot. My doctor has tried persuading me to get a flu shot for three years.  I responded that I’d never had the flu and that my last cold was in 2012. He chuckled and asked the next question. 

CHANGE IS COMING

~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich on Pexels.com

Some of us are not rushing to wave the I made it flag. Some favor holding back until the other elements of our character life are solid; ย our fear, pettiness, falsity, greed, so many steps to climb. I have to trust in the pattern of our lives; the invisible thread that taunts us, teases us, and even torments us. I am discovering the shame and greed, the absolute indifference to my security, and finances.

Gravity has dropped, and so has my sense of structure, health, and self-discipline. Making a bed was too tedious, and grocery shopping was needless because I didnโ€™t care about food; I like tuna sandwiches with avocado and bananas for breakfast. The comfort comes from writing, cloud watching, and phone calls with friends. ย ย 

The loss of direction and ambiguity lurking in the future is a place any person can find themselves in, especially those sensitive and artistic, without a map, familiar signs, and a plan. You have to ride it all the way to a new horizon.

It is a day later; the sky is unchanged, and the cloud cover is still nailed to the sky.ย  In random conversations, I have heard of peopleโ€™s hardships, sacrifices, and compromises. ย I tell myself not to be too sentimental , but it’s a useless force, I am sentiment. Donโ€™tย open those links to real estate values, how much money you need to retire. Openย the link to redesign my interior life using new colors, textures, and backgrounds.

MALIBU PARADISE BLUES

~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

In a current of unexpected life moves, I floated towards the Pacific Ocean and landed along the fragile, factious Santa Monica Mountains to Malibu.

The salty seaweed smell of the ocean streams through my car, driving down the Pacific Coast highway on my way to buy groceries. Vintage Market is new to Malibu, and clerks are giddy about their jobs. They may be aspiring actors or former actors.

I walk in and get a phone call that Iโ€™d been waiting for so, I set my cart down on a shelf and took the call. During the half-hour conversation, my eyes were fluttering through the scene: tanned surfers, affluent college students, and diamond-rich men and women of age that donโ€™t check their bank balances. Because of this, expressions are chilled as fine wines, and smiles are sublime or radiating. They are a mostly content population of 13,000. The median home price is $901,000, and the median income household is $127,000. Here in Malibu every thing looks different from Santa Fe: The staging of โ€˜was in the business, am in the business, or want to be in the business,โ€™ surfaces and dominates the scenery.

They are beautiful-the young teenagers who surf and paddle are true blondes, the blue eyes scintillating pools of water, young women are saddled onto 6โ€ platforms, and then there are the stand-out power people, who will not acknowledge anyone, and expect everyone to acknowledge them. Tucked in the mountains, are extraordinary artists who live off the grid the way most people prefer to live in Santa Fe.
I am learning slowly and still hiding out at Chantalโ€™s, where I am living, two miles up from PCH off Malibu Canyon Road, behind a gate. Bohemians, artists, home-office screenwriters, producers, and famous heirs of recognizable movie stars live there.

In the last hour, I walked down the road in the hands of sloping hillsides, horse ranches, and signature homes behind walls as high as the palm trees, built to withstand the typhoons of nature and mankind. In the daylight a swirl of rain and clouds, it was as if I was in Ireland, walking along a road in Kilkenny. I roped in my imagination and returned to the mountains, which will teach me how far to go, how to duck a racing motorcycle car, or confront a coyote or a snake.
A full transcendental moon dipped into the black-out mountain evening, and has cured me of interior turmoil for the time being. This is part of adventures in livingness in what locals call the bu. Chantal’s artistic compound of eight cottages and seventeen acres burned to chips in the Woolsey Fire. One night with Chantal and Neighbors.

Today, as the Bu, Palisades, and five other fires demolish humanity’s lives, I am grateful I was able to return to my childhood memories in Malibu for one summer in 2017. My family home burned in the Bel Air fire in 1961… No WATER. SAVE THEM THIS TIME, LA, AND DON’T LIE TO THEM.

FRIENDS of FOLLIES

~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

Saturday, a heavy clog of humidity tries to zap my energy. I slept six hours, so I fight, do laundry, do a bit of weight lifting, go up and down the twenty stairs twelve times, and wander in my mind. I answer the first phone call of the day.

” Hi, how are you? ?” I pause to answer with some amusing honesty.

” I’m cleaning my brain?

” How do you do that? You’re funny.”

” “I sweep away all the repetitive scary thoughts.”

” What about you? My friend sighed and then zigzagged into her struggles, taking care of her ninety-six-year-old mother, who does not speak English; my friend is Armenian. She works full-time as a court translator, has two children, a husband, and about fifty friends she continually connects to.

“You are four people in one. I don’t know how you do it?” Is your Mom still living with you?”

“ Yes, she can’t walk. She sleeps in the living room because the bedrooms are upstairs. It’s difficult. I have to feed her as she’s now refusing to eat.”

” Please try and get a nurse’s aide to come in and help you.”

“She won’t let anyone touch her but me.”

“I find that selfish, not to be critical, but you will wear yourself down.”

” She’s always been like that; in my culture, you never abandon a parent, no matter what. Her mind is sharp, so that is good.“

” Heaven isn’t good enough for you,” she chuckled. I often improvise to be amusing because her laughter is boisterous, and we all need more injections of humor.

” Have you decided where to move when it sells?” She asked again.

” Yes, I was looking at my book on Italy, all the different regions, and I think Anacapri is a good choice.”

” Oh, Greta… that is so expensive; what are you thinking?”

“I’m not thinking I’m daydreaming.”

” I have an idea for you. There is a new trend, something like Boomermates, a group of people who share a house, and you don’t have to sign a lease. Go look in San Diego and find something.

“Roommates, strangers, you mean?”

“Yes, why not?”

” Would you do that?”

” Probably not. A studio anywhere in San Diego is two thousand at least, and don’t use the proceeds from the house.

“Now you’re daydreaming. I’ll have to use some without the rental income until I find employment. Are you home now?”

“No, I’m driving to San Diego for a court appointment

“It’s what, six in the morning?“

“Yes, I wake up at five.”

” Every time I come here, I think of you. You were a great leasing agent. You leased about fifty of my units. You can get a job leasing in a nice project. Oh, you should have bought that unit. I remember G4 when we converted to condominiums.“

“Yes, you’ve told me that a hundred times.”

” I made the same mistake. What can you do?”

” Complain and then accept what you can’t accept. Like selling my home.” I went through my steamer trunk and found my marketing portfolio when I opened Follies as an artist retreat. It was nonstop theatrics. One time, I hosted a theater group of six young actors; they were so much fun. Ah, memories.

” You will make it; look what you accomplished, winning a foreclosure, Greta; that is something big.”

” So is my glass of wine.”

“I’d be doing the same in your situation.”

” Another showing, a really nice family. They’ll make an offer. They commented that the exterior paint is their issue, so did I tell you already? I found a marvelous painter from Albania, and he’s given me a very reasonable price to paint the entrance, balisters, and overhang. You know that curb appeal is critical.”

” You shouldn’t spend your money, Greta, how much?”

” Three thousand, and it’s a lot of scraping and ladder work. It’s the right decision if I may disagree with my real estate guru.”

” That is reasonable. Keep me posted. I’m in San Diego now, so I will speak to you soon.”

” Heaven isn’t good enough for you.” And I’m leaving Follies in the best I can because she was so good to me.

63 E High St – Dropbox

~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

My Favorite home must be sold. After twenty-four years, Letting go is going slow, packing, and viewing my possessions and antiques. Today, I found a matchbook in perfect condition from the Stork Club, playbills, and musical sheets. I wish I hadn’t opened my steamer trunk; it’s like looking at another woman.

~ LouLou

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STEPS AWAY FROM ADVENTURES IN LIVINGNESS

~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

ADVENTURES IN LIVINGNESS    

Achievement knocked down the barrier of fear. It feels like lifting off from ground level; I am floating like I used to be in the swimming pool, and I am only at my desk reading the news from my attorney. From one beginning to an ending, five years later, after tedious research, unscrambling legal language, and searching for the meaning behind the case references, this journey is over. I won the lawsuit against the bank that attempted to foreclose on my home and Dodger, my ex-partner of thirty-five years, who, for still unknown reasons, pursued the foreclosure.

Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich on Pexels.com

 Agape, eyes widened, nerves settled like snowflakes; the joy of achievement cannot be understated. During this phantasmagoria, life beyond research, consulting with foreclosure agencies, banking laws, and regulations, I detached from my passion for adventure, creativity, parades, parties, and socializing; I sat alone, and resilience shadowed, then enflamed like a log of fire, encapsulated into a daily doctrine. Music by Ennio Morricone, blue note Jazz, the everchanging scenery of seasons, phone conversations with friends who released ambers of comfort, confidence, and advice, and TCM films nuzzled my fatigue.

 Some days, I remained in bed, staring at my Icart Ladies of Leisure prints, or sat by my favorite window seat and studied clouds, birds, and leaves. The blossom of tenacity grew into a tree trunk and taught me the art of persistence and emotional strength, which were missing links in my character.

Achievement in fine-tuning relationships, setting down the needle gently instead of plummeting riffs and arguments. In the present, as you all know, if you read the news, our culture has replaced argument and debate with assault and violence.  I digress; renewed confidence in my aptitude to fight battles, disputes, and disappointments without Dodger is as solid as concrete.

The next episodic internal journey is regaining my passion for opening the door to interaction with strangers and discovering newness in that engine of life. I hope this admission reaches others who are experiencing depriving themselves of love within and without.

RELOCATION…SENIORS

~ LouLou ~ 2 Comments

My direction is following Lawrence Durrell, โ€œSpirit of the Place,โ€ and living where I would never expect to live.ย I wish I could control my impractical, impulsive, and annoying spirit of adventure. I think about architecture, Jewish deli’s, Italian restaurants, at one movie theater built in the 1930s, and neighborhoods of unfamiliar lighting, expressions, and conversations. Gambling on yourself is how much you can adapt, change, influence, and accept the days of your life.

In my syndicate, there must be a dozen pals with the same unsolved equation. Is it age that blocks me and maybe you from relocation, or is it the trauma and stress? What liberation to just pack a suitcase and board a plane like in the movies. Separation from the familiar. The spirit of adventure has arrived. My home sold and so relocation isn’t a muse any longer, it’s reality. Today, coincidently is Independence day and so am I. It is a day of nostalgia. The Rudster painting Follies. It took two summers to remove the aluminum siding, scrape, caulk, prime, and paint my chosen seven colors to resemble a wedding cake. Mr. Doolittle built the home in 1883 as a wedding present for his daughter.

The Rudster painting Follies. It took two summers to remove the aluminum siding, scrape, caulk, prime, and paint my chosen seven colors to resemble a wedding cake. Mr Doolittle built the home in 1883 for his daughter as a wedding present.

MOODY BLUES TUESDAY

~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

Writing somberly so if you’re not in a dreary mood, skip reading. Somber writing is akin to writer’s block. It’s not a block really more like a disregard of hallelujah holidays, maybe. Disinterest in shopping, village festivals, parties, writing, dancing, and eating. If I place all the options on a puzzle board, this leads to the center. The vortex of discontent is a punctured life.

Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich on Pexels.com

     A fractured life impacts emotional posture and is not unlike physical posture. We slump or stand tall. We love instead of neutralizing, we are inspired instead of stagnant, we romance our passions and we live to love. My heart is at the starting gate to love again, but the racetrack is missing. I’m undercover. I watch Blacklist or some foreign film in the evening. Most weekdays I’m circulating between finance, selling furnishings online, and writing.

The windows of my home reflect the splendor of nature that plays all day long in the winter.  I’m spending more time watching sky stage plays: clouds still, clouds moving, colliding, changing colors, sculpted into aberrations of animals and faces, than cognitive thinking. The scenery is accompanied by my collection of records and CDs. Thank you to all my musician friends for the gift of mood enhancement. When I’m sorrowful I listen to Ennio Morricone, when I need a lift, Vivaldi, Sundays it is Turandot or some other Opera, and when I’m a go-go girl, Swing, Salsa or The Stones, when I feel alone, Sarah Vaughn, Nancy Wilson, and Etta James, for writing inspiration Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Annie Lenox .

        I don’t see any remedy commercials for a fractured heart. By tomorrow the despair could vanish, like the rain that puddled us for the last two weeks. Everything Iโ€™ve experienced is good in the beginning. So, to begin the beginning, Iโ€™m going to listen to Begin the Beguine.

“Begin the Beguine” is a popular song written by Cole Porter. Porter composed the song between Kalabahi, Indonesia, and Fiji during a 1935 Pacific cruise aboard Cunard’s ocean liner Franconia. In October 1935, it was introduced by June Knight in the Broadway musical Jubilee, produced at the Imperial Theatre.  

http://vadebailes.blogspot.com/2012/01/beguine.html Word press changed the writing tools and they don’t make any sense. This is Fred Astaire and Jane Powell.

THANKSGIVING THREE TIMES A YEAR

~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

Iโ€™ve adopted a savant to facilitate making decisions. I donโ€™t want to use the word hate, itโ€™s useless, but this time I will, I hate making decisions. Whether to go out for dinner, or go to one of villages’ festivals, parades, or events, they rake up events during the winter to keep us off drugs. This weekend was a ย village-wide Friday sale for shopping, the lighted tractor parade, and appetizers at all the shops in town. Sounded pleasurable and Iโ€™m proud of the village to induct us into a community of we care about you.ย  I didnโ€™t go, but I did go out for Thanksgiving dinner in a restaurant Iโ€™d never been to, festive crowded, and the tempting buffet twinkled like the first time Iโ€™d seen decorated food. Itโ€™s been five years since Iโ€™ve gone out for Thanksgiving so the jubilee of food was a bit musical.ย  I ordered a glass of wine at the bar, the only customer as everyone had reserved tables for grandparents and children and the roar was melodious. My order to go would wait, the celebratory ambiance shattered my loneliness. The bartender, Jovida was like a lightbulb, she kept coming over to me maybe three times asking me polite questions, have you been here before, you must come on the weekends we have live music, while youโ€™re having your wine can I bring you something from the buffet. I wondered if Iโ€™d be charged, she noticed my hesitation and said, No charge. So I choose smoked salmon, capers, onion, and horseradish. On m wish list if Iโ€™m allowed to eat in heaven, along with Gruyere cheese, tacos, salad, and croissants. ย The bliss, was a sandwich of bustling eager activity, laughter, and the children. ย I remember our family Thanksgiving when my parents were divorced and we went to Nanaโ€™s home in San Fernando Valley, through that old tunnel. My motherโ€™s mother is full-flecked Irish so the dinner was grand, and she was a dedicated cooking slave.ย  She made mashed potatoes like Iโ€™ve never tasted since, and homemade pies, everything spiced with Nanaโ€™s kinship with making the family love her.

ย ย ย ย ย  I left the restaurant after an hour later with a jubilant bag of turkey, fixings, and pumpkin pie. I found my seat on the bedroom sofa, and watched, โ€˜ The Trainโ€™ with Burt Lancaster.ย  My thoughts were rested, abated for the whole evening, and then the next day, turkey revenge. I could not get out of bed, eat, or think. So I said to myself, itโ€™s okay to do nothing and so I watched a romantic comedy, โ€˜ Cardboard Husband,โ€™ with Norma Sherer and Robert Taylor, removed three-year-old lipstick and liners, shopped online without buying, saved for later my way of shopping. Then I threw the dice and I got seven. That is where my decisions are now made. If I donโ€™t get a seven with seven throws, I donโ€™t go out or make a decision. If I get it once- Iโ€™m on! It was a perfect day for thanks. I think we should have a Thanksgiving Holiday three or four times a year.

WINTER WRITING IN UPSTATE NEW YORK

~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

ย ย ย  Still flustering over how to save more money, and which expense she should solve; the dental appointment thatโ€™s six months overdue, the servicing of her car overdue since June, or elevated reasons to book a trip to San Diego. The urgency to decide sent her into a minor mid-afternoon tizzy and she decided she needed potato chips to solve her physical edginess. She does not use salt in her cooking, and from experimentation over the years realized that salt could elevate her dizzy thinking and lackluster posture. The momentary outdoor freshness stilted her, to stop moving, and breathe deeply like she was in the doctorโ€™s office and they say, โ€˜ deep breath.โ€™ ย ย The street is absent of walkers, workers, delivery trucks, and residents, itโ€™s almost like a graveyard and this does not irritate Greta, she uses the bliss to engulf her creativity, and so she began to write.

“Young woman sitting on the books and typing, toned image”

PUZZLE OF SOLITUDE  will always be a puzzle because our lives, solo or mated, are puzzled by too much solitude, or not enough.

ย I contest what seems endless solitude with my Irish Russian temper; condemning irritants like street noise, absence of friends, short-tempered customer service reps, world news, and mindless tasks. After the first ice rain and snow, the fever dulled, and mindfulness triumphed. I imagined my basement of survival would sink. It did not. There is an inner exploration happening, unfolding like spreading new sheets on my bed, that solitude has befriended me all my life, in the best of times and the tedious. I have to find the frolic and follies in the world I created. I have to laugh alone so I watch screwball comedies, seek humor in my irregularities; wear a sweater inside out, pour coffee into a wine glass for a cocktail and chuckle up and down the staircase, because I keep forgetting where I left my phone. My head is elsewhere-daydreaming.
Iโ€™ve learned how to repair house calamities; unscrew windows, seal up cracks, fix clogged drains, replace air vents, read the meters, and rejuvenate every wood board, handle, chair, and table with Old English Oil. As one pal commented on a visit to the house, ‘ It’s a perfect day for Old English! The winter forecast is blizzardy and full of warnings I havenโ€™t experienced here; and how could I complain when half of Upstate New York is buried in SEVENTY INCHES of snow and no way out? At the end of the day, pleasure comes in the kitchen; my heart and spirit melt while stirring my weekly slumguillion stew while listening to Tony Bennett, Nat King Cole, and swing music.
Winter has in the past been a funnel that leads to writing.

LOVE FOR HISTORIC VICTORIAN HOMES

~ LouLou ~ 2 Comments

Looks like an open dragon mouth, in a way it is. Follies House is begging for a brace. The horrors and hahas of owning a 137-year-old home. We’ve had twenty-two years of sustainable wood, but this year is the end of luck. A dear and wise friend once told me this, ” Don’t love what doesn’t love you back.” As a woman of insatiable imagination and impracticability, I do love her. So I spent a few weeks interviewing masonry contractors. The first four said this, ” I wouldn’t park your car under there.”
“What? The carport is going to collapse?”
“It could.”
” And that costs?
” Fifteen thousand at minimum.”
” What about a temporary fix.”
” Too much liability. Sorry, mam.”

Five interviews later talking to a man whose been in the business thirty years, ” I cannot restore the entire job, is there a temporary fix?”
“Well, we could bring in a platform plank to hold it up.”
” How much would that cost?”
“Twenty-five hundred tops. You should really let us remove the foundation above it, that’s rotted and sinking. Is there a room above it?”
“Yes, a bedroom in my unit. How much would that cost?”
” Between ten thousand and fifteen. We have to get in there and see how much water damage.”
” No, I can’t do that, no impossible.”
” I understand. I’ll do the temporary fix, the house is so gorgeous, and I’ve seen them all.”
” Thank you, I have tenants and have to be responsible for their safety.”
” Would you like to see the bedroom?”
” I’m in a rush.” I smiled a lot and walked up the stairs and opened the front door so he could see.
“Wow, this is incredible.” Once he was in the house he was in love and granted me a discount of five hundred dollars. Do you know why? He said he’d love to be a part of her history after he’s gone. Historic homes are leaving our country, replaced by what he called tinderboxes that only last thirty years.