Little Stone Lion

This evening the older son gave me a marvelous present. It was something he found in an empty house where he and his partner were laying rugs and knew I would like it an so he brought it home for me. It's a small stone lion in a deco kind of style and it means more to me then if he had gone out and spent a fortune. God I love him so.

Stick a fork in me, I'm done

Money problems yet again and, as always, there is a deal hovering about that we cannot grasp and thus end our troubles. I'm Half resigned to the fact that I will spend the last part of my life living in a box somewhere but I can't stand to watch my husband fail once again. All he has ever wanted is to be successful and it has always danced right beyond his grasp. I feel so badly for him I want to lay down and pull the blankets over my head and not get up again.
I don't want to be rich. I want to be comfortable. I want to know that we can buy food, pay the younger son's salary and pay our bills. I don't need a fancy car or glamorous clothes. I need some peace of mind. I need to know that we will be alright. Even more, I need for the Husband to be a success. Not just for me but for him. He tries so hard and he takes care of us so well, it breaks my heart to see him start to realize that he may be a failure. At least a failure in his eyes. He'll never be a failure in mine.

Mad Hot Ballroom

I just finished watching Mad Hot Ballroom on Showtime and found myself bawling like a baby, just like every other time I've watched it. MHB is about a ballroom dance competition for school aged children in New York City.Apparently this is a yearly thing with a big trophy going to the winning school. SO why do I cry? Maybe because I've never had a chance to do something that could prove to my mother and the world that I was good at something. Maybe because I remember the elation of my sons when they had there moments in the sun. When older son, first chair sax in band all throughout his high school career, despite the fact that, as his middle school teacher so cruely reminded him, freshmen never make first chair. Older son made first chair on the very first day and held it forever more. The school band had one big trip a year where they competed and always brought home a prize or two. One trip as the older son was unpacking his bags from a trip to Virginia Beach he told me he brought me something. Thinking I was getting salt water taffy I was excited but not as excited as when he hauled this trophy out of his bag and handed it to me. Outstanding soloist. And he said the trophy was mine.
Younger son wasn't much into band. Instead he and a select number of his clasmates, wrote an dillustrated a slide show called "Save the Bay'. Each and every picter was made of paper. No pen lines no markers. If you wanted a line it had to be cut out of paper and glues just so so that there were no shadows. I had helped with their project the year before and they came in runner up for the state, complete with a trophy. That year the teacher was too busy to help so another mother and I worked with the kids. I can't tell you what fun I had with these creative kids. We won county, we won state and then we went to the International film festival that just happened to be in DC that year. So the other mother and i hired a bus, invited the parents and off we went. When they won first place I think the parents screamed more than the kids. Their trophy is still at the elementary school and younger son is now 24.
I think I know why these things and Mad Hot Ballroom make me cry. For once, the focus is on the arty kids, the creative kids and not just the atheletes. In high school, football players get a letter and recognition at the end of the school year. Band gets a letter as well but no mention is ever made about first chair this or that. But we know. We band parents know that not only doe sit take skill and practise and determination but a sort of stuborness that our kids like being in the band, despite all the geek connotations, just as the arty kids, love their glue and cut paper and the chance to let their imaginations fly. Some day the arty kids will get their recognition.
After all, according to what I have heard and read, the thing that made ancient man into what we call human wasn't his skill with a spear, or relationships with the others in their clan. It was art. When ancient man first put finger to pigment and drew upon a cave wall, we left the workd of the brute and entered the world of the modern man. Someone hand me my glue.

Tax time in the office

Since I'm the one in the office who knows how to use the computer (A clever ploy on the husband's part if you ask me), I get to be 'SHE WHO MUST INPUT" This goes along with my other title of 'SHE WHO IS ORGANISED'. Put the two of them together and guess who is stuck gathering tax information to feed into turbo tax. Now it isn't as bad as it could be. I knew this day was coming ever since Michael let evil voodoo woman go and then she and the husband spent four Saturday's doing the taxes. I thought I had this horrendous pile o' work to do and I was driving myself crazy. And then I learned that I have most of it done, since I've been recording the busines' expenses all along instead of waiting till the last minute. Then I hit a snag. The rental pooperties. I meant properties but today they are definitely pooperties.
These three rental properties were the husband's idea. They do bring us a positave cash flow but that was before one of the properties was condemned do to a falling down porch. Well, the porch was condemned but then the city was kind enough to condemn the whole house which meant that the tenants who weren't paying their rent because they said the house was dangerous had to leave. This is the tenant who, when the husband took her to renter's court to evict her for non payment of rent, told the judge the house was unsafe and that was why she wasn't paying the rent. The new paint in the house was making her son and husband sick because they are alergic to latex paint despite the fact that she's the one who bought the paint and painted the rooms black. We had fresh white paint trhoughout.
I'm wandering.
So the husband decided to fix up the house properly and replaced all the rugs, the window, the doors and who knows what all else. In fact everything was done so well that we now have a buyer for the place with us holding the mortgage and a more positive cash flow. All well and good but now I have grease stained receipts for things I can't even begin to imagine. I'm sure the guys at 84 lumber know what pcpvc elconduit is but it has me scratching my head. Is it repair or capital investment. AAArrrg.
Now we throw into the mix, the renters rental history which is scribled on the back of envelopes and on a runing list with dates, red marks and running totals that the husband might understand but it is only so much hieroglyphs to me. I swaer I am slowly plucking myself bald.
I'm perservering. Now I have to get the husband to sit down with me and stay off the phone. I'm thinking about super gluing his butt to a chair and not letting him up until it is all done.
And then we got a snot o gram as a response to one of our letters and I must admit I fell into temptation and snot o grammed him right back. I'm not usually like that but there are some days when I have had enough.
I came home to find the older son making chili for dinner, complete with texas toast and stuffed potato skins and then Rocco the wonder dog grabbed his stuffed gorilla, Eloise Matilda, and dragged her into the living room where they had some sweet monkey love, even though gorillas are apes and not monkeys. Ahh swet monkey love.
t she who gets to imput everything into