This space for rent
Happy New Year Everyone!!
Where have I been?
Posted on 2009-Nov-25 at 07:03
Where have I been?
Well let’s see… just busy. Everyone is busy I know. Yet some are really good about blogging anyway. I just haven’t had the desire to be honest. Part of it is that after my ordeal with Frank I was exhausted. Then work started. Then I had to deal with Social Security.
I feel bad about not blogging but you know, my life just isn’t that exciting. I have also had a sudden urge to become invisible online- but it’s a bit late for that. My name and my business name is all over the internet. I did hide all of my personal ads, actually canceled them. Tired of the losers contacting me. Most of them don’t even know how to type a single sentence anyway. I get ‘mail’ that says, “hi, how are you?”. Fine. Peachy. Dandy. I mean, what is that??
No, I don’t have the energy or time for that. I just don’t anymore. I am watching (or listening I should say) to hockey online and watch the discs Dr. Dog sends me. He is my hockey Angel. He is a wonderful friend. If I was his neighbor I know that he would help me chop my wood and stack it for me. He would help me if I needed help, unlike my ”friends” here who I never hear from. But I live 3000 miles from him.
One thing I don’t get and maybe some of you understand this or have been through it. Why is it that when we get older we stop hanging with the same friends, stop helping our friends that we hung out with all the time when we were young and single? Why should having a relationship with others stop our friendships? But it does. I have an ex-friend like that who lives about 4 miles from me. Does he ever call me and ask if I need help? No. Does he ever call and say hey lets hang out? No. Yes, I have called him, invited him over when I have seen him at the store, etc. We were just friends, nothing more. And my ex bf, he lives two miles from me. Same story- wants to be friends but never calls, never hangs out, never nothing.
Ah I have gotten to where I don’t care anymore. I just can’t. I don’t get it, but I am not going worry about it either.I have a new motto, one I tell myself everyday when I get up;
“Never make anyone a priority who is only willing to make you an option”
That’s it and that is what I will live by. My priority is me, my kids, finishing school and living my life.
One more thing, I am going to be a grandma. Yep, hard to believe, even for me. My son is going to be a dad and he is trying hard now to change his life around. He is signed up for college and will start in Jan. His gf is also going. So I am helping them as much as I can. I will not spend money on it but since I graduated from the same college and work there I am helping with all of that for them. I really hope he sticks to it. I had a talk with him again today and he said he is serious about it and about changing his life. He is going to be 30 next year so he needs to do something for sure.
So that is about it from California. I may or may not be alone for Thanksgiving but if I am that is fine with me.
But all of you that are traveling or having family over, have a safe and wonderful Thanksgiving and I will try and post more often. I am reading yours!!
Well guess what today is?
Posted on 2009-Oct-2 at 09:46
Well it's that time of year again!! Time for hockey to Officially start today and the Red Wings have a lot of new faces and some come-backs on the roster. It will be an interesting year indeed and hopefully a fruitful one too! BACK TO THE CUP!!! Funny thing about this image-- Chris Chelios-on the left side- is not playing hockey at all right now and is no longer with the Wings. Bummer in a way but his leaving made cap room for some much needed younger blood. I think the other image is Hasek and he is also retired. It was an old image, what can I say?
Healing and then...
I know it’s been a few months since I wrote anything in here but ever since Frank died my life has been one big blur.
But things are getting back on track now and that is a good thing. I just finished a huge estate sale with a large part of his things and now I just need to clean up the yard and get rid of the rest of the stuff. I am in the process of deciding to get a loan to buy a manufactured home to put on my place. I am worried about being able to make the payments from then on ($570 a month vs. the $333. I make now) but I would have a great place that would be warmer in the winter and safer all the way around. Plus this is the time for a loan while the rates are low and the banks are dying to loan money. I have already spoken to someone that said I could get a fixed rate of 3-4% on a 30 yr loan. I owe $26,000 on my place now- so I would go from that small amount to owing a lot-but the trade off is worth it, isn’t it?
My dream home has three bedrooms (one for my office) and a great master bath with a garden tub for me. My kids think I should buy a little place but I have been in a little place for 30 yrs and want some space!!! It’s not much different in cost for what I want.
I am seven classes away from graduating with my bachelor’s degree- so I will then have student loans to pay on also. My biggest fear is that if I have no work during the summers can I afford all these payments with just my SSD? Web work is slow but I will be able to apply as an online instructor after I graduate which is my goal. I want to be able to teach online as well as here when the hiring frost is thawed. I get really excited when I think about it- a new home with real walls and not paper thin ones. Real walls!! A real home with a floor that doesn’t bounce when the washer is in spin cycle. A real home with a real kitchen and best of all, a linen closet!! I have no linen closet now and it sucks. I just am a bit scared because I have to do this all by myself. I am sure my son will help as he can with moving things for me but otherwise- it’s scary!! A friend of mine just told me that she rented a storage unit for two months- got a trailer to live in and had it all done in two months time- and in winter!! So that gives me more hope. Of course she doesn’t have a crippled back but hey, if she can do it, so can I. She was a lot younger too when she did this (38 compared to my 54) but I know I can do it. I will do it!! If I can get the loan then I am good to go.
I am back at the college working in the ITC again, but this time we are doing everything ourselves in there. We get no help from the techs unless we beg for it and I told my boss forget that- I can install monitors, programs etc as well as they can. So that is what I have been doing. I switched out four 19: monitors for 22” widescreens (which I don’t like) and we installed our new robotic disc duplicator. It’s a piece of junk as far as I am concerned but oh well.
I have been really swamped with that and doing research online for other items also. We have CS4 installed on all of the computers in the college labs now but we have discovered a major problem in exporting videos from Premiere Pro CS4. You used to be able to just click on Export> movie and make it a raw AVI that you could import to Encore to make a menu or further work on it. I finally found the way to export it to Encore, but you have to jump through some hoops to export it as just an AVI file. None of this will make sense to those of you that don’t do video work but it will to those that do.
And yes, you Macfreaks, I know that final cut pro is sooo much better. Be we are stuck with pcs and so that is that. The worst part about this mess is that it is a common bug and everyone is hoping that CS 4.5 will be better. Well that is groovy but the college can’t just swap out $25,000.00 worth of software like that. So I had to research a work around and I found it-fortunately on the adobe website. It turns out it is an issue with upgrading from CS3. Many people in the forums said screw it and use PP CS3. I just may do that myself here at home. I have a video class coming up soon-I think this will be my 6th? Geesh..
Well it is a multimedia degree….
And now I get a call from my son who was starting to get back on track,,only to find out some chick lied to him to have sex with him and now she is crying rape and is only 15. Funny she was hanging around a bar all night long.
So of course his (cheating) gf kicked him out, told him SHE was pregnant and now he is trying to find a lawyer. Heh, with what money?
All I can do is slap myself on the forehead and ask why why why.....
He just turned 29. He has NO idea why he does what he does. Who do I ask then I asked him. Who do I ask WHY you don't think anymore- who is controlling your body and your brain? WHO????
Lord have mercy. That is all I can say...
The passing of Frank....
On July 22, my best friend Frank died. I went to see him in the long term care unit he had been in since Feb of 2009 and then spoke at length with the social worker there. They were concerned about his sudden lack of memory and his need for increased oxygen. They had been keeping him on it for the previous week, which he had told me.
I couldnt' stay long- which bothered him I know- and I felt terrible about it each time. But I was so busy running around doing errands and trying to get this Social Security mess fixed. I thought Monday, the 20th was his birthday, but I was a day off. Moon landing day he had told me. It was the day before.
I brought him some fresh jalepeno peppers- his favorite 'snack'. He ate them like that fresh, like I would eat an apple. Ugh. Iron stomach. Being Hispanic I guess helps.
On Tuesday I had to go to Modesto- a 150 mile round trip for me- to file an appeal at the Modesto SSA office since I was not up to trusting the office here in Sonora. I had told Frank I was going. I had to turn off my phone in their office and was in there for two hours.
When I stepped outside I received a message from the social worker at the hospital telling me Frank was in the ER and not doing well.
I rushed from Modesto and went straight to the hospital and stayed with him until after 11pm. I would have stayed but my 11 yr old dog had been locked up since 8 am and I was exhausted.
The last thing Frank said to me was "Think positive, think positive, think positive." Meaning, that after having had 8 strokes and 8 heart attacks, he was going to beat this because he just had to. He slipped into a coma and died the next morning.
Frank and I had been looking for his daughter for the last 6 yrs. He had been back in Sonora since 1998 and had seen her a few times, even traveled to Fremont to see her (a three and a half hour drive from here) in his 1973 Chevy p/u that had been his dad's. It was barely running at the time.
Over the course of the next 11 yrs Frank had many strokes and heart attacks. He was born with a bad heart and had left Sonora in 1981 to have a valve replacement done down in San Jose, where he was originally from.
We lost contact for a short time in which I thought he had gone back to Fremont, but he was just leaving me alone since he knew I had a lot on my plate at the time and he was in need of a lot of help that I just couldn't offer.
I felt terrible about that for a long time but I made it up to him. We talked about it, he was forgiving and I was apologetic.
We have been friends for 33 yrs. I would come visit him once he got his own place back in 2005- he stayed with us for about 9 months until he could get into the low-income apartments. Frank was terribly disabled from not only his work-related injuries but also from diabetes and his heart condition.He was in constant pain, day and night. It was so sad to see him like that- and try as I might I couldn't help him with that pain. But it was his heart in the end, that gave out.
Over the last four years Frank and I became very close friends. I could tell him anything and he would listen. We spoke online or on the phone almost daily- I would worry about him if I didn't see him online or hear from him so I called him to see if he was okay.
While he still had his truck he traveled mostly by bus in his wheelchair- and while he was a fairly private person and very shy, he made friends with a lot of people. Always quick to give advice and be a listening ear, he wasn't opposed to taking strays off of the street until they could get it together.
He was a great musician also.
He loved music. He was a wonderful guitar and keyboard player and he wrote many songs that he dedicated to his daughter. He was re-united through Classmates.com with some old high school buddies that he had been in a band with and that really made him happy. They traveled a long way to come see him more than once after that.
I tried my best to be a good friend to Frank. He gave his daughter my first name as her middle name. Once upon a time when we worked together- he as a tow truck driver and me as a gas jockey/dispatcher- he had some pretty strong feelings for me. I never let on that I knew but I was already with someone that later became my husband. I guess those feelings lasted a lot longer than I knew- at least until we talked about it.
But we loved each other as friends no matter what. The last five months Frank had been in a long-term care unit where everyone loved him, no matter how grumpy he got. I went and got his mail for him twice a week and got things out of his apartment for him. I saw him as much as I could until the smell of that place drove me nuts. But I still came- I just wish I had stayed longer on that last Monday.
The worst part was we never could find his daughter- until after he died of course. Seems the law has no issues finding a 12 yr old girl to let her know her dad died, but to heck with trying to find her so he could tell her he loved her himself one more time. We tried everything we could- from the finder dude on tv to online paid searches to Social Security. Nothing worked. Had I known the law might have looked for me I would have taken Frank to the Sheriff's office myself- but he hated the law. I could have at least proved to them that he wasn't about to abduct his daughter or kill her mom-he just wanted a phone conversation with her. But his memory was so bad from the strokes that he never told me about a small piece of paper at the bottom of his wallet. A piece that had Destiny's mom's drivers license on it. That is what the sheriff used to find her. No problem.
So I had a bittersweet meeting with the 12 yr old daughter of my best friend, after he died. She carries my name and looks just like her dad. We hugged, we cried and I gave her things in his apartment that meant a lot to him.
I told her I made her dad two promises. One was to find her no matter what and tell her how much her dad loved her, missed her and thought about her all the time. The second one was to start a trust fund for her. I have fulfilled one promise and I only need her ssn to complete the second one.
I may not be able to take care of his things as I said I would, they took the key and haven't been back, but I did the best I could.
Rest in peace my good friend Frank. You are now no longer in pain. Your daughter knows how much you missed and loved her and she feels the pain of missing out on knowing you better, but she is happy that she now knows the truth.
You are missed daily.
Here are some photos of Frank:
Frank and his signed guitar
Frank's other love-RC Helicopters
Frank's first love-Destiny Jana Rubio
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