The summer of '23 has been an eventful one. It's incredible how life events can be all-consuming and then there comes a lull leaving me to wonder what the heck to do with my time.
First, the craziness: we moved to New Mexico. This means that we needed to sell our house in Massachusetts, celebrate my older son's high school graduation, hold an estate sale to downsize all of our stuff, move some things to an apartment locally (long story) and then move what was remaining to NM, and close on the sale of the houses.
My husband is working full time in NM, and I was holding down the fort in MA, both looking for work and trying to manage all of the moving requirements. I was also trying to manage my sanity; it's quite hard to transition from a high-power biotechnology executive to a lowly job seeker in an environment that has been seeing a massive downturn in both investment and solvency. So, to add to the stress of the moving, I was also taking an Executive Education course to try to expand my CV. What was I thinking? Seriously.
In any case, the movers came to the house on June 1st to pick up the boxes and furniture that were going to the apartment. My son picked up the apartment key and I stayed at the house to oversee the packing and loading. My younger son was still in school. That night the older son had prom. I scrambled to get the apartment livable (at least make up beds and get out the coffee maker) because my sister her husband were arriving that night and needed a place to sleep. The house was all packed up and there wasn't a bed for them there! We managed to get them from the airport, get my son to prom, and have everyone with a bed. EXCEPT that my brother-in-law forgot that my son was coming in to the apartment through the garage (which has a key code) and did not have an apartment key. He was locked out. Neither my sister nor brother-in-law heard him banging on the door and so he had to call me to drive down to the apartment at 2am and let him in. Ei yi yi...the best laid plans.
The remainder of the family arrived on June 2nd. This included my husband from NM, four relatives from AZ, and four relatives from CA. They were all staying in a house that we rented for them in RI (it's a bit far, but we were hoping for some gorgeous beach weather...boy were we wrong). My older son's team made it to the state finals for his sport, and so we had to travel for their first match to the north of the state...just to make it challenging.
On June 4th, we had a photo session scheduled with a professional photographer. It had been torrential rain for days and we didn't think that we were going to get it in, but we had a miraculous (but cold) window in which there was minimal precipitation. We had family ranging from 79 years to six months in age, all with different needs, but because it was so rare that we were all together in one place, we thought it was important to keep. We froze through graduation, the younguns (and old-uns) left a little early to warm up in the apartment, and then went to dinner at an Inn. It was a beautiful day.
On Monday June 5th I had the fire department at the house - they had to inspect the smoke and carbon monoxide detectors to make sure they were up to code (they weren't...yay, more headache). I also had a call with a recruiter about a new job opportunity. Yay!
The next day, my husband had to head back to NM for work, and my older son had another game for the state finals. This also happened to be in Northern MA, so it was a hike for the family who were in RI, but they wanted to come and see him play since they hadn't gotten to throughout his high school career. I had the phone screen for the job, and it went well...we decided to follow up with more of the team. The next two days were spent in RI with the family (in the rain...lots of playing cards and putting together puzzles).
Thursday I had a call for my consulting work (keeping myself busy), and Friday we brought my son's car into the shop to make sure it'd be able to make the trek to NM, I had to order a personalized cake for his team party (he was a captain), and I had an introductory discussion with a second company for which I through my hat in the ring.
Saturday, the family left for their respective homes.
Sunday. Breathe.
Monday the 12th saw the team from the estate sale company arrive at the house for staging and pricing of objects. It's a little disconcerting to see people rifle through your things and put numbers on items that you think are invaluable. I understand why they prefer that owners aren't around for haggling with estate sales now.
Tuesday through Thursday were spent networking, interviewing for the jobs I was hoping to land, and unpacking the rest of the apartment so that we were comfortable in our new space. My son had kind of taken over the apartment and it looked like a true bachelor pad...not something that I wanted to move into. It needed cleaning and unpacking, arranging, and perhaps a little bit of a feminine touch.
Friday was the estate sale. It was also the last day of school for my younger son. Lots of transition.
The following week was spent interviewing for jobs, packing up the house and the rest of the things that didn't sell in the estate sale, and hiring 1-800-got-junk to get rid of all the rest of the stuff that we didn't need in NM and that didn't sell and that Goodwill wouldn't/couldn't take. They loaded our moving truck for NM on the 20th of the month, the dumpster came on the 22nd, and I spent Friday cleaning and ensuring the house was empty.
On Tuesday, the 20th, I went out to treat the water of our hot tub, it's usual 1X per week chlorine check. It. Was. Not. Working. I couldn't get the darn thing to turn on (and usually it's just always on). I called for service and they couldn't come until Thursday the 29th. We were supposed to close on the 26th. I called every pool place I or our real estate agents could think of. No one could come and fix it (until after the closing). Through our lawyer, we offered the prospective new owners a check for $1500 (and the appointment that I had secured with a deposit) and hoped they would close without issue. The spa repair company stated they thought the repair would run anywhere from $50 - $1500, so we just went with the high end to make it easy. On the 26th, the day of the closing, the buyers balked and stated that in order to close, they wanted a $5000 hold back (kind of like escrow) until the repair was completed. It was over the top. They wouldn't budge. So we finally agreed. The repair cost $35.
Our furniture was delivered in NM the week of 4th of July.
I didn't get either job.
I have been getting mammograms since I turned 40, since there is a history of breast cancer in my family. Each year, after the scans, I get the same notice, something akin to "you have very dense and lumpy breasts, we can't see shit". Despite this, I still went, and even upgraded to the 3D version (excerpted to the left). Then, in 2020 (yay! COVID!) the radiologist "saw something" on the scan of my left breast and so I was sent for biopsy, which ended up being surgical because they couldn't get a good enough view/angle for a core biopsy. Thankfully, what they found was benign, attributed to something like calcifications. Since then, all of my scans were negative, accompanied by notes such as (in my best Mr. Mackey impression) "It'd be great if you could just iron out all of those lumps and pump some air into those suckers to make our lives easier, mkay?".
