Mark

I met Mark yesterday and went to his stunning house on Sherrill Road in East Hampton. He's an interior designer and his place is my dream home. Not too big, not too small. Tastefully furnished with a cozy backyard, complex with pool and pool house. I have to admit I was a little jealous. But I'm always thankful for what I have in my little cape.

Jeepers!

I'm selling my apartment in the city. It's an extravagance I just can't afford any longer, and the city brings no joy when you can't do all the things there that make it an experience. Ordering takeout, going to restaurants, shopping, etc. So I'm moving on! But one of the benefits of selling is that I could take a chunk of the money and buy a new car, something I'd really need in the Hamptons if I were to live here full time. I can't close until February of next month so I figured that's when I'd purchase the new vehicle.
As I was telling my financial advisor all this--my portfolio is with a brokerage firm--and he reminded me that I have a $550K line of credit with them. Why wait til February when I could borrow the money for the car against that line now at a low interest rate, and then pay it off completely when the money from the sale of the apartment comes through next year? Genius, right?
So I trotted off to a car dealer in Southampton with my eye on a make that I've been eyeing for eons: a Jeep. Specifically a Jeep Wrangler 4x4. Two door. Preferably black.
The Jeep website said a basic model goes for between $28K and $30K. Of course all they had in Southampton were more loaded models, loaded with up to $8K worth of stuff to be exact. Ugh. Too pricey for my budget. There was a black one, but it was the most expensive. No. There was a red one. No, again. You know what they say about men who drive red cars. Then there were two gray ones, a light gray and a dark charcoal, they were both $7K over my budget. I haggles with the salesman and got him down another thousand, so the total was $36K. There was also a white one at $35K but it was a manual. I decided to test drive that one just to see how it handled. It was a no-go. Between the color and the shifting I just wasn't into it. I gave sigh and bit on the charcoal one. Jeeps hold their value really well and this was going to be a car I'm gonna keep for the next 15 years. So I bought it.
It's Friday, I'm picking it up next Thursday. That'll give me time to have the money wired to my bank and then get a bank check. It's exciting stuff. I just try not to think that I have to sell my apartment to get it (wonk-wohhh).

My sister's garden

One of the few things that has brought peace and happiness to my poor tortured sister this summer has been her potted plants. Her emotional health has, in some ways, gotten progressively worse as the dog days of summer have worn on. Body vibrations, headaches, sleepless nights, and lots and lots of tears and hugs. My heart continues to break. That said, she has been under the care of a psychiatrist (albeit a virtual online one), and she's been on prescription medications, Lexipro, Xanax. So far she's still had more bad days than good. We keep hoping the scales will tip and she'll start to come out from the shadows...but no real sign of it yet. All we can do is hope.
Back to the plants: weeks ago we found a lot of large clay pots at a yard sale. They were a steal. She potted them with multi-colored geraniums, lantana, ivies, etc. The colors make her happy and it gives her something to take care of, a focus to take her mind off her troubles, if only for a few minutes a day. They make me happy because they make her happy.

So much depends upon a red wheelbarrow

I use my wheelbarrow all the time. But because it's so large it has to stay outside in the weather. The other day one of the handles had taken such a beating that was fully rotten and broke in half. What to do? Buyng another one was out of the question, I'm broke. After I took a long look at it I thought "I can fix this."
I bought a long piece of wood in the same shape and cut it to size. I struggled with getting the bolts and nuts off the old piece of wood, it took me quite a while to figure out how to cut them out. A lot of sweat later I finally got the wood in place and the new bolts in. It looks pretty good.

BEFORE: the broken handle

AFTER: the new handle

Then it took me a couple of days to paint the whole thing. I found an almost full can of the red "County Redwood" paint for the trough so I stayed with that color. Who doesn't love a red wheelbarrow? Reminds me of one of my favorite poems by William Carlos Williams. 

"The Red Wheelbarrow"

so much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens

I found a nice taupe can of paint for the legs and braces underneath. It's like the color of my morning coffee with cream.

All in all, I'm very proud of how the whole project turned out...and it only cost me about $8.00! 

Finding the septic

A horseshoe for luck

It's been over 3 years since my septic was serviced and emptied. I decided it was high time to have it taken care of. 

When the two very nice guys from the septic tank company showed up I pointed them to the back left hand corner of the property because that's where I thought it was, covered over with grass.
But I was wrong. They tried and tried and tried to poke a metal bar into the ground to try and hit the cement cover of the tank, but to no avail.
They then tried to run a cable camera into the sewer line from the basement to locate it. Success!
It turned out to be right to the side of the stone retaining wall in the yard. I'll never forget where it is again! One happy thing is that while digging up the cover they found a horseshoe...good for luck!

The dirt patch is the X that marks the spot

Sis

My little sister came to live with me last month. A while back she asked me if she could move in for 6 months or so in order to save a little money, start a nest egg for her future since after her divorce she really had nothing. She'd move up from Atlanta, and use the upstairs for her bedroom and home office. She works from home on her computer and monitors. How could I refuse? Besides, it could be fun.
And it has been.
She's a great cook, we grill, play board games, do puzzles, haunt yard sales, go the beach.
But there's a "but":
It's all been way, WAY too much of an emotional trial for her.
She left her 3 grown kids, all her friends, the city she knows like the back of her hand...only to come to a place where she knows no one but her brother who's not there a good chunk of the time.

About a a month before she was to come here, she had panic attack in a public place. It was so disorienting EMT's had to be called to deal with her. That incident has haunted and put a pall over her ever since. What if it were to happen again? In public. Where she doesn't know anybody. The fear of that is too much.
She has body vibrations, a "buzzing" that travels around her body. Sometimes dizzyness, sometimes headaches. It's affecting her whole personality and her job. And I feel helpless. It's heart breaking. I talk to her constantly, as does my mom and her friends, nothing helps.
The only solution I can think of is for her to go back to Atlanta, but that opens up a whole new set of problems to tackle, not the least of which is shipping her car back and finding a new apartment.
So we take it day by day.
But to complicate things, she had a tick bite scare a few weeks ago. She went to two clinics and got a mega-dose antibiotic. She thought she had two more bites (that was a scary night) but luckily they were only plant splinters.
The following week, the internet went out for FOUR days. Not fun. She needs the internet for her work. Thank God she found out she could go to the Sag Harbor library, but it was nerve wracking nonetheless.
And this week when I was in the city on jury duty, she had more panics and ended up with shingles on her face around her eyes. A midnight trip to Southampton hospital ensued. She got some Xanex and they help but she's afraid to get hooked on them.
So it's one thing after another and she's not getting any better. The irony is that she's in one of the most beautiful places in the country...and she's miserable. Somehow she'll get through this but I fear it will get worse before it gets better. Stay tuned...

And then Jaws opened a bottle

The only person more obsessed with sharks and "Jaws" than me is my friend Ron. Recently he gave me a little house gift that's too adorable, a cast metal bottle opener in the shape of a shark head that you mount on the wall. I decided the best place was a column on the porch. It sort of looks like mini trophy, LOL.