Category: March 2018

Hello, I have not written anything for a week because I’ve been very sick! It started with migraines last weekend, then the reason for the migraines became apparent on Monday when I came down with a cold. By Wednesday I was super sick with a bad migraine plus the cold and missed a day of work. I was quite sure I was never going to make it to Houston the following day.

But by Thursday afternoon I had only the cold and not a migraine, so I got on the plane and that went ok. Except my ears hurt and I had a lot of trouble trying to pretend I was a sophisticated traveler with snot dripping out of my nose.

I was glad to be in Houston (Cypress, actually, which is west of Houston), which was quite lovely. But on Friday I still had the cold and the migraine was back again, and the same with Saturday…so at that point we went home.

Actually, we drove home, because John had driven down earlier in the week with the van and the dogs and his tools in order to do some repairs to Monica’s house. So we drove part-way back on Saturday afternoon and the rest of the way on Sunday.

Here’s what I learned on my trip:

• Don’t travel when sick. Even if you have a plane ticket! Its ok to miss a plane flight.
• The drive from Houston to Placitas is a full two day drive (not one day drive, and not a “one day plus a couple hours the previous evening to get a head start”). Nope, it’s two whole days.
• And most startling of all – parts of Texas are actually quite beautiful in the springtime.

Typically I have the same negative opinion of Texas as most of the rest of the non-Texas west harbors toward our large neighboring state to the southeast. When I think of Texas, I think of miles and miles of reeking oil wells and refineries, interspersed with stinking cattle feedlots dotting the flat, brown expanse of nothingness, overshadowed by backward politics. (That is a very accurate description of the portion of Texas that I’m most familiar with – the portion that borders New Mexico.)

I had heard that Austin was a “little spot of California,” by which I assumed they meant “expensive with high tech jobs for the millennials”. Thanks but no thanks. But it appears that the area around Austin is really quite pretty. From google maps, it looks like the area around San Antonio might be pretty too. I don’t know, but it’s worth checking out.

I would hate to allow my west coast prejudices lead me to miss out on some beautiful country! Sorry I didn’t take pictures of the wildflowers. I wasn’t feeling very well. But they were impressive!

Also I have always loved oak trees. I grew up with oak covered hills – they are common in northern California, and southern & western Oregon. I had no idea Texas had so many oak trees! You could have blindfolded me and dropped me down in the right part of Texas and told me I was in Oregon and I would have believed you!

Which I never would have believed. We all know Oregon is beautiful. But Texas?

Well, you know me. Pretty soon I’m on Zillow.com checking it out and thinking OMG, I could get a house on a river with oak trees and fruit trees and a pool and tropical flowers for about two million dollars less in Texas than in California (and about one million less than in Oregon) and it’s already warm, green and blooming by March!

(Red alert – keep that girl off Zillow or next thing we know she’s gonna be a Texan)

Sometimes I imagine what it would be like if I actually was what I appear to be, as I dash out to my car 5 minutes late every morning, the same as all my neighbors. We dash out to our cars and wave, but do not stop to say hi (because we are 5 minutes late), and off we all go to our modest jobs. Every weekday.

And every evening we all come home and wave a tired little wave (but do not stop to say hi or discuss the complexities of life) because we are tired after the long day. Some of us park and then walk to the mailboxes, others stop their cars at the boxes, get out, get the mail, get back in and drive the remaining block home. Either way, we all go in, and fix a bite to eat, and sit on our couches and eat our reheated pizza or our cold tuna sandwiches (sans lettuce because we didn’t make it to the grocery store). And there we are.

I feel like I fit in fine, collecting my little bit of daily mail, mostly junk, plus a mortgage statement every month. My schedule is regular and unremarkable. My modest townhome is in line with my modest state job income. This little slice of life looks internally consistent.

The only visible oddity is several pallets of bricks in my driveway, which are now permanent fixtures. (Do I fire Sam and lose the large down payment I gave him, or just wait for an undetermined length of time?)

But despite appearances, everyone’s reality is always more complicated than it looks. I am lucky that my reality isn’t anything terrible like death or disease or divorce or all the things that happen in life to the best of us when we least expect it.

My hidden reality is fine, just a lot to keep up with. I don’t know why, but I’ve been getting emails from perspective coaching clients every day for over a week now. I’m not advertising. Did someone publish my link somewhere?

Speaking of advertising, we have tenants leaving the Peregrine house, they bought a new house, and they’ve given us plenty of notice, so it’s all good. I’m running that ad, and fielding those calls and emails. People ask me the darndest things – they wonder if I’ll hold it for them until July (hello – no). Not without rent!  It’s March! I don’t care what day they actually move in, or if they ever actually move in; they aren’t tying it up until they pay rent.

And real estate agents leave me cheerful, urgent messages to call them right back, with no actual reason why I might want to do that. In this region, agents rarely help people find rentals (and if they did have a tenant for me, they would say so in the message). These calls are just agents looking for clients – in case someday I want to sell the rentals or buy more. They probably have access to data where they can see that we’ve churned properties recently, and who knows, we may not be done. And maybe they’re right?

And then there’s the remodel in Placitas. This is the first weekend I wasn’t downright depressed to be out there. We still have piles of boxes everywhere, and no window coverings, and lots of details undone. But the kitchen cabinets are installed!! And some of the furniture is in some semblance of order.

And we sort of have a bed now. I ordered a California King mattress by mistake (we meant to upgrade to a King), but it turns out the Cali King is plenty enormous enough. We’re used to a Queen (which is now in Santa Fe). John’s a little worried he won’t be able to find a headboard he likes in the Cali size, but that concern is for some months or who knows, years from now. It will be a long time before we get around to buying a headboard. The headboard is not very high on our list of priorities. I can’t just go order one (my speciality) because he wants to pick something out special. We may be moved again by the time that happens.

This weekend we are headed to Houston to visit Monica. She’s been enormously helpful this past year or two (she’s better at moving than I am, and I’m not just saying that. I’ve had a lot of practice, but I’m just not getting any better at it.) So John’s going down to do some handyman items at her house. He leaves tonight. I don’t have a lot of time off, so I’m working most of the week and flying down on Thursday night.

Many of you know that I enjoy plane flights about as much as people who hate roller coasters enjoy those. When I was a kid there was something at the fair that I think we called squirrel cages. It spun around fast while at the same time swinging around in big swoops. Have you ever tried those at the fair? I did once and thought I was going to die! To continue the analogy, I don’t actually think the plane is going to crash, but my body appears to think dying is imminent. What other people feel as a modest amount of movement, my brain interprets as an insane amount of speed and motion, even without any turbulence.

Meanwhile, I think I’m getting a cold, No! I hate the final cold of the season. I am so sick of winter and I don’t care if I’m lucky to be in New Mexico and it’s so much worse elsewhere, etc., etc., I still think winter sucks! Anyway, I’ve had a migraine for 3 days (I’m not feeling too bad, still functioning fine), but fighting off the cold has triggered migraines, bla-bla-bla.

It may have something to do with the unexpected snow flurries and crazy high winds while we were hiking on Sunday. But it was worth it! At least I thought so at the time. I might not think so tomorrow.

No, I have not yet heard whether I’m going to get the management position. My boss has asked me for a listing of my entire career, month-by-month, including everything, all the way back, including the internships 20+ years ago, including all the coaching, everything & everything! I typically only list the last decade or so, which is the most relevant. Why would anyone care if I taught geography for two years at a community college in the 1990’s?

It took me half the weekend to get it put together. I can now confidently tell you that I’ve been working for 24 years and 7 months. (Holy shit, I am old.) It would have been 24 years and 10 months if it weren’t for the 3 months I took off between semesters the summer of 1995. I remember it clearly – I spent it reading textbooks. In particular I remember a biodiversity textbook. Why did I spend it reading textbooks? If I had only somehow known that was going to be my only 3 months off in my entire life, maybe I would have done something, I don’t know, gone to Europe or something. I could have read textbooks any other time (and I have, and I will).

On that note – if you actually read this far, you probably have something better to do by now, so I’ll sign off till next time.

This one is actually from a year ago. I was looking for it recently for a friend of mine, and couldn’t find it. Then I came across it yesterday while looking for something else. I have talented nieces and nephews!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0oBtjKxnQuSM2V3RnRUbEdaRzg/view?ts=58c4c17e

First of all, I should know that I am not smart enough – to be so dumb as to write – a one-word sticky note reminder.

Mark? I’ve got a brother named Mark, but that doesn’t have anything to do with my job. There is an off-site consultant by that name, but I don’t interact with him for anything. Maybe it doesn’t mean the name Mark, maybe it means I need to mark up a draft of something? Who or what is Mark?

Meanwhile, today I discovered that every state employee (including me of course) has their salary posted on a public website. By name. Searchable and sortable. Talk about transparency!

At least it keeps things fair. I can verify that I make the same amount as the other managers in my section. Fair, but low. Sigh. Even with the promotion to management, I still only make just over HALF as much as I made at Sandia. But I’m far happier here, which is what counts.

Our section has a new employee who just started this week. She’s my kid’s age and reminds me of a cross between Laura and Emily. Of course I immediately asked her for lunch. Turns out, sure enough, she’s totally real and open. We skipped straight past all the small talk about the weather, lol, and got right down to sharing our stories for reals, including tearing up at times. And I’m thinking, “Same time, next week, every week? Or how about tomorrow?” But I didn’t say that, because I don’t want to be the lonely middle-age woman stalker! I just miss my family!!!

I interviewed on Tuesday for the permanent management position (in which I am still Acting Manager) and it seemed to go fine, but how to tell? By the next day, I was SURE I was not going to get the job. I was so sure, that I went up to my coworker whom I thought was going to get the job and told him I’ll be happy to work for him. Which I would be! He’s totally the nicest guy. But he said he didn’t apply. He didn’t apply?! Why? He’s got management experience and lots of air quality experience and everyone likes him and he would have totally beat me out for the job. Well, they’ve got a special project for him that he’s excited about. Plus, I think he makes more as a staff member anyway (because – long story).

This raises the stakes. I had been figuring if I didn’t get it, he would, and it would be fine either way. Now I’m like, uh oh. Who’s going to get it? Now my “Plan B” is if one of the other senior staff get it, and it turns out to be not someone I want to work for, I could probably take their old job (because the job they would be leaving would be the same level as the one I originally accepted in September). Whew. I’m totally a Plan-B sort of person. With a Plan B, everything will be ok one way or the other!

Then today they asked me for references, preferably internal. Well, it couldn’t be my management chain, or my employees. Also couldn’t be the two managers who are my close peers, whom I interact a lot with, because they were on the interview panel. And I didn’t want to accidentally ask someone who is competing with me for the job (lol) and I don’t actually know for sure who they are (although I can make some guesses – one likely candidate has been giving my the total cold shoulder recently, uh-huh.) Anyway, that leaves…who to ask?

Well, the nice guy who didn’t apply for the job said he was very happy to do it. And I found a couple of others. Asking people for references is actually a pretty rewarding experience. They all had such nice things to say about me when assuring me they would be happy to do it – who knew?

Remember earlier I mentioned I was going through all my photos? Well, I came across one that I’m not going to post because it has financial data on it, and this is a public blog, but I’m going to describe it because it’s sad and funny at the same time and why-does-life-have-to-be-so-complicated?

It’s from several years ago. It’s a huge whiteboard with blue dry erase scribbles and arrows all over it. It says things like:

“Basic Expenses – Pension? – Needed from Rentals – Plus any Mortgage – Equity Sources – Income Sources – Equity Required – Monthly Net Rent Estimated”

Then it says, “Places we could live in a $XXX,000 house: Sacramento (outskirts only), Central Valley, Sierra’s, Southern California Deserts, Reno, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Tucson, St. George, Albuquerque, Placitas, Austin (outskirts only),  Mexico”…Notice only hot & dry climates made the cut, lol.

Then it says,

Scenario 1: Pay off El Padro and move to cheaper house, sell Hampton, income from El Padro, live in Placitas or NM replacement.

Scenario 2: Sell El Padro, pay mortgage down, stay in Hampton, income from Placitas. $$$ per month short. Doesn’t work.

Scenario 3: Two small rentals and move to cheaper house, sell Hampton, sell El Padro, buy 2 plus Placitas, live in 1, rent the other 2.

Scenario 4: Rent Hampton and move to cheaper house, sell El Padro, live in Placitas or replacement.

Scenario 5: Both work full-time for x-years, stay in CA, pay off Hampton and El Padro, sell Kristina’s 401k, sell Placitas.

Scenario 6: Sell Hampton, pay off El Padro, move to Sacramento, rent Placitas.

Funny, but nowhere does it say the actual real scenario: Sell Hampton, move to a rental in Placitas, plan a huge remodel of the house in Placitas, realize it’s going to cost too much, try to buy a different house Placitas, back out of that, undertake a less ambitious remodel of the house in Placitas, sell El Padro, buy three rentals in Albuquerque, get really frustrated with the remodel, accept a job in Santa Fe, rent a casita in Santa Fe, buy a townhome in Santa Fe, move part-time into the townhome in Santa Fe and part-time into the Placitas house with the remodel half-done. And then, come spring, miss California!

iPhoto says I have 32,959 photos and 399 videos. This is hard to believe. Part of the problem is we use our phones to do things like take photos of our shopping lists! I also have hundreds, if not thousands, of photos of things like tile and stucco colors.

I’ve been trying to sort those kinds of pictures out of the vacation and family pictures, because we like to play the vacation and family pictures on the TV screen on the wall (we put them all in a screensaver file, hook the computer up to the TV, and then just put the computer into screensaver mode).

The current batch of screensavers goes from when we met in 2005 up until about mid-2014, and has 13,501 photos. I have about 2,000 more per year to add to it, to get it caught up to 2017.

I also have a lot of really beautiful pictures that I would like to post on this blog, but there’s too many of them and I don’t know where to start. John and I will take hundreds of photos just on a short weekend trip. Then what do I do with them all? How do I pick 8 or 10 of them to post?

And then I’ll have to remember where we were when we took them, because of course you guys are going to ask. Even though I disabled comments, you all have my email!

Here I am, taking too many photos. Based on how I was dressed, I guess it was several months ago, because right now we’re getting slush.

This is on a local hike we do all the time. Exactly what’s out there that wasn’t out there the week before?

I’m reading a book (that I wouldn’t widely recommend because I think most people would find it boring) but I’m finding it thought provoking. It’s an autobiography, and it’s titled, ‘My Life in Houses’. Doesn’t that sound like my kind of book?

It’s written by an Englishwoman, Margaret Forester, who was born in the late 1930’s. She uses the different houses she lived in during her life as structure for her autobiography. She explores the concept of how our living spaces influence our beliefs, our productivity, and our expectations of life.

She spent her childhood in Council Houses (government project houses for the poor). She and her husband make steady economic progress, and although I don’t think they are ever really wealthy, they do end up with a variety of housing options and choices – remodeling, purchasing a vacation home, purchasing a rental, and for awhile they had one house for half the year and another house in a different location for the other half of the year.

Although she didn’t enjoy the chaos of moving or remodeling or living part time in various houses, she did find it enriched her writing career. She felt that being in London at least part of the time was necessary for idea generating and creativity, but then she would to retreat to the countryside to write it all down.

She also used the idea of caring for houses (remodeling, landscaping, etc.) as an analogy for caring for and upkeeping our bodies, and our careers, and our friendships. She was greatly saddened when she would occasionally come upon an abandoned structure during her trekking, and wondered how it could have come to that – that so much initial investment was eventually simply abandoned.

In addition to her writing career (she has published multiple novels and biographies), she also raised a family. She survived breast cancer at a young age, and then several decades later, at the very end of her life, the cancer returned. The last chapter of the book includes discussions of living in a hospital, at home, and in hospice, and is very interesting to hear what is important to her regarding her living spaces in that final stage of terminal cancer. It sounds sad, but it was more thoughtful than anything.

The book really helped me think about what I would like regarding my living situation as I get older. John has never experienced chronic illness or physical dependence like I have. So I don’t think he really knows what he would want when he’s very old, other than, obviously, to stay independent. Well, we all want that. But what about when we start needing some help? I think I have a better sense than he does of what kinds of interactions and connections I would want to have with others as I age.

That impacts what we want in our early retirement years, when we will presumably still be healthy. He wants travel and adventure – whereas I want to use the time to strengthen relationships with close friends & family. He imagines us living abroad for a time, while I plot to buy a house near my daughter. Maybe we can do both?

In an entirely unexpected and completely stunning upset today, Liz, a non-flashy but apparently extremely competent level-1 manager catapulted over all four level-2 managers to win the title of Bureau Chief. She is now the head of all of us in the Air Quality Bureau.

The global email was greeted first with an astounded silence, followed quickly by muted gasps and even quieter hurrah’s. As beloved as Liz is, all of us still work for the four spurned level-2 managers. So we celebrated very quietly. Delight was discreetly masked by quick glances and heads kept down.

One female level-1 manager wept quietly in sheer relief, as if our entire global Trumpian disaster had been rectified by one insignificant promotion within one rural state’s environment department. Unfortunately, the anti-Trumpian triumph wasn’t on the global scale, but the analogy stands – the level-2 who had been favored for the position is an aging authoritarian white male with no love for the environment. And Liz, our darling Liz; fair, earnest, caring, relatively young and completely without pretense – Liz, will you save our country as well as our Bureau? Liz for president!

How will the four take it? Will they retire? Will they contentedly work for Liz, who until today worked for one of them? And how did Liz manage such a coup? Was it ageism, or is she really that good?