Light at the End of the Tunnel?

There was a big blowout at the house this weekend. I could even hear it from my spot all the way outside in the driveway. From the mumbles of the Girl this morning, I think it had something to do with the Sister taking the last avocado. Yeah, real earth shattering, I know. The strain of living all together seems to be taking its toll.
The Girl and I moved from our not so comfortable but not so bad digs in South Philly (Graduate Hospital area, for those in the know) back to South Jersey to live with the Mom and Sister, and for a little while the Brother - although that's another story for another time, in the house that had been turned into a business for 25 years and which they were going to turn back into a home. Long story short, things didn't turn out exactly as they had planned. Things got delayed, and then costs went up and before they knew it, they were stuck in this halfway house (for surely, that's how it feels) with barely any of the rehab done and very little savings left to keep things moving.
That was three years ago. The kitchen is still the original 30+ year old kitchen complete with crumbling flooring. The bathrooms are also all still original. Many of the walls are still riddled with staples and pin holes from the business. The building is on septic. They had to have a gas line brought in. It's a constant battle to keep the woods from encroaching too much in the back, and the deer, groundhogs and hawks have decided we have the most delectable bushes and wildlife, respectively.
The three of them are at their wits end, and this weekend was the blowout. The Sister wants out, and truth be told, so does the Girl. The Mom can't quite see past the four bedroom, two-story colonial she's lived in most of her life in one form or another to something smaller, perhaps apartment-like. Everyone's stressed, and everyone feels trapped. No one can figure out a solution. Do they sell? In this market, with the house as is? Do they stay and keep playing musical money? Where's the light at the end of the tunnel?

Busy Weekend

This weekend was an unusually busy weekend. Typically, we just laze around the house through Saturday at least, and then Sun morning is food shopping, running errands, etc. After being busy all week, what with taking The Girl to the train and getting her home afterwards sometimes after a late night out with friends or running errands on the way home, I look forward to sunbathing in the front yard, smelling the flowers, having the bunnies nibble grass from in between my tires and the bees buzzing by my antenna.

This Saturday morning I was rudely awakened quite early by The Sister who was out almost around the same time she is for work. She was on her way to visit a friend in Baltimore (I got the dirt from her car overnight). Then The Girl comes out all ready to go. We stopped a t Starbucks for some coffee and breakfast, then to drop off her Redbox video (a video vending machine, how great is that!?), and then we were off. Up to Bryn Mawr to pick up The Mom who'd been working for a music festival for the past couple of weeks. We stopped at Suburban Square to do some shopping on the way home. It seems that every shopping center, no matter where it is or how big or small, has all the same chain stores. So although it was fun being somewhere different, there were no exciting one-of-a-kind finds to bring home. We did a little more shopping on the Jersey side of the bridge, but by that point it had been a long day and home was looking pretty good.

Sunday we had brunch with The Grandparents and the off to food shop. Dropped the old folk off their share of the shopping and then home. The Mom trimmed some of the bushes and watered everything. She was a little dismayed to find that while she was gone, all the little animals (read chipmunks, squirrels, birds, groundhogs, deer) had a real field day with all the new bushes she had planted this spring. But it'll grow back.
Tonight it looks like we'll be stopping by the library to drop off a couple of The Girl's books, The Diary by Eileen Goudge which she said wasn't very good and she couldn't even get past a few chapters, and The Knitting Circle by Ann Hood, which was a good quick read, a little more emotional than expected, but fairly well written.

It'll be nice to sit here in the train parking lot all day, especially with the sun shining (it's been raining for months now it seems). It's especially nice that it'll be a short week this week with the Fourth of July coming up!

Feeling Old

It seems that Michael Jackson passed away over night. Farah Fawcett died yesterday. I, however, did not gain this info until late this afternoon.

While most people watch the news before bed or put it on when they get up in the morning, apparently, I am not owned by most people. No, The Girl was blissfully unaware of the Michael Jackson news until this morning when she was riding up the elevator to work with several coworkers. They were joking that they'd have Michael Jackson music playing on the 19th floor if she wanted to come up and moonwalk with them . She laughed along with them and just wrote it off as general Friday goofiness (which tends to get more so in the summer, so I'm told), or to the fact that she might not have looked exactly awake yet (some mornings I wonder how she ever gets me to the train at all). Then when she turned on her computer, she saw the news.

Now, I'm not the hugest fan of Michael Jackson's. Oh, I enjoy his stuff when it comes on the radio, but I don't think The Girl has even one of his albums. So I'm not as familiar with his music as say the Mustang sitting next to me on the train parking lot. So perhaps the correct phrasing is that I'm just not the biggest expert on his music, whether I'm the hugest fan remains to be seen. But isn't it trendy to get really big posthumously? I mean even The Girl's brother didn't get into Nirvana until Kurt Cobain's death, and then that was all that was coming out of his bedroom and the garage when he had friends over and parties.

But I digress... The Girl has been thinking quite a bit about growing older and how she fits into the whole scheme of things. Actually, I've been thinking that myself. A friend sent her this article about Gen Xers and Michael Jackson/Farah Fawcett http://www.philly.com/philly/wires/ap/news/nation_world/20090626_ap_2losticonsforgenerationxareallybadday.html

It’s interesting how people are now writing how that generation didn’t really have a purpose. (I’ve been feeling this way without putting a word/concept to it for a while now) Their parents had the Sixties, the Summer of Love, Vietnam. The current generation has Sept 11, War on Terror (and all that encompasses) Environmentalism (think green!), Even their Grandparents had Hitler and WWII, but what did they have? Michael Jackson and Farah Fawcett? **Sigh**