Blue-Footed Musings

Yesterday I had no specific plans for the day. Then I read the “lake news” and noticed a price reduction on a lake cottage in Massachusetts. I suddenly and uncharacteristically called up the Realtor and asked to see the place. She said, “Come on up!” My hubby was understandably not so keen on such a time-consuming addition to his day, but he grudgingly agreed to go with me.

Located about an hour away, the lake is small (about 100 acres) but it looks pretty and it has an active lake association with modest, voluntary fees. When I first started shopping for lake houses, I had hoped to find a pristine lake with no issues (invasive plants, toxic algae blooms, etc.). What I’ve since discovered is that all the local lakes have issues. For example, every single one I’ve investigated so far has at least one invasive plant. The best you can hope for is a lake that is actively managed to mitigate the issues. So the lake association really matters, and this one looks excellent.

The house itself is also small, only about 1,000 square feet. For its size, it’s about as nice as it could possibly be, with three bedrooms and two full baths, plus a delightful sun porch. It has some other pluses, including central air, public sewer, and a whole-house water filter. Unfortunately, it feels very cramped.

I could probably forgive the minimal house size if everything outside were as I wished. I like that the plot slopes gently and the entrance to the water is shallow and sandy, but there’s no privacy. The houses on both sides are significantly larger, the one to the right so big and close that it feels like it’s looming over you, plus they have a dog that immediately started barking when we got there. You can’t help but notice how much bigger and nicer the left neighbor’s lot is, because you have to look over it to get the best lake view. On the water both neighbors have hulking docks and boats that are way too close. I wouldn’t feel comfortable swimming there. In fact, I think that no matter where I went outside, be it the patio or the yard or the water, I’d always feel under the eye of the left-side neighbor, whose house decorations give off unwholesome political vibes.

So I’ve dubbed this cottage “Under His Eye” and crossed it off the list. However, the Realtor was able to answer nearly every question I had about the lake. That was impressive given that the Realtors at all the other lakes have been totally clueless. And, as I said, the lake and association looked great. So, I’m keeping both the Realtor and the lake on my list.

There’s this theory going around in online articles that Boomers “retire forward” and Gen-Xers “retire backward.” That is, Boomers hope to do in retirement all the things that they’ve always wished they could do but didn’t have the time, money, and/or opportunity earlier in their lives. It’s a gamble of sorts, because there’s the possibility that they won’t ultimately like the lifestyle and activities that they’ve chosen for their golden years. Gen-Xers, on the other hand, hope to do in retirement all the things they loved when they were younger but had to give up when “real life” came calling. They want to get the band back together, or reengage in sports that they enjoyed, or start collecting toys from their childhoods, etc. I mentioned this to my husband and remarked that I thought we were more Boomerlike in our expectations.

But then I was looking out the kitchen window yesterday, marveling at the beautiful shapes of the goldenrods in the backyard, and I felt a sudden urge to go outside and draw them. That’s something I would have done as a child, and I thought to myself, “I can’t wait until I retire and have nothing better to do than pursue whatever creative idea passes through my mind.”

And then it hit me: my goal for retirement actually is to recreate that time from my youth when I could freely pursue my favorite pastimes. I want to play piano and write and sketch and walk and think and just enjoy existing, and I’d particularly like to do that at a lake house. My desire for a lake house itself hearkens back to the period of my childhood when my grandparents owned a cottage on a lake. Even my current obsession with The New Yorker cartoons stems from that era.

OMG, I am so trying to retire backward!

Yesterday my husband and I went to an open house. We had high hopes for this particular cottage and were prepared to make an offer if we liked the it as much in person as we had online. We’d even gone so far as to get ourselves preapproved for a mortgage.

The pictures online had portrayed an old cottage that hadn’t been updated but that had been well maintained. Pictures never tell the whole story, though, and a lot of the tale had been missing in the photos. As we walked around the property we discovered problem after problem. I’d guess it would cost at least $100,000 just to deal with the immediate issues and eyesores.

Maybe we could have negotiated the price down to compensate, but the lake didn’t give enough vibe to make it worthwhile. The view was attractive and peaceful, but there was no underlying feeling of excitement. The water was murky and boulder-filled, not ideal for swimming. The house had a lot of steps in it, creating hazards for elderly visitors. We understand that we will have to make compromises, but there’s just no sense in risking our financial well-being for a location that doesn’t thrill us.

We give nicknames to all the properties we’ve visited so that we might easily reference them later. I asked my husband what we should call this one. He said, “The Big Letdown.” Yeah. That’s the perfect name for it.

The other night I signed in to The New Yorker so that I could enter the weekly caption contest, only to find that I’d missed the deadline. Dang it. But of course there was a new cartoon waiting for a caption, so I took a shot at that one.

I came up with four ideas, which I showed to the fam. They all liked idea #4 best, but Marshall thought it needed a different (opposite, in fact) verb. I took Marshall’s advice and rewrote the caption to work better with that verb. I hope I made the right choice. I will be very annoyed if someone wins with a punchline involving my original verb choice.

That could happen. The exact wording matters. In the preceding contest, I submitted a caption that said, “Looks like my train finally turned up” (or something very similar to that–I didn’t keep a record of it). Someone else submitted a caption that said, “See, I knew the train would turn up soon.” Same joke, different wording. And their caption, not mine, was chosen as a finalist. 🙁

On Saturday I dusted and reorganized my bookshelves. This was necessary because 1. The books and shelves had gotten mighty dusty, 2. Livia had borrowed a bunch of books and then returned them after I’d filled in all the gaps with new books, and 3. I took back the books that Marshall had borrowed. Even with the space left empty when I disposed of my stereo, there wasn’t enough room for all the books. My stomach sank as I realized that, once again, I have to get rid of some books.

With that thought in mind, I picked up a small book that I’d had for a while but hadn’t read yet. It was The Lump of Coal by Lemony Snicket. It only took a few minutes to read.

In this odd little Christmas book, a lump of coal dreams of being an artist and of cooking barbecue–typical dreams for coal, I’d say–but the world doesn’t welcome him in those roles. When he settles for being a lump of coal in a kid’s stocking, his wishes finally start to come true. It’s a cute story, and only a tiny bit annoying in the Snickety way (by defining words for the reader), but I don’t love it. I put it in the donation pile. Whew. I feel so much better now. That’s one whole tiny sliver of space cleared on my shelf.

On Sunday, as we were out shopping for lake houses, we passed by a used-book store and couldn’t resist stopping in. I came home with four books. <sigh> I can’t help myself.

My husband built a wishing well to conceal our house’s wellhead. The local robins thought it was swell. They kept attempting to build nests on the roof beams. My husband got so fed up with them that he tried putting nails (a.k.a. “robin deterrents”) on the beams, but the birds reportedly “used them as a loom to facilitate their nest-making.” <snicker>

I have watched so much TV lately. Too much. But, I’ve found some movies worth not only watching but rewatching, and that’s not a bad thing. One of those movies is Champagne Problems, available on Netflix.

In this romance, workaholic Syndey travels to Paris to acquire a struggling winery for her company. Having promised her sister that she will take time off for sightseeing, one of the first things she does in Paris is to visit a bookstore, where she meets a cute French guy named Henri. And so the romance begins.

The two main characters are delightful. I love the meet-cute in the bookstore, and I love that the French characters frequently speak French (crazy, right?). The characters talk about their past and present troubles with real emotion, but there’s a lot of silliness in the movie to keep things from getting too heavy. For example, one character (Roberto) wants to buy the winery just so he can keep drinking his favorite party champagne. I could almost hate Roberto for being so god-awful wealthy, but he’s so endearing that instead I want him to be my friend. His dialogue, sometimes featured, sometimes off-screen and in the background, is by turns funny and sweet (“It doesn’t matter if you’re a glass-half-full or glass-half-empty type of person. All that matters is that the glass is refillable.”).

The movie is rated only 6 stars out of 10 at imdb.com, so perhaps it’s not for everybody, but I have added it to my list of go-to films for those times when I need a little pick-me-up.

At work, now that I’m no longer shackled to that unpleasant project, I feel a little less mopey. There’s nothing on my schedule, and I can work on whatever I please. Mostly I’ve been writing and editing documentation, a task that I enjoy. I do that work in MS Word, the latest version of which has a built-in “Editor.” I know my writing isn’t perfect, and I would appreciate some good advice, but many of the Editor’s recommendations are questionable. For example, it always tells me that I should get rid of the word “very,” which is reasonable, but then it suggests that I replace “very” with “ridiculously” or “extremely.” Ugh. No.

I have forgotten so much about the years when my kids were small, and that makes me sad, but some things have stayed with me. I still can’t read the word “triangle” without hearing it in my head as “trigingle,” which is how Marshall used to say it when he was very young. This and other random memories from that era are blessings to me, and I am grateful for them.