Last (Maybe) Blog of 2023

 

Welcome to what will likely be the last blog of 2023. I’ll start a new one hopefully in January 2024. I hope we all survive 2024, and hopefully without the U.S.A. becoming a dictatorship. God help us if you-know-who ends up back in the White House. But, enough on that…

It’s been one hell of a month in November, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to change much in December. Seems like lately, I’m collecting doctors the way some folks collect baseball trading cards.

My regular doctor that we’ve been going to for years has retired. The office he was in now has one doctor, and it takes a couple months to get an appointment with her. The only other practitioner in the office is a family nurse practitioner, and we’ve been seeing her. She’s OK, but we miss our old doctor greatly.

I saw my new podiatrist yesterday to take care of a rather painful ingrown toenail – and take care of it she did! She was GOOD! She didn’t even have to inject the toe to numb it! Then today, I had to go get x-rays of my kidney area for a follow-up with my urologist – just to make sure no boulders are forming in my kidneys. I see him in a few days.

This getting older thing is highly over-rated. I want my money back!

Onward…

As I’ve mentioned before, we want to get out of this house, and this particular part of Independence. We’re both tired of listening to the aural diarrhea emanating from all the idiots with their “boom cars.”

We’ve considered those “senior living” apartment communities, regular apartments, and another house. The senior independent living communities are really nice – and REALLY expensive. They START at anywhere from $1700.00 to $3000+ PER MONTH. And they seem to raise the rent on a yearly basis! Our sister-in-law rented one of those after her husband (Jo’s brother) passed away last year. She was paying $1750.00 a month, and the manager told her the rent was going up to $2100.00 in January 2024.

She moved to a really nice apartment in Overland Park, but it’s still running her $2000 monthly.

I get notifications daily from Zillow, and a decent house in a nicer part of Independence will go for $200,000 - $350,000. That works out to a monthly payment of $1400.00 - $2100.00+. About the same as a decent apartment. And it’s YOUR house. You can do want you want to do with it. So, we may very well go that route. I’d love that as I wouldn’t have to say good-bye to all my shop equipment.

We’re hoping to make this happen in spring / summer of 2024. We shall see. I already have someone interested in buying this house. I spoke with the gentleman that bought the next-door house, and told him we were looking to relocate. He gave me his card, and said he'd love to buy it when we're ready. He has several properties within walking distance. I told him we were hoping to move next summer, and will give him a call and see what he offers us.

Things have been pretty active here lately. Our next-door neighbor lady to our west has finally decided to move to an apartment for low-income folks, and sell her……ummm…….house. It’s going to need a LOT of work…

This is the garage on the east side of her house that faces our house. That door has looked like this for years. There are always raccoons and feral cats going in / out of that hole.

 

This is the north side of that little stoop in the photo above that leads to the back yard.

 

And, this is the back yard. You can barely see the back of the house covered in vines at the upper left corner. I’ve offered to help with some of this stuff, but she always said, “Oh, that’s ok, I’ll get my brother to do it..” or something similar.

 

This is from a few days ago, after the house was sold, and she moved out. The clean-out is just getting started.

This is the first dumpster full, and ready to go. I talked with the fellow that bought the house. He paid her 50K for this place! I didn’t think she’d get more than 10K for the condition it’s in. The lady that lived here is a sweetheart, but… You’ve heard of folks with a hoarding problem? She was a MEGA-hoarder – a hoarder’s hoarder. In the 20 years we’ve been here, I’ve only been in that house a couple times. Once to help when her mom fell (she passed away a few years ago), and once when something (I’ve forgotten what) wasn’t working right. You could barely move. There were little pathways maybe 18 inches wide through all the stuff.

 

This is inside the garage (she hasn’t had a car for years), after a full load into the dumpster. Unreal..

 

They came to pick up the first dumpster this evening and returned with another one. We were talking with one of the guys working with the house. He told us after filling the first dumpster, they’d barely scratched the surface. He said they had another SIX dumpsters reserved! We knew she was a hoarder, but this still totally blew us away! Good grief!

Moving on…

I kind of got my hands slapped over on Renderosity. For those unfamiliar, Rendo is an on-line art gallery I’ve been a member of for around 14 years. I’ve had my “Girls From TNA” series running there for 13 of those years. It’s been a wonderful experience, and I’ve made a lot of good friends there.

Lately there seems to be a shift in the demographics (?) of the artists that post work in the galleries. To make a long story short, there are several “artists” that post the 8 images a day limit to post either photos of essentially nothing special, or artists that post 8 variations of the same figure with very minor differences – not much ‘artistic’ effort in other words.

Artists get “rewards points” for each post, so I’m just theorizing they do this mainly for the reward points (they can be used for purchases), and not mainly for the sake of the art. It also helps put them on the "Top Artists" lists.

I got into an on-going conversation with some other artists who feel the same way a week or so ago. I probably said some things I shouldn't have - I tend to take my art / photography very seriously, and sometimes my mouth (or keyboard) gets me in hot water. The upshot was I got a 7-day gallery ban,which has now been lifted.

 I called one of the Moderators that’s a friend, and we talked about it for a bit. He looked it up in their system, and told me, “Oh don’t worry – you weren’t the only one that got a hand-slapping!” He just encouraged me to sit tight until it ends, and I said I’d do that – and will try to “behave” afterwards. We both had a good chuckle, talked about some other stuff, and all was cool.

OK…. Before I write a novel here, I’m going to bring this to a close – it’s long enough! I am going to TRY to get these out a bit more often. It’s going to be an interesting winter, methinks..

Happy Holidays to all! Stay safe, stay sane in this crazy world, and most of all, stay creative! See ya!