Rant #3,219: Last Night, I Couldn't Get To Sleep At All

Another sleepless night …

And on Friday the 13th yet.

Too many things going through my mind as I tried to go to sleep.

Where am I going to put all my records—all 10,000 of them—when we move into our much smaller living residence, with about half the space of what we had?

Where will the 45s go?

Where will the LPs go?

My wife and I have spoken about this, and what we do know is that the CDs, cassette tapes and our DVDs are going to have to go into a storage area, something that we have never had to use but which will be an imperative when we finally leave our current environs.

The “problem” is that my wife, my son and myself are collectors, to various degrees.

We like to hold entertainment media in our hands, and have them at our disposal when we want them.

That has amounted to thousands of 45s, LPs, tapes, CDs, and DVDs collecting in our home for the past 30-plus years, and we just don’t have the room for all the stuff in the new place.

My wife and I have thrown away scads of cassette tapes and VHS tapes—many made by ourselves over the years—but I do want to keep many of my music cassettes—of which I must have over 150 or so—but they will have to go into a storage area.

The same thing for our collective DVDs and CDs—of which we have hundreds—but we simply do not have the room to store in our house anymore.

Our son has probably 200 pro wrestling videos, and even though much of this is now available online, I know he wants to keep them in his new room, and we will try to accommodate his request.

And my records—the jewel of my collecting life over the past several decades—I just cannot have them in a storage area, they must be in the new residence.

The albums are currently on shelves in my work area—my daughter’s old room—and my 45s are also in that room in plastic storage bins.

That worked fine when we had twice the amount of space that we have in the old place, but in the new place, it is going to take a lot of creativity to figure out where to put, and how to store, this admittedly massive collection.

We are most probably going to take my mother’s old curio cabinet with us, and we have scheduled with a handyman to have it sanded and repainted to make it look like new.

That should hold a good amount of the LPs—a couple of hundred at least—or perhaps all of my 45s.

But what to do with the rest?

My mother also had a sort of auxiliary pantry, and perhaps we can take that with us and use those for the 45s—I think most of them would fit in there—and the curio cabinet could be used just for LPs.

But it is a quandary that keeps me up at night, and certainly is keeping me up this night, as I had a bit of a nightmare about where the records are going to go and could not get back to sleep afterward.

All told, we haven’t even reached the packing stage yet, still throwing out scads of garbage from all our years here onto the street for pickup.

There must be another 50 bags on the street in front of our house, and we have more to go as we decide what we need and what definitely goes.

We must have put well more than 150 bags filled with junk on the street during the past three weeks, and I wanted everything in bags so that no one could see what we were throwing out.

Yes, it is on the street, but we don’t need human scavengers sorting through what we have put out there and leaving the remains all over the place.

But last night, I was looking out the window to see when the contractor we were going to hire to remove the kitchen in our part of the house would arrive, and lo and behold, I saw someone using his phone to see as he picked through our garbage on the street.

I ran downstairs, but the person fled to his car and after I screamed out, “Who is picking through our garbage?” the car sped away, so I never got a good look at who it was, nor did I get the car’s license plate or make or model. It was just too dark out there to see.

But the person who will be doing the ripping up of our kitchen did finally arrive way past the appointed time that he was supposed to be here, and from what I gather fro his comments, this is going to cost us a lot to do, but we will have to bear the costs so that we can legally sell the house.

And when I add up all the costs—and less the costs of the reverse mortgage that my mother had on the house—it will be completely amazing if my sister and I—right now the legal owners of the house—will get much of anything from the eventual home sale …

And what we might get will probably be eaten up by fees to the lawyer we are using and the broker who is trying to sell the house, so if we get a dime from this albatross around my neck, I will be completely amazed.

But we are powerless to do anything about it, so we just have to do what we have to do and get rid of this house as quickly as possible.

All I know is that someone will get a spacious and nice six-bedroom home in a good area to do with what they want—even gut it if they would like—and my family and I, who have called this place home for decades …. we won’t get bupkis, and quite frankly, we will be lucky to not have to owe any money on this house.

And you wonder why I stay up at night thinking about such things … ?

Have a great weekend, and I will speak to you again on Monday.

Rant #3,218: Listen People

It is amazing that it takes so long to get on the same page, where sanity takes a long time to sink in to some people.

It took the “team” that my family is a main member of to finally agree on the obvious when it comes to moving forward and selling my house.

I told you yesterday that after speaking to the Town of Oyster Bay Compliance Department, that I was told that we would have to get someone in here to remove the sink, the dishwasher and the stove to make this a compliant one-family dwelling.

We would not be able to sell the house otherwise … so it seemed to me to be pretty obvious that this was going to have to be done—and there should have been immediate agreement on all sides that this was the next, best and only plan of action that we were going to have to take to sell the house and move on from this nightmare.

Well, that agreement was not as immediate as I had hoped.

I was told by other parties that I should investigate what we had to do to retain the mother/daughter status of the house—which I did, and after finding out what we had to do, it became even more blatantly obvious that this was not doable, and that we had to do exactly what Compliance said we had to do.

Yet, there were other parties in my “team” who evidently did not believe this, or perhaps did not understand this fully, and thought there were other options that we should explore before we fell in line with what Compliance told me to do.

I gave those parties until Monday to figure out another plan of action—but at about 4:30 p.m. yesterday, whatever plans of action that they thought they had completely fell through, and we are on the same page—finally.

I really don’t know what my “team” was thinking.

We were found out by Compliance, were found not to be in compliance for four years—meaning that we were living in this house for four years illegally—and that even if my mother had filed again for the mother/daughter designation in the proper time frame, once she left this earth, the mother/daughter situation completely fell through.

I knew this—I admit that I didn’t know all the whys and wherefores of what this meant to a T—but when Compliance told me what had to be done, the charade was over.

I knew it was over, but I guess others did not understand this … but they seemed to all fall in line after I spoke to our attorney yesterday, who told me at the end of the conversation that he was happy that he and I “were on the same page” with this predicament, and that he would do what he could on his end to make others understand exactly what that meant and what we had do do moving forward.

We have to get a contractor to rip up that kitchen either right now or sometime after my family leaves here for good, the property must be re-listed to reflect that this is now a one-family dwelling, and the price must be set to reflect that change.

I can’t really blame our attorney or our broker for any of this consternation, but other members of the team just took their time in understanding what I was saying to them--

Quite frankly that the jig was up.

I mean, who listens to me? I am just the son of the former owners who are both now deceased, my family and I are just living here the past 30 years, and heck, when the idea of the reverse mortgage first came up all those years ago, my concerns about the long-range effects of such a situation on my family were not listened to either, so why should anyone listen to me now?

This is a burden that I have to bear for the rest of my life, that my parents—and my mother in particular—did not listen to her own son when it came to this matter, and she paid more attention to outside sources when it came to this situation.

My mother has been in the ground for about five weeks, yet I mourned for her exactly one day, the day of the funeral.

Instead of mourning for her, and remembering what a great mother she was, all I have been thinking about is how bad she erred in taking on this reverse mortgage without fully understanding what it meant to not only her and my father, but to her son and his family.

And that it was egged on by someone who should have known better.

This is the millstone I have to wear around my neck for the rest of my life, and it is already a burden that no one could have imagined.

If I would have known what this would lead to, my family and I would have moved out of here years ago.

Hindsight is nice, but it does not lead anywhere positive.

What “might have been” carries absolutely no weight, but yes, I do think about it.

That being said, it is time to “pay the piper,” and I am assured that since we are all now on the same page, we can get this done and I can put this nightmare firmly behind me, and my wife and our son can do the same.

And I hope that in the future, when I have something to say, certain people open up their ears and their minds a little wider, and that they listen to what I have to say, because if this episode has proven one thing, it is that what I have to say carries a lot of weight, even during a period of total insanity.

Rant #3,217: Bits and Pieces

Yesterday was another impossible day in the life of my family.

The Town of Oyster Bay Code Enforcement Division got to us, and what they told us wasn’t anything good.

Evidently, according to the division chief, my family and I have been living in our home illegally for the past four years, and the house cannot be sold until certain things are done to it to make the home into a standard, one-family dwelling.

It seems that every three years, my parents—the owner of the home—were supposed to re-sign the “legal” mother/daughter home agreement that they had with the town.

Through my father’s death three years ago and my mother’s emerging dementia and recent passing, that agreement was never re-signed, so technically, my family and I were living in the house illegally from 2019 to the current time.

Three are thousands of illegal living situations in Nassau County—in fact, right across the street form us, there is a house with three separate dwellings and on the corner, there is another house with about four families living there--but our situation was only brought to light when the house went up for sale.

The house cannot be sold unless we get a Town of Oyster Bay-authorized plumber to file a permit for the work that needs to be done to make it a legal one-family house, and that work includes removing the sink, the dishwasher and the stove from our part of the house, and then running what he did through an inspector to see that everything was done properly.

I know that the permit itself costs $400, and heaven knows what the work is going to cost to remove all of those other things.

I spoke to the Code Enforcement chief, and he appears to understand our situation, and will give us time to do all of this, but it has to be done, and now that he has spoken to me, he is going to keep tabs on the progress of the work.

It is going to have to be done after we leave the place for our new living quarters in the middle of November, and we have already had several potential buyers rescind their offers because they were not comfortable with the situation they foresaw.

Now, I have a sneaking suspicion that this house—the place where I spent the last 50 or so years of my life—is either going to go through foreclosure or will be sold for far less than we had hoped, leaving us with nothing form the sale, since the lender of the reverse mortgage gets their cut first.

I have promised certain people involved with the home that I will give them until Monday to look for another option—there is none—but I gave my word I would not do anything until Monday.

I even looked into another option myself, and it would take literally months to accomplish even if it was successful, and it involves so much legwork and other work that it really doesn’t pay … nor do we have the time to even accomplish it.

So on Monday, I will have to look for a town-certified plumber to do this work … all of which just adds another brick to a load that my family and I should not have to bear.

Now onto other matters …

Since this is a “Bits and Pieces” entry, there is just so much more that I have to say—

But since I already posted these two entries that follow on Facebook as separate posts, they are kind of like reruns, but they have not yet been put on the official Blog, so with their inclusion here, now they will be there.

So here goes …

Israel Declares War on Hamas … "I have read plenty of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic rhetoric on Facebook.

I am currently in Facebook jail for utter nonsense, yet these barbarians are permitted to spread their lies and misinformation.

I cannot believe that any human being can support Hamas, but evidently, many do.

And if you read Newsday's editorial today [yesterday]--which supposedly supports Israel--it ends by pushing for a Palestinian state, which, of course, is NOT Hamas and the Palestinians' endgame--which is--and has been for time immemorial--the ultimate annihilation and destruction of the Jewish state and Jews around the world.

This myth that Israelis and Palestinians can live, work and prosper side by side is nothing but a pipe dream, and why this stupidity is perpetuated by the media is beyond my comprehension.

Since the creation of Israel in 1948 and even generations prior to this, these gutter snipes have wanted the entire region for themselves, and never wanted to work with the Jewish people to exist side by side in harmony.

It is very simple; the Israelis are the good guys, Hamas and the Palestinians are not even the bad guys, they are cretins.

And if you ever bought into Hamas and the Palestrina’s' peace and love and flowers and phony public relations nonsense, look at what has transpired during the past couple of days ...

This is what a "civilized" society does to its neighbor?

Israel will win out in this battle for its survival, because they have to, and have every right to defend their nation against these barbarians."

Yesterday Was a Day That Will Live In My Personal infamy Forever … "October 10, 2019 ... four years ago, a day that will live in infamy, at least for me ...

It was the day that the company I was employed by for nearly a quarter of a century went out of business, and the employees that stuck it out until the bitter end--including me--were left as the collateral damage of bad management and the eventual closure.

Things have never been the same for me since that closure.

I was never able to find another full-time position--it did not help that the majority of my job seeking was during the pandemic--and I had to retire early, against my will.

Today, I look back at the past four years as the worst period of my 66 years of life, but there really is not much I can do about it, but move on from that mess the best that I can.

But I do feel that four years of my life have been stolen from me, and next year at this time, it will be five years, the next year, six years, etc.

And to those who ran this former business: you ran it into the ground with your total and complete incompetence. You said you had chances to sell the company, but instead, we all went down in flames with it.

Yes, I am bitter, but the only way I can get that bitterness out is to vent right here.

So be it."

That is all I have to say today.

Rant #3,216: The Gift

Yesterday was an interesting day for myself and my family in our quest to relocate as quickly as possible.

We paid our security deposit and first month’s rent, and we went inside the apartment again.

It is still being worked on, but my wife and I were able to get a better read on what we need to make these new living quarters perfect for us.

Again, we have about half the room we once had, so all those garbage bags you saw in the photo accompanying this Rant yesterday will certainly be doubled or even tripled in due time.

(And yes, the garbage men picked up every last drop of them, with plenty more to come.)

We got, and paid for, apartment insurance, which is a requirement of our lease. I found out that most of the major insurance companies offer this to customers, but in various degrees or levels, so I had to go outside our unusual insurance company to find something that fit our needs.

We still have to schedule a moving company to help us cart over the bigger pieces, and we are going to need boxes, boxes and more boxes to store away the stuff that they can transport to the new residence and that we can also get over there ourselves.

My wife’s brother can get plenty of boxes for us, as he works in a supermarket, so we should have plenty of boxes by the time we need them, a time which is coming up really soon.

I still have to call Verizon to transfer over our TV and Internet, and we are seriously thinking about dumping our landline phone. We rarely use it anymore, and I think we can save a little money by getting rid of it.

And also yesterday, I finally put my remaining comic book collection into storage boxes that we already had, and lacking anywhere to put them, I had to put the three larges boxes of comics in the garage.

My childhood is in those three boxes.

I started collecting comic books when I was about three years old, taught myself to read with them—hence, my 12th grade reading level in first grade—and I collected them seriously until I was about 18, when I gave up that pursuit and moved over to serious record collecting.

Over the years, I have sold about one-third of what I had—the pricier comics in my collection—and now I have the remaining 1,000 or so issues, mainly DC and some Marvel.

You might have seen that I put up the comics for sale on Facebook and elsewhere, $500 for the entire lot—you get the bad and the good, but it is well worth it at about 50 cents an issue, because many of the comics are worth much more than that individually, but I want to move them—every one of them—as a set, and close out my connection to the collection for good.

I hope someone is interested, because it remains a really nice collection, and I guess I can be a little wiggly on the price if necessary.

And then we have my records, all 10,000 of them, and what are we going to go with them?

One solution is a curio cabinet that we are taking from my mother’s house, which should hold a lot of them. It is a really nice piece, and it just needs to be sanded down and repainted, and I have asked out local handyman to do that, and he said he could in about two weeks, so that cabinet should be one solution.

But it won’t fit everything—and I am looking at ways to get every one of those 10,000 records into the house in the limited space we have.

And yes, we are looking into renting a storage area in a local facility, because beyond the records and the comics, we have so much stuff that we cannot throw out but that we can’t get rid of, like photo albums that go back years and years and years.

So yes, things are still a bit of a mess.

But in all the chaos—I haven’t even told you the whole story about what is going on here—there is a lot of sanity and a definite direction and an end goal.

To get to that end goal, we still have a lot of things that we still have to do to get things just right for the move and the new residence.

By Christmas, we should have everything the way we want it, or at least very close to the way we want it.

And let me tell you, that is the best holiday present my family and I could possibly give ourselves.

Rant #3,215: Beginnings

Happy Columbus Day!

As Christopher Columbus steered the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria to a new and mysterious land in 1492, in 2023, my family and I will soon be steering moving vans into new and uncharted territory.

Due to circumstances way beyond our control, my family and I will be moving to a new abode later this year, and when that happens, it will pretty much close the chapter on this nightmare saga we have been going through for the past couple of months, and really, the past couple of years.

We will be moving to a neighboring town into an adult development that is on the borderline of two counties, and like what Christopher Columbus found when he came here, this move will be our own “New World.”

We are trading in private home living for an apartment lifestyle, lessening our living space by 50 percent but at twice the price.

As I said last week, we had an epiphany, where we felt we really didn’t belong in this house that we once called home.

This past weekend, as we were throwing out more and more stuff we cannot possibly take with us, an inspector came here, looking over the house for the possible new owner.

He was here about three hours, looking at every nook and cranny inside and outside the home, and we just felt like outsiders in the place we have called home for 30 years (me, 50 years), and it is not a good feeling.

Last week, my wife made numerous calls to a variety of living possiblilities, and we went to visit a few of them in person.

Due to a variety of reasons, we chose one development which we can call home, and hopefully today, we can finalize everything, and really start preparing for the big move.

And it is not going to be an easy move, on a variety of levels.

We have so much to move, and that is after throwing out bag after bag of things we won’t be moving.

We have so many bags in front of the house right now it is as if we are preparing for the next big rain storm, and we are using the bags to prevent water seeping into the house.

Or maybe it looks like we have built our own war bunker.

But moving all of what we are actually taking with us over to the new residence is going to be interesting.

So right now, we are feeling a variety of emotions.

We are happy, yet sad, jubilant, yet nervous.

We are hoping that everything goes OK, and we are worried that our son can acclimate to our new surroundings—he knows no other home than the one we are moving from, and I just know it is going to be the hardest on him.

But he will get through it, just like we, as a family, will get through it … look, the new residence is not perfect; there are things that we already don’t like about it, including conveniences that we had that we won’t have in the new place.

But my wife and I decided that we can get through all of that, and make this into something outstanding … and I think that we can really do that, or at least I am telling myself that.

Here we are talking about a major move for my family, and on the other side of the world, we are talking about real hurt, real dismay, real pain and real chaos.

Hamas’ attack on Israel tells the world, in big, bold letters, exactly what their true intentions are.

They look to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, and this has been the goal of the Palestinians and much of the Middle East since 1948, when the state of Israel was created.

Hamas took Israel by surprise, and they know that with the tactics that they used, the Jewish state simply cannot annihilate the Palestinians; they are going to have to be very careful in what they do to retaliate.

Of course, many blame Israel for this current state of affairs, but it is quite clear—and has been clear for decades—that Israel is pretty much by itself here, even though the U.S. has vowed that it stands by one of its great world partners.

And, in a minor point of this whole mess, just go onto Facebook and see all the anti-Israel and anti-Semitic rhetoric you will find now crawling out of the rat holes.

It is disconcerting, and so very unfair as to be unbelievable, in nature, that people can actually believe what they are writing.

Here, I worry about a place to live, while Israelis—and yes, I have a couple of relatives who live there—worry about not only their homes, but their very lives and their very existence.

Kind of makes my problem minor in comparison.

Rant #3,214: Communication

As I have said numerous times, life goes on.

Yesterday, we did not have anyone come to the house to look it over for possible purchase.

That was the first day in like two weeks that no one came to the house.

We don’t have anyone yet scheduled for today, but we do have a prospective owner coming here on Sunday.

People have put up offers, and then rapidly withdrawn them for one reason or another.

I don’t think a lot of them are serious, but they go the offer route and then withdraw their offer after a day or two.

That is how this works, apparently, and it takes the life out of myself and my family when they do this, because it clouds everything up, making our future even less bright than it already is.

And I do believe a lot of it has to do with us.

Do you keep us as tenants or not? What do you charge us for rent, since we cannot possibly pay what many of them want us to pay?

I do believe that we are the quagmires in this entire business, and we are the ones who are holding up the process.

And it is making myself and my family more uncomfortable by the second.

It is not easy being the fly in the ointment, and knowing that you are the fly in the ointment makes it even worse.

But as I said, in the meantime, life goes on ....

I was put in Facebook jail yet again, because I supposedly violated their cybersecurity regulations with the post I tried to put up yesterday.

I will be in the hoosegow until September 12, and I guess that I will have to subsist on bread and water until that time.

I can still post things, but not directly in my groups, which of course, makes absolutely no sense.

But what makes even less sense is that the Facebook police allow sexist, racist, anti-Semitic and lurid sexual content on the social networking site, yet they go after me.

If you can explain this to me, please do, because I don’t get it at all.

Then, in “real world” happenings, I did my family’s food shopping yesterday, and today, after I drop my son off at work, I have to get gas—the liquid kind, not the “natural” kind that this entire episode has produced in my body—and then have the pleasure of driving 40 miles to get my allergy shots, another situation that I would like someone to explain to me the benefit I get from driving such a distance to get shots that I used to get five miles away from me.

I wood not be doing my duty if I did not report on two recent passings, people that impacted our lives in their own ways.

David McCallum certainly had one of the most interesting careers of any actor I can remember, reaching his height of popularity first as a young man and then doing the impossible, reaching that height again later in life.

First playing a Russian spy working for our side in “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” when he was in his 30s, and later, paying a medical examiner in “NCIS” inn his 70s and 80s, the Scottish-born actor bookended his career with mass popularity due to his TV roles, but somewhere in between, he kind of faded off the face of the earth, even though he was an active actor for the entirety of his career.

He also was very musically inclined, as I have chronicled in past Rants, and he married a Long Island girl and maintained a home on the island, so he was OK in my book.

The other passing was of Terry Kirkman, a performer, singer and songwriter whose name you might not know, but whose legacy can be found in the songs he wrote, in particular one of them.

Kirkman was a member of The Association, one of the most popular vocal groups of the 1960s, a group that had successes through the 1980s.

He penned a number of their most popular songs, but none was more popular than “Cherish,” one of the acts’ number one records and just behind The Righteous Brothers” “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling,” as the most played song on the airwaves in the history of music.

And the song was also covered by a multitude of artists, including David Cassidy, who re-energized it again into a big pop hit during the height of his career.

R.I.P. to both McCallum and Kirkman.

Now, back to my problems …

It is a waiting game now, and maybe, just maybe, next week will bring better news, but with little light at the end of the tunnel, who knows?

Have a great weekend, and I will speak to you again on Monday.

Rant #3,213: Life

Life goes on …

Around 45 to 50 groups of possible buyers have seen the house, and more are coming each and every day.

Some of the potential buyers are quite nice and respectful of the fact that my family still lives in the house.

They say hello, they talk with us while they are looking at the house while we are there, and they are respectful of the fact that we are still living in this house while they look to buy it.

Others are not as respectful.

They bang on the walls to see how thick they are—I guess—and I wonder if they actually put their fists through the walls, will they reimburse us for the cost of fixing the hole they created?

They leave doors open, the garage door open and lights on when they leave, having no comprehension that there is a family still living there.

They park their cars the wrong way on our side of the street—we park with the front of the car pointed west, and they park right in front of our car with the front of the car pointed east, even within full view of every other car on the street parked like our car is parked.

They have no regard for other people’s property, as they park in such a way that they are literally blocking our neighbors’ driveway, parking directly behind it.

They completely ignore us when they come into our part of the house, saying out loud things that you would never say if you were in someone else’s house.

They try to get into the house without a broker, which is something that is not permissible on either our broker’s end or with my family (since the house is in multiple listings, any broker can show the house, but like a cop showing his badge before entering a house, we need to see a broker’s card before they enter).

They touch things that they should not touch, feeling that if they are looking at the house, it is their right to touch everything in the house, regardless of whether we are still living there or not.

And without permission, they take their own cellphone photos of the house, which is an absolute no-no. We have photos on the wall of myself and my family, and for security reasons, we don’t want those photos taken, even though the photos do not focus on these pictures.

And then we have the big talkers, who right in our face want to know how much we currently pay for rent and then, when we refuse to tell them, say, “Well, it doesn’t matter anyway, because we are going to have to gut renovate the house one way or the other.”

Yes, we have had all of these types of people, and more, looking at the house while we are in it, and not only is it a violation of our privacy, but it simply rubs us the wrong way.

We came to an epiphany the other day, based on what we have witnessed with people looking at the house.

While we do want to stay in our home as renters, there is no future in this for us, at least long term.

We really need to find another place, a place that we can hang our hats and feel like we are in OUR home, because as it stands, we currently feel like interlopers in the place that we have called home for decades.

So we have to find a place of our own, a place that we can call home for perhaps the rest of our lives.

We began this quest in earnest yesterday, looking at a few places in housing developments in the neighboring environs, and we will continue to look so we can gauge what is out there and what it is going to cost us.

Out of necessity, we are going to have to stay in our current dwelling, because quite frankly, it will take us four to six months simply to pack everything away in preparation to move the stuff.

It is going to take months for the potential buyer to get his or her things in order, align with the bank, get approved for the mortgage, etc., so we feel that we might have to work out an arrangement with the buyer, if there is one, and maybe go on a month to month or six month lease while we look around.

But since there has been no movement on anyone buying the house, it almost puts us in the catbird seat right now, because we have time to look around until a buyer is in place, and even if one is in place, we can continue to look as we pack everything away over the next months in preparation for a move.

The problem is money.

The costs for rentals are very high, and I do mean VERY high on Long Island, but there is really nowhere else for us to go, as our son gets the best services available perhaps in the world as a resident of New York State and Nassau County, and we want that to continue not just right now but into perpetuity.

And with basically two part-time salaries—my freelance salary and my son’s part-time salary—plus the three of our Social Security payments, we simply do not have the money to be able to pick and choose where we might want to live.

We do have some money squirreled away from my wife and my old 401K plans, and there will be money from the sale of the house—not too much after the reverse mortgage company gets their money, and I split the money with my sister, as my mother used up the entire reverse mortgage payments in her last years—but it is not something that is going to replenish itself, so we are in a real pickle here.

As I said, we did look at a few places yesterday, and while neither place was perfect, and both places were pricey for our budget, we might have to go all in on these—

Because we simply do not have a choice.

To say that this is nerve racking is an understatement of epic proportions, and we know that no one can help us.

We were really left with a catastrophe not of our own making when my mother passed away a month ago, and we are just going to have to clean up this mess on our own, somehow, someway.