My kids' houses

Old photo of Josh"s  new house. It is finished except for trees

Shanna's house that she hopes to close on in 2 weeks. Maybe they will put sod down today. The neighborhood is supposed to be turn of the19th century houses with modern updates inside. I found a wicker set that would have been so cute on the porch but my vision was not shared.

Josh is now down to one house. At the closing today, he was asked where his wife was.
He said he didn't have one. All the paperwork had his ex-wife's name all over it. How they knew of her existence, who knows though I suspect the real estate agent messed up. Josh was not married when he bought the house and never added her name to the deed when they were married 18 months later.. It was not an issue in the divorce, although by some weird dowager right's law, Julia was entitled to half the house (and half the debt). He had to leave the closing to run to the court house to get a copy of his divorce decree. Then they wouldn't accept it because it wasn't certified. Finally they said they would accept it if he paid them more money, which he refused to do. It wasn't his mistake. Why didn't they send the papers over earlier?
His realtor ended up paying the extra money, which it was probably his fault anyway.

So a relief to him to sell the house at a lesser loss than he thought. And we get our bridge loan money back.

I was so crabby yesterday. Besides wasting time dealing with Verizon and Apple and then having to type my contacts in myself, Naomi got a letter from the State Treasury saying she owed $1000 of sales tax on the car whose title we signed over to her. Usually this is paid, if needed, when you apply for a new title. As we charged her, $0 for the car, the tax should be $0. If it is a transfer between relatives, then no tax is owed. Fine they said, but we have to prove our relationship. So lots of digging around and copying documents.

Another why I hate Siri story. My friend used her to navigate to our other friend's farm the other night. True, the farm is a half mile down a private road but it does have a mailbox on a main road. Siri had her take the freeway 4 miles past the correct exit, get off and then told her to get on the freeway in the opposite direction. Then it told her to turn into a rest stop and that she had arrived at her destination. WTF? She ended up calling me. I am better than Siri at least.

But for all my ranting against Apple, Verizon and the State Treasury, it occurred to me what a whiner I was. I was watching Maya while Naomi helped Josh with last minute packing (her solution to saving gas now that it is the highest priced in the country due to some BS, is to drive our cars). The neighbors are honorary grandparents and had a three year old themselves in tow. They had bought a dollar store kite and took the little boy to the park to fly it. Maya and I came too. Although there wasn't much wind, he was able to get it airborne while running down the hill. A cheap thrill. Maya was amused. The man has stage 4 prostate cancer. He will get on a clinical trial that will work for a while and then it doesn't. They are fresh out of clinical trials for him so he will go back on traditional chemo, which he hates. As it is Taxol, he was asking me what he can or can not do on it. He enjoys his walks. If he can't do them... I said I walked every day. I would have ran but the Red Devil had made me anemic. But the big worry, will it work? Will they find another clinical trial that will? This makes my petty concerns....well petty.