Do I know you?

After an absence of almost three years, my estranged husband showed up today. It wasn't a total surprise; he'd given me advance notice a couple of weeks ago. But I'd been too busy worrying about my mother to give it any thought.

When I first saw him, all I could think is that he'd shrunk; he's thinner and actually seems shorter. I think he's lost an inch somewhere during the past years, or maybe I got taller. He's gotten too much sun so he's too tanned. He reminds me of a Florida retiree with peeling arms and crow's feet.

But after several hours of him in the house, and going out for lunch and shopping, I've realized that it's like having a near-stranger around. Like one of those cousins you see about every 10 years at the family reunion. You see your cousin at a distance across from the pot luck buffet, and you spend a few minutes trying to decide if it's really the cousin you thought it was, before you approach him or her and make a jerk out of yourself.

I'd planned to take my husband up on his offer of helping me paint Chez Melina during the next weeks, especially since his family's business is house painting. But now I don't mind if he does it or not. Part of me is wishing he'd head on down to the coast to see his new grandson and head back up north. It was a nice offer, but he can skip the house painting. So far, it's been a bit too weird for my taste.

dark circles

My mother has been hospitalized for over a week now. It began with that dreadful cliche: she fell down and couldn't get up. But after 10 days in the hospital, there still isn't much of a diagnosis to be had.

She hadn't broken anything when she fell, and her only symptoms were slightly high blood pressure and low sodium levels. This last one annoys me, as it seems that some doctors think that a low sodium diet will cure everything, when it can actually contribute to vertigo.

The upshot of all this is that after four days in the hospital, the doctors decided to move her to what they described as a "rehabilitation and physiotherapy facility". They kept calling it rehab for short, which irritated me as it sounded like my tee-total, non-swearing mother was drying out or smoking crack. (At least my mother found this observation amusing.)

This facility is tacked on to a nursing home and I have major problems with these. I think they're human junkyards, and indicative of some of our society's worst faults; mainly, the belief that it's okay to dispose of our aging parents in these places so they won't clutter up our own homes.

This one wasn't the worst I'd seen, but it still had its share of comatose and/or senile patients. But the most depressing thing about the place is that it was obvious that some patients had no visitors. Ever. Perhaps they didn't have any children to look after them, but it was still difficult for me to even look at these people, even if they had no comprehension that anyone was around at all.

I am beginning to feel that my mother's time is running out, and I'm having a mysterious amount of trouble dealing with it. The heart surgery she had 13 years ago was only designed to give her 10 to 15 more years, and the only thing she frets about is her Siamese cat Princess Leia. She seems to accept it all quietly without complaining. But I keep having these awful premonitions that she won't be able to go home again.

I've stopped asking her to move in with me, as she has never shown any sign of considering it. But I can't help but think that even Chez Melina is better than a nursing home. At least she could bring Princess Leia with her.

The English Literature major goes shopping

About once a year I break down and order something from the J. Peterman catalog. From a marketing perspective, they break one major rule; mainly, the one that says that people don't like or respond to illustrations of merchandise. They prefer photos. Perhaps the easily parodied descriptions of the items cancel this out.

For example, I spotted this nightgown in the most recent catalog and was tempted:

Should you walk away when you're underwater?

Last week, a friend mentioned a 60 Minutes segment about the mortgage industry that she thought I'd find interesting. It was about people who had bought homes during the housing boom, and now that their home's price had tanked, they were going to walk - even though they could still make the mortgage payments.

Click here if you'd like to take a look.

After I watched the video and read through the comments, I realized that I was rather conflicted about the situation. Which is odd for me, as I usually react to a situation promptly and without changing my mind either.

For example, I've always believed that if you've signed on the dotted line, that's it. During the past few years, especially pre-housing bust, I would read about people who had no idea what sort of mortgage they had (fixed- or adjustable-rate). All I could think was "WTF? What could they have been thinking? Didn't they realize that this isn't the same as buying a car, or boat, or new pair of Ferragamos?"

But on the other hand, you have plenty of people who acted in good faith when they bought their white elephants. These people hadn't been led astray by a mortgage brokers who were busy saying Wall Street Made Me Do It. The NPR show This American Life did a fascinating episode on this called The Giant Pool of Money.
Can anyone blame them for walking away from a bad investment - especially when plenty of banks have done, and will continue to do, the same thing? One woman made a pretty good point: it was like trying to bail the ocean with a bucket.

There was one point that Morley Safer, who is not aging well, didn't make. Which is that most properties' prices will go up again. Sooner or later. One simply has to look at other housing markets (Hong Kong is a good example) to see this.

For the time being, I'm going to try to stay put. The estranged husband will show up soon and has promised to help me with the renovations; while I'm suffering some angst about seeing him again after so long, I welcome the assistance. And if I ask him to leave, he'll leave.

melina's trippy television

After failing to locate my digital camera, I finally remembered that my cell phone takes photos. Not great photos, but passable ones.

Here's what the telly is doing:

The top part of the screen should be all white lettering on a blue background. Not here, though: