Thursday, July 10, 2008
A note on the previous post - Jay was clean on everything tested, all the hepatitis variations, all the STDs, everything. The only surprise was that he had only one kidney, and a dried-up walnut where the other one should have been.
------------------------
The sisters are dividing up the late father-in-law's estate. One sister wanted to sell all the stock and distribute the cash. One sister wanted to distribute the shares, because the market is in the toilet. I don't know what the third sister wanted, but they decided to distribute shares.
There's really no difference, even if the market is so bad, because although it's a bad time to sell, it's also a good time to buy, so it doesn't make much difference to me. The one thing you don't want to do is sell and then just let the cash sit.
So anyway, I got the word that I'm to open an online brokerage account to receive my shares. I spent some time doing that today. (I don't like the brokerage they chose - I think their costs are too high, but I don't expect to be with them long.)
There's one thing that disturbs me about distributing shares. If the stock is sold and the proceeds distributed, then everyone gets the same. If, however, shares are distributed, there is a potential for inequity.
Depending on the history and future of the company, $1 worth of stock in company ABC can be of greater intrinsic value than $1 worth of stock in company XYZ. For example, there's a big difference between $1000 in Exxon (future recovery), and $1000 in Millennium Cell (possible bankruptcy).
I don't know how many different stocks they're looking at (having been ousted from the executor position I'm no longer privy to that information until the accounting), but I sent them a note suggesting that shares be distributed by count in any one company. Divide the number of shares by the number of portions, distribute to the parties proportionately, sell any remainder (a maximum of six shares in every case), and distribute the sales proceeds. That's fair, everybody gets exactly the same, and it heads off any later claims of inequity.
Mainly, I want to let them know that I will object to any division that leaves me with all the crap stocks, even if the current value is nominally the same. And I can't assume they already thought of that.
.
Showing posts with label FIL. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FIL. Show all posts
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Friday, June 06, 2008
1838 Jay's Stuff
Friday, June 6, 2008
While I was in Rochester, the eldest sister kept asking me if there was anything in the house that I wanted.
There wasn't a lot left except large pieces of furniture, and trash, and most of the furniture had pieces of tape on it with the names of the younger sisters and their daughters. The younger sisters and their husbands had gone through the house earlier, filled several dumpsters, and took home a few truckloads of the more portable good stuff. (Legal note - all of it is part of the estate, I'm entitled to a portion of that estate or the value thereof, and I'm thoroughly pissed that none of it had been appraised.)
There were only a few things that I wanted. One is a beautiful genuine Irish blackthorn walking stick I had given to the FIL a few years ago. The other was a few things that Jay had mentioned before he died: projects he had worked on, experimental photographs he had taken, his scouting badges, a carved wooden French Revolution chess set, stuff like that. He would have picked them up during an earlier visit to Rochester, but the FIL was a pack rat, and had no idea where any of Jay's stuff might be. I thought that perhaps the sisters would set Jay's things aside for me. But I didn't realize they were purging the house so soon, and I didn't get my word in before they filled the dumpsters.
The caregiver said she had seen the blackthorn before the FIL died. Now, of course, it's nowhere to be found, and everyone claims they didn't see it. Either someone has it and won't admit it, or several hundred dollars of blackthorn went into the dumpster. The caregiver brought me a box she spotted that had my name and "Jay's stuff" written on it. It contained a battered felt cowboy hat that would have been too small for him (I already have his good hats), a cheap chess set, and a six-inch stack of paper. That's all.
So Wednesday night in the hotel room I spent about three hours reading through the papers. It looks like they just found a file labeled "Jay" and threw the contents into a box without looking at it. It was all materials having to do with Jay's application for math summer enrichment programs when he was in high school. That's all.
He had to write essays for the applications. I read all of the typed essays, and thought, "This isn't Jay. He didn't write these." The style was his father's, not his, including the overuse of exclamation points! Like on sentences like this! That habit of his father used to drive Jay crazy!
And then I found one of the typed essays written in longhand. His father's longhand. Jay had always said that nothing he ever did was good enough for his father, that his father had always taken over on everything. This was almost like a haunting. I was reminded of when my daughter was writing essays for college applications. She would not allow me to so much as suggest anything. In fact, I never saw any of the essays she wrote. I have to contrast that with Jay's father's controlling everything. It was one of the reasons Jay had so much difficulty making decisions.
The stack happened to include a few letters Jay had written home from Paris (in longhand), when he had college summer internships there. Those I kept. All the rest of the contents of the box I threw out.
On Thursday I happened to notice a file cabinet in one of the upstairs bedrooms. I opened a drawer, and it was still full of paper. One file was labeled "Jay". I pulled the contents, and found all the letters I had written to his father during Jay's illness, detailing the diagnosis, the treatments, what was happening with Jay, right up to the end, when I had to warn his father about things he should avoid mentioning in phone calls, since Jay had no short term memory and it would just upset him.
I took those letters downstairs and put them in my tote bag, and didn't mention them to anyone.
.
While I was in Rochester, the eldest sister kept asking me if there was anything in the house that I wanted.
There wasn't a lot left except large pieces of furniture, and trash, and most of the furniture had pieces of tape on it with the names of the younger sisters and their daughters. The younger sisters and their husbands had gone through the house earlier, filled several dumpsters, and took home a few truckloads of the more portable good stuff. (Legal note - all of it is part of the estate, I'm entitled to a portion of that estate or the value thereof, and I'm thoroughly pissed that none of it had been appraised.)
There were only a few things that I wanted. One is a beautiful genuine Irish blackthorn walking stick I had given to the FIL a few years ago. The other was a few things that Jay had mentioned before he died: projects he had worked on, experimental photographs he had taken, his scouting badges, a carved wooden French Revolution chess set, stuff like that. He would have picked them up during an earlier visit to Rochester, but the FIL was a pack rat, and had no idea where any of Jay's stuff might be. I thought that perhaps the sisters would set Jay's things aside for me. But I didn't realize they were purging the house so soon, and I didn't get my word in before they filled the dumpsters.
The caregiver said she had seen the blackthorn before the FIL died. Now, of course, it's nowhere to be found, and everyone claims they didn't see it. Either someone has it and won't admit it, or several hundred dollars of blackthorn went into the dumpster. The caregiver brought me a box she spotted that had my name and "Jay's stuff" written on it. It contained a battered felt cowboy hat that would have been too small for him (I already have his good hats), a cheap chess set, and a six-inch stack of paper. That's all.
So Wednesday night in the hotel room I spent about three hours reading through the papers. It looks like they just found a file labeled "Jay" and threw the contents into a box without looking at it. It was all materials having to do with Jay's application for math summer enrichment programs when he was in high school. That's all.
He had to write essays for the applications. I read all of the typed essays, and thought, "This isn't Jay. He didn't write these." The style was his father's, not his, including the overuse of exclamation points! Like on sentences like this! That habit of his father used to drive Jay crazy!
And then I found one of the typed essays written in longhand. His father's longhand. Jay had always said that nothing he ever did was good enough for his father, that his father had always taken over on everything. This was almost like a haunting. I was reminded of when my daughter was writing essays for college applications. She would not allow me to so much as suggest anything. In fact, I never saw any of the essays she wrote. I have to contrast that with Jay's father's controlling everything. It was one of the reasons Jay had so much difficulty making decisions.
The stack happened to include a few letters Jay had written home from Paris (in longhand), when he had college summer internships there. Those I kept. All the rest of the contents of the box I threw out.
On Thursday I happened to notice a file cabinet in one of the upstairs bedrooms. I opened a drawer, and it was still full of paper. One file was labeled "Jay". I pulled the contents, and found all the letters I had written to his father during Jay's illness, detailing the diagnosis, the treatments, what was happening with Jay, right up to the end, when I had to warn his father about things he should avoid mentioning in phone calls, since Jay had no short term memory and it would just upset him.
I took those letters downstairs and put them in my tote bag, and didn't mention them to anyone.
.
1837 Not Sure Why
Friday, June 6, 2008
I've spent the past few days in Rochester, helping Jay's eldest sister to get the late FIL's house ready to show.
I couldn't believe what they're asking for the house. It's about 1.75 times the size of my house, five bedrooms (the two upstairs are huge, and share a bathroom with double sinks, etc.), 2.5 bathrooms, 40-some windows (I know, 'cause I personally washed about a third of them), two fireplaces (one with an old marble Victorian surround) a huge basement, about an acre or more of land, huge very old trees, in a beautiful old neighborhood where every house is different and all use professional landscapers.
Even in the current depressed market, with what my house would fetch, I could buy his house and another equal to it, and still have $50,000 left over to remodel or decorate. It's crazy. Rochester must be terribly depressed. We did some shopping for decorating touches that took us all over the city, and it seemed like there were a lot of closed and boarded up businesses, and a lot of parking lots of open businesses looked uncared for. Grass growing in the cracks and so on. It seemed like the things we were looking at in the stores (patio furniture, 9x12 "oriental" rugs, towels, silk plants at Michaels, etc.) were a LOT cheaper than down here.
Conclusion, if you don't mind snow, and would like being near excellent medical centers and elder-care facilities, Rochester, NY, might be a good place to retire.
------------------------------
The "crew" consisted of one of Dad's caregivers, her two late-teen/early 20s sons, her father, me, and Jay's eldest sister (who happens to be exactly the same age as I am). The boys mostly did outside work, washing the outsides of the windows, power washing the siding and the patio. The father installed several window air conditioners. The caregiver and I cleaned the inside of windows on Wednesday, and washed 40 years of soot and grime off every flat surface. Thursday we scoured bathrooms. I spent three hours on the half bath alone. Every inch had to be scrubbed. The cabinets had to be cleaned out, and --- I'm not kidding --- I had to whack things stuck to the shelves with a hammer to loosen them.
Eldest sister, in the meantime, wandered around rearranging furniture, talking on the phone, making lists of touches to arrange and things to buy, hanging pictures, and otherwise decorating. She didn't even get her hands dirty. She issued orders to the rest of us whenever she noticed something that needed cleaning.
By 7 pm last evening, I'd had it. I was lying on the floor with my head and shoulders stuck in the under-sink cabinet in the master bath, and suddenly I wondered what the heck I was doing, and why. I hadn't had anything to eat all day, and I was being treated like a hired hand. The caregiver and her family were being paid for their time. I was a volunteer. And I wasn't sure why.
At that point eldest sister said she was going shopping for more stuff, and invited me along, and I made a snap decision. I was tired, and I was going back to the hotel. And I did.
(I had been invited to stay at the house, but I knew if I did, I'd be worked into the ground, 7 am to 11 pm, so instead I spent $360 on a hotel. I'm wondering now if I can bill the estate for the hotel and the $60 in gas.)
So, I went to an Appleby's near the hotel, got a takeout dinner, and fell asleep lying across the bed, fully dressed, before I could finish my ribs. I slept 13 hours, straight through.
I went back this morning and cleaned off and dusted some shelves, and then headed home at noon. I sneezed and coughed all the way home, from the house dust. I've been digging black oily dust out of my nose for the past two days.
The realtor is bringing some people to see the house this evening. I hope they buy it!
.
I've spent the past few days in Rochester, helping Jay's eldest sister to get the late FIL's house ready to show.
I couldn't believe what they're asking for the house. It's about 1.75 times the size of my house, five bedrooms (the two upstairs are huge, and share a bathroom with double sinks, etc.), 2.5 bathrooms, 40-some windows (I know, 'cause I personally washed about a third of them), two fireplaces (one with an old marble Victorian surround) a huge basement, about an acre or more of land, huge very old trees, in a beautiful old neighborhood where every house is different and all use professional landscapers.
Even in the current depressed market, with what my house would fetch, I could buy his house and another equal to it, and still have $50,000 left over to remodel or decorate. It's crazy. Rochester must be terribly depressed. We did some shopping for decorating touches that took us all over the city, and it seemed like there were a lot of closed and boarded up businesses, and a lot of parking lots of open businesses looked uncared for. Grass growing in the cracks and so on. It seemed like the things we were looking at in the stores (patio furniture, 9x12 "oriental" rugs, towels, silk plants at Michaels, etc.) were a LOT cheaper than down here.
Conclusion, if you don't mind snow, and would like being near excellent medical centers and elder-care facilities, Rochester, NY, might be a good place to retire.
------------------------------
The "crew" consisted of one of Dad's caregivers, her two late-teen/early 20s sons, her father, me, and Jay's eldest sister (who happens to be exactly the same age as I am). The boys mostly did outside work, washing the outsides of the windows, power washing the siding and the patio. The father installed several window air conditioners. The caregiver and I cleaned the inside of windows on Wednesday, and washed 40 years of soot and grime off every flat surface. Thursday we scoured bathrooms. I spent three hours on the half bath alone. Every inch had to be scrubbed. The cabinets had to be cleaned out, and --- I'm not kidding --- I had to whack things stuck to the shelves with a hammer to loosen them.
Eldest sister, in the meantime, wandered around rearranging furniture, talking on the phone, making lists of touches to arrange and things to buy, hanging pictures, and otherwise decorating. She didn't even get her hands dirty. She issued orders to the rest of us whenever she noticed something that needed cleaning.
By 7 pm last evening, I'd had it. I was lying on the floor with my head and shoulders stuck in the under-sink cabinet in the master bath, and suddenly I wondered what the heck I was doing, and why. I hadn't had anything to eat all day, and I was being treated like a hired hand. The caregiver and her family were being paid for their time. I was a volunteer. And I wasn't sure why.
At that point eldest sister said she was going shopping for more stuff, and invited me along, and I made a snap decision. I was tired, and I was going back to the hotel. And I did.
(I had been invited to stay at the house, but I knew if I did, I'd be worked into the ground, 7 am to 11 pm, so instead I spent $360 on a hotel. I'm wondering now if I can bill the estate for the hotel and the $60 in gas.)
So, I went to an Appleby's near the hotel, got a takeout dinner, and fell asleep lying across the bed, fully dressed, before I could finish my ribs. I slept 13 hours, straight through.
I went back this morning and cleaned off and dusted some shelves, and then headed home at noon. I sneezed and coughed all the way home, from the house dust. I've been digging black oily dust out of my nose for the past two days.
The realtor is bringing some people to see the house this evening. I hope they buy it!
.
Monday, June 02, 2008
1834 Shakeup
Monday, June 2, 2008
Today has been an up down all around shake it up day. I'm completely worn out.
I mentioned that Jay's father died a few weeks ago. Turns out there were some very sneaky and even illegal things done concerning his estate. It's turning into a real snakepit.
Piper predicted that stuff like this would happen, he sees it all the time, and I naively said no, not with these folks. He shook his head, and said that the larger the estate, the nastier the people.
Well, it's even worse than he figured.
No details, but let's postulate, just for sake of argument, that a second will has appeared, postdating the "known" one, and the second one was signed after someone was declared incompetent, without the knowledge of certain of the siblings, and threats have been made that if anyone fights it, the entire estate will be spent defending it and there won't be anything left for anyone, so shut up, and so on. Oh, and the house was cleaned out by some siblings without the knowledge of the others. Without any appraisals. And of course no one has any idea where the Academy Award went.
If there happened to be someone concerned who has been damaged by the new will, which she believes does not reflect his expressed wishes, and that particular someone would not have minded if she got nothing in the will if that was his desire, since she is only the widow of a deceased son, but had been told that she would get the deceased son's share in appreciation of what she had done for him, and that's what was in the first will, but she has been thrown a sop in the new will apparently on the theory that she's as greedy as the rest and will accept a pittance rather than the nothing she might get if she blew the whistle, well, if there happened to be someone like that,
Today has been an up down all around shake it up day. I'm completely worn out.
I mentioned that Jay's father died a few weeks ago. Turns out there were some very sneaky and even illegal things done concerning his estate. It's turning into a real snakepit.
Piper predicted that stuff like this would happen, he sees it all the time, and I naively said no, not with these folks. He shook his head, and said that the larger the estate, the nastier the people.
Well, it's even worse than he figured.
No details, but let's postulate, just for sake of argument, that a second will has appeared, postdating the "known" one, and the second one was signed after someone was declared incompetent, without the knowledge of certain of the siblings, and threats have been made that if anyone fights it, the entire estate will be spent defending it and there won't be anything left for anyone, so shut up, and so on. Oh, and the house was cleaned out by some siblings without the knowledge of the others. Without any appraisals. And of course no one has any idea where the Academy Award went.
If there happened to be someone concerned who has been damaged by the new will, which she believes does not reflect his expressed wishes, and that particular someone would not have minded if she got nothing in the will if that was his desire, since she is only the widow of a deceased son, but had been told that she would get the deceased son's share in appreciation of what she had done for him, and that's what was in the first will, but she has been thrown a sop in the new will apparently on the theory that she's as greedy as the rest and will accept a pittance rather than the nothing she might get if she blew the whistle, well, if there happened to be someone like that,
THEY GROSSLY OVERESTIMATED HER GREED AND UNDERESTIMATED HER CAPACITY TO STAND UP FOR MORAL PRINCIPLE AND THE RULE OF LAW !!!
.
.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
1802 Bits
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Bertrand Russell: "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt."
------------------------------
Jay's father died yesterday. I was having a late lunch with Daughter when Jay's eldest sister called to tell me. I feel guilty, because I was planning to go to Rochester to see him today. I was sure that he'd have at least a few more days.
That sureness came from my own arrogance. All my life people close to me who were on the way out have waited for me before they went. I feel a call, I go, I hold their hand, we talk, I tell them it's ok, and then they leave easily, while I'm holding them. It's happened so often I began to feel like that was my role, to ease the passage. Jay's father had told me many times that he found me the easiest to talk to, and in the past few years he often cried when we talked, cried about all the abilities he was losing and all that had been taken from him. He couldn't cry before anyone else.
I am comforted by the thought that Jay was with him. Of the living, his two youngest daughters and one of the caretakers were there (not the most calm group of people). The eldest daughter told me that they're still not sure that he'd had strokes, because scans showed nothing, but he had severe weakness on his left side, so that's what they assumed. I pointed out to her that that's the same side Jay had lost. Yeah, I think Jay was there, has been for a while, perhaps even pulling him.
I met up with Daughter and Hercules yesterday at a geocaching flash mob in a NJ park, after which they took me to find a nearby cache they thought would amuse me. It was right out in the open, at the base of a tree in the woods near the dog park. The owner of the cache had made a brown cement cast of her dog's poop, hollowed out underneath to hold the log book. I took one look, yelled "Raccoon poop!" and ran the other direction.
Daughter and Hercules laughed, but didn't explain it to the other cachers. I guess we don't want to start a panic, eh?
For Mothers' Day, Daughter gave me an essay, in her own handwriting, on what she loves about where she lives, and Hercules gave me a container of his own recipe peanut butter cookies. This was exactly what I wanted.
I had spent Friday evening with the man, sent him off on Saturday morning to visit his mother - a 10-12 hour drive.
I still don't understand the attraction. When I'm not with him, I wonder what I'm doing, and why. Why am I wasting time on something that I don't see as ever being anything more than what it is now. There's so much against this ... whatever it is, and I'm fully aware of that, and I'm too old to waste time. And yet, since the first time he touched me, I've had no interest in any other man, real or ideal. When I'm with him, I don't care about all the negatives, all the differences. I adore his mind, the way he sees so clearly. I find the timbre of his voice exciting, deep and slightly rough. He's technically not handsome, but when I see him I see handsome, I see beauty, I love his face, his body, the way he moves. I love sitting across a table from him.
I wish I could see the future.
.
Bertrand Russell: "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt."
------------------------------
Jay's father died yesterday. I was having a late lunch with Daughter when Jay's eldest sister called to tell me. I feel guilty, because I was planning to go to Rochester to see him today. I was sure that he'd have at least a few more days.
That sureness came from my own arrogance. All my life people close to me who were on the way out have waited for me before they went. I feel a call, I go, I hold their hand, we talk, I tell them it's ok, and then they leave easily, while I'm holding them. It's happened so often I began to feel like that was my role, to ease the passage. Jay's father had told me many times that he found me the easiest to talk to, and in the past few years he often cried when we talked, cried about all the abilities he was losing and all that had been taken from him. He couldn't cry before anyone else.
I am comforted by the thought that Jay was with him. Of the living, his two youngest daughters and one of the caretakers were there (not the most calm group of people). The eldest daughter told me that they're still not sure that he'd had strokes, because scans showed nothing, but he had severe weakness on his left side, so that's what they assumed. I pointed out to her that that's the same side Jay had lost. Yeah, I think Jay was there, has been for a while, perhaps even pulling him.
I met up with Daughter and Hercules yesterday at a geocaching flash mob in a NJ park, after which they took me to find a nearby cache they thought would amuse me. It was right out in the open, at the base of a tree in the woods near the dog park. The owner of the cache had made a brown cement cast of her dog's poop, hollowed out underneath to hold the log book. I took one look, yelled "Raccoon poop!" and ran the other direction.
Daughter and Hercules laughed, but didn't explain it to the other cachers. I guess we don't want to start a panic, eh?
For Mothers' Day, Daughter gave me an essay, in her own handwriting, on what she loves about where she lives, and Hercules gave me a container of his own recipe peanut butter cookies. This was exactly what I wanted.
I had spent Friday evening with the man, sent him off on Saturday morning to visit his mother - a 10-12 hour drive.
I still don't understand the attraction. When I'm not with him, I wonder what I'm doing, and why. Why am I wasting time on something that I don't see as ever being anything more than what it is now. There's so much against this ... whatever it is, and I'm fully aware of that, and I'm too old to waste time. And yet, since the first time he touched me, I've had no interest in any other man, real or ideal. When I'm with him, I don't care about all the negatives, all the differences. I adore his mind, the way he sees so clearly. I find the timbre of his voice exciting, deep and slightly rough. He's technically not handsome, but when I see him I see handsome, I see beauty, I love his face, his body, the way he moves. I love sitting across a table from him.
I wish I could see the future.
.
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
1799 Up and Down Wednesday
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
I had another of those long lunches with Piper today. I took Clyde, the Pleo, so he could meet him, and during the course of the afternoon The Angel, Jim, and Vinnie stopped by, either at the office or at the restaurant, so they got to meet him, too.
I am amused at how different people have such different reactions to Clyde. It's almost always a different reaction than I would expect from that person.
This afternoon I got a call from Jay's eldest sister. Jay's father has had a series of strokes, and he isn't able to swallow. Today is his 91st birthday. They haven't yet decided what direction to go in treatment, but all agree he'd be a lot happier at home, no matter what else is decided.
He already has three live-in caregivers, so as soon as they can be trained in the new requirements of his care, he'll go home. We've agreed that the day after the transfer, I should go to visit.
Distance is our enemy here. The father lives in Rochester, NY, the eldest daughter is just south of Washington, DC, the next daughter lives near Boston, and the third daughter lives about 40 minutes south of me. So it's ironic that I, the daughter-in-law, despised wife of the deceased son, is actually, at five+ hours' drive, the closest.
I've been out of the loop for a long time. Looks like I'll be getting back in. But he always liked me (when he figured out who I was). Maybe I can do some good, finally.
.
I had another of those long lunches with Piper today. I took Clyde, the Pleo, so he could meet him, and during the course of the afternoon The Angel, Jim, and Vinnie stopped by, either at the office or at the restaurant, so they got to meet him, too.
I am amused at how different people have such different reactions to Clyde. It's almost always a different reaction than I would expect from that person.
This afternoon I got a call from Jay's eldest sister. Jay's father has had a series of strokes, and he isn't able to swallow. Today is his 91st birthday. They haven't yet decided what direction to go in treatment, but all agree he'd be a lot happier at home, no matter what else is decided.
He already has three live-in caregivers, so as soon as they can be trained in the new requirements of his care, he'll go home. We've agreed that the day after the transfer, I should go to visit.
Distance is our enemy here. The father lives in Rochester, NY, the eldest daughter is just south of Washington, DC, the next daughter lives near Boston, and the third daughter lives about 40 minutes south of me. So it's ironic that I, the daughter-in-law, despised wife of the deceased son, is actually, at five+ hours' drive, the closest.
I've been out of the loop for a long time. Looks like I'll be getting back in. But he always liked me (when he figured out who I was). Maybe I can do some good, finally.
.
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