Family Divorce

For happy news, please feel free to read a different post!

It has been unmercifully hot for the past week. In the third week of March the temperature in the aku room hit 120. My geraniums are well-watered but can't take the scorching. For the past few weeks whenever I had a spare moment, and often when I did not, I was summoned. There was confusing paperwork to look through. Copies to be made, decisions to consider. Several times in the past month I have bolted from work because there was family stuff to do. Or because I was so flipped out about it. Mrguy and I spoke to our estate attorney about any risk involved with selling the building. She asked a simple question: "What do you want mrguy's year to be like"? That was chilling. I don't want to feel the way I do right now, and certainly not if he's gone. But what about in-between? What am I putting him through with all the distress?

Urgent text messages have rained down upon us during my workday, telling us to look at important emails. When you find the email, it is marked up with highlights and fonts that change in the middle of words, looking like the digital equivalent of a ransom note. My sister, of course, was unaware of the font changes, but it's super distressing to be told to examine something and to have it so illegible.

I have spoken to my siblings for hours on end this past week. We had two different two-hour meetings on Wednesday. Then the buyer came back with a reduced offer because of some bullshit excuse saying they had to retrofit the building. Our lawyer looked at the law and it says no such thing. It says that people have to file a letter before some time next year. And we know the buyer plans to flip the building right away so there is no way they're doing that work.

We came away from the second two-hour meeting deciding to sell. Mrguy was super pissed. I feel trapped between my family and my family. I used the nuclear option and told my family to shove it. I cannot continue to live at this level of intensity any more and I want out of the family partnership. Take it. I want to be free, and to never have to deal with my sister again. Evvvvvver. I spoke to our lawyer to see if she could do the deed.

Then my sister pulled a rabbit out of a hat. Yes, reduced price. But they are going to take responsibility for the uncleared loans forever. I am weighing my options. I still want to have nothing to do with my sister. 

I have a dysfunctional family. And a toxic relationship with my sister. She's the head of the family and summons us for family meetings whenever we are together. Why did I hate family  "vacation?" Because we'd spend 2 hours a day discussing mom's medications or real estate. No meeting or phone call is fewer than 2 hours. It's always urgent. When I don't do things her way she gets mad or wears me down. This week felt like a trip back to the years 2015 through 2025 when I was the point person for my mom. The PTSD is real, people.

I don't know how this will pan out. My stomach is still in knots. Mrguy feels slightly guilty about yesterday when he was super pissed after a lifetime of my family's bullshit. He's on steroids, which kinda intensified his feelings. That helped me pull the trigger that I've wanted to pull for a long time.

More when I know it.

Feuerzangenbowle 2026

We finally did it. The feuerzangenbowle dinner. I bought the feuerzangenbowle set in 2022, then we had to wait for the pandemic to be over, and our friends to stop traveling for a minute. Then mrguy got cancer and then he got better, then our friend came over last month and he and I started talking about spaetzle and schnitzel. It was ON!

We had a couple weeks' notice. I was going to make chicken schnitzel. Couldn't remember what sauce I served with it last time, but I saw a recipe for chicken schnitzel with mustard sauce and I just so happen to have purchased a very large bottle of Bautz'ner senf (mittelscharf) that would just plus the whole thing.

Then I went to an estate sale the week before and bought a german cookie form for ten bucks. I have always wanted one! So I was going to need to make cookies. And during the week we did a bread baking class at a brewery, and I had amazing fresh bread to serve. And of course I made a compound butter to serve with it.

The first step in making feuerzangenbowle is to make mulled wine. I got all decorative with that sh$t so I could take a picture for readers of mrsguy. The leaves are from our allspice tree, purchased from fastgrowingtrees.com during the pandemic. The tree is not fast growing. It is still only four feet tall, but the leaves are delicious and I use them in applesauce...and flaming punch, now, I guess.

The cookies turned out great. I made a Dutch speculaas cookie dough and watched some YouTube videos on how to make the cookies. Should have made them the day before, which I will do next time.

Our friends brought sides and different kinds of spaetzle and accoutrements and we had a great dinner. One friend took over the making of the mustard sauce, and it was delish.

And then we made the punch after dinner. You take the heated punch and put it in the bowl. Unwrap the zuckerhut and put it on the metal thingie that is suspended over the warmed punch. Pour a ladle full of 58% rum over the sugar. Turn out the lights. Set it on fire and watch the melting, rum-soaked sugar drop into the punch. Although the guys started a quiet drone-chant of "feuerzangen, feuerzangen, feuerzangen bowle", this is not traditional. 

It was so fun!

March 2026 Vortex of Power

I was enjoying my first duty-free weekend, when my family upended it again. Welcome to my life.

I am the holder of around ten boxes of my parents' paperwork related to everything from bank statements to tax statements to medical bills, to calendars, to everything related to a piece of property we're trying to sell. In a different state, my sister is dealing with our mom's estate and the real estate deal. This piece of property was my dad's life work. It belonged to my mom, had an unbreakable 75-year lease, and they intended for it to continue to pass down through the family after my mom died.

Out of the blue comes an offer. At this point we realize that there are two "outstanding" loans. I have all of the documents to prove that they've been paid off. My parents never filed the paperwork to make it official. Not sure why. They tried to get the official documents from the lenders, as my dad's correspondence shows, but he couldn't get it. In one case he had been paying the people who had the promissory note, and finally paid it off. The bank confirmed this, but the individuals who held the note did not provide the promissory note to my dad. Similar story with the other loan. Paid off, and didn't get the note.

I have been looking through the documents for weeks. And spending time at work to make pdfs. Last week I was so beyond frustrated with this whole situation, and I was asked to look again. I made a weekend of it, researching and collecting and then spending five hours scanning. I found a document that my mom scribbled on, giving the order of the lenders over a 20-year loan. None of the bank documents listed the address of the property, so if she hadn't jotted it down I would not have understood what I was looking at. 

This week our real estate attorney came over to double-check my work, at my request. He agrees that the docs are not there, but that the two loans were definitely paid off. I thought I was done!! argh.

This is the kind of stuff that has occupied some of my weekends. The requests for my time and effort from family are urgent and unexpected. I had hoped that this weekend would be free. And now we have a family meeting with lawyer tomorrow. 

My schpilkes have returned.

3 Movies, 3 Days

Last Saturday I took Rev to see the new forklift movie. Then I got to show her the forklift archives, and I posed her for photos with forklifts so that she could show her mom.

On Sunday mrguy and I went to see the new Paul McCartney and Wings movie in a theater. Everybody in the theater was really old, and I felt younger than 50% of the audience and mrguy informed me that I was wrong about that. The pre-show music featured some of the worst Wings music ever made. You know how a Paul McCartney song starts out strong and then has a B part that is super squizzy? Those songs.

The movie itself was great. No repellent songs, because Morgan Neville has good taste. The film was more about the people than the music, I'd say. I didn't realize that Denny Laine was a stalwart of the Wings band while others came and went. There were cute animals. Mrguy is really moved by cute animals.

Then we grabbed felafel at the place across the street and went home. It was a perfect day.

On Monday, clamdip2020 and I went to see "Homecoming: the Tokyo Series" about Japan and baseball. What's not to like? We got there early, which allowed us time to go to the new huge Japanese supermarket. And then the movie. It was so good! It centered around specific games held in Tokyo, but told the stories of various people who follow baseball. Americans who came to Japan for the games, athletes who were born in Japan but playing for MLB teams, a mom and son who run a baseball program for little kids, a place where you can rehab your vintage mitt, a guy who is a hair stylist and also keeps a museum for one of the players. It was great. Highly recommended.

I've Been Missing, Sorta

I haven't blogged about Hawaii for various reasons, and when we came back I didn't feel like it. I've been doing things. Been busy.

The day after we came back from Hawaii, mrguy had to go in for his ambulatory EEG. They put electrodes on your head, lash it all down with webbing, and you walk around like that for two days while writing down the time and symptom description whenever you feel weird. I thought he looked adorable in the weird contraption, hence the photo.

The EEG checked out as ok / there is nothing wrong with his brain. But his new neurologist specializes in seizures, and that seems to be what's afoot. She thinks they are caused by the chemical load of his chemotherapy meds. She prescribed a mild anti-seizure medication, which immediately gave him his first migraine in 6 months. We're expecting side-effects, but this was a very un-fun one for mrguy.

Then he had a PET scan. It shows a possible recurrence. Or not? This one is in his esophagus and it's soft tissue. Could be inflammation. On followup with our oncologist he said he wasn't too concerned. Decided against an endoscopy, but then scheduled one. We know that the doctors were conferring in the background, so I have a feeling that someone else weighed in and advised the endoscopy after all. His clinical trial doctor, who he meets with periodically, was aware of the updates to mrguy's situation. Mrguy got to have one of his medications infused that week, but they didn't give him his anti-nausea drugs (which he never needs cause he's not nauseated ever) and gave him compazine, instead. He did great. No weirdness. Next week he "gets" to have the full chemo regimen. Hope it shrinks whatever it is in his genechtagazoink and I hope he is infused without incident.

In the meantime time marched on and I had a funeral of a workmate to go to. 

All the founders were there, and none of them brought their second wives, who were the *correct* wives but didn't really know the deceased so well. I kinda went into hostess mode, inviting my faves to the table where I was sitting and inadvertently but happily excluding the one OG who I've blocked on my phone and fb. It's possible that he didn't want to join us because there's an allegiance issue with one of the other founders who was not present at this event. Both feel butt hurt about how they left the forklift factory. The reason that I blocked him was that before the guy was laid off, I tried to find him work to do within our department, at his request. But (and this was a problem always) he didn't look at his calendar, visit his office often, respond to email or to voicemail. You could barely contact him, but then he'd mysteriously stop by your office from time to time. He lost his job in one of the big layoffs. Afterward, he was still a fb friend and one of my go-to people for historical information, so I'd reach out to ask questions. He'd promise gobs of information, but again never followed through. He was a tease. One day I posted a fb memory of mrguy and I in Hawaii. My former colleague saw it and commented that it was nice that I was in Hawaii when people like him were out of work. I pointed out to him that the memory was from 5 years earlier, when we all still worked together. Then I blocked him on every device. He could have found a job, and certainly had talents, but I think that he was so shocked from being canned that it wrecked him. I think that there was a part of him that assumed that his prior accomplishments would render him immune from harm. None of us is unexpendable, my man.

Eusa Kills

Yeah. So we dismantled a successful agreement with Iran because the Black President put it together. And then the Orange President bombed Iran, killing dozens of young girls. And Iran is lashing out at the countries around it. 

Don't we feel better now?

Eusa Kills