The Paper Trail...

 

Oh my goodness !

 

Two days of bloated blowhards sitting at my dining room table.

 

We had a third estimate scheduled,

 and cancelled because we couldn't take it anymore.

 

Apparently, a roof now costs the same as a built in pool

 or a whole addition onto your house.

 

My brother came through with a guy who would do the job for half the price,

but I don't have cash.

So either way,

there will be no roofing done here.

 

Poor Terry will throw some shingles on the little porch cover he made,

and call it a day.

 

Meanwhile...

 

Handling his brother's Social Security applications

 and doctors appointments...

 

Getting armed to fight the finance company

 on my lease car damage assessment...

 

Making sure my disabled son's Social Security

  and Medicare are in order...

 

Oops, no time for my Wednesday

 Diagramless crossword puzzle...

 

Mom's paperwork, garage door opener manual,

and other stuff,

waiting for attention...

 

And, the Center Line sidewalk repair program,

which is going to sock us with $1,200 worth of new sidewalk slabs...

 

I need a secretary to keep track of all this paperwork

 that litters my dining room table every day.

 

Bills, and checks, and statements, and estimates;

ongoing battles, and rebate slips.

 

Grocery lists, and birthday lists; 

lists of priorities, lists of wishes,

and a list to keep track of all of those lists.

 

I need to remember to buy more notepads for lists...

 

 

 

Epic Fail

 

Saturday started off without a hitch.

Terry got to work on the porch,

trying to figure out the metal roof.

 

We have spent more money on this than we wanted,

and he has had a rough time trying to make it work.

 

In the middle of the day,

mom called and said her garage door opener was not working,

 so we got some new batteries for the remote and headed over there...

 

We changed the batteries,

we investigated every possible problem...

 

but came up without a solution.

 

So, the professional garage door guys will have to take over this one...

 

After we dealt with this problem,

 we got a call that Tim needed cigarettes down at the shelter.

 

We stopped at the smoke shop

 and bought him a pipe and some loose tobacco.

 

This should last him a few days...

 

and off we go to downtown Detroit...

 

There's the Motor City Casino.

We would rather go there,

but we went straight to the shelter.

 

Tim seems almost happy to be in this situation.

He seems to take it all in stride.

And he was just happy to have some tobacco.

 

Back home, back to the porch...

I stood back and looked at the progress on the metal roof,

and OH MY GOD!

 

I had to tell Terry that I hated it and it looked awful.

This was my idea,

and I thought it would look good, but I was wrong!

 

I thought a metal roof would add a modern touch to the house,

but it looks like a shed in the back woods of Kentucky.

 

I'm so sorry honey.

 

Epic fail. My fault.

 

Calling a roofer this week to finish the job with some shingles...

 

and maybe even get the whole house and garage reshingled.

 

Gotta count my money...

 

 

These Days

 

Haha, here's me and Terry driving around

 downtown Detroit, helplessly lost.

 

Tery's brother called and begged for cigarettes,

and of course,

we drove downtown,

 at rush hour on a Tuesday evening...

 

We were trying to avoid the "lightrail" construction,

and ended up at the Ambassador Bridge.

 

Trying to get out of there,

merging with trucks...

 

Yikes!!!

 

Made it to the shelter...

delivered the cigarettes,

and there he goes.

 

He's headed back to his new reality.

He seems resigned to this new life.

He doesn't say much but makes small talk.

We are torn up inside... Is he?

 

We drive home in silence.

 

What are we supposed to do?........

 

The porch project sits in limbo,

much like our brains right now...

 

It's hard to be single-minded these days.

Strange Days...

 

We've had a tarp over the porch roof for a week now,

 because we had to special order a part of the metal roof.

 

In the meantime,

Terry cut all of the pieces he had,

 and they are ready to go...

 

He also continues his waterproofing mission

 around the basement foundation.

 

Here, he has dug out around the base,

 and put down plastic,

caulked to the brick...

 

Laid down lots more dirt,

 and covered with mulch.

 

I keep calling him "nuts",

but it is working.

 

The basement is not leaking.

 

Here's our garage filled with all of the crap from his brother's house.

I don't even know what we're going to do with all of this stuff.

 

Endless amounts of tools, and tools, and tools.

 

Four "Shop-Vacs", 59 flashlights,

and buckets and buckets of stuff.

 

Yesterday,  we went to pick up our special order roof part for the back porch,

 and we decided to stop in at the Jeep dealership,

because my lease was ending soon,

and we wanted to test drive a Renegade.

 

I've had a Chevy Malibu for six years now,

 and I was sick of it, so I really wanted to go outside of my comfort zone...

 

Well, a couple hours later,

and the deal was done.

 

Goodbye Malibu.

 

Hello Jeep Renegade.

 

Here we are going out to get our new car.

 

Mike Paparelli from Jim Riehl's Jeep,

was a really nice guy.

 

There she is...

Soo excited...

 

until Terry's brother called while we were

still in the lot.

 

He was evicted and needed us to take him to a shelter.

 

We took the new car home,

 and climbed into Terry's car and went to get him.

 

It is very sad to watch a person's life spiral out of control

 and not be able to stop it.

 This has been coming for a year now.

 We have been hanging in the background,

 helping when we could, and helpless when we couldn't.

 

Tim made it very difficult to help,

 as he was quite sound of mind, and refused to be

guided.

He squandered his life savings on drugs and alcohol,

and lost his home,

 and we stood by with no recourse to stop what we knew was happening.

 

 At one point we actually went to the police

 and signed an order to have him committed,

 and the police escorted him to the hospital,

 but the hospital let him walk out.

 

A year later, here we are.

He has lost everything.

 

If I could figure out a way to fit him into our home,

 I would,

 but I just can't.

 

We dropped him off at a shelter

 with no money in his pocket,

and not even a cigarette to smoke.

 

Terry is crushed,

 and my head is whirling with "how can I fix this?"

 

The only shelter that would take him

 was at Martin Luther King and Third Street

 in the bowels of Detroit.

 

He's going to last one day,

and be calling us to come and get him,

and then we have no idea what we're going to do.

 

So we drove home in silence,

or in shock,

not sure which,

 

but I knew I had a daughter

 who was waiting to drive the new car with me.

 So we went out for a drive and got accustomed to the new ride.

 

There's the face of innocence.

Iguanas and Ice Cream?

 

Wow. Sunday we had to spend the day

 moving things out of Terry's brother's house,

 due to his eviction.

 

A hoarder and a buyer of "stuff",

we had to move alot of his stuff into our garage,

for safe-keeping. 

 

Biggest surprise of all,

was this giant iguana.

 

His roommate had left it upstairs when she departed.

 

I called her and gave her one day to come and get him...

 

When we got home from our busy day,

Terry was determined to do some work on the porch .

 

Every time he started working on it,

it started raining.

 

Nice double rainbow.

 

And our pet squirrel "Petey" was not deterred by rain.

 

He got his daily treat.

 

Let's see that rainbow again...

 

Sooo...

 

a day later, we checked in with the brother

 and his ex-roommate did not come and retrieve her dinosaur,

 so we did what we had to do...

 

We found a pet store that would take him in.

 

Here he is on the car ride to the store.

 

The people at this pet store were so excited to get him,

 one of the girls actually cried with happiness.

 

He was a beauty,

just not our cup of tea.

 

His body temperture was low,

 but these people seemed dedicated to taking good care of him.

 

We will check back in on him...

 

On the way home,

 we decided we should be rewarded for our good deed.

Ice cream cones!!!

 

After about five tries, we got the light hung.

We really should try to read directions,

but it seems we are always in a rush,

 because we never have time to do things thoughtfully.

 

Oh well, it looks great...

 

Still needs the metal roof.

 

and this messy brickwork under the roof...

 

Still trying to figure out what we're going to do about this...

Now We're Getting Somewhere

 

 

Terry didn't like my last post,

complaining about this project taking so long,

 so we are ON IT.

 

Braces, (brackets), (corbels),

whatever you want to call them,

They went up. 

 

Red Cedar, hard to work with...

 

He is an acrobat,

jumping from ladder to ladder...

 

He has also hidden the electrical in the braces,

and led it into the box where the light will hang.

 

A trip to Menards and we found a perfect light.

After some tough work,

we had a mini fire and listened to the ballgame on the radio.

Nice night.

 

Last weekend we took a trip up to see my brother,

 and we stopped at the outlet store,

 where I found a raincoat.

 

I haven't even worn it yet.

God damn it.

 

He wore it out to the garage...

 

He said it's a good raincoat.