Christmas is a hard one.
Part of it for me is that it was always a time that I felt disenfranchised due to not being mainstream in religion or culture. Christmas was always low key, and How it Went was small gifts, dinner with my parents, and quiet time reading books and talking. Now that Dad is gone what went before is no longer there. It is one of the times I deeply miss my uncles, and especially miss my dad. One of the tasks of loss is to find a new set of How It Goes.
I know that for the next years part of How It Goes involves making this time one of comfort and joy for Mom and me as well. The question I keep asking myself is how do I want this to be, What do I want for me? and how do I want to remember this part of Mom's life, how do I want to remember being me?
Mom and I are beginning to instigate some new traditions. Last year we went out looking at the Christmas lights We enjoyed it so much that this year we did it again and so part of the new paradigm of How It Goes is that after dinner on Christmas Eve we ride around and look at the lights.
This year I added a thing that after the lights, I read at least a part of my favorite Christmas book, A Child's Christmas In Wales. We got to the part about the postman and the presents before Mom was too tired to concentrate. We read the rest after the Christmas Brunch the next day.
There needs to be something to look forwards to in the morning, so next year (if there is one) I am going to instigate stockings. After that I went back up to home and went out to the Holidance. It is the best thing I know of for what to do on a day where nothing is open and nothing is supposed to happen. An evening dancing off the meal you ate and overate during, looks like just what I like.
Slowly a new How It Goes is getting put together.
It looks like the rest of my life, under construction but liveable.
Friday, December 26, 2014
Saturday, December 13, 2014
Truffling about among the discs and the lessons learned.
The task of the month is to get Mr Footless's incredible selection of Vinyl down to the good stuff so that if there is salable good stuff it can be sold. This has a two ton emotional load riding on it, and I have been avoiding it for the better part of a year.
Well, closing down my office has been a tipping point for starting this. Now I need the space taken up by the boxes.
I had a really hard time even going down to the basement. When I actually gathered my courage and went down there I counted the boxes and was nearly floored. What I was looking at was thirty two boxes of unsorted vinyl which I had been assured had some very valuable pieces in it. How on earth was I going to find those bits among the boxes I had no idea.
Then I got a call from my Bestie. She had in mind a three way barter, and offered me the services of her housemate in return for cash off his rent. So suddenly I had intelligent muscle with no emotional investment in the vinyl. Last week he came over and we ripped through all the boxes doing first a rough sort and then a more carefully considered sort of the collection. We sent five full boxes out to the world. We mentally labeled them WTF, Please God no you have to be kidding, OK was he drunk, stoned or constipated or any combination of the three? and If that is what made it to the album cover, what does the rest of the photo shoot look like?
By day three, we had a much thinned better categorized selection of vinyl with a big box of what might be albums with some real value in them. Both of us were much more able to assess what we were looking for, and so we went through the dead boxes once more and pulled some ten albums that might be more salable than we thought. Then I took the rest down to the local record dealer to have him do a final sort to see what we missed.
The record dealer was rootling about in them there boxes and he looks at me and says in a slightly accusing voice, "You aren't bringing me your good ones are you?
So I explained that I was bringing him the grossly unsaleable herd first, and his was the very last stop before the donation bin to see what I might have missed, and to sharpen my eye by seeing what he pulled from the dreck. He nods his head. He says, "That makes some sense, It is just that most people bring me the valuable stuff first."
I know how most people sell their stuff. It happens a lot in the Antique business, I know why not to do it. It would go like this; Joe Schmoe would bring in his piece. We would research it, and pay him a fair price for it, which would be much more than he expected. Then Joe would come in with increasingly less fine stuff and expect that we would pay him the same sort of prices. Which we would not, it was less fine stuff, more common, poorer shape, not something the market wanted. Joe Schmoe had his expectations blown way out of shape by that first sale. He got upset because in his eyes, the later stuff had the same value as the first stuff. It never does.
This record guy is in a business. He needs to make a profit, he is not going to waste space on unsalable items. I have a collection of vinyl that has huge numbers of waste of space items and some few actually worthwhile pieces.
Letting him have the last stop check through before I sent these pieces off to donation clears my deck and lets him understand that I may have more and better goodies. He pulls some things out that I might not have considered worthwhile and explains why I should look at those things, He pays me some cash and we are both pleased. He will be paying attention when I roll up with a box or two of slightly better quality, because he now understands that I know what I am doing. I have been checking his methods, his eye, his business sense, and his honesty. So far he has passed all the tests. He is someone I can do business with.
Well, closing down my office has been a tipping point for starting this. Now I need the space taken up by the boxes.
I had a really hard time even going down to the basement. When I actually gathered my courage and went down there I counted the boxes and was nearly floored. What I was looking at was thirty two boxes of unsorted vinyl which I had been assured had some very valuable pieces in it. How on earth was I going to find those bits among the boxes I had no idea.
Then I got a call from my Bestie. She had in mind a three way barter, and offered me the services of her housemate in return for cash off his rent. So suddenly I had intelligent muscle with no emotional investment in the vinyl. Last week he came over and we ripped through all the boxes doing first a rough sort and then a more carefully considered sort of the collection. We sent five full boxes out to the world. We mentally labeled them WTF, Please God no you have to be kidding, OK was he drunk, stoned or constipated or any combination of the three? and If that is what made it to the album cover, what does the rest of the photo shoot look like?
By day three, we had a much thinned better categorized selection of vinyl with a big box of what might be albums with some real value in them. Both of us were much more able to assess what we were looking for, and so we went through the dead boxes once more and pulled some ten albums that might be more salable than we thought. Then I took the rest down to the local record dealer to have him do a final sort to see what we missed.
The record dealer was rootling about in them there boxes and he looks at me and says in a slightly accusing voice, "You aren't bringing me your good ones are you?
So I explained that I was bringing him the grossly unsaleable herd first, and his was the very last stop before the donation bin to see what I might have missed, and to sharpen my eye by seeing what he pulled from the dreck. He nods his head. He says, "That makes some sense, It is just that most people bring me the valuable stuff first."
I know how most people sell their stuff. It happens a lot in the Antique business, I know why not to do it. It would go like this; Joe Schmoe would bring in his piece. We would research it, and pay him a fair price for it, which would be much more than he expected. Then Joe would come in with increasingly less fine stuff and expect that we would pay him the same sort of prices. Which we would not, it was less fine stuff, more common, poorer shape, not something the market wanted. Joe Schmoe had his expectations blown way out of shape by that first sale. He got upset because in his eyes, the later stuff had the same value as the first stuff. It never does.
This record guy is in a business. He needs to make a profit, he is not going to waste space on unsalable items. I have a collection of vinyl that has huge numbers of waste of space items and some few actually worthwhile pieces.
Letting him have the last stop check through before I sent these pieces off to donation clears my deck and lets him understand that I may have more and better goodies. He pulls some things out that I might not have considered worthwhile and explains why I should look at those things, He pays me some cash and we are both pleased. He will be paying attention when I roll up with a box or two of slightly better quality, because he now understands that I know what I am doing. I have been checking his methods, his eye, his business sense, and his honesty. So far he has passed all the tests. He is someone I can do business with.
Sunday, December 7, 2014
The conlusions of the clueless.
Dancers in my age range tend to treat relationships with a lot of discretion. If I am going to date another dancer I will do my best not to alert the group as a whole, or even the parts, to what I am about. Romance conducted by grownups looks more like Jane Austin than not.
Because we dance together, there are people that I have a lot more physical contact with, without having any emotional connection at all. There are dance partners that I will stand with our arms around each others waist talking and neither they or I would think anything about it. However I wouldn't think of walking hand in hand with them. Nor would I allow them to walk me to my car. It would advertise a closeness, and I am acutely aware that I will be dancing with these people for a long time and if things don't work out it can expose both parties to painful scrutiny.
The Sound Man and I have had an increasingly friendly relationship and we both agree that what we do outside of dancing stays just that. We limit the dances we partner in, and don't spend much time talking in breaks. This isn't unusual, as I said, discrete
So there is a guy. He is a very fine dancer, he teaches the lessons and has been very active in this group since its birth. He is also never been in any relationship for longer than a year, and never been married. So if you are looking for someone to flirt with he is great, he knows the rules and will not take you as having an interest other than a few minutes of hanging together. I think of him as The Loon. I like him a lot, and we hang out together during the breaks and sometimes for a bit just after the end of things.
All this background because without, the following exchange makes no sense.
After a dance The Loon and I are standing on stairs in a half hug talking about nothing and just enjoying a bit of body heat before heading out. One of the young and clueless student dancers bounces out the door and comes to a dead stop in front of us.
"Oh," she exclaims, "are you two married?!"
I can feel The Loon absolutely freeze beside me. I looked at Ms. Clueless, and just started to laugh. Then she blunders on, "Well, are you two a couple?" The Loon and I just continue to look at her because I have been robbed of any words and because he is entirely horror struck.
An older dancer calmly tells her, "You know, I have been dancing with this group for fifteen years and I still don't know who the couples are."
I would not have done more than laugh at the conclusions of the young and inexperienced. Except that at a dance a month later, another student who dances, male this time, inquired delicately of me as to what my relationship with The Loon actually was. So after giving him the set down he needed and deserved, I went into the basics of being a widow and not really interested in a relationship and bless the Loon he flirted with me.
Really now, He got all dewy eyed and terribly, terribly embarrassed. Like Ms. Clueless I think he has never seen a romance conducted by grownups.
Meanwhile my on going deepening friendship with The Sound Guy seems to have gone unnoticed and unobserved. Whew.
Because we dance together, there are people that I have a lot more physical contact with, without having any emotional connection at all. There are dance partners that I will stand with our arms around each others waist talking and neither they or I would think anything about it. However I wouldn't think of walking hand in hand with them. Nor would I allow them to walk me to my car. It would advertise a closeness, and I am acutely aware that I will be dancing with these people for a long time and if things don't work out it can expose both parties to painful scrutiny.
The Sound Man and I have had an increasingly friendly relationship and we both agree that what we do outside of dancing stays just that. We limit the dances we partner in, and don't spend much time talking in breaks. This isn't unusual, as I said, discrete
So there is a guy. He is a very fine dancer, he teaches the lessons and has been very active in this group since its birth. He is also never been in any relationship for longer than a year, and never been married. So if you are looking for someone to flirt with he is great, he knows the rules and will not take you as having an interest other than a few minutes of hanging together. I think of him as The Loon. I like him a lot, and we hang out together during the breaks and sometimes for a bit just after the end of things.
All this background because without, the following exchange makes no sense.
After a dance The Loon and I are standing on stairs in a half hug talking about nothing and just enjoying a bit of body heat before heading out. One of the young and clueless student dancers bounces out the door and comes to a dead stop in front of us.
"Oh," she exclaims, "are you two married?!"
I can feel The Loon absolutely freeze beside me. I looked at Ms. Clueless, and just started to laugh. Then she blunders on, "Well, are you two a couple?" The Loon and I just continue to look at her because I have been robbed of any words and because he is entirely horror struck.
An older dancer calmly tells her, "You know, I have been dancing with this group for fifteen years and I still don't know who the couples are."
I would not have done more than laugh at the conclusions of the young and inexperienced. Except that at a dance a month later, another student who dances, male this time, inquired delicately of me as to what my relationship with The Loon actually was. So after giving him the set down he needed and deserved, I went into the basics of being a widow and not really interested in a relationship and bless the Loon he flirted with me.
Really now, He got all dewy eyed and terribly, terribly embarrassed. Like Ms. Clueless I think he has never seen a romance conducted by grownups.
Meanwhile my on going deepening friendship with The Sound Guy seems to have gone unnoticed and unobserved. Whew.
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