So I did a thing my mom would hate me for and asked my father’s family for help. My sister’s husband is like a rural real estate mogul.

We also rehomed her cat today with a young trans woman and her mom. The cat did not love me., but was lovey with Maria and my friend Rebekah who had the young person.

That sounds like a good home for the cat, Sophia. And good for you asking for help.

Ugh on the norovirus, Tep, but yay Midnight Burger toaster!

That sounds amazing, Tom! How was the train?

Happy Vortex Day!

Tom, I hope you didn't blister your feet. 20k steps a day in Pittsburgh is no little thing, even in the flatter parts.

Erika, I've been e-mailing back and forth with a friend I met just after I turned 8. It has brought up a lot of memories, for certain. I definitely hear you on the ambivalence thing.

Sophia, while I think it's smart to take your time and not be rushed making big, life changing decisions, I would also caution about leaving the house unoccupied for too long.

JZ and her brothers took a long time to bring it to market and the place wound up catching fire and burning from an electrical short. Also thieves marked it as unoccupied and broke into it.

An unoccupied house is vulnerable in ways it's hard to anticipate.

Anyway, I think it's smart to get your BiL involved. He'll have a good sense of the house's value and you can weigh moving into it vs. selling it and perhaps getting something smaller and retiring early.

Excellent points on the house, David.

We got to Otter Lake Saturday after a detour to northern NJ to visit with SIL. Friday's travel was a super pain with all sorts of delays including getting 3/4 of the way across the pine barrens when the road was suddenly closed. We had no way of knowing why because there was zero signal so we just had to u-turn and go back around another way.

Happy to report an absolute Adirondack miracle. The main reasons for my quick visit a few weeks before I relocate for the summer are turning on the water, checking for winter damage, and massive cleaning. Every year since forever when I return after winter there is a film of grime over everything. I prep as much as possible with covers and such, but it is still gross. Also, most years evidence of mouse intrusion, including corpses at times. This year no grime at all. The place is in exactly the same state of mess as I left it since I don't bother to clean before I leave because I'd just be wasting effort. Zero mouse droppings! The work we have done in recent years with new windows and insulation has yielded amazing and unexpected value. Honestly, I am stunned. I expected the quiet and temperature benefits, but I didn't realize how it would protect against the sticky dust accumulation. I am so delighted!

In other Otter Lake news, I purchased a VseeBox so I would have television here and it is awesome! Take that Spectrum!

I honestly can’t really do anything right now until I get control of the estate in wish weeks hopefully I will have a better idea how I want to proceed at that point. My gut was instantly that I wanted to move in because having no rent was appealing and I frankly love it. But I am quite cautious that it might be a money pit.

But I am quite cautious that it might be a money pit.

I'm sure it's cheaper where you live but property taxes in SF are quite high. So you'll need to get a sense of how much that's going to be.

Our annual property taxes are almost as much as our total annual mortgage payments.

Also, if there's been a lot of deferred maintenance (as I suspect there has been) on an older property you would have to spend money to maintain the place.

But you can get an inspector to review all of that for you.

The bigger issues are: plumbing (Full Copper Repipe!), Electrical (you probably won't need to rewire the house but the outside electrical box might need replacing. Ours did.), Dry Rot (we had an issue where the water draining off the roof hadn't gone on its proper path and got behind the wood surrounding the garage door and that had to be ripped open and replaced), roof leaks, and mold issues. Also termites.

Highly recommend getting Roto-Rooter out and cleaning out all the interior plumbing of blockage, and then separately cleaning out the drains that go from the house to city sewer lines. That's something people should get in the habit of doing every 10 years or so.

Roto-Rooter isn't expensive and a good house inspection would be necessary anyway before you put it on the market (if you go that route). But in your case a house inspection would really give you important information on expenses going forward and help you make a cost/benefit analysis.

Happy belated to Vortex, even though I haven't seen her for a while. Thanks, Karl. I have seen a few things on TV about Pittsburgh that make it look...hipper than I might have expected, but given my preference for gritty urban drama I'd probably still like it, either way. Sometimes I think it sucks that I can't see more things for myself.

We should have had this place inspected...lots of issues with the electrical. My dad and That's How They Get You as the gift that keeps on giving. And I don't know what I expected from my friend...it's been a long time since we could be nine and giggle and stuff. It's hard how many of my relationships with other disabled people(Not really Buffistas, but most everyone else,) are so undercut with unspoken rivalry and competition and thoughts about measuring up because it seems like the greater society can only accept one of us at a time. I think we do it without even thinking.

One of the complicating factors over my grief about Mom is that, what with the house burning down and what with her dying before Dad, even the slight share of inheritance that would have come with selling the house after both parents passed is sort of never going to happen, AND we'll be out money from dealing with all of this.

So, you know. Grief, plus a side of just despair and frustration. And a currently homeless sibling (brother) living in my shed, as insurance stopped paying for the apartment he and Mom were in. And I just cleaned out the storage unit with all my sister's crap in it (did I mention her complete mental breakdown, blowing up of her life, and current status of group home resident? and that I haven't spoken to her since just after the fire?) that I'd been paying for since taking it over from my ex-brother-in-law in December. We'd been planning on moving it into the new shed we got (that currently has my brother in it), but when they went down to look at it, they found rats had got into everything, so instead, we had to rent a dump truck and throw out almost every single one of my sister's belongings (three dump runs costing several hundred dollars), which is how I spent my weekend.

Oh, and did I mention the drunk driver who at 2 AM a couple of weeks ago took out multiple parked vehicles on my street? Three of which were ours? (Two of those were totalled--Mom's old Miata and Paul's motorcycle--and the third needs $11k of repairs, which means our EV is out of commission while gas prices are through the roof, and also, the driver was underinsured, so that's fun.)

I feel like I should ask Job for therapist recommendations, except it's been an expensive last year and a half.