The Emerald Rose

   I believe it was David Copperfield that started with the oft’ quoted, “T’was the best of times, t’was the worst of times.” Well I’m begining to believe it, bigtime. In my 63 years on the Big Blue Marble I don’t ever remember being as concerned and upset about the world around me as I do today. I know I can handle one, two, and even three or four things at a time (Yea multi-tasking!) but the whole bloody world seems to be making those numbers more like 37, 45, or 62 things at a time, and none of them are the one step simple process! Perhaps we’ve actually over complicated our world to such a degree that it’s eating us alive,…from the inside out.

        For example what should have been a “good” thing wound up raising my blood pressure and lowering my tolerance of humanoids in equally and opposite directions big time. After 19 1/2 years of waiting I finally recieved a payment that old on a business I sold in 1988 which for a bunch of reasons the buyer had refused to make payment for that long. They sent me a “Treasurer’s Check” for the nice middle 5 figure (OK, $35,000) amount. My wife and I had been trying to decide for the past month or so, when we found out this was going to actually happen, what to do with the money. Buy a new car, get some other “stuff”, put it in the bank, invest it,…what? Last weekend I finally made the decision, well actually about ten days before that, then I decided to think on it, mull it over, wait for the huge baritone voice to come out of the clouds and agree,….you know,….but nothing happened, either way.

      So, we’re going to get a new countertop for the kitchen, old one was a cheap builder’s choice, the laminate is bubbling, the seam is about two inches from the faucet so over ten years the “pressboard” or “particle board” under the laminate is beginning to rot away and turn black. So our 43rd Wedding Anniversary present to us is new granite countertops! Needless to say Mama is all happy. They are coming to do the “template” on Monday. It’s quite a process I guess because a 1 inch thick piece of granite rock is not that easy to tool, join, whatever else they have to do to it. There really is no  “margin of error” in the process.

       So with Mama all happy that’s half the ballte, what about the rest of the money? Normally I’d just go get a couple of brand new gee whiz electronic toys or sexy software program or something like that, you know “man toys” as my wife calls them. But I’m not, and I don’t even feel like it. I look at the price of gasoline, the price of food, the extremely narrow options being left for choosing a “leader” for our country, the stock market moving worse than any roller coaster I’ve been on, the idiots whose whole cause in life is to kill non-muslims, and anyone else, and the real lack of meaningful jobs, and the 5.5% of my fellow Americans out of work in a country supposedly as great as ours! No, I need a more fiscally responsible back to basics plan. So where am I going? Liquid and as debt free as I can possibley be.

        Payoff all, and I mean all, both her’s and mine credit cards, a couple small loans, whatever we have that we can get rid of a payment on. Put the rest in a nice little “retirement account” or made up of stock that will provide income and dividends monthly, and re-invest everyone of those as well, and make that the “piggy-bank”. Since we are both over 60, and this chunk of money is the collection of a debt, there is no “taxable event” or income tax to be dealt with, nor any tax to be paid if we have to withdraw any of it.

        So it’s all safely stashed at the Brokerage house, that which is being invested I invested yestrday (Market drops almost 400 points biggest drop in years and I’m buying! p.s. the Broker tells me nows the time to buy with so  many prices depressed)  Anyhow I feel a little better now that we’ve put some money in the piggy bank, and next week I’ll take a whole day off and sit down and start paying off everything else. By next Friday I’ll hopefully be clear of “dumb debt”, you know the credit cards, the stupid little “discretionary” things we do, and be down to a mortgage payment, water and sewer bill, electrical bill, cell phone bill, and weekly food bills, oh yeah and car insurance bill.

       We’ve aready spent about $1,000 getting the A/C system overhauled, about the same on my car, new radiator, sneakers(tires), engine workover, etc. and her car is almost running smooth with perhaps about $500 more of work,…oh yeah and the cable TV/high speed internet/telephone bill.

      So do I feel better? Hell no, I’ve only handled my petty little problems, now I have to take on those of the Country! So many problems, so little time!

      Maybe it is getting closer to selling off everything, buying a 45 foot Trimaran, hiring an all girl crew of nympho-maniacs, (one Capt’n dude for my wife,) and just like running away from it all to spend my “golden years”,….or simply going on in this crazy little world, drinking Guinness, enjoying the sunshine, and an occasional nap under a tree,…….sigh!

-30-