Maura's Illuminated Manuscript

Good Sister, or rather her lawyer, finally has the court order that allows GS to sell Mom's house. I checked this here journal and it's been on the market for eight months. Might this be the year that Good Sister is Done With All This? I hope so. She has so very got it coming.

I wonder if homes in the inland parts of Florida, including the one I grew up in, are as uninsurable as on the coasts are these days. That may put a damper on my plans to swan around like an heiress.

I also wonder if the house's new owner will want to pry up all those bricks that my father laid in the sidewalk with so much swearing and bleeding forty fifty years ago. If they do, I hope it hurts them.

Speaking of swanning around, it's warm and sunny, a whopping 63°F (17C), so it's time to take The Coat to the cleaners.

After playing phone tag with nice young men at the University of Washington, I can now access their libraries. Limitless cosmic power! At the end of a 20-minute bus or bike ride.

I wish things were going as well for Good Sister as they did for me today. I didn't realize until she told me today that she isn't yet legally authorized to sell Mom's house. She accused her lawyer of dragging her feet, the latest of a series of bureaucratic hassles going back six years now.

When Mom's house is sold, and she files last tax return and report to the court, I expect Good Sister to evaporate like the ghost soldiers in the Lord Of the Rings movies. What makes me sad is that her whole life since birth* has been one long string of frustrations.

The house that she & D just bought is quite a bit bigger than she needs or wants — it's more than double the square footage of the Devil Girl House including the Wendling's apartment — and it's in need of some work. The upside, though, is that she had the room this year to put up the biggest Christmas tree she's ever had. I'm happy that it makes her happy.

No news from Evil Sister, which I will assume is good news.



*No, really: she was born with her umbilical cord wrapped around her neck. How's that for an omen?

I had another talk with Good Sister about the sale of Mom's house. Niece E has moved out — I hope GS have her a big break on the rent — and the house is now listed.

But can we legally sell it yet? Uh, not quite. There's one more thing that the court has to do for us, and our lawyer was in a car accident recently. Good Sister was born with her umbilical cord wrapped around her neck, and that has set the tone for much of her life to date.

Nevertheless, we've had an offer. It's nearly 7% below ask, which is a thing that doesn't happen where I live. GS read the offer in detail, and she says it's because they're at the limit of what they can borrow. We sympathize, but GS doesn't want to accept such an offer even if she could right now.

The irony there is that this sale is the last of a years-long series of irritations for Good Sister. If she wanted to rush through, I wouldn't blame her. She asked me, "Are you hard up?"
"No," I said. And it's true. But it speaks well of her that she asked. Good Sister: a pain in the butt to live with, but the salt of the earth.

Oh: Evil Sister provided us with some real estate market intelligence. House flippers are uncommon in Gainesville, FL, except in areas closer to the U of F where there are a lot of students. My old neighborhood isn't such an area.

It occurs to me that someday somebody is going to tear up the brick sidewalks that my father laid with his own thands, hurting himself and swearing all the way. And somebody's going to undo my mother's attempts at improvement that were done with questionable taste and competence late in her life. Maybe someday another child will live in the bedroom just north of the master bedroom; I hope it makes them freaky and geeky.

I called Good Sister last week. As she said she would, she's bought a house in Roanoke, VA and she'll move in at the end of this month. On the one hand, I won't be able to see DC when I visit her. On the other hand, hey, it's what she wanted.

You may have noticed that I've posted no news about probate. That's because there hasn't been any. We're just over halfway through the 90-day waiting period before GS can unload Mom's house and its contents, and no creditors have materialized to claim anything.

Good Sister has just reduced her cost of living and she's mere weeks away from getting out from under obligations related to Mom. No wonder she sounds happy. She had it coming.

Oh: Evil Sister is moving to a bigger spread out in the country, but still in the greater Nashville area. GS says she wants to do some gardening. Okey doke.

But first: my son's union local has voted to reject management's latest contract offer and authorize a strike. I just checked their web site, and there's no word on when they walk off the job. It does say, though, that negotiations resume on the 30th.

And now for what I really wanted to write about: Good Sister texted the other two of us at 0615*. That's fine; I was (just barely) awake already as usual, and I'd told her that it's OK to text me at that hour. And what did she have to say?

23 And Me told her that she's more susceptible to bunions than most, and should take care to wear comfy shoes that aren't too tight. (Our mother had bunions and wore overly tight shoes after the dementia hit.) I had to tell her that I've already been to bunion hell and back, and might still be there** if it hadn't been for the pandemic.

It was just such a classic interaction between GS and me that I had to write about it.



*Good Sister lives in the Eastern time zone, so it was a much more reasonable 0915 for her.
**My narrow heels are gone through attrition, but I still have some tall, chunky heels and lots of pointy booootz with heels of various heights. At least these days I wear heels about once a week instead of three or four times, which seems to be sustainable.

I just finished cleaning my house before finding out that I'd have visitors. Go me!

My Burner Buddy K from the Bay Area and her local pal J went out with me to the 'Rose and later the Mercury on Saturday night. A lovely evening was had. J&K are more optimistic about my dating prospects than I am, but they're both younger than I am. Pity the three of us have so much in common.

Shallow fashion details: I wore my big blue Rebirthday outfit from Gallery Serpentine. Yes, I wore a hoop skirt on the bus.

Oh: I ran into Vienna La Rouge, looking ever so dapper an a black suit to my guests' delight. I have a(nother) gripe about getting old: my high-frequency hearing loss is bad enough that Vienna is really hard for me to hear. She and I are the same height, but only I have to struggle not to sound like a dude.

I'm looking forward to seeking K in Fremont at some point this week. No, that's not dirty, even though K is cute and I like her.

I didn't go to Flammable, the house music night, as planned last night because my body said, "Nope." I got the best night's sleep I've had in a while. Je ne regrette rien.

There's no calling Mom this year, but there was texting with Good Sister. Happiness. I was surprised to learn that she was looking into making an offer on a house in Roanoke near where we stayed. I hope she doesn't move out of the DC area, because I have grand plans of someday visiting her there and being a tourist in DC for the first time in decades.

Tonight: my son is coming for dinner. I shall circumflatulate this afternoon.

I just got a call from Good Sister. Even though she, like me, was told in writing that she needed a version of Mom's death certificate with the cause of death and even though the certificate still hasn't reached her two weeks after she requested it, she, like Evil Sister, has gotten (some of?) her money.

What did they both do to deserve their money that I didn't, you ask? Apparently, they both asked for a live check. I asked for an electronic transfer, like someone born after World War II.

This isn't avarice or malice. This is pure Muppetry.

Good Sister graciously offered to request the necessary death certificate through an alternative channel (There's an alternative channel?!) on my behalf, because where the state of Florida is involved we don't trust bureaucrats not to screw a trans person if they sniff one out.

Updated to add: I asked GS if I should just call the investment company and ask for a paper check, and she said no. My sisters only got their money because of "a crack in their system", and alerting the company to that crack won't convince them to let me through it. If anyone knows this stuff by now, it's Good Sister. Le sigh.

My apologies for taking so long to get around to this entry. I had plenty of time, but typing on a phone just didn't appeal to me this trip the way it did on, say, my earlier trips to the Folsom Street Fair.

So let me begin at the beginning. If you'll recall, my mother passed away on September 3rd. My father passed in 1995. Dad had the idea long ago that we'd scatter their ashes together somewhere along the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia, which is where he proposed to her. Mom had almost thirty years to put the kibosh on that plan, and she didn't. So we executed.

Airlines being what they are, I flew into Roanoke, VA this past Wednesday. The AirBnB that Good Sister found* was a house built in 1890 in a neighborhood, the Old Southwest, full of houses of similar age. I was filled with porch envy. I mean, the ratio of porch area to interior area was probably the highest I've ever seen. Porches with big plants. Porches with swings.

So yeah, I arrived on Wednesday, but Good Sister wasn't going to arrive until Saturday. What to do? Get lots of sweet, sweet information from dreamsrundeep and then meet up with her and her wife for dinner! You read that right: it was an old-fashioned online-to-meatspace meetup. Shallow fashion details: my sleeveless rose print dress from Pinup Girl Clothing with Fluevog Gladstone boots. I told Burner stories – I can't help myself – either during or after some excellent fried chicken and collard greens at The Hatch in downtown Roanoke.

One of the coffee joints that dreamsrundeep told me about, Sweet Donkey, is in a old detached brick house with a killer sunlit patio out front surrounded by an immaculate lawn and a low iron fence. In spite of that fairly representative architecture, my information is that it's a queer-friendly establishment. Sure enough, one of the women behind the counter was wearing a black leather vest. Well, okay then.

Indeed, bricks are everywhere there. Roanoke has several brick city sidewalks. I wonder if that's where Dad got the idea for the brick sidewalks that he made leading to the exterior doors of the house I grew up in.

Friday: much sleeping through rain, then an unsuccessful attempt to find ancestors in a small, old cemetery. I found about four Confederate veterans, at least that many Masons, a puzzling amount of unoccupied grave space, and an overwhelming but unsurprising majority with British names. The newest grave was from 1984, and the oldest likely pre-Civil War.

I think I found Roanoke's answer to the Kraken: Jack Brown's Burger Joint. They appear not to do veggies on their burgers, but they do have a solid beer selection, queer and antifa stickers mixed in with those from breweries, and bras hanging from the ceiling.

Another note about Roanoke: it's demographically no bigger than Gainesville, FL, but it looks bigger because it's necessarily denser. Why necessarily? The close-in mountains** enforce that. Gainesville has no natural barriers to sprawl.

Weed is legal in Virginia. There appears to be at least one trans barrista in Roanoke. I found this out on Saturday morning on a quest for caffeine and lunch at a place called RND. They have donuts on Sunday, and avocado toast every day. I find all of that deeply reassuring.

But then I went and got my sister at the airport. We talked amongst ourselves. (I brought a Willamette Valley Pinot Noir.) I'd forgotten how much she's inherited our father's predilection for pontificating. She wants me to crack the whip over my son to get him to launch, which arguably isn't a bad idea. However, she has no say in what I do with what are now my Navajo blankets.

Sunday was the actual ash trip. Not-so-shallow fashion details: I wore the same dress, accessories, and makeup that I did to the opera with Mom. I did add leggings and Fluevog Gladstones because it was the Blue Ridge in October, not Florida in April.

I'm embarrased to admit that I didn't realize that the parkway goes so close to Roanoke until I got there. I thought we were going to be driving a lot longer, and through much scarier places. I brought an automotive phone charger that I ended up not needing.

I tried to get on the Blue Ridge Parkway without using spoken directions, but I overshot it. Good Sister found a specific place along the road and had Google aim me there, driving through tiny towns and rural-ish areas. I only saw one Confederate flag, which might be less than you'd see in Florida. I was reminded of all the times I'd driven through the Klamath Basin in Oregon; the vibe & architecture are similar, but that part of Oregon is much flatter.

We did eventually find the spot, Buck Mountain. "No bikes", said the sign at the trailhead. As the big, strong sister, I got to carry the ash. In heels, because I am the Femme of Steel.

A note about cremated human remains: they're dense and gritty. Mom and Dad together were about the same weight and volume as a five-pound (2.26 kg) sack of flour. We were careful not to recreate a scene from The Big Lebowski but we did get some "cremains" on our shoes.

But it was an absolutely gorgeous, mostly sunny day in an eastern mountain forest whose leaves were about half red. It was easy to imagine my father in particular loving this place.

Good Sister and I hit Table 50 for dinner. I've inherited my mother's love of bread pudding. Two thumbs up.

In summation, I found the queers, weed, and hipster eats and coffee. The Klan did not git me as I feared it might. And I had a beautiful walk in the eastern woods on a sunny day. My sister and I didn't even come close to physically harming each other.

My parents are laid to rest, and their children at peace.

Oh: the investment firm that has Mom's retirement money is refusing to give any to Good Sister or me until they have a copy of the death certificate that lists the cause of death. Poor GS got the other kind after a long series of screwups at the funeral home. The punch line here is that Evil Sister has already received a paper check for her share, and she's the one who didn't – OK, couldn't – contribute to rescuing Mom's house from the reverse mortgage. No good deed...

Another oh: Good Sister told me she doesn't want me using her as blog fodder, but I told her honestly that an awful lot of what we talked about is stuff that would be uninteresting or unintelligible to anyone but the United Sister Front. Either that, or I've already blogged it.

Third and final oh: The rental car had Bluetooth. I exposed Good Sister to Mark Farina and Depeche Mode's Violator LP. Hey, she who drives calls the tune.



*Yeah, I know, but I didn't want to pick a fight with GS over what's essentially my mom's funeral.
**dreamsrundeep took me up one of those mountains to take in the amazing view and see the giant illuminated star that is the city's symbol. It claims to be the largest such star in the world, and I wouldn't dare dispute that.

Good Sister just called, right before her bedtime. It's always exciting.

Good: My mother's investments with a certain financial institution don't have to go through probate, unlike her other assets. They just get disbursed to us heirs. Uh, gosh, I sure could use a cash infusion right about now.

Bad: Unlike Evil Sister, I've received no notification. There are two likely reasons: I don't have an account with this institution, and they might have used my previous address. GS recommends that I bug them over the phone, and warns me that'll be time-consuming.

Unknown: Do they have the correct name for me? I don't know, but it's possible. If Mom (or Good Sister) used even my old address, I was using my current name a couple of years before I even moved into the old Devil Girl Pad.

Also unknown: how much money we're talking about. Known: Good Sister just sent me a photo of the letter that Evil Sister got. The amount is in the high four figures, if I understand it correctly, i.e. it's to be divided by three. Nothing to sneeze at, certainly.

I'll be flying into Roanoke, VA on Oct. 18th, and out on Oct. 25th. The 18th is a Wednesday, and Good Sister said she'd join me "on the weekend". That leaves me about a day, namely the 19th, for shenanigans.

GS is looking for lodging. She said she wants to rent a car instead of driving her own. I don't get it, but there's a lot that I don't get about my sisters.

Facts, not exactly fun: I have ancestors who lived in Roanoke. They were a family of merchants named Balthas, originaly from Germany if I remember correctly. They kept at least one enslaved person. One of the Balthases, a girl named Ophelia, married a descendant of the Scotch-Irish* who'd come to this country in the late 18th century, of whom there are many in the area. I'm pretty sure she married down.

Anyway, Ophelia's granddaughter married the coal-mining son** of immigrants from Wales who'd settled in Ohio. That couple was my maternal grandparents, and they lived in a couple of towns about a hundred miles west of Roanoke.



*Known as "Ulster Scots" in Ireland.
**He's the one who gave me my square, bone-crushing jowls of doom. Le sigh.