It has been a long month. First I was working like mad on my presentation and then for a couple days after that, riding the wave of email praise and a sense that maybe I was of use to the world. I went out to Guitar Center to buy some drum sticks, having decided that my remaining sticks must be about five years old, all falling in numbers, and the ones still usable are splintering like mad. So I plunked down on what must then seem like a ten year supply, given the rate at which I wear them out. I went to Pro Sound and Music to look at some software and talk shop with the owner. Then I went to check on my custom guitar-in-progress, which was actually not even started beyond sanding the pre-milled body. It was meant to be a Telecaster with two humbuckers and some simple hardware options. I took a look and feel and was oohing and ahhhing on it and hearing the notes go “weeeeettooooo teeeetoooooooo neeeeeeee nnooooooooowwwww” and contemplating the classy “Mary Kay” finish—a white wash stain over light wood (ash in this case) and my variety would have a dose of purple thrown in but only enough to keep the white from turning the usual pink tone that the Mary Kay finish creates. And black hardware, resulting in a black and purple-tinged white. Yum. Then I drove home with fanciful dreams of playing my first custom guitar in my newly reinstated studio.
When I got home after music geeking in three music shops, there was an envelope on my screen door with nothing but an address on it, and a single page of paper inside. I opened it with my hands full of stuff and fumbled around to get it straight. All I had to see was that it had the names of the three of us who live here. Then it hit me. Holy FUCK!!! It was real.
I got an eviction notice finally from a property management company that my old man hired to do the dirty work.
Kelli was gone to Florida to see her mom and grandmother for eight days. She had only left two days before, and she had all of a week to stay there. I was floored at this news. There had been talk of such a thing for years, and more rumors in the recent months since the garage and patio have been knocked down. But here it was, and with Kelli being gone, it was hell. I’ve been here for seven years now and have had to do some really dogged things to stay here or to bear it, mostly because I wanted to keep my studio intact, but then later on because it was a good place for Kelli and I to start with, and we were hoping for another three years while she went to school. On one hand, for her, she was in Florida helping her grandmother get into her newly rebuilt place after the hurricanes rippped her house apart last year, just a week or two after the wedding. And as she talked on the phone to me, there was nothing but dismal news here regarding stress and angst surrounding the eviction notice. One house happy, one house sad.
I’ve since struck a tentative deal with my father as to what the future will hold after all this blows past, so I don’t want to sabotage that here, but for the first two and a half weeks, it was utter hell and confusion. We still have to move, but at least we understand the situation better, and it's not as draconian as it seemed earlier on.
So now Kelli and I don’t know really where to live. She has a guaranteed housing situation at her school in Claremont but if we don’t have work there, we don’t have much chance to make that work either. On the other hand, if we stay in San Diego, we need to pay for whatever we get here, plus her commuter housing for three nights a week at school, and the cost of commuting one way or another, and throw on top of that the cost of storage for stuff we clearly can’t use in the sort of abode we can afford. We’re talking a big downsizing here. We fill all but one bedroom in the house. That’s a lot for a couple with one foot on each side of the “30” fence—she 28, me 31. The biggest challenge is in what to do with furniture. Most of it is inherited from my grandparents and some collected on our own because it looks compatible. I have most of a full set of furniture. And it all more or less looks like it belongs together. I could sell it to offload it but I don’t anticipate being able to replace it with something of quality. IKEA doesn’t count. It would suck to see it broken up because it makes a nice working set. Anything else I could readily afford would look like toys compared to this, but none of this would fetch any premium rates.
And then my studio gear is something that even when broken down takes up a quarter of a room and more. In a one bedroom, it's a dead deal. In any place but here, it's a huge question mark as to whether or not I will be able to use it like I have done. I’d need a garage to play drums in and have the luxury of leaving things all set up. Grrrr. I sold a few small things and have put more on the block, but that just bends my mind. In one post, I put up my Warwick bass, Rhodes piano, DAT recorder, second guitar cabinet, eight channel compressor, djembe drum, two snare drums, and some smaller stuff like cymbals, pedals, pickups, etc. I purposely priced it high so no one would respond, or at least once a deal was closed, I’d hopefully be left with a respectable sum. At this point, everything is taken apart for the most part and is stacked in the corner in the big room, in preparation for whatever solution comes up.