What Do You Do on a Rainy Day?

What do you do on a rainy day in southern Delaware?  You have lunch at a fabulous Mexican restaurant in Millsboro, Delaware called La Quezalteca.


La Quezalteca is located at the corner of Rts. 24 and 30 in the beautiful farm country of Sussex County, Delaware.


No fighting congested Rehoboth Beach traffic to get to this restaurant.


No paying inflated Rehoboth Beach prices to dine at this restaurant.


Dine on meals made with freshly made ingredients.  You won't see Sysco trucks in the early morning dawn at this restaurant.  All fresh ingredients are used.


The waiter delivers the hot plates with gloves.  Never a cold plate that has been sitting for five or ten minutes cooling down while the waiter (or waitress) tries to deal with the demanding summertime touristas.


And the best thing is having a relaxing meal with friends and not feeling rush to get out and make room for the next diners.  


Today I met my friends Paul, Jack, Jim and Bob for lunch.  We're all older now and some of us have serious medical issues but we can still get together and enjoy each other's company, catch up on the latest gossip, and exchange in some gentle teasing.  


It will take a lot more than a rainy day to dampen our enthusiasm for enjoying the pleasures of retirement.  Today was such a day. 


A nice lunch with the camaraderie of friends.  That's what it's all about.

Political Compass

I always wondered where I stood politically.  Kim Ayers, one of my favorite bloggers posted a website to test one's political compass.  It's called "Political Compass."  I took the test and found that I am closer to Ghandi than Hitler.  I would hope so.  Wow.  


Anyway, if you want to take the test go here.


The results of my test:

Seattle Weather

A fool treading the wet boardwalk in Rehoboth - ALONE

Thwarted again.


I headed out in the darkness of this morning for my daily walk on the boardwalk in Rehoboth only to meet more rain.


Yesterday morning I went into Rehoboth later in the morning to check out the end of the season sidewalk sales only to encounter high winds and rain.  And I mean HIGH WINDS.  I couldn't even walk on the boardwalk.  


This is getting real old, this Seattle Weather.  I'm starting to feel the effects of not doing my daily walk of four miles.  My legs are aching.  I can feel the pounds just waiting to come back to my waist.


It seems like the past two weeks the whole east coast has been getting a constant drubbing from the rain gods.  Thank goodness we don't have any flooding here but my brother Isaac, who lives in Downingtown, PA is now confronted with a flooded basement.  He lives in the basement.  Bill lives in our basement.  As I said....THANK GOODNESS NO FLOODING HERE.


This is what I imagine the weather is like in Seattle and the Northwest.  All this rain may make for lush greenery but I'm telling you, it's seriously disrupting my daily routine and depressing me.  I could never live year round in weather like this.  I need me a LOT OF LIGHT.  


What was it that terrible, headache producing song from "Annie" said?  "Tomorrow, tomorrow!  The sun will come out tomorrow!" 


I hope so.  

Rusty and Molly

Rusty and Molly - Mom's best friends

Back in 1998, a tortoise colored calico feral cat dropped a littler of three kittens in my dad's cornfield.  


My dad noticed the little puddle of multi-colored kittens when he was getting ready to plow under the dried corn stalks in his cornfield.  


Of the three kittens, two were male and one was a female.  


Snowball was an all white male and the largest of the three kittens.


Rusty was a tiger stripped big boned male.


Molly (aka later as "Miss Martha" when her dominant personality became known) was  classic gray, white and with a bit of orange calico female cat.


When my dad told my Mom what he found in the field, she wanted to rescue them.  Even though they were kittens of a feral cat, they were easily rescued.  My Mom brought them down to their house.  The Mother Cat seemed to appreciate that her kittens would be cared for.  However, she stopped around several times each day to check up on them, never letting any human getting near her.


My Mom would put out a plate of food for her which she would come down everyday and eat. She did this every day until one day she stopped coming around.  We found her along side the road a few days later.  She was dead, apparently hit by a speeding car.


In time the kittens grew up.  Snowball, the bit white male, was the dominant cat.  He protected his smaller brother and sister.


About the time the kittens were one year old, my Mom found Snowball dead by the back porch.  Apparently he got into a fight with the neighbor's dog who got loose.  Snowball lost defending his siblings.  


Molly took over as the Head Cat even though Rusty was much bigger.  Rusty, all his life, as big as he was, was always a Fraidy Cat.


Mom, Molly and Rusty enjoyed a close and harmonious relationship over the next twelve years.


Rusty thought he was "married" to Mom and was very protective of her.  Whenever Mom went out to hang up the clothes, there was Rusty guarding her.  Whenever Mom took her daily walk, there was Rusty on the sidelines, keeping an every watchful eye out for any potential mugger.

Rusty loving Mom

Molly was Mom's hot water bottle.  She always slept with Mom.  Rusty didn't like to stay inside the house.  He still had strong feral cat instincts.  If the weather got too cold, Rusty would relent and spend the in the enclosed front porch but come morning he wanted OUT.  If Mom didn't get him out fast enough, he would attack the door Garfield like.  The door has plenty of Rusty's claw marks to prove this.

"Miss Martha" in all her glory

When Mom's health began failing last October, we decided to move her to live with brother John in the South.  Isaac (my brother who was living with her) and I decided she couldn't survive another Pennsylvania winter, which proved to be very fortuitous given the back to back blizzards we had last year.


Mom couldn't take her cats with her.  They were used to the only home they knew.  Mom left without her cats.  They were the one thing she really missed when she moved south to my brother John's home.


Late this summer Rusty and Molly must have realized that Mom wasn't coming back.  Rusty died in August.  Molly died in September.  Mom died last month.  They're all together now.  And this is as it should be.  


This I believe with all my heart and soul.

Mom and her "hot water bottle" Molly

Gone Baby Gone

Last night I watched "Gone Baby Gone."  This was the actor Ben Afleck's directorial debut.  I didn't like the movie.  It was a muddled mess.  Plus, Ben put his brother Casey Afleck in the starring role.  Big time family nepotism here Ben.  Hey Ben, it didn't work.  The supporting actors from Edd Harris and Morgan Freeman acted circles around the almost unintelligible Casey.  And that brings up the question, what is it with so many movies today that you can't even understand what the actors are saying?  I'm all for realism but when they're mumbling and whispering and speaking in a heavy accent (Boston in Casey's case), you almost need subtitles.


But one good thing I got from this movie.  A title for today's blog posting.


Yesterday I called my mortgage company.  I called to ask them to prepare a payoff statement of my mortgage.  Yes folks that's right, I'm paying off my mortgage.  As of October 15th, I will no longer have a mortgage.  I will be a free man!


One of my earliest goals in life was to own my own home.  I grew up in second floor apartments.  We never had any land.


As I walked to the East Ward School on Washington Avenue in Downingtown, I always envied my school hood friends who had a backyard in which they could play in.  My brothers and I used to play down by the railroad tracks behind our apartment house on 120 Washington Avenue.  One of the constants I remember from my childhood was "Hey you kids!  What are you doing there?  Get out!"  


That about sums up my childhood....."Hey you kids.....get out!"  No summer camps for us, no Boy Scouts, no trips to "the shore."  Nope, just trying to find a little piece of earth where we could play Hide and Seek.


Bill and I brought our first house in Philadelphia in 1969.  We had a mortgage.  Our first goal was to get that mortgage paid off.  It took us seven years but we got it paid off.  That was a wonderful feeling.  In addition to being ahead of the game financially wise, we had our independence.  We didn't owe money to anybody.


When we sold our house in Philadelphia in 1980 and built a new one on 6.875 acres of land in East Brandywine Township, we paid cash.  We didn't have a mortgage.  For the next twenty five years we didn't have a mortgage.  We felt special.


The year 2006 arrives.  I decided that I want to build a new house and retire to Delaware near the shower.  This was my life long goal, to live near the water.


I did what I did the same thing as I did when we sold our house in Philadelphia and built the new one in Pennsylvania.  I got a swing loan to contract the our new house in Delaware.  I had no doubt that I would sell our Pennsylvania house quickly.  I was wrong.


I got caught in the housing market crises and couldn't sell our house in Pennsylvania.  I came thisclose to financial meltdown.  It was the worst time of my life.  Bill threatened to kill himself if he didn't sell our house in Pennsylvania.


I sold the house but at a loss.  I had to take a six figure mortgage, 30 year mortgage that would be paid off until I was 96 years old.  So here I was, back at GO again at this late stage of my life.


This is the burden I've been living with for the past four years, this mortgage hanging over my head.  I didn't realize how much it affected my life until this week when my financial circumstances changed and now I will be able to pay off my mortgage on October 15th.


Now I feel as if a great burden is being lifted from my shoulders.  That dark cloud that has been over my head these past four years is about to disappear.  Suddenly I have an interest in cleaning out my basement room which is still stuffed with unpacked boxes from our move four years ago.


I have a new spring to my step as I walk the boardwalk in Rehoboth.


Little things that were bothering me before suddenly seem small and unimportant now.


And I attribute this new dawn in my life to the fact in two weeks the my ball and chain that was my mortgage will be

 GONE BABY GONE  

HALLELUJAH!

A Tale of Two Movies

"Death at a Funeral" - American version

Last week I watched the movie "Death at a Funeral" with Chris Rock and Martin Lawrence.   I had high expectations for this movie because Chris Rock and Martin Lawrence are two of my favorite comedians.  It was one of the worse movies I've seen this year.


The problem wasn't with the stars.  The problem was with the writing and direction.  As is usually the case with American comedy movies, the writers feel that they have to telegraph the funny lines with a sledge hammer.  They don't know the meaning of subtleness.


Watching this movie, I felt like I was watching a cartoon produced for a five year old.  I was insulted.  I was bored.  I was angry that I wasted my time watching this dreck.


When I wrote the review on Netflix for the movie, I happened to read another review.  That review advised to watch the original English version of this movie.


That's what I did last night.  I watched "Death at a Funeral" that was made in 2007 in England with English actors.  What a difference!  Ironically many of the scenes were verbatim and much of the dialogue was the same.  However, the lines were delivered with a subtle, dry humor that most American actors and American made movies are incapable of producing.  I thoroughly enjoyed watching this English version of "Death at a Funeral" last night.  I had a lot of LOL moments.  Now that is what I call a funny movie.

"Death at a Funeral" - English version

Rainy Day on the Boardwalk

Walking the wet boards this morning

Just got back from a very wet walk on the boardwalk in Rehoboth.  


This weather doesn't bother me.  In fact, I like all kinds of weather.  Perhaps the only exceptions were this summer when the humidity was so high that I was soaked in my own sweat after only walking a few hundred feed.  Also, the extreme cold of winter, but that doesn't come until January and February.  All the other months and weather conditions are just fine with me.


I talked Bill into going with me this morning.  He didn't walk but he does me to take him for a ride.  He sat in my car at the end of the boardwalk and took a nap while I braved the wet wind whipping the boardwalk.  

Bill taking a snooze this morning while waiting for me

I usually take two laps up and down the boardwalk but this morning I was so wet after the first lap I decided to pull it in.  


I took Bill for a ride up to North Shores, at Cape Henlopen State Park.  Delaware is the only state in the union that doesn't have a national park but we have some wonderful state park, Cape Henlopen being one of them.


After viewing the wind and the waves at North Shores we headed home on Rt. 1.  Half way up One, my cell phone rang.  It was my brother John who is the executor of our Mom's estate  He had good news.  In fact he had WONDERFUL NEWS!  He is sending me a check in the mail today as an advanced distribution of my share of Mom's estate.  I will be able to pay off my mortgage!  


This is a very strange feeling.  It's a good feeling but a strange feeling.  I had a 30 year mortgage, that would be paid off when I'm 98 years old (I should live that long.)  My mortgage predicament was the result of me being caught in the housing crises in 2006.  I thought I would have to live with that result the rest of my life.  I feel like I've now been set free.


Free at last, free at last.  Thank God almighty I'm free at last.


Thank you Mom.  You're still doing for us.