on Sunday 7 September i called to deactivate my Mother's cellphone.
back in April, a few days before my Mother packed up to leave New Jersey, we went to the Target and we got my Mother one of those Consumer Cellular phones for old people.
we figured if she was going to be out living in the world, it was time she got a cellphone.
she got a plan for $25 per month for basic phone service, no internet.
it could text, but that only served to confuse her.
i spent a while trying to teach my Mother how to make calls, but she never quite mastered it.
then, after a few months of the phone just sitting there on the counter in the kitchen, my Mother started to say she wanted to get rid of it.
“i never use it... sometimes i forget to charge it...”
the PSE pushed back on that, if you're gonna be out driving your car, you really should have a cellphone, but, after another few months, my Mother kept saying that she didn't need or want the thing.
so, okay, Ma, let's cancel.
my Mother is a millionaire, but, no sense in paying $25 per month for a thing that my Mother doesn't use or understand, so, i called Consumer Cellular's famous America-based Customer Service and told them we would no longer be needing their services.
so now, let's just hope my Mother doesn't get lost in the wild.

on Monday 8 September i got a call from my Mother's G.P.
well, not from the G.P. himself, those people don't make their own phone calls, but from one of his stooges.
she had test results from a blood panel that my Mother took a week or two before.
i went down to the basement apartment to get my Mother on the call and she gave us the not-good news.
my Mother's thyroid hormones were a bit off, but it wasn't anything that required any urgent attention. we could discuss what to do with that at the next follow up.
but my Mother's blood sugar was high and she would have to bump up her insulin from 6 units up to 8.
my Mother eats dinner with her every night and i guess the diet that we feed her has taken an effect.
there are a lot of breads and carbs and sweets.
don't get me wrong, my Mother has always been a shit diabetic - she eats a bowl of ice cream in the afternoon every single day.
her diet was garbage before she came to live with us, both on her own and with my Father.
my Parents seem to have absolutely no understanding about basic nutrition concepts – a regular meal she would eat with my Father was fried frozen blintzes. that's it. nothing else.
another meal was instant mashed potatoes and scrambled eggs.
everything was beige, and no mastication necessary.
but, since she's been living with the PSE and Dax and me my Mother has been eating supper with us every night, and that has been a big change.
the PSE doesn't change the menu to accommodate for my Mother's medical needs of bland palate, my Mother just gets what the PSE makes, like prison.
and to my Mother's credit she eats what she is fed every night, even though we all know she doesn't like a lot of it.
my Mother commented that the new diet even effects her bowl movements, they are different in consistency and texture.
but i guess our diet is more rich in things a diabetic shouldn't eat, a lot of breads and carbs and sweets for desert, and that has sent her A1C skyrocketing.
so the G.P. told her to boost her insulin and let's see if that will keep her from dying for a while.

on Tuesday 9 September my Mother had an appointment with the Ophthalmologist.
which mean that i had an appointment with the Ophthalmologist because my Mother can't get anywhere on her own besides the YMCA and the Wal-Mart – and those took, like two months of practicing to work out.
the appointment was at 8:30am because Fuck You!, so i had to wake up at 7:33am, do my morning things and leave the house around 8:15am.
we made our way to the Ophthalmologist ten minutes away and we signed in at the lobby and they took us back a few minutes later.
my Mother wanted me to go with her for the exam, so i followed her from room to room to room as they stuck her face in various testing machines.
they tested her vision, measured her eye pressure, examined her retina, examined her lens.
sure enough, there was a cataract on her left eye, which was why we were there.
my Mother had cataract surgery on her right eye back in New Jersey maybe a year and a half ago, and that went well, and she was scheduled to do her left eye in another few weeks, but then my Father got sick and my Mother had to cancel her appointment.
both because she was busy with my Dad's shit and also because cataract surgery requires a regular regiment of eye drops, both before and after the procedure, and with my Mother's shaky hands, she can't hit the bullseye reliably and she'll just be spraying drops all over her face.
but now that my Mother is in Colorado, with the PSE and i to help her, she wanted to follow up and get her left eye peeled.
after all the tests were done the Ophthalmologist came in to confirm “yeah, we should do this thing!” and then he sent us to his Billing Lady who tried to up-sell us on all kinds of shit.
Medicare will pay for cataract surgery, and my Mother has a Medicare Supplement that will cover the rest, but they have other procedures, with lasers, that aren't covered, and would we like to do that instead?
we told the lady fuck no! and then she tried to sell us special eye drops that also aren't covered, and that was another big fuck no!
the lady got noticeably shitty after that, and the rest of the filling out paperwork was vaguely tense and hostile.
my Mother's surgery was scheduled for 1 October.

on Wednesday 10 September my Mother had an appointment to go get a passport
she is nearly-eighty-four and she has barely traveled.
she went to Paris once, with my Dad before i was born, and a few places in the Carribian before she was married, and later, with my Dad, they went to Italy twice, but besides that, her three passport books that she's collected over her eight decades have been woefully sparse.
we'd like to try to fill them out before she ultimately croaks.
so, my Mother and i went down to the Post Office downtown and we handed in an application with my Mother's information, and a copy of her birth certificate that my Father ordered from the Brooklyn Department of Vital Statistics years ago for unknown reasons, and my Mother sat for a photo, and we paid them $180 dollars.
we were in and out of there in twenty minutes, which was surprisingly efficient.
my Mother's passport will arrive in another eight or ten weeks, and then we can set to globetrotting.
how do you think that is going to go?

on Thursday 11 September my Mother came up to eat dinner with us, like she does.
we had garlic knots, which my Mother barely knows what to do with.
after dinner, out of the corner of my eye, i watched my Mother pull a dirty, crumpled up piece of paper towel out of her pocket, wipe her nose and then move to put it back in her pocket.
“throw it out!” i told her, perhaps a bit more harshly then i intended.
i intended it to be slightly jokey but also part 'what the fuck as wrong with you!?!', but i think it came across as pure 'what the fuck is wrong with you!?!'
fucking old people and their tissues.
my Mother's handbag is, like, 45% used tissues, and if that's the way she likes it i'm not going to rain on her gross, snotty parade, but at the table, i had to say something.

on Friday 12 September it was my Mother's birthday.
she turned 84.

my Mother spent her day much like any other; she went for a walk in the morning, she watched a lot of TV.
my Mother told us that over the past few weeks she's developed a little relationship with a 60 year old Black woman who also walks around the parking lot at the Community Center down the street and my Mother mentioned that today was her birthday, so the lady gave her a hug and made a little fuss.
that's nice.

at dinner, my Mother came up to eat with us, like she always does.
we had Chinese, which is my Mother's favorite.
i would have preferred PF Changs, but that's all the way up in the northern sprawl of town, so the PSE just got from some place we've never been to before; orange chicken and honey chicken and fried rice and wonton soup.
the orange chicken was dry, and the honey chicken had a weird glaze on it, like you might find on a Krispy Kream donut.
i didn't care for any of it, but my Mother seemed to like it, and that's what counts.

after dinner we had a Carvel ice cream cake and we sang the Happy Birthday song at my Mother and she made a birthday wish.
then i presented her with a nice card.
on the front it was a picture of my Mother wearing a party hat, and after looking at it she just set it aside, thinking that was what it was.
i had to tell her that it was a card, so she opened it up to read what it said:
“My Dear Mother,
well, it's been a shit year all things considered, but the PSE and Dax and i are very happy to have you here with us. the Monster seems ambivalent.
we are glad that you get to make a life with us on Colorado, to share meals wth us, to play with Dax, and spend quality time with your family.
we love you very much and we wish you a Very Happy Birthday.
TITS (son)”
and then the PSE signed her name, and Dax wrote her name, which is something that she can do now, somewhat.

before she went back downstairs, i asked my Mother if she had any wisdom to share after 84 years.
“no,” she shrugged, laughing, and toddled off on her way.

//[get excited!]

last Wednesday, 10 September, was my five-year Housiversary.
i closed on The House That I Own on 10 September 2020, and i've been living here ever since.
it is the longest that i've ever lived anywhere since i left my Parents' house.
i used to be a roaming soul, i would live some place for six months, a year, maybe two, and then want to move on, but, after five years, i am still very happy to be living in my house.
and i guess a big part of the calculus is that i own my house.
the PSE and i get to invest so much time and effort and money and love into this house, pride of ownership, and that is worth a lot.
when i first bought The House That I Own i figured i would live in it for a few years until i got sick of working for a living, then sell it, hopefully for a profit.
but, i didn't consider how attached you get to a House that is yours, how it becomes a part if your family that you don't want to leave behind.
there may well come a time when the PSE and Dax and i want to go traveling, go live in several other parts of the world, but the plan will be to keep the house, and whenever we come back to the States, to live in The House that I Own.
because that is our home.

here are some statistics:
i bought The House That I Own in September 2020 for $380,000.
they were asking $389,900 and i Jewed them out of $9,900
i paid $24,000 in cash up front, and i took out a loan of $361,000 to cover the rest, plus closing costs.
my loan rate was 2.625%, which was historically low, nobody has a better rate, but despite that, i am still getting raped up the asshole with interest.
over the life of the loan, paying minimum principal every month, after thirty years, the Mortgage Company will have extracted $160,984.72 from me. that makes me ill.
i have spent the past five years regularly making mortgage payments well in excess of what was actually due.
my monthly mortgage due has varied between $1,942.56 and $1,706.64 over the past five years, [but normally closer to the $1,700 number then $1,900,] an i have always paid at least $2,000 every month.
i have always paid at least $150 in additional mortgage principal every month, most months closer to an additional $250 per month.
but yet, despite that regular over-payment, after five years of mortgage payments my loan is only down to $310,556.96.
after five years of regular over-payments, i have given my Mortgage Company $112,630.13, but i only have a $50,443.04 reduction in my principal owed to show for it.
the rest went to property tax and homeowners insurance, and the lion's share went to the fucking Mortgage Company in interest.
2.625% doesn't sound like much, but somehow to these criminals, it works out to more then half.

when i bought The House That I Own, it was in need of some care.
it wasn't a shambles, but there were things that it needed, mostly aesthetic.
what's the point of living in a House if you're not going to add your own personal touch to it.
and the PSE and i have been adding our personal touches pretty much non-stop since we moved in.

this past year, we spent $56,187.15 on five major home renovation projects.
well, technically, we spent $77,910.97, but, we got back $21,723.82 from homeowners insurance, thank fucking goodness.
still, $56,187.15 is a lot of out-of-pocket expenses for just one year of home improvements.

in September, the PSE started renovating my Home Office.
she redesigned my closet, she smoothed and painted the walls, she built a floor-to-ceiling bookcase.
i only wrote down ~$2,000 in supplies for that, though, it was likely more, and that number did not factor in the PSE's labor.

in April, my Mother moved in to the Basement Apartment, which necessitated some repairs.
we enlarged the windows in the basement bedroom and kitchen in the hopes that it would bring in more sunlight, and we cut back a wall in the kitchen to try to disperse what light there is around better.
the windows were $14,300 and the wall removal was another $4,300.
the project worked, but only just barely.
there is more light in the bedroom and the kitchen then there once was, but the result was not anywhere close to being worth the expense.

soon after my Mother moved in, in June, my entire sewer line from the basement, through the front yard and out into the street needed to be replaced.
it was the old cast iron plumbing that was installed when the house was built back in 1952 and it had rotted through after 73 years.
so, the plumbers had to come and rip up our basement, and rip up our front lawn, but before they did that, they had to bring in some specialists to rip up the tile because it was made of asbestos [everybody assumed,] and that's a whole big thing.
to rip up the asbestos tile was $7,480.
then, to dig up the old pipes through the basement and the lawn and then replace them with PVC Pipe cost $39,295.90, but then we got reimbursed $21,723.82 from the Insurance Company, which brought the total to replace the sewer pipes down to $17,572.08

after the Sewer People dug up the basement, we had to redo the flooring, because they just left it with a concrete floor.
that tied into a larger remodel of the basement kitchen that we planned to do anyway, on account of how ugly the basement kitchen was originally.
we bought new cabinets, new counter tops [including installation,] a new stove, a new refrigerator, a new sink and faucet, tile for a backslash, luxury vinyl flooring and installation, all for $9,785.07.
[more about that in some post next week. maybe the week after.]

the PSE also spent a lot of time and money on landscaping in the front and back yards.
i don't have good figured on how much she spent over the past year, but she guesses $750 roughly.

so, all of the above works out to $56,187.15 in out-of-pocket home improvement costs for the past year, September 2024 to September 2025.

since we moved into the House in September 2020, all the way up to this post [including the $56,187.15] we have invested a total $159,520.92 into The House That I Own.
i'm not going to go back and detail all of those expenses because that'll be a whole big thing.
that is fucking nuts!

but, then, we made some money on The House That I Own, too.
my Mother moved into the basement apartment back in April, and she insisted on paying rent.
i didn't ask her to pay rent, and i'm a little reluctant to accept it because what kind of a son charges their Mother rent!?!, but she insisted, and i think it makes her feel like she's not a burden, like she is pulling her weight with the family.
so, sure, Ma! i'll take your money if you want.
my Mother paid $1,220 in rent for May, June, July and August 2025.
then starting in September, she paid $1,338.73, which is really just the amount of rents we were able to extract from renting the Rental House out to somebody.
but, in theory, that is my Mother's money that she is using to now pay her room and board, so i guess we'll count it as House rents earned.
that's $6,218.73 in rents that The House That I Own generated in the past year.

and back in 2021 and 2022, we had a guy from work renting out the basement.
he paid $1,000 per month, plus a third of Utilities.
he rented the basement for 13 months, which is $13,000.
which is total rental income earnings over the past five years of $19,218.73.

so, what does all of that math mean?
over the past five years, i have invested:
-$24,000 in up-front costs.
-$112,630.13 in mortgage payments, principle, interest and escrow.
-$159,520.92 in house repair and improvement expenses.
that's $296,151.05.
then, i have recouped $19,218.73 in rents.
which brings my total cash expenditures on The House That I Own down to $276,932.32 over the past five years.
and for all that, i still owe another $310,556.96 on my mortgage.
if i never spend another dime on home renovations, i'll be into my house $587,489.28 by the time my mortgage is paid off in 2050.

according to the internet, presently, my House is worth between $436,800 [Realtor Dot Com,] $468,100 [Zillow,] and $501,598 [Redfin.]
meaning that even if i sold my House tomorrow and got ten percent over the highest estimate, i would still be in the fucking red on my house.

despite all of the above depressing arithmetic on home ownership, i am still very, very happpy to be a home owner.
the alternatives are to rent, like a fucking asshole, or to be a homeless person, but, i can't do that as a father.
it's cool to hobo around in your early twenties. when you're in your mid-forties, with toddler and an elderly Mother to care for, that would be unacceptable.
so, i will keep feeding The House That I Own money and trying to keep it happy, and it will be mine, and that is worth a lot.
here's to five good years together, House!
let's go another fifty!

//[get excited!]