Support for LateToSchool - Page 190

Faline2 · 05-16-2008, 12:45 PM

showing up at a party when everyone else is in formal wear and you are still in office attire...ummm (I have had plenty of bad dreams along this line), stepping out of bed in the dark into a foot of water...after midnight..., coming home to find a landlady is laundering your dry clean only clothing to be "helpful" ....

LTS...I think this is all a bad dream! I am pretty sure that Bobby is about to step out of the shower a la Dallas and that JR is not dead either! Yeah..that is the explanation!

although I am seriously happy about your meeting this General who has already taken on a major lung cancer battle..and look forward to your contacting him and exploring his experiences with him. btw, I am a Col's daughter, 25 yrs in military family...Vietnam was the centerpiece in my upbringing...

calmom · 05-16-2008, 01:33 PM

Maybe I'm being petty at this point, but whatever the liability for the possessions destroyed by the flood, the landlady is personally liable for what is destroyed by her own actions. It sounds like the books were not really salvageable -- but the formal wear is another matter.

Also.... don't be so quick to assume that she is not financially liable for the rest. I agree that you shouldn't trouble yourself worrying about it -- you need to get a private adjuster or an attorney taking care of that for you -- but she could have liability if her own conduct led to the flooding. I'd be inclined to want to check to double check on construction permits for the basement apartment -- if she took short cuts along the way that contributed to the problem, then it really could be something that she has greater liabiity for than at first glance. (And if it is personal negligence on her part, her insurance will probably still cover her -- so it does not necessarily mean its coming out of her pocket -- so don't hold back because you feel she is "trying" her best.)

latetoschool · 05-16-2008, 02:06 PM

Calmom, I hear you - I really do - and you're right - but it's as much my fault too. I'm 50% reponsible for the problem. I should have had renters insurance; I should have bothered to learn something about sump pumps; I should have taken the time to learn what happens in the rainy season here; I should have taken the time to understand what homeowner's insurance covers. On the other hand I have been a homeowner so long I forgot about one's position as a renter though, and, we don't have basements in Florida, or at least not in South Florida, but still, my bad.

And I really don't have the strength or the stomach for the battle on top of the more serious battle I still fight. Just thinking about, I feel like crying again. It's the loss of the memories and the experiences that matter far more than the value of the material items. My daughter's gift, for example, she babbled on and on about it, she was so excited for me to have it. I would have treasured it until the end of my days, because it made her so happy to give it to me. Of course I could probably recover the $25 or so that the gift is worth but it isn't the same thing at all....Then, a formal skirt that is now ruined because it should not have been washed, I remember when and where it was purchased, and the things my daughter and I talked about as we waited in line so I could pay for it: a wonderful memory of happier, healthier times. Just looking at that skirt and I just start to cry.

I need to move on, get off this. It is too distressing. The way forward is to find new housing, focus on what is good and happy and positive, and get this matter into my rearview mirror as quickly and decisively as possible.

Faline, many thanks to your parent who is the Colonel, for service in uniform. I started to assume you meant your father, then realized, your post doesn't exactly say, it could be your mother (????).

NYMomof2 · 05-16-2008, 02:27 PM

LTS, I am so sorry for all the memory-laden possessions you've lost. Like you, I attach meaning to possessions. It is really too bad that this happened, and you have every right to feel sad about it. And it is not your fault that this happened; no one can think of everything, and surely it was not your responsibility to learn about sump pumps!

Please call a hotel now, ask for a weekly rate, explain that you need a temporary home while you look for a new rental, explain that your luggage was ruined and you will be bringing your things along in Hefty bags, and ask them to have a bellman meet you at your car and take the bags up the back way while you check in. Make an appointment with a personal shopper at your favorite store so that you can quickly replace at least part of your wardrobe. You don't want to be short of suits/shoes for next week, and you don't want to miss any evening events for lack of a gown. Then you can look for a new place as you have time, without pressure to find something soon. And remember that you need to be in town - didn't you say that you've missed evening events in the past because you didn't have time/energy to go all the way out to the (now flooded) rental to change?

Faline2 · 05-16-2008, 04:02 PM

"Faline, many thanks to your parent who is the Colonel, for service in uniform. I started to assume you meant your father, then realized, your post doesn't exactly say, it could be your mother (????)."

you are only too PC for words, LTS. Although I must say women do make me very proud at all our service academies in this generation..that was all before my time. My father..is a proud graduate of VMI, and among the last of the living graduates who went to VMI AFTER service in WWII as enlisted men first. He was George Marshall's aide for one memorable day on his best day in Lexington...

I once had a great teacher I loved dearly in my college in Wisdom Literature who used to write/publish on Job and make us all believe that there was a big message about faith in the tale....although I confess I didn't have the forebearance or patience for truly applying myself to why Job had to experience so many dramatic trials-- but the loss of these personal items in such an unsettling experience as a middle of the night invasion of water, well...like Job, I am still waiting it out to see what I am going to learn about faith in that experience! So far it just plain feels unfair! I want to believe in all the promise of such a great literary genre called "wisdom literature" though, and I sense that is also the kind of person you are. And the landlady seems a bit like a ninny to me when largesse is what is called for in this circumstance, when an innocent tenant is harmed in any way.
Although I agree with you that as soon as you can...it is time to keep walking and find a new nesting place to call your DC home and shut the door on "the night of the creeping water."

latetoschool · 05-16-2008, 04:50 PM

Faline, too cool, congrats and many thanks to your father. Last night Robert Gates mentioned he is giving the commencement address at VMI today and I wondered what he would say, what it would be like, and how proud all of the parents must be, and of course how excited the graduates must be.

Yes, the landlord is a ninny, but, it's truly not her fault. She is not an experienced landlord and doesn't own a lot of properties that she rents and she honestly, truly was trying to be helpful when she washed my stuff, etc. The books are another matter - perhaps even there she had my best interests at heart; she was trying to reform me I'm sure.

epistrophy · 05-16-2008, 05:24 PM

and another

Quote:

"Boston Marathon runners team up to help Dana Farber Institute"

When the starting pistol fires on Monday, April 16, two local women will be part of the massive pack that snakes its way through the town of Hopkinton with its collective eyes firmly on the Boston skyline. How these women and so many others make it to that last stretch of Boylston Street is all part of the legend and the lure of the Boston Athletic Association’s Boston Marathon.

The lure perhaps is the legend itself. Now in its 111th year, the marathon was inspired by the Olympic Games. The first marathon took place April 19, 1897, establishing it as the oldest annually contested marathon.

Held each year on Patriot’s Day, the Boston Marathon has long been considered the Holy Grail for long distance runners in spite of its overall girth and tough qualifying standards. In 1996, this marathon set the all-time record for participants, with 35,868 finishers from a field of 36,748 official starters in the 100th running of the Boston Marathon.

Susanne Carpenter of Milford said, “If you love running, how could you not want to run Boston? The course is challenging. The crowds are there every inch of the way and you finish in a great city.”

Susanne and her husband, Jeff, will be running Boston this year, although their training styles and times may see them following their own pace during the race. In 2001, they started and finished the marathon together, running as part of the Dana Farber Marathon Challenge Team.

The Dana Farber Marathon Challenge raises money for the Claudia Adams Barr Program in Innovative Basic Cancer Research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

“It was awesome having Jeff there every step of the way,” Carpenter said. “We are going to try to run together this year, but we haven’t been able to train much together.”

This year is particularly poignant for the couple, as Jeff was diagnosed in March of 2006 with low-grade lung cancer. He had surgery in April to remove the entire lower lobe of his right lung and received a clean bill of health this past August.

Although they ran on Dana Farber’s behalf in the past, their desire and resolve to help those with cancer is now that much stronger. The Carpenters were accepted to the DFMC again in October and embarked on training for this year’s event. . . .

Nashuatelegraph.com: Boston Marathon runners team up to help Dana Farber Institute

NYMomof2 · 05-16-2008, 06:41 PM

LTS, There are dozens of formal dresses on bluefly.com for at least 40% off. I seem to remember that you like black:

Bluefly - Find Elegant Evening Dresses at 75% savings at Bluefly.com

I like this one:

Bluefly - Find Designer Cocktail Dresses, Short Evening Dresses at Bluefly.com - #2125562 - Nicole Miller black shantung bow detail cocktail dress

2VU0609 · 05-16-2008, 07:47 PM

LTS,
I have been out of town for the last several days and have just cruised through this thread to get an update about your bad luck. Before you totally discard everything that is damaged/ruined, please take pictures and make lists. While you may be out of luck as far as insurance, you may be able to deduct the unreimbursed loss on your tax return if you itemize. Keep records for your accountant!
Hoping your run of bad luck is at an end!

ADad · 05-16-2008, 10:14 PM

Quote:

Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision.

--Ayn Rand

Karen Colleges · 05-16-2008, 11:30 PM

Here is a note to LTS daughter: Not that you need something else added to your plate, but here is a gift idea for your Mom. See if you can collect some photos of her wearing the clothes that had special meaning, look online for copies of the dust jackets of the special books, sketch a cartoon of you giving LTS the perfect present, etc. It'll be a new hobbie for you: collecting bits and pieces to make a scrapbook of those special memories for her.

"It's the loss of the memories and the experiences that matter far more than the value of the material items."

Kelowna · 05-17-2008, 12:15 AM

LTS - forget about the flooding right now. Get together with this general/POW guy and fight lung cancer together.
Why do we spend so much money on AIDS research? Who on this board is suffering from AIDS? Honestly, we have to lobby really strong for the regular cancer patient. I read many, many months ago that the funding is so short, the researchers are not even able to meet regularly for conferences. The money is too short. They ONLY meet like once or twice per year! A cancer patient can not afford it! Each one of us can be a cancer patient tomorrow!

knc · 05-17-2008, 04:44 AM

LTS - I just discovered this thread today and spent hours reading through it. Once I got past the horror of what you're dealing with, and closed my jaw, I found myself inspired by your posts.

You're like my repressed inner Superwoman, taking on great battles with strength & character, & acting in ways I would want to act, but am usually too timid to accomplish. You are an excellent teacher for me. So thank you for your posts.

Should you ever come upon another flood (I'm a property manager of luxury homes & have walked in on several) you can WOW people with this tip: Wet paper items such as artwork, rare or valuable books, letters, manuscripts, etc., should be placed in the freezer. Freezing stops further damage. Disaster experts (libraries keep their names) can take it from there.

epistrophy · 05-17-2008, 05:46 AM

and another (this one in Canada)

Quote:

"Cancer plight part of exhibit"

Barrie's Laura and Andrew Gardler will be featured in one of almost 300 photographs appearing in a national exhibition due to launch in Toronto next week.

Cancer Connections, a photographic exhibition presented by PhotoSensitive and the Canadian Cancer Society, will open in Toronto at noon, Tuesday. It features a vast array of people from across Canada who have been affected by cancer. Over the next two years, the show will travel across the country, visiting every province and growing as it goes.

PhotoSensitive is a non-profit organization that has used the power of photography to highlight social issues for more than 15 years.

Cancer Connections is unique in mixing professional photographs with those taken by the general public. The organization is inviting Canadians to pick up their camera and submit photos of people they know who have been affected in some way by cancer.

Laura Gardler became involved when a friend of hers, Brian Barrer, a Barrie-based photographer, got in touch with her to tell her about the exhibition. Gardler is a lung cancer survivor, and Barrer thought she would make an ideal subject for the show.

"I got to know Laura because our children are friends," Barrer said. "I had known about her cancer operation and so when I heard about Cancer Connections, I asked her if she would let me photograph her." "I was really excited about being in the exhibition," Gardler said. "Brian told me that it would be travelling from city to city, all over Canada, and I thought it would be a great thing to be involved in."

Gardler's own experience with cancer began back in 1999 when she was pregnant with her daughter. She woke up one night with stabbing chest pains and thought she was having a heart attack. Because she was pregnant, there was a limit to the tests that could be performed on her.

Doctors came to the conclusion that she had a blood clot on her lung and gave her blood thinners.

After Gardler gave birth to her daughter, an X-ray seemed to confirm the diagnosis. It wasn't until 2001, when she had another X-ray for suspected bronchitis, that a tumour the size of a golf ball was found on her right lung.

The diagnosis came as a shock.

"I am not really a religious person," Gardler said, "but I found myself praying to God and promising him things if I got better. It was Christmastime, we were at my dad's and I remember looking at my grandfather and wondering if I would ever see him again."

The two months leading up to the operation flew by, and Gardler found herself relying on her husband to get her through the experience.

"I was really worried, but Andrew kept me positive," she said. "He came to every meeting with me. I don't think I would have remembered a word of any of it if he hadn't been there with me."

For Andrew, who lost his mother to cancer at the age of seven, the staff at St. Joseph's hospital in Toronto helped him to get through the ordeal.

"The doctors gave Laura a good prognosis and were very reassuring," he said. "We knew the surgery was risky, but if she got through it OK, we knew she had a good chance."

Half of Laura's left lung was removed in a successful operation and she made a full recovery.

The Barrie Examiner - Ontario, CA

latetoschool · 05-17-2008, 01:20 PM

Karen Colleges, my daughter does not know about this site, and if she did, she would think we were all barking mad. LOL. But I had sort of an epiphany last night - I went home, and thinking I needed to try to get some control of the mess, tried to go through things to sort them out and determine what might be salvaged. My daughter and I had talked earlier about my luggage set in particular; it is black, it was sitting on the floor; we talked about how I could never know if it developed mold or mildew because of the color of it, and how I could never imagine putting clean business clothing in it, ever again. Anyway, we talked, and she said maybe an upholstery cleaner? I speculated as to how my time is worth more than the effort of finding and hiring an upholstery cleaner - whatever, I went home, opened the luggage, and to my dismay found papers, more books, and more clothing just sort of thrown in there, and half of it soaking wet, half of it clean and dry, but the two mixed together, so the clean and dry stuff was icky anyway.

I ended up throwing all of it into the trash - the luggage and the contents.

Later, when I went to bed, I was laying there thinking about the luggage, and I remembered when I bought it, and what it represented to me: I was going places, literally and figuratively; I was on my way. These were the material icons that proved that I was headed into important dialog with interesting, educated people on critical topics in appropriate geographies. When my daughter and I talked earlier she reminded me of author's inscriptions in some of the books and told me to try to dig them out of the trash and save them if I could, and, I tried not to cry when she said this, not wanting to upset her, anyway, later, last night, I couldn't hold the tears back any longer, and so I started to cry, there in bed, thinking about the loss of my stuff and what it represented in my life.

Once I got that out of my system, I began to realize that I wasn't sad over the luggage or the books or anything else; I was sad, and to some extent very angry, about the cancer. The books etc. were just the catalyst I was using to send my anger elsewhere - at the landlady perhaps, who, to be sure, made some very unfortunate choices; she zigged when she should have zagged, etc., but at the end of the day, she meant well, was trying very hard, and had no malice towards me, she was just confused.

So I made the decision that it's o.k. to be very angry about this, and it's even going to be o.k. to cry, but, I have to make sure to turn this anger into a very deadly weapon, and aim it at the cancer.

Then, I got up this morning and decided to go through the laundry the landlady did, and, to my horror found not only black tie and formal attire laundered but also wool skirts, - just a weird smorgasbord of all sorts of clothing that should never be mixed let alone washed and dried in machines, and so then I thought, wait a minute, maybe my thinking last night was wrong...

What I am certain of is that negative thinking is poisonous and corrosive; it impacts who we are and what we become. Today, physically, I feel worse than I have at any point since diagnosis; it is obvious that this is as much mental and physical, and I need to get control of this.

ADad, thanks for that. I first read Ayn Rand's books as a teenager, and many times since. I admire her greatly and am sorry that she died when she did, I had always hoped that she would write more. It is frustrating to read the same four books over and over again, but as long as I let several years pass between re-reading them I find I get something new out of them each time.