4 years later, the glass is pretty much still half empty

Oh my god, I stumbled across this blog (which is my blog) today, and my last entry was an unpublished draft on April 29, 2016, Two thousand sixteen, 2016, this is two thousand, fucking, sixteen people, and really not one thing has changed.  Aside from the great pandemic of 2020, going on 2021, I am in the same predicament.  Ok, there was a little wrinkle, that I realized why I stopped writing, because we had to move abruptly from our million dollar shack.  The old lady owner wanted to sell is, but in reality it was falling apart (see previous post), so she cheaply fixed and updated it, rented it out for about 4 years, and now it's on the market for $2 million dollars.  It's 1,420 square feet, so you do the math.  Even if you are not well versed in common core, if you live outside the Bay Area, you will know that is an insane amount per square foot.  

Obviously a lot has happened in the last 4 years, significant, wonderful, heartbreaking, good and bad things.  The wins are that my parents are now in the mid 80's, still live independently (although with extraordinary, angelic help from my sister), and most importantly survived 'that which shall not be named, aka the Corona virus) and are currently on track to get their second vaccine.  This alone should send me shouting to the rooftops, screaming with joy, and trust me, it is on one level.  On an entirely different level, I am on the floor, shaking, crying, screaming, kept up at night, basically comatose during the day, wanting to self-prescribe a second dose of my anxiety meds (but I wont) level of desperation, and that is because I am in the same predicament that I was in this time four years ago, I shit you not.  The wonderful rental we moved our family and dog into is being sold in July.  Our landlord graciously gave us three months notice, to which I basically begged my life for another two months, so now we have 5 months to move on to the next step.  Financially, things have drastically improved, my hardest working husband ever (he would get the award if there was one) started a company which was acquired and gave him an impressive salary, benefits, and ownership, and all the fruits of his labor are finally paying off, the division he started is going somewhere good.  But the timing sucks.  'Going somewhere good' in startup land can take over a year to see any big financial reward.  So here we are needing to move, and stuck between a rock and a hard place, if you will.  These are just the facts.  The deeper, more troubling aspect, the 'entirely different level' aspect, if you will, is that now my son is 16 and a sophomore, and my daughter is 12 and just started middle school.  Now if you have not been fortunate enough to be living under a rock since roughly March 15, 2020, you well know a little thing called Covid-19 literally swept the world, and brought us all to a screeching halt.  So my kids (as with most kids who've lost over a year of their wee lives), my kids are in dire emotional straights.  My daughter has spiraled to places that quite frankly scare the life out of me, knock me down cold and sweaty, and we have to sleep with her because we are frightened of the dark places she goes in her mind.  My son is the polar opposite, but if you've ever heard of the expression 'tears of a clown', you will know that just because someone is smiling and happy-go-lucky on the outside, it does not mean they are coasting through life on the inside.  So moving now is basically a recipe for teenage disaster.  I don't care who your spin doctor is and how much you pay them, this is a situation that cannot be spun.  And as if time doesn't swing you back to where you started, still living in the 5% means that you unfortunately cannot afford to by the house you live in, or rent in, in this particular case.  We are cash rich, and house poor, which I could live with, except for everyplace we live in, the big man (landlord) (sorry, I'm sure those terms are canceled in writing these days, the all gender 'man' and 'lord' but I need to use them for emphasis here), so the big man wants to make a bang for their buck, and the little guy (us) gets screwed in the end.  As they say, the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer... 

Right now, I am barely keeping my head above water in all of this mess, and I wont mention that I need to have surgery and a biopsy at the end of month for suspiciously large polyps on my uterine lining (I know, tmi, I'll leave it at that, you're welcome).  I want a glass of wine like someone stuck in the dessert five days without water, but I am using my better judgment to abstain from drinking right now.  One, I think if I start I will not stop, and that is not an over exaggeration, and two, well there is no two, I just wont stop if I start so I think that is reason enough.  Hey, I am going to count that as a win, I have chosen not to drink myself into oblivion, yay me.  And one last thing before I make You depressed, I turned 50 in January.  For all those who are younger than me, please, for the love of god, abandon all hope that your life will magically change for the better when you hit fifty.  Let's just say my birthday was one day after January 6, and if you need a not so gentle reminder, Google images of January 6.  Damn, I should have seen this train wreck coming.  This blog may be many things, but it wont be political, but if that's not a precursor for disaster, I don't know what is.

Honestly, although I have severe anxiety and most often see the glass as half empty (well, bone dry if I am being truly honest here), I do have hope.  However small, however dim, there is always a little faith in me that everything will be ok.  It is rarely what I envision it to be, but somehow it is something that works out.  So bear with me for the journey, I hope is turns out in 5 months (since it's March 5, 5 months, minus 5 days)...

Glass half empty

Found in my drafts, but originally written 4/16/16

It's been more time than I anticipated since I last posted.  I really tried to be diligent and keep up with the blog, but a few significant life events have happened.  It is a little strange because you don't know me very well, but my primary goal of starting this blog was to be honest about my life, and in that honesty are things that happen that need to be addressed.

My parents are in their early eighties and live in Southern California.  They are very healthy and live independently, but last week I got that dreaded phone call.  My dad has prostate cancer.  It's low level, which is similar to early stage and therefore very treatable.  It seems to be slow growing which is good.  And as it is the case in these situations, after I got off the call, I developed a new lexicon in about 30 minutes:  "PSA, Gleason Score, Active Surveillance..."  I am now an overnight prostate cancer expert.  So that was tough, but I can deal with it.

I could not deal with the call the following week, letting me know that my dear relative, Robert Cooper, had died.  He is somewhat famous.  You might not have heard of him, but if you fancy yourself a cocktail, you've probably had his liqueur, St. Germain, or his family brand, Chambord.  But if you met Rob, you would never have known.  He was the most successful man I knew, yet also the most humble, sincere, and loving man as well.  He left behind an amazing wife, and two wonderful children, a four year old son and 3 month old daughter.  So this is tough, and it is so hard to accept.   I haven't yet told my 11 year old.  He has a very unique and special relationship with Rob.  It's hard to explain, but they were like two old souls coming together and forging a friendship.  Catcher will be devastated. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/28/business/robert-j-cooper-39-creator-of-st-germain-elderflower-liqueur-dies.html?_r=0

Win a little, lose a lot

Times were not always so rough, after several years of struggle in our twenties and thirties, we sold our first company for a million dollars.  We pocketed some cash and purchased a vacation home in Las Vegas (aka a house for my in-laws to live in).   

This is when we learned the first few lessons of starting a company.  One: always negotiate a release and non-compete.  This, we did not do and subsequently my husband was let go from the company he started, but was prohibited from working in the field for over a year.  Luckily we were able to continue living our lifestyle for a couple of years, but then the housing market crash came and our son was going to enter kindergarten.   

Living in San Francisco was fun and exiting as a childless couple, a little challenging after having a baby, and nearly impossible when we found out a second was on the way.  Driving around 20 minutes for a parking space at the supermarket got a little old when you ended up parking two blocks away with two kids in tow.  So with the mortgage looming and elementary school beckoning, we put our condo up for sale and moved to the suburbs.  This seemed like a great idea.  I knew that we would be facing a loss on the condo, but it seemed worth it because we would park it in the rental for a year or two and purchase a home …   

This turned out to be the worst idea ever.  The housing crisis got worse by the minute, and we sold our million dollar condo at an extreme loss, it was either that or go into foreclosure, but because of our little windfall, we would not have qualified for it.  So one year of roughing it in a rental turned into six years and counting.  Of course, in between the market recovered and skyrocketed into a stratosphere that has become untouchable for us to obtain.  Houses we made bids on five years ago, are now practically double.  In fact the shack that we are living in, we did make an offer on, for 1.4 million dollars.  1.4 million dollars with the idea of tearing it down and doing a million dollar remodel.  Our bid was rejected by the owner, citing tax write off reasons.  She couldn’t afford to by another house to write the taxes off.  The irony.

My million dollar shack

Some days you wake up and think this is the day you are going to be a millionaire, and then other days you feel that you’ll be living in this shack for the rest of your God forsaken life.  And by shack, I am referring to a $4,500 rental in the heart of Silicon Valley.  Everyone knows about the rise and fall of the housing market, but currently the Bay Area is on an astronomical rise with no end in sight.  By most accounts, our rental is a bargain, but by bargain I mean that $4,500 a month will get you a circa 1950, two bedroom, one bath, 1,800 square foot house with salmon paint peeling off the walls and a puke brown kitchen with a Jenn-Air four burner coil cooktop.  It is really quite mortifying when you step back and look at the situation, but when you are in it, you can justify it every which way.  Back in the hey-day when I cooking out with my six burner Thermador stove, I would mock my mom for being so loyal to those black coils, inconsistently heating up her stir-fries and eggs.   I honestly could not understand how anyone could succumb to such backwardness in domesticity.  But then again, back then, I honestly could not understand a lot of things the way I do now.

Aren't seeds for planting?

Silicon Valley is probably one of the few places in the world where you feel poor if you can’t afford a multi-million dollar home.  Everyone you meet is in a startup, venture fund, works at Facebook, Airbnb, or some other company you’ve never heard of that’s worth a billion dollars.  You start to adapt to that mentality thinking this is how life is.  Most conversations start with how’s work, just got funding, we got our seed round, second round, we just went public, we sold.  It’s enough to make you look in the mirror and feel like a complete failure.  Ironically, a few hundred miles away in la la land of LA, the conversation is completely different.  You bring up a seed round, and most people think you’ve got a new angle on gardening.  That is reality, this is not. It's almost as if the Valley has become plastic, and LA is the reality.  How f'd up is that?

5 stages

According to Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, there are five states of grief:  denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.  I learned this when I was in seventh grade when my Catholic education teacher was explaining the process of dying, and it has always stayed with me.  I have at times been preoccupied with the possible death of my loved ones, though I have never had anybody die whom I was close enough with to experience these stages.

However, it was not until recently when I realized that these stages were not just limited to physical death, but that these stages could be attributed to a metaphorical death - the death of a dream, the death of an idea, the death of what you think your existence is (or should be), and the ultimate acceptance of who you really are.

bated breath

Sometimes you wait with bated breath, will this be the day my life changes?  Sometimes it hinges on one phone call and one answer:  yes. or no.   Well today it was a maybe, and that is probably worse than a no because it just means more waiting.  Waiting meaning frustration, aggravation, and more waiting..


It is days like this where I wonder what the tipping point is to just walk away.  Stop pursuing, wanting, envying what's on the other and just be content with what is in front of you.  I mean, millions in this country and certainly around the world would trade places in one second to have a well paying stable job with benefits.  But it is the unique few that would sacrifice this job even if it paid a million dollar salary, for the freedom of being an entrepreneur.   

en·tre·pre·neur

 noun \ˌäⁿn-trə-p(r)ə-ˈnər, -ˈn(y)u̇r\

: a person who starts a business and is willing to risk loss in order to make money

According to Miriam-Webster, this word had its first known use in 1852.  This word I have come to despise as it has become the bane of my marital existence, the source of all things evil and great, and the single word that just may be the tipping point of my relationship as well as my future.