This morning is a product of the continued bedlam of the new year. We have a Speaker of the House again, a new one, and there is all sorts of squirming around on the partisan political front. Some of it involves the President’s Corvette, which we understand is one of those cool ones from 1967. The car was at least a brief issue, since it apparently was parked in a garage that also had a modest stack of classified papers in a box on the concrete floor next to it. It had only been there for six years, so you can understand the breathless nature of the discovery passed fairly quickly.

(This is a low-resolution screen shot of the President, his garage, and his Corvette. The stack of boxes in the garage apparently contained classified documents. That sort of storage policy would have resulted in jail time, had we done it, but things are different these days. We know better than storing lampshades on top of classified material).

As the day progressed on this side of The River, there were conversations about purchasing real estate, which led to requests for old documents of our own. They weren’t classified, mind you, nor were they in a garage. So, that led to a search for documentation from a couple Federal agencies about streams of cash that led to blank fire-walls in the data streams. The fire-walls required passwords we might have known a decade or two ago, and we think you know the adventures associated with clicking on the “request change password” button.

It takes a while to get organized after a move from the country back to the city. The vicissitudes of Rural Living were getting away from us down on Refuge Farm. As time went on, we found we needed better access to things like ‘medical care. It wasn’t a lack of it down in Culpeper County, and the Vet was happy to come out when needed. That was mostly for large animal health, though. For humans, it was the matter of getting to the appropriate office for the appropriate malady that posed transportation issues. Driving a sixty mile round trip for routine procedures became tiresome. So, back to Big Pink we came to a rental unit to figure out a better means of low-impact living.

The Plan for all this? Rent something and take some time to figure out an appropriate unit to buy, with enough separation to complete basic reconfiguration without the dust drifting on our shoulders. A perfect one has appeared, but we will spare you the details on that level of confusion. Suffice it to say that yesterday included forays into past legal adventures, reconstructed documents, income streams validated by Federal agencies, mortgage brokers, real property owners and tax officials.

In so doing, a book appeared about the last time we found ourselves in the middle of several piles of similar paper. It contains stories from a period of equal confusion. Ruth-Ann, the Den Mother at the Big Pink Front Desk, commented yesterday that she was approaching 30 years behind the desk. We gave her a copy of the old book, not as a literary token, but because she was great back then and we wanted to remind her how much her cheery presence had enlivened some of those trying days. The cover of that effort is the lead image for this morning’s effort.

Between attempts to connect with ancient data, we looked through the old book. There was an account of a real estate purchase successfully concluded a couple decades ago. It was a little condo on the ground floor near the pool. It was composed of a single room with a large kitchen and full bath. One of the first challenges was delivery and installation of a Murphy bed, a classic piece of American technology. It is essentially a mattress on a frame constructed with a pivot joint at the head which permits the bed to be lowered for sleep and raised for space in the morning. Use of a conventional bed in the place would have resulted in a de facto recreation of a Holiday Inn suite, which would make it a bit awkward for entertaining.

“Hi! Welcome to the place, here is our bed, how do you like us so far?”

The patented Murphy System seemed to meet our requirements. The bed contained a real mattress mounted to the wall on a clever pivot. You could lift it up at the foot with a single finger and it smoothly glided up in an arc to rest vertically against the wall. The one we ordered came in rich genuine melamine and featured bookcases able to slide closed to completely conceal the mattress. It transformed the single room with a bed to one that had an aspect of a “sitting” room, since that is mostly what we did there.

That was the first of the three units at Big Pink we owned to accommodate different requirements. The Murphy unit was first, but ultimately too small. We bought a two-bedroom, two bath unit on the 4th floor to expand our discretionary space a bit, while looking at what we thought was the perfect unit. It was a spacious one-bedroom end unit, ground floor and bright with the end-windows facing the sunset. No Murphy adaptation was required and life was good there.

The Farm seemed to be an even more attractive solution to relaxed living. It was flawlessly planned. Purchase was just after the Great Recession with prices depressed. Five acres of green fenced pasture gave some privacy. We had planned flawlessly for everything except increasing age, diminishing memory, and the inability to drive the tractor efficiently.

Up here in Arlington we think we are embarked on the last real property deal we are likely to have enough energy to complete. Joel has owned it since we last lived in Big Pink, and he is downsizing in the same manner we just did. His place is a first floor, two bedroom end unit. All upgrades and repairs are already accomplished, which eliminates the requirement to keep a rental unit until construction is done. Both are baths upgraded, an actual dining area laid out on the other side of a sweeping bar area that replaced a kitchen wall. It is not directly part of the Great Room and flooded with light, which is another plus.

It being the weekend, we don’t anticipate much in the way of confusion about money or mortgage. Except the Congress is going to have to deal with raising the Debt Ceiling in a couple days or everything is gong to fall flat. We already owe about $31 Trillion bucks on the equivalent of the national credit card, so that is why they need permission to charge some more.

How the Congress is going to deal with that matter will provide a flurry for the week that conflates our personal fiscal issues with national ones. It should make the next week exciting, in a way. We will see what the mortgage guys have to say about that, both the local ones and the ones on the other side of The River. It could be fun. Experience suggests otherwise, but you never can tell, you know?

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