Race the Sunset: Riding the Roller Coaster of Events

by Ralph F. Couey

Looking back over the past six weeks or so, has been like racing through the dark aboard a very fast train. We have been extraordinarily busy, consumed by multiple obligations, not the least of which has been the purchase of Cheryl's mother's house, and coincidentally, the Yanamura ancestral family home. Every once in a while, I look up, catching glimpses here and there of the rest of life as it whizzes past the windows. The good news, is that I think we're in the home stretch. All the required paperwork has been filed, or will be in the next 24 hours. Closing is set for <gulp> this Friday or Saturday.

In a perfect world, I would have taken some time off to prepare. But a deteriorating staffing crisis at work has put me (and my colleagues) in the position of not being able to be away. So, I'm galloping along with about 5 hours of sleep per night, trying to balance some very large plates on some very small sticks. Looking at my weekly walking mileage and how it has dwindled of late enforces how little time I've had for any other pursuits. My usual place of decompression, Hale'iwa Beach Park, has only seen me once during this period. The memory of that couple of hours looms large in my mind.

It was a warmer day, as winter in Hawai'i goes, and the breeze was calm. For the first day in weeks, there was no large swell coming in from the broad reaches of the North Pacific, so the surface of the water was almost flat, and the surf coming ashore arrived with barely a whisper. I set up in my usual spot, surprised that there was almost nobody there. The surf schools, of course, weren't teaching. I saw only two small families, both speaking in languages I would hesitatingly describe as Nordic. The day was bright and clear, and as I gazed out from the shore, I could see a countless number of diamond-like points of light as the water caught and reflected the sunlight. Sea turtles were active among the rocks close to shore, and it was a treat to watch them gracefully glide around, occasionally sticking their heads up for a quick look-see. A palm log, a piece of debris from the cascade of flooding rains that ran rampant throughout the state a couple of weeks prior. It bobbed and weaved close ashore, never quite reaching the beach. Towards the end of my stay, the tide began to recede, and the log headed out to sea. It was a perfect, quiet day, and for a short time, my cares and worries fell away.

I left in time to come home to make dinner, although I admitted to Cheryl that it was a difficult parting. I would have loved to stay until sunset.

I would have made a great beach bum.

There are living in Diamond Head Crater a sizeable herd of feral cats. Most were trapped and removed last fall, after some cat-hater who hated that we were feeding them sub rosa, called animal control. But one managed to elude the dragnet. It's a female orange tabby who seems way too friendly to be feral. It could be that the cat was brought into the crater and abandoned. Anyway, she hides out during the day, but once the sun goes down, she appears on the front steps of our building. Of course, we are feeding her. I named her "Pumpkin," because she is orange. Over time, our relationship has improved. At first, my attempts to pet her resulted in some serious claw action. But now, when she sees me, she purrs and comes up for a scratch. Pumpkin is a tough cat because there are a lot of other, much less friendly critters (animal and human) that roam around this ancient volcano. But its nice to have a friendly, furry animal around.

Anyway, it was back to real life.

The initial VA inspection turned up some minor things, mainly flaking paint around the windows. There were a couple of windows above a shed that I didn't get to, because I didn't want to climb onto the roof of the shed. Yeah, I know. But today, the inspector called and told me they'd be over in about an hour to re-inspect. Swiftly, I retrieved paint, brush, stepladder, and gloves, and with great trepidation (my sense of balance is nowhere what it used to be), I clambered on top of the shed, and managed to complete the job. Not 15 minutes after cleaning the brushes, the inspector arrived. 15 minutes later, he was done. We passed. Yay! I then got ready for work, finding about a pound of old broken pieces of shingles in my clothes.

As anyone who has bought a house knows, so much of that process is a seemingly unrelenting scramble for documents. Every day, I visited the lender's web portal to find yet another request. Most were pretty easy, just time consuming. Yesterday, I reached the point, finally, where there were no more requests. But today, come to find out, they still had not done our employment verification. Mine was much easier. The HR staff had somehow missed a dozen or so emails and phone calls, so I went over there today (inconveniently located in a completely different building about a mile and a half away, and stood in front of the person who is responsible for such tasks, refusing to leave until it was done. Voila.

Cheryl's task involves logging in from a government computer, so she will tend to that tomorrow morning. Once those two things are received, that should be it. Home stretch. Unless they come up with something else.

We close either Friday or Saturday, depending upon how soon the lender delivers the loan docs to the escrow company. If nothing else goes wrong, (of which there could be a couple of thousand) by the end of this weekend, we should be homeowners again. Staring down the barrel of an enormous amount of debt. But its for a good reason. Mom will have enough money to fund whatever level or extent of care she might need down the road. For now, this will still be her home. She will not be told about the change in ownership because it's not necessary to tell her. The only thing she needs to know is that she is safe and loved.

This has been such a dizzying time that its hard to think about what life will be like after this is all done. But in the midst of all this, there was the reminder of the really important thing: