Finding a Wedding Dress

I always hated buying clothes. Now I am stressed about finding a dress for my daughter's wedding. Kate is the first of my daughters to get married and I am finding that she is a little bit more particular about what I am going to wear to her wedding, unlike my five sons, who got married at didn't bother or care about the color or style of my dress. Or at least they never mentioned that they didn't like it, which was wise on their part. I know, I better get this dress and color and style just right. I have been banned from wearing any type of ugly hippy style monstrosity.

No problem I think. Then again this is a problem. My three daughters are pretty much in single digit sizes, unlike me. After nine children, I have gained weight. So, I refuse to even check out or think about wearing the dresses my daughter sent me as an idea, via email. I nixed the strapless and topless dresses. There is no way that I want my top and arms exposed. I swear that I go to the gym on a daily basis to work my upper arms with the free weights, and my lower body by riding the stationary bicycle for 16 miles a day.

Although, I did check out the one website that my daughter sent me. I navigated through the online wedding booklet, and found a dress or two. They are both long. I like the idea of black because black hides a multiple of sins, and makes a person look smaller. I did stop by that store in Pittsburgh, and found two more dresses that I like but didn't bother to try on. I found out that they don't sell dresses but rather tops and skirts because you can buy them in two different sizes. Great idea! I keep promising myself that I will go on a diet and lose some weight before the wedding, and then I will go back to that store and try on some of those outfits.

I know that when I am ready to try on dresses I am going to be very sad and depressed. I will probably head to Wendy's to drown my sorrow and order their #1 combo - a single hamburger with ketchup, mustard, pickles, onions, a small container of fries, and a small diet pop. After all, I am trying to lose weight for the wedding. Or maybe I could just hire the woman modeling the dress on page six of the wedding booklet, the one in that snappy long black outfit that I like.

Starting a "Cottage" Business

My latest adventure has been taking up too much of my life—starting a “cottage” business, literally. In the beginning it seemed like a great idea, offer the new house as a rental, to help defray expenses. My mystery writer friend who lives in Door County was my guide. She’d built a house on spec a few years ago and then rented it out until she was able to sell it. According to her, the rental business covered her mortgage. Wow, how hard could that be? Put an ad on VRBO (Vacation Rental By Owner), hire a property manager, and sit back and luxuriate in the profits. Little did I know that not only would the business be a time and money drain, but that every time I visited my new second home I’d have visions of renters invading my dream place.

What set off my invasion fears was a warning comment from a friend. “You know renters will be having sex in your bed.” She must have read the incredulous look on my face because she added, “C’mon, they’re on vacation.” My brain immediately went to defensive mode. “But there are mattress covers on all the beds.” She smiled knowingly. “What about the couch, the chairs, the carpet?” Okay, I thought to myself when my husband and I retire there, we’ll throw everything out—mattresses, couch, chairs, carpet, and start fresh. But what about when we want to use the place before that? It didn’t bear thinking about.

To add fuel to my flaming imagination, one of the first renter inquires asked if we had a fire pit. A fire pit! I gasped. The house is surrounded by trees with a small area around the perimeter. When my property manager replied that many owners don’t have fire pits because of liability issues. The renter responded gleefully, “That’s okay, we’ll burn logs in the fireplace.” A burning fire in August? Was I renting to a bunch of pyromaniacs? My property manager said to me, “I hope they don’t burn a fire and run the air conditioning.”

Long lists of dos and don’ts began forming in my mind as well as how many surfaces could I artfully cover and with what. I was beginning to doubt that I was constitutionally cut out to handle renting my dream house to strangers. Even when my daughter and her family vacationed with us over Memorial Day weekend, I kept cringing over every wet glass on a tabletop, every crumb on the furniture, every grain of sand on the floor. Was the money enough to offset my growing anxiety? And when did I turn into a neat freak? No, this was about letting strangers into my dream place and losing control of that dream. Fears of showing up after the renters and discovering my getaway place nicked and gouged, scratched and grooved, stained and fingered like some crime scene I’d have to investigate.

“Renters are hard on your property,” my property manager said, trying to prepare me for what was to come.

Right now, we have four confirmed renters July into August. I study their phone numbers—Illinois, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, the number of people in their party—two adults, two children; four adults, two children, trying to decipher the kind of people they are as if that would tell me the damage they’ll leave behind.

My girlfriend who spent three nights at the house with me recently said, “Maybe in the future you should just rent to friends and family—people you know. Good idea, but too late for that now as I wait anxiously for the renters to invade. Even the owner’s closet gives me little solace. “The perfect place to hide your booze,” the site manager joked when we were designing the house. Booze being another worry.

Of course, worrying about this is useless, I tell myself. And as I’ve learned from experience, trouble never comes from the direction you’re looking. So I’m taking a chance on a new venture at a time in my life when most people kick back and cruise to the finish or start ticking off their bucket list items. Jumping out of a plane, camping in the wilderness, hitchhiking around Europe, all look pretty mundane to me right now when I think about the strangers in my bed.

Hacked

The day after my trip to the Inner Harbor in Baltimore, I worked a few hours at the greenhouse. I came home tired, sat in front of my computer to catch up on my emails. But before accessing my account, I checked my phone messages. The first one was from my daughter. The message went something like change your password, someone got into your email account. The second, third, and fourth messages were from other family members and friends asking if I was okay, and to call them ASAP. Another message asked if I was back? I was back, and okay, and puzzled. I tried to access my email account and was denied entry. I kept at it for a while when the telephone rang. A friend from Texas asked me what was going on?

What was going on was that some LOSER hacked into my account, sent out emails to everyone in my address book. Whoever that Loser was...they sent an email to everyone, and this was the email that was sent to me. This is exactly what they said: "Hello, I'm sorry for this odd request because it might get to you too urgent but it's due to the situation of things right now. I'm stuck in London, England with my family right now, we came down here for a short vacation then I was robbed, worse of it is that bags, cash and cards and my cell phone were stolen at GUN POINT, it's such a crazy experience for us, we need help flying back money, the authorities are not being 100% supportive but the good thing is we still have our passports and return tickets but currently having troubles paying off the hotel bills and also getting a cab to take us to the airport. Please I need you to loan me some money, will refund you as soon as I'm back home, I promise. Thank you, Mary."

First of all, my friends and family know that I never carry or use my cell phone. Heck, I don't even know my cell telephone number. The second thing is that I would never fly on a plane. I hate planes. If I did go away, it wouldn't be to London. All my family was at home working, and they were not with me. Since I am a freelance writer, I would never use sloppy grammar as exhibited in the email, and I do know the difference between a comma and a period.

The phone calls kept coming from Cleveland, Texas, Missouri, and New York. Everyone pretty much knew that I wasn't sending out these emails but they were still worried about me. Even my cousin called and said that he knew that I didn't send out the email but he wanted to help me. He offered to send money and the response he got was for a post office box number. He emailed and asked for some kind of information that only he and I would know. The emails stopped.

What I had to do...spend a number of hours on the telephone.

1. I called the bank and set up an appointment for the next day to change my accounts. That took 1-1/2 hours.

2. I called my major credit card carrier and had a Fraud Alert placed on my transactions.

3. I called Equifax and set up a Fraud Alert. It was a 3-1 report to Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion.

4. Called my Financial Advisor, who in turn would contact the police officer, who gives talks for his firm on Identity Theft.

5 Changed all my passwords to every account on the computer. Which I now have seemed to have forgotten with all the confusion.

I spent a lot of time on the phone and at my computer. Hopefully, I caught everything in time. The only problem is that I can no longer get into my email account. All I want is my email address book and give a heads up to everyone who is in my book. I am disturbed that the hacker does know my name. I am irritated that I lost my address book and a lot of emails that I kept on file for my writing information, and for sentimental reasons. I am angry to be locked out of my own email account!

But today, my daughter helped me to get back into my hacked email account with a new password. My address book was empty. The hacker took it. That person also set something up to have all emails forwarded to him/her. My daughter was able to change that. I went through my emails that I saved and found that I had left some information that the hacker also must have. Thank God I changed my banking accounts and put out a Fraud Alert. But I am still worried. I did copy the emails that I saved and wanted, and deleted them. But there is a trail of every email that I have sent that the hacker probably read.

I doubt very much if I will even use my old account. It was like going back into my private space that had been occupied and vandalized by someone I didn't know. I was uncomfortable. None of it felt right. I liked my email address name but I don't think I will be using that email account ever again.

Maybe Fox Mulder from the old X-Files series on television was right..."Trust No One!"

Where's the Pasta and Meatballs?

I was bummed because one of my kids made fun of my blog adventures or lack of adventures. Then my oldest daughter, Kate said, "Forget about them. Why don't you write about the trip that we took to visit your relatives? That was really funny, and quite an adventure."



I thought about it and realized that it was a funny adventure. It was the first time that I traveled with my daughter, Kate, to my hometown of Utica, New York. We would stay with my cousins for a few days. I had a lot of things planned like, attending the Italian Festival, visiting the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, touring the Utica Club Brewery and seeing the neighborhoods where my parents grew up. Along with that we would sample a lot of Italian pastries, and eat the most delicious pasta and meatballs. I told my daughter that Utica had the best Italian food ever.

The drive to Utica started out an hour later then scheduled while I tried to find my only set of car keys that I had misplaced. I found them one hour later after a frantic search, peppered with a colorful array of four letter words. Except for that, the drive was perfect and I exited off into Utica and showed Kate my favorite Italian restaurant, the Cafe Canole, with a For Sale sign in front of it. It was now permanently closed. We drove along the historical Memorial Parkway, and I turned off the street to show Kate the house where my mother used to live. We did stop at the Florentine Cafe and drank cappuccinos and ate some wonderful Italian pastries.

After we drove to my cousins house. That evening, we ended up sitting at the table for six hours eating and listening to our family stories...over and over. The next day we visited the Brewery but couldn't ride the trolley because it didn't pass inspection, and we saw only half of the Brewery because of a major fire last year. We did have two beers, which we needed. That night we went to the Italian Festival where I assured Kate we would be able to eat some authentic pasta and meatballs, only to find that they ran out of the pasta. Who runs out of pasta at an Italian Festival? We stayed at the festival for one hour because my cousin wanted to leave and go back home, where we would sit at the kitchen table for a few more house, and hear the same stories... over and over.

The next day we went to the Baseball Hall of Fame, where we ate a fantastic brunch at the historical Otesaga Resort Hotel. Then my cousin bought two senior citizen tickets for the Hall of Fame for my daughter and I (I like to point out the fact that neither my daughter or I are senior citizens). While we went through the Hall and looked at the displays, my cousin and his wife sat out in their car waiting for us. Don't ask.

Finally, the next night we went to a restaurant where my daughter was ready to order pasta and meatballs only to have my cousin stop her with the fact that his wife made the best meatballs and pasta sauce, and we would have that tomorrow night for dinner. The next night we sat at the kitchen table and ate a pork roast with all the trimmings. After dinner, my daughter escaped to her room as I listened to the same stories for a few more hours.

Our trip home was fast; too fast. I received a speeding ticket for going 80 mph in a 55 mph zone. I pleaded guilty, received a ticket for $125.00, and would eventually receive three points on my license. My daughter took a photo of me holding the ticket and posted it on Facebook. I might add that it was my first ticket ever!

My adventure with my daughter was fun, and we still talk about the famous "pasta and meatballs" that she never got, my speeding ticket, how well we actually got along for a whole trip, and the fact that we didn't fight once. Now that was some adventure!

* Photo from myrecipes.com