The End of Summer, Part II: September's Additions and Subtractions

 As we close in on mid-month, it has finally started to cool down in Omaha. Yesterday's high barely hit 75, and I have my window open at 4am as the temperature outside is, purportedly, 60 degrees. Fall is definitely here. The NFL season has started, WVU has won their first two football games of the season, the Steelers play today and the Chiefs play tomorrow night. Yes, fall is here. 

To celebrate Labor Day weekend last week, Daisy and I pored over sales and ran comparisons between models, but I am happy to report that we are having a 65-inch Roku TV delivered and mounted, professionally, on our bedroom wall later this week. 

Did we need a giant (ten inches larger than our downstairs television) TV mounted on our bedroom wall? No, but we've been talking about it for years. I would've been happy with a smaller model, but Daisy wanted the big wall, movie theater experience if we were going to do it. So I said sure, fuck it, let's do it.

And then a week after we ordered it, we got text message notifications that we both had 11am dentist appointments on Friday -- the day the TV folks are supposed to come anytime between 7am and 7pm to put the TV up on the wall. 

We're debating on whether we should just cancel the appointments -- they're just teeth cleanings -- because rescheduling a delivery and install of the TVs will be hella difficult, and Daisy does not know whether she will be able to take the time off work for the appointments anyhow (the appointments were made long before she was in the position she is in now within her job). 

I, on the other hand, was going to just be here and take care of the install guys myself, handling it and making sure they were supervised and the cats were out of the way -- because, honestly, how long could it take to drill a mount into the wall and put a TV on it? Ten minutes? Fifteen? We could've done it ourselves but instead of mess with the hassle, Daisy and I both decided to not stress about it and just pay the experts to do it. 

As for the dentist, that's up in the air. We already have our next set of appointments after these ones set for March anyway. It is what it is. I told her if she can't get off work for our appointments or if it would be exceedingly difficult to do so, believe me, I have no problems canceling a teeth cleaning. It saves me from needing to leave the house on a Friday.

Because, folks, that's the type of lazy I have become in my old age. I don't have to leave the house and play a game of "who's in my mouth?" while HGTV blares above my head in the dental chair? Okay, cool.

Truth be told, there's a lot of things I need to be doing this fall, and especially this month -- for one, I have not created the Christmas cards yet. I wanted to do it tonight, but I am now too exhausted to do so and would not be able to make good judgment calls at 4am. For two, I have bills I need to assess and pay. Again, too tired tonight at this juncture to do math. And the third thing I have to do is...I have to figure out my new student loan repayment plan before the end of the month. 

That last one is a big one. 

Because they canceled the SAVE plan I was on for income-based repayment, we got notices a few months ago that after July 1, we would be told by our loan servicers that we'd have a 60-day window to login and select a new repayment plan for our loans. I'm sure if you have student loans, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Well, I was on an income-based repayment plan and I was paying something like $200 a month for my loans -- which I was fine with, I guess. It was an added expense every month, but it was what it was.

And then Covid hit, and everyone's payments were put on hiatus and/or were thrown into forbearance. And...it didn't end. I think I made one payment after Covid hit, and it was done the week before everything had been put on hold. Well, once I select my new payment plan, that hold finally comes off  and for the first time in well over five years, I will be paying on student loans again. Except, well, that income-based repayment plan likely isn't going to work for me anymore as I now make a lot more money than I did when I last tried to recertify that plan.

"Your bare minimum is going to be something like $300-400 a month," Daisy told me last weekend, after doing some rough calculations. 

"My goal," I said, "is to pay the bare minimum possible every month until the remainder is discharged."

There's something like a 15-year stipulation for student loans for undergrads and, I think, 20 years for grad students, where anything past that point just gets waived/discharged. Covid helped that for us big time, as did the court battle for the SAVE plan putting us back on hiatus. 2033 would be 20 years for me. So that's what, six years and change? Psh, if I have to, I should be able to handle that. And, likely, it won't even be that long as we should elect a Democrat president in 2028 who will likely wipe out the vast majority of student loan debt anyhow. I'll roll the dice on that, sure.

I will note here that I took those loans out in the long-long-ago, the earth-that-was, in 2010 -- and I took them out because I needed to eat and put gas in the Monte Carlo while I was in grad school. I needed to keep the lights on, I needed to keep food in the fridge and in the bowls of the cats. It wasn't like OMG, I can get free money from the government? Okay! It was a necessity for survival. And I knew even then I did not and would not want to pay them back when they came due. I was right there. 

Shit, I'm 43 now. Back then, I didn't expect to live past 40 in any real reasonable fashion, ever. I would either drink and smoke myself to death, I'd die in a fiery car crash, or if neither of those things happened, I would likely -- at some point, anyway -- off myself. None of those scenarios entailed doing it after age 40. I was, after all, desperately alone and lonely and didn't see much of a future for myself outside of being poor and teaching class after class every semester until it was time to die. 

You know, figuratively, anyway.

Fast forward to today and life is very different, but still. 

The End of Summer, Part I

 Well, here we are. Another year, another summer gone.

Summer 2026 seems like it disappeared -- evaporated before our eyes and vanished into nothingness as we held it in our arms. I told Daisy this past weekend that it feels like we just got back from Canada two weeks ago, not two months ago. 

It is now Labor Day weekend. Well, for me anyway. For me it's been Labor Day weekend for two days already. I took off Wednesday the 2nd, and as I am already out until Tuesday the 8th, I have a rather uncommon stretch of six days in a row off work, unfettered, for downtime and relaxation. 

I am, quietly and slowly/peacefully, trying to reset myself for fall. With fall comes cooler temperatures and work tends to slow down a bit (it has not yet, but it tends to). Football, both NFL and college, comes back this week. Schools are already back in session, of course, and school buses are continually rolling through the neighborhoods of Omaha once more. Pumpkin spice lattes have become a thing again, and I'm already starting the season right -- despite the fact that it was almost 100 degrees every day this week, I have already enjoyed a few pumpkin spice lattes, both made at home as well as purchased. That's right, I'm a basic bitch.

Anyway. 

Fall this year somehow feels different as well -- I haven't made the Christmas cards yet. I don't even have good photos for the cards yet this year. This time last year I was worried about how long Pete was going to last and prepping for our trip to Canada -- this year we've already been to Canada and back again, Pete is dead, and we have a Dolly now. 

Speaking of Dollys, I should probably mention how the passing of three greats this past week or so have really felt like a gut punch. I'm sure if you've not been living under a rock, you are aware that Dolly Parton died. Some of you who paid a little more close attention also would have heard that Tim Curry and Peter Cullen both died as well.

Look, I realize I am old now. I also realize that I am far past the age of where any celebrity, big or small, should have a profound affect on me if and when they eventually die. I can likely count on one hand the number of celebrities out there who I could name who I would be affected more by, and whose work really shaped a large part of my life more than Tim Curry and Peter Cullen. 

I am sure there are people reading this website who don't really know who I am, or are reading it for the first time. Certainly some of my readers here have never met me in real life, or if they have, they have not seen me in over two decades -- I understand that and it's okay. But, for those of you who know me well, who have known me well for most if not all of my life, you realize that The Rocky Horror Picture Show affected me in profound ways. Not sexually, of course, but creatively, musically, even spiritually to an extent. Was it a bad movie? Oh hell yes. Is it still my favorite movie of all time, and is Tim Curry a giant part of that? Also yes. I realize his health had been failing in the past decade or so, and yes, he was an old man, but losing him is a tremendous loss to fans of not just musical theater, but of the man himself. 

Similarly, Peter Cullen voiced my childhood. Since I don't expect most normal people to know who he was, here:

And a Canadian, too. 

Every time I heard Optimus Prime as a child well into my adulthood, it was Peter Cullen (with the exceptions of a few roles in offshoot series, where Garry Chalk voiced one or more characters of other/some variations of Optimus). I am and always have been a huge fan of anything Transformers. I own the entire original series and the movie as well as all of Generation 2 and the sequel series Beast Wars and Beast Machines. I went to see the first...several? Michael Bay movies in the theater based on the fact that Cullen had returned to the role of Optimus Prime for those films. The man was loved in my heart and mind. 

Everyone dies eventually, of course. I am likely going to see a lot of my heroes die of old age at some point before I kick off this mortal coil as well. One of my former friends told me that when Bob Dylan dies, she's going to wear black for a month, and...I get that. I echo that sentiment. I can't think of a major musical icon dying suddenly that really affected me and my own generation -- I guess Kurt was likely the last one, and even that was more Gen X than it was me as an elder millennial. Maybe Amy Winehouse? Still not the same level as Kurt though. I'm talking someone who my generation would be very, very upset over because they're a universally beloved household name. I don't know if anyone exists like that for my generation, someone that everyone knows.

But everyone knew Dolly Parton.

Young and old, everyone knew Dolly by music, looks, acting, or association. At the very least I don't think there's anyone on the planet in English-speaking countries who did not know who Dolly Parton was or who hadn't heard of her by name. And for those folks paying attention? She was universally beloved. It's not really hyperbole when I say that, either. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone who would have said something like "to hell with Dolly Parton, she's an awful human being" because nobody I've ever seen or known has ever disliked her.

Dolly was not of my generation; she was of my parents and grandparents' generation -- but we all knew her. We all adored her. We all knew more about her than most people would care to admit. And she was such a remarkable person, a true example of a great role model to follow. I am not going to go into details here because all of you can feel free to research her on your own, and many of you already know -- but I am going to tell two stories about Dolly, one short and one long. 

The short one is, because of the association of "Dolly" to "Dolly Parton," I always wondered how many people immediately assumed that Daisy had named our cat Dolly after her. Of all the names ending in -olly, she chose Dolly -- over Holly, Polly, and/or Molly. That will, always, boggle my mind to an extent. And to be fair, Daisy did question the cat's name a number of times, not knowing that it really fit her. Well, now ten months into having that cat, the name fits her very well. She is a very vocal, outspoken girl with big words and a big voice, but she still has a little frame and a little face. She is our Dollbaby, our Dollface. 

The second story is the longer story. As you folks may know, Daisy's grandfather built guitars. I don't think he ever really did it for a living, but more of a hobby. It seemed to be much more of a labor of love than anything else, but it seemed like his output increased as he got older. He would sell them for extra money, sometimes large sums of money -- so okay, maybe it was what he did for a living after a while. He didn't just build guitars, either -- he built banjos and dobros, he made his own guitar straps in his same workshop on the same workbench (and apparently also did other leatherwork as well, such as belts). 

I don't know how many guitars he cranked out every year, or over his lifetime. It was a lot of work. They are some of the finest, most beautiful guitars I have ever seen. He made them in all sizes, and when we visited up there for the first time in 2015, I actually got to see some of them in-progress -- as well as got to briefly "jam" with him and Daisy's uncle (his son) in the basement where we spent most of our time a few months ago when we were there.

When he died, in 2022, the remaining completed guitars (all but two or three of them) were distributed throughout the family. Daisy got one, Daisy's sister and our nephew got one, etc. I am sure Mama has at least one, if not more than one, of his guitars too. The rest went to his sons, all that I know of but two -- they adorn the wall of the basement living room; one is a normal acoustic and the other is a shiny, silver dobro.

It turns out that his dobros got the attention, eventually, of someone quite famous.

That someone was Dolly Parton. 

On the wall downstairs in that basement is a letter Daisy's grandfather received from Dolly Parton. It addressed him by name and said (and I am paraphrasing here) that he made the best dobros she'd ever seen, and invited him to join her to play one at the Dixie Stampede, where (at the time) she performed every night. 

Now, this letter did not have a date on it. I don't know how authentic it is, only that the family claims it's absolutely authentic. I don't know when Dolly stopped performing nightly at the Dixie Stampede. But it is a remarkable artifact and conversation piece. I have a high-definition photo of the letter, which I will obviously not share here as it has family information/names on it. The letter, to this day, hangs on Grandpa's computer desk downstairs in the basement. He did not frame it -- he was not really a framing man, from what I gathered -- but it hangs there in bare paper as if it were a shopping list, on a desk in a basement where everything sits as if frozen in time since the day the man died in 2022. 

So there's the stories. Now, onward...