Random Thoughts in My 50th Year

The Clock, She Ticks

At 6:32 a.m. PDT Saturday morning, I began my 50th year here on earth. The very minute that I turned 49 years old on the 15th, I started Year 50.

Today, two days into my fiftieth year, I'm heading to Disneyland for the first time with my wife, 4-year old daughter and 2-year old son. I don't know what 50 is supposed to feel like, but I'm sure this ain't it.



Between Holly and the kids, I feel 20 years younger. Besides the joy I'm experiencing just sharing time and space with these three, I'm also experiencing a rebirth in learning. Just a zig here and a zag there in my personal philosophy and I'm absorbing information and opening new doors in my life at a pace that rivals my that of my kids. Amazing. Exciting!

Everywhere I turn, I see things that relate back to living and learning. Last Friday, I was pruning/training the jasmine vines we planted to climb up some chains at the front of our house.

I hadn't been as diligent this summer as I was last year. I worked for about an hour on it, whereas when I was doing it last year each Sunday morning, it would take no more than 10 minutes. Blam! It dawned on me that it works the same way with everything else in life: family; business; physical health; finances; you name it.

Gardening has always been a popular metaphor for life, dating back at least as far as the New Testament, so I'm not claiming that this is anything profound. The point is that things like that are popping into my head at all. positive things. Hopeful things. Growing things.

From what I understand (and what I see in a lot of men my age) your late 40s and early 50s are often a time of melancholy reflection and spiritual restlessness. Mid-life crisis. Male menopause. Harley. Mistress. Whatever. All that stuff will have to wait until I hit my 70s.


I suppose it's because of the young kiddos, maybe the strong and patient wife, maybe because of the things I've been reading lately. Quien sabe? Whatever the combination of events, I have the feeling that I'm getting away with something these days. I'm feeling spiritually the way I used to feel physically back in my youth in Oklahoma right before a big tornado would come through...there's a palpable excitement that something huge was about to happen.


So bring it on, Papa Time. Today, tomorrow, next week. These are the "good old days."


Abraham Lincoln and Meth
My friend Nina Radetich is doing a story for KTNV on former meth houses and homes that were used for huge pot-growing operations that are being sold in the open market these days.


Her angle on the story isn't so much that these places exist or that they're horribly toxic (I had no idea just how poisonous they are and what an enormous task it is to make them habitable), but that people are selling them without disclosing their sordid past.


Almost all of them now are bank-owned properties, having been foreclosed on by the lenders (who could have guessed that pot growers and meth makers were bad credit risks?).


Nevada Law requires homeowners must disclose all material information about the home they are selling, via a document called the Sellers Real Property Disclosure (SRPD). And while, as yet, there is no specific question on it that asks about the production of methamphetamine, there is one about the storage of hazardous chemicals such as urea-formaldehyde. That chemical is involved in the production of meth (either as a catalyst or by-product, I haven't looked into it). In that sense, there's a roundabout way for a potential homebuyer to learn if the home had been a meth lab.

But here's the problem. Banks, according to Nevada law, are exempt from filling out an SRPD when they've taken a property back. So ironically (and quite unfortunately), those who "own" virtually all of the meth houses are the only ones who don't have to disclose that they were meth houses. The law is de facto rendered useless.


Explaining this to another Realtor last Saturday, I was reminded of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves in 1863. Funny thing, though, it only applied to the Union states where slavery wasn't being practiced anyway. In the South (where all the slaves were), the proclamation had no weight because those states had already seceded from the Union.


I'm hope the legislature will get this rectified next session. It's bad enough what that damn drug does to our community in general. At least we can tie up this loophole.


More Later
Okay, I had a couple of more things to hit today, but I see by the little clock in the lower right hand corner of my screen that it's 1:00 and it's time to hit the road to "The Happiest Place on Earth" with the wife and kids. I'll be talking to Goofy within a matter of hours.