The Condo In Florida Is Rented! Again!

As regular Blog readers know, I took a part time job to pay for the HOA fees, taxes, and insurance on the condo in Stuart, Florida that my sister Susan and I inherited from our parents after we could not rent it for the season.  I was working 7 days a week, some days 12 hours, but at least we could pay for the place, and even go down there in August to prepare to rent it next season.  Then the fellow who checks on our condo every month recommended it to his childhood friend, and he rented it for the year. He liked it so much he even offered to buy it.  However, it has been in the family for over 40 years and we want to hold onto the place.  It is filled with many happy memories, such the trip my father Nelson, mother Mary, sister Susan, and I took to Key West back in March of 1979.  My mother and father and sister can be seen posing in front of the Hemingway House in the photograph on the left.

And because he really wanted to own, our renter decided to buy a place in the next building and gave me notice of that the same day I left the part-time job that I took to pay the condo's expenses.  Life is truly ironic.  And so I was back to square one.  But I was also happy about it, too.  I could go back down there in August after all, get the place ready to rent in January, attend Stuart's annual "Dancing in the Streets" festival, catch a Single A Jupiter Hammerheads baseball game, play some golf, walk the beach, etc. etc. Let the good times roll!  Then someone recommended the place to a mother and daughter already living in the complex, and I rented it to them for the year, with a promise to re-rent it for one more year after that.  It will pay the expenses, and so I won't have to take another part-time job, but I won't get the place back for another two year.  I still have the memories, however, such as walking along the St. Lucie River - a short distance from the condo - with ( from left to right) my then wife Lisa, mother Mary, and sister Susan.

I could still go down there, of course, and stay at a luxury Motel 6 Resort Hotel like I did for a night in Portland, Oregon, but that would cost actual money.  I know people will say "David, you are getting $850 a month that you were not getting before," but somehow it seems like it is coming out of a different pocket - specifically mine.  In any case, Stuart is a mere 40 miles or so from Palm Beach, and so maybe I will go down and stay with my soon-to- be good friend Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago.  He needs my moral support because of all this Russian business, all for the price of a guest room.  In the meantime, as I said before, I still have the memories and the photographs, like the pier at sunset with Stewie Anderson's sailboat in the background.  It was the one boat that ever docked at the complex, and like Stewie himself, now long gone.  Oh well, time to suck it up and enjoy not working 7 days a week.  It almost feels like retirement.