We still talk on Sundays

Two Sundays ago it was leaf blowers. Whether the corded kind's worth it when you've only got the one strip of grass by the carport. He doesn't have grass.

Three years in March. An hour, usually a little past it.

Phone goes on the right. Left ear's been out since 2019 and the aid's fine in a room but it's no good with a phone pressed on it, so I stand at the counter and hold it on the right side.

We bought the place in 2021. Great Bridge, off Battlefield. 2.875 percent. Everybody was getting that number that year and I still bring it up too much. Note's two thousand eleven a month. That's with the escrow in it, so the taxes and the insurance are already in there, it's not two thousand eleven of just the loan, the loan part of it is sixteen something. HOA's two-twenty on top. Two-forty since January, they went up and I keep saying two-twenty. Both names on the note. Mine's first because of the alphabet.

He was in my unit four years before any of that. He used to take the passenger seat in my truck so he'd be sitting on my good ear. He slept in the second bedroom the first few months and then he didn't. After that he was in my room, left side, closest to the window, and I'd be up at 0515 and he wouldn't move.

Orders came for Yokosuka in 2023. I paid the note that first month because it was due on the first and it was due. Then the next one. By that fall I'd stopped bringing it up. Thirty-eight months now.

I looked at getting his name off it in July. It's a refinance. A quitclaim deed and a new note with just me on it. I qualify on my own, that part came back fine. It's the rate. I'd be coming off 2.875 and going on at 6.75 and the payment goes to two thousand six hundred and change. Call it six hundred more a month. Six-ten, six-twenty, depending what they do with the escrow, and they redo the escrow when you refinance, they have to, so it's not exactly six hundred. I've run it four times on the Navy Federal site and it comes out the same every time. He has to sign.

Sick call's 0700 on weekdays and I'm in the building by 0615, so Sunday's the one morning I'm at the counter instead of in the truck. 0700 my time is 2000 his. Half of what he tells me already happened.

My mom's nine minutes from me. She calls Sunday afternoons after the eleven-thirty and she says anak before she says anything else, and she still cooks like there's a table of people coming. I go home with pancit in a Country Crock tub and adobo in another one and I eat it standing at the counter Monday before work.

She runs a novena group. Nine nights, and they say people out by name. My ear's been on that list since 2019. I said something to her once about how it hasn't taken yet and she didn't take it the way I meant it.

And every time, she asks how the roommate's doing. Three years of that. I say he's good and the food's cheap over there. Then she tells me about her knee and what the doctor at Bon Secours said about the shot. She's got him on the list too. I didn't put him there.

He got married last spring. She works for the housing office on the base, which is how that happened, and I know the date because he sent a picture and I wrote back congrats and then drove to the commissary.

Second of August he was going on about the shaken, which is the inspection they make you do on your car over there. Runs you a couple thousand dollars. They'd just had the Nissan done. Then he said she's due in March.

I laughed and asked if housing bumps you up a bedroom for that. He said not till it's out. Then I told him about the guy at the clinic who's been parking in the ambulance spot since June and how they finally towed him, and what the tow company charges over there on Independence, and what the guy said when he found out who called it in, and he let me go the whole way through it.

After we hung up I went and pressure-washed the driveway. Did the carport pad too. Took me till about 1130.

Ninth of August I didn't bring up the papers. Sixteenth I didn't either. I had it written on the back of an envelope so I wouldn't be fumbling around on the phone.

Twenty-third I went ahead. I led with all of it. The 2.875 and the 6.75 and what that does to the payment, and then I went back over the escrow part because I don't think I said it right the first time, and how the notary works at the legal office on his base, and that I'd FedEx it both directions and cover the shipping on it. I was four minutes in before I took a breath.

He said yeah, of course, send it.

That was the whole thing. One second, maybe less than that. Then he got into a stroller that won't fold down small enough for the back of the car they've got, and he was laughing about it, and I told him to get a different car.

The line does a thing where it drops about half a second. It did it right after he said send it, and he said something in there that I didn't get. I said yeah. I didn't ask him to run it back.

Scan came back 0314 on the twenty-sixth. Signed on both pages with the notary stamp on it. No message in the email.

I printed it before work that morning. It's on the counter by the coffee maker, under the HOA letter about the roof. I haven't taken it over to them.

Last Sunday we talked about a guy from the old unit who got picked up in Norfolk on a DUI and what that does to you at twelve years. He's got twelve in October. I'm up in the spring and my package is already started.

Second bedroom's got the weight bench in it.

There's four Miller High Lifes in the garage fridge from a cookout we had before he left. I move them around when I need the shelf.