Sunday, June 19, 2005
Moments of Less Than Grand Import
Little things in my life are coming together. Memories and realizations from the past, pieces of the present which have been a problem...it's nice.
I believe I inherited a "pass-down" from my Great Depression-WWII era parents. Besides being from a financially challenged time, they were both farm kids. They have had, their whole lives, a strong sense of waste about things. My mother nearly eliminated Dad's and my stomach lining by reheating the same pot of coffee till we'd drank it all, or it began to become a solid. I'm not kidding. I used to pour it out as soon as I got out of sight of the house. For years afterward, there were dark splash spots on the asphalt. I once asked Dad how he could stand it. He said, "Oh, after 12 years or so, you become immune."
Happily, the U.S. Navy came to our rescue. They did a study which proved reheated, even hours old coffee was bad for you, and switched over to a fresh-brewed all the time system. Mom followed suit.
The bad part of my inheritance of a sense of waste was the extreme packrat syndrome. I asked my Dad to identify this strange tool he had, and he said it was a steering wheel puller for 1950 era cars. It looks like a cast-iron jellyfish.
Since my job involves traveling around the county searching for unervalued, abandoned or neglected properties, I run across a LOT of stuff. Junk. Odds and ends. It's taken me years to quit bringing EVERYTHING home. Lately, a lot of small businesses have closed down, and the owners of the buildings just toss out their office furniture if they leave it behind. I've been collecting it, storing it on an already-overloaded carport and too-full house.
I'd reached critical mass, where I not only had NO more room for anything, but I had to do something with what I have. Well, the roofing crew foreman came to talk to me one day, turned over a wood-and-vinyl padded chair on the porch, and sat in it. Ten minutes later, he announced, "Man! This chair is COMFORTABLE." "Fine," I told him, "Take it home. Watch TV in it. Get online. Whatever. Just take it." One decent chair I didn't need, gone. More importantly, used, not wasted.
About two months ago, Tracy, one of my Arnie's Angels, was complaining about how small her computer desk was. "Would you like a nice, wide corner desk with 4 drawers?," I asked her.
"Yeah, but we can't afford one."
"I have one you can have free. Too bad you're in North Carolina."
"Have you got a computer chair, too? I need one BAD."
I laughed.
"Any color preference?"
"Blue?"
"I'm sitting in it. It's yours."
"I'm coming down to spend a month with my parents next month. Will you hold them for me?"
Tracy, husband James and son Jamie show up this morning with a nice pickup, load up their stuff, and head out. Again, something put back to use, not wasted. This, unfortunately, is a packratter's dream. Tracy is completely excited. Not only is there room for computer, monitor and printer, there's extra room so she can do homework (she's in college) on the corner piece while hubby is online. James is happy because the chair I gave her has a thickened lumbar area, so maybe she'll use it instead of his. After sitting in it, she agrees.
Standing in my doorway, looking around, I begin a mental list of Things That Could Go Away, get a couple of big garbage bags. They're enormous. They fill up quickly, and get placed beside the already-overstuffed can by the road. Taking a break, a friend's online, so Packrat Deprogramming is suspended for the day. Later, it's time to get Dad one of his favorite meals, since it's Father's Day, and head for the rehab center. Dad is deep asleep. I keep trying to wake him up, and he just can't do it.
I sit with him a while, talk at him to see if he can gradually bring him awake. After a while, I get my stuff, tell him goodnight, and head out. I stop by the nurses' station.
"He's WAY deep asleep," I observe.
"We had to put his air mattress back under him, change his colostomy bag and rebandage his back," she said, "and he was in a lot of pain. I gave him a pain pill."
Aha. A-ha. Means I have to go see him early tomorrow, he'll be wide awake and rowdy.
My doctor has me on some kind of heavy-duty metabolism-booster-fat burner diet pill; a 30-pill prescription is $95. He thinks it might knock 25 pounds off me in the next month. Since I have no insurance, it better, or I might give him pill #30 as a suppository. I'm banking on him being right, though. He did save my legs from being amputated, after all.
Heck, I might like being in decent shape again. Instead of all this mindless babble blogging, I could put things like "woke up on living room floor. No idea how I got home. No idea where the pickup is parked now. No idea who owns the pink thong panties I'm wearing. You'd really think I'd remember having a dung beetle tattoed on my penis, too."
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