Does the Pile Look Any Smaller?

I've been sorting through things.  Dear Son and his Devoted Girlfriend have been sorting through things.  There's just a lot to sort through.

I've taken some pictures and let some things go.  I'll post the pictures, but later.  I want to reminisce over them a little and, well, National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is about to start.  I want to save the word count and the introspection for that.

 It's also too late at night for introspection.  And I have to drive an hour in the morning to attend a workshop.  I need to remember to take a book on tape to keep me awake.  Hey, mornings aren't my strong suit.

I swear that I've thrown things out and put things in boxes and bags for a trip to the thrift store.  That's assuming that Devoted Girlfreind doesn't organize a yard sale.  It could happen.

The Ads Aren't Supposed to Make ME Want to Buy Things!

I wonder if it's because I used the word Toastmaster.  There's now an ad for something called the Ideaboard at the side of this blog.  It might not be there when you read this, of course.  I don't have control of that.

Unfortunately, as a Toastmaster who often gives speaches in small rooms, it looks like it would be really handy.  Visual aids really add to a presentation.  They smooth a presentation out, too, because there's less worry that I'll forget something.  The small one is even within my current whim purchase limits.  Fortunately, the big one isn't, and I want it slightly more than I want the small one. 

It may not be obvious why that's a fortunate thing, wanting both of them.  The key is that I'd feel bad (guilty?) if I made the wrong purchasing choice and now one of the choices isn't within the whim limit, so I'll have to stop and think about it for awhile.

One of the blessings of having a bad memory is that I can use it with confidence to weed out the purchase of things that I don't really want.  I just tell myself I'll think about it.  Let it sit on the back burner.  If it's not something I REALLY want, I'll forget about it. 

If I keep remembering the nifty way it sets up and the way that the transparancies turn the paper tablet into a white board, I may end up buying both of them.  But if I forget . . . hey, more money in my pocket. 

I just had to grouse.  I didn't expect the ads on the side to bring in any money.  I just didn't expect them to make me want to spend money myself.  Grumble, grumble.

You Thought the Last Two Were Bad

I'm not sure what to call this one.  I had Christmas Has Left the Building.  I had Unpacking Grandma.  Now Youngest Son and Devoted Girlfriend are back from the far away state where my Mother's house, garage, and various sheds are finally empty.  
(Pictures below)

They returned in a van and a truck hauling a rented trailer, all three of which were filled.  My house is now very not empty.

 At one point, YS&DG had run the two nearest small towns out of large trash bags.  The nearest town that still had some stocked was 45 minutes away.  He estimates that they filled and hauled away 200 large bags of old paperwork, broken things, worn out things, and long expired food.

That's not counting the twenty bags of old paperwork and obsolete maps and advice books that went bye-bye both of the times that I went up.  And this was after she had spent maybe two years trying to sort and disburse as much as she could. 

I'll talk more about what sort of thing she couldn't or didn't get around to parting with, later.  At one point she and Dad had shoe boxes containing every cancelled check they ever wrote, and those had been sent to the great balance sheet in the sky.  So it could have been worse.

Since this is The Guilt List, I always sort of listen inside myself, straining to catch a whisper of guilt, whenever I post.  If I listen now, I perceive within myself guilt that YS spent so many weeks doing this work.  Fortunately, I feel more gratitude than guilt.  He was doing it for Mom and Dan and for the rest of the family that couldn't be there, as much as he was doing it for me.  I think it was a wonderful thing for him to do.

It's not over, yet.  I'll get to help sort and disburse or store the things that they brought back and the boxes and boxes that came back on previous trips.

It's a relief that there's not much to add to the kitchen.

The biggest pile inside.

Devoted Girlfriend is sorting.  There is an aisle, there.

Boxes and half-sorted pictures on the table.  Boxes under the table.

I'm sure that going through everything will bring up memories.  It has every other time.  It won't just be memories of Mom.  Mom sort of inherited pictures, papers, and bits & pieces from the two generations before her.  Not to mention, the collections of two husbands. 

YS&DG have been in purging mode for weeks, now, and they're determined to continue, going through their stuff and my stuff after we've purged or controlled the old relatives' stuff.  I'm going to do what I can to join them.  We've seen what it can build up to if you're not willing to be brutal and send things out of your life. 

And if I have trouble letting enough go, I'll be writing about it here.

One Guilt Leads to Another

The trouble with feeling guilty about clearing your desk is that when you do start to clean it, you'll find many things that you haven't done and they'll make you feel more guilty.  Not that I can say that I'm cleaning my desk right now.  Right now I'm watching a DVD from Netflix:  Arctic Dinosaurs: Nova. 

Watching the DVD is making me feel guilty, and not because I've stopped cleaning the desk.  Partly it's because I've had the DVD for so long.  It's been waiting here for weeks months.  Netflix charges a monthly fee and if you just hold on to a disc, they won't send you a new one and then you're not getting your money's worth. 

Mostly, though, the reason for the guilt is that it's been waiting that long for me to take notes from it and possibly write up a small blurb or article.  In the past, I've thought of writing books.  I have another blog for pieces of fiction, some of which are even complete.  These two book ideas were non-fiction, though.

Over the years I thought about the subjects and collected bits and pieces, but never sat down and wrote, never even sat down and outlined a structure.  Also over the years, technology changed and about some years ago I started thinking that the two subjects could make a website.  I never sat down and outlined what the sites should look like, but I collected a bunch of online articles that could be used for reference or linked to. 

Three years ago, I bought domains for the two ideas and, uh, well, once I started thinking of websites instead of books, I had another idea for one, so that's three domains I bought.  I say bought.  With a domain, it's more like renting.  I've renewed them twice, now. 

One of the domains is fossilswithoutdinosaurs.com.  I'll explain why I'm interested in the concept later.  Explaining here would be like writing the About page for the website, except I wouldn't really have an actual About page at the end. 

I almost don't feel guilty that I've spent the money for three domains and all I've done to make something out of them is cruise the web looking for articles, harvest the addresses and some quotes, and email them to myself (there are two computers involved, it's not quite as schizophrenic as it seems).

Well, it's time to pop that guilt like a zit.  That is, slowly and hesitantly, because being to firm might hurt.  And quitting after a bit to whine, telling myself that it will be easier if I wait until it's riper.  But before I quit, I'm going to start another blog.  And it shall be named (sound of heavenly choir):  Fossils Without Dinosaurs.

It won't be much more than a placeholder.  But before I go to bed, it will have, if not an article, at least the notes for a possible article inspired by part of the documentary that I've let sit on my desk for far too long.

Go me. 

(Oh.  For anyone wondering why an article inspired by Arctic Dinosaurs should be suitable for a blog called Fossils Without Dinosaurs, it's because they used fossil plants to determine how cold it was in the arctic at the time the dinosaurs were there.  Fossil plants, folks - there are lots of them and they deserve a bit more cred.)

Unremembered Stories

I'm not feeling guilty about the thing I'm going to write about.  It's something that I found in a doc in my writing folder.  I was going through the writing folder because I was feeling guilty about not writing in too long.  But the actual subject is not guilt-inducing.
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Each of us has some childhood memories that we don't remember.  What we remember is hearing relatives talk about us doing that when we were younger.  The stories get repeated fondly and occasionally become the cause of false memories, triggered by the stories.  I'm lucky in that I have absolutely no memory of this event.

My Mother and Father had slightly different versions of the story.  This is because my Mother saw it happen and my Father . . . well.  To set things up properly, you have to know that my Father had some habits. One of his habits was a little relaxing dance that he did with a cookie and a cup of coffee.

Some people might have described what he did as pacing.  But when I think of pacing, I think of anxiety and strong motions and pacing back and forth in a line.  This was more like a waltz with no particular rhythm. 

He'd stand and take in a slow sip of coffee, the take a bite of cookie, then take a step or two . . . possibly three, then relax and lean back, curving his back, then straighten slowly, perhaps take a step, then settle for another sip.  The steps would slowly cover half of the front room and half of the dining room (no door between the two).

He describes looking up and seeing a black mark on the cream colored plaster of the ceiling on a day when he was drinking coffee and I was playing on the floor in the front room.  (Plaster, not wallboard.  He had a full rant about that.)  He asked, "What's this black mark on the ceiling, here?" expecting my Mother to answer from the kitchen. 

I looked up, and off-handedly answered, "Oh, that's where I stuck my banana," and went back to playing.  Mother had to come out and tell him her version of the story.

Mother had given me a quarter of a banana.  One that had been cut in half width-wise and then cut again length-wise, so that there was a flat side to the banana a few inches long.  Either I wasn't hungry, or I was feeling energetic or whimsical, because as I ate it, I also tossed it up and caught it.

Mom says I should have seen my face the time that I tossed the banana up and it didn't come down.  I stood with my hands out, waiting, then looked back up.  It had been thrown just hard enough to hit the ceiling, and the flat side was soft and slick enough to make a suction that held it there.

As I was peering up and had finally located the cream-colored banana on the cream-colored ceiling, the suction gave way to the pull of gravity and it fell on me.  I don't remember hearing if it landed on me or if I made a grab for it. 

I also don't remember any discussion between them, but they must have worked out that the banana-damp, that hadn't looked like anything on the day of the event, and that had been forgotten, must have molded, unnoticed, on the ceiling until my Father, doing the slow dance of coffee and cookie, had leaned back and looked up and seen the black mark.

By the time they told me the story, years later, there wasn't much of a mark to see.  They had washed it as well as they could, of course, once they had noticed it.  But they could still see a shadow of it.  I couldn't tell you what shape it had, by then.  I mostly remember that they both loved telling the story. 
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There were other things in that Writing Notes doc, but I'm going to leave them out of this post.  I think that story can stand on its own.  Well, I could add one thing.  It's a quote that I collected.  See below.
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"I was reminded of an elderly mathematician who had told me years before of his vision of paradise.  Imagine, he said, a long corridor, drawn in perspective, stretching back toward a narrow point at infinity.  Then imagine that each side of the corridor is lined with straight-backed cane-bottomed chairs.  Then imagine that on the seat of every chair there is a kitten."

Laura Gould, Cats Are Not Peas:  A Calico History of Genetics

If You Love Your Children . . .

I gave a speech, once, with a recurring motif of "If you love your children: . . . "  (I'm a Toastmaster, I'm allowed to give speeches for no reason in particular.)  There were three sections to the speech.  The first was: Write a Will.  The second was: Prepay Your Funeral.  And the third was:  Have a Living Will or Medical Power of Attorney on File. 

These are important things.  If you do these things, your children will bless you.  Well, unless they're the sort who are always looking for drama, and you shouldn't be encouraging that anyway. 

But if you really love your children, you will LABEL ALL OF YOUR PHOTOS.  This applies particularly to photos that have been in a box under your bed for decades, photos that you never take out and reminisce and share stories over.  I may have to start a blog called:  Who The Hell Are These People?  (Yes, I did notice that I've written about this before.  The photos still aren't sorted and labeled, so the irritation continues.)
I will give Mom credit.  Last year she brought over two boxes of pictures and we labeled all of the photos that she could identify.  Unfortunately, she didn't bring the other four boxes, including the ones that she had inherited from her mother (and that were possibly inherited at least once before that).  Some of these people will never be identified.  Some of them might.  There's a chance that some were identified in other photos.  But a lot of my second cousins look very similar as toddlers.  If the whole family is in the photo, I can go by birth order, but singletons are mysteries.

Now to the guilt.  I felt very guilty when I started throwing away vacation photos.  At first.  As I got further and further into the box, I became almost gleeful.  It was liberating.  If it's just a photo of a mountain or a lake, with no person in it and no date and no clue who took the vacation, it's going.  Sorry.  Bye, bye.  If the people by the lake or the bridge are too small or too blurry to identify, it's going.  Postcards are going.  Joke postcards are being hurled into the waste bin.

I feel just a little guilty about some of these just because they were kept for so many years.  How do I know?  Well, after the fifth picture of Great Grandma B standing next to her car to show that she was on vacation, I started tossing those, too.  So they would have been hers, to start with (or Great Uncle L's - he lived with her for years, and may have taken the photos).  Then they would have been kept by Grandma B, then by my Mother.  I am breaking the chain.  Sorry.  I can get a better picture of that lake on the internet. 

I also feel a little sad about the milestone pictures and the way they accumulate.  There are multiple copies of my Mother's high school graduation picture, for instance.  Some are unsigned and others are dedicated to other relatives from her.  It's obvious that the photos went out, and then, over the decades, the relatives died and the copies slowly collected back.  I've been able to toss multiples of me and of my kids.  I haven't tossed one of Mom's graduation pictures, yet.  I may be able to find homes for them.  We'll see.

I'll write about other things that were collected some other time.  Hint:  you folks who started collecting pre-1964 silver coins from your pocket change when the sandwich coins came out made a good investment.  Buying coins as an investment doesn't work as well; but you folks who didn't pay anything but the time to roll them and the space to keep them came out nicely ahead.  Or rather, your kids will. 

Maybe Should Have Mentioned

In between my Mother being diagnosed with cancer in March and dying in May, I had knee replacement surgery in April.  The knee had completely gone, prior to that.  Some days I could get by with a cane and some days it was crutches.  Mom didn't want me to put off the surgery waiting to see how things would go.  Then things went faster than any of us expected.

Three things have kept me from feeling hideously guilty about going ahead with the surgery.  Two of Mom's friends, DeeDee and Paula, formed a wonderful support group for her, and my Youngest Son more or less went to live with Mom, except for during my actual surgery and the first weeks back from the hospital.  Then his Devoted Girlfriend took over driving me around while he went back.  He was the one who took her to the emergency room when she started to be unresponsive and, weeks later, he was the one who was with her when she died.  In beween, he ran all her errands and kept her in contact with the rest of us with an iPad and Facetime.  She loved that. 

It's been about three weeks, now, since the pain has gone.  It's odd not to have it there after all these years.  It's started building up around 1999, give or take a year.  So I have my mobility back, but I need to build up the muscles that weren't used, not just after the surgery, but for months before.  It's embarrassing the little it takes to make different muscles sore.  And if I make the mistake of thinking that I'm a regular, fit person, I end up pulling something. 

I'm still behind on a lot of things and it would be nice to put in some straight-ahead hours catching up.  But I have to potter instead.  I always think both that I'm not doing enough, that I'm using the weak muscles as an excuse to be lazy, AND that I'm doing too much, that I'm risking racking myself up so that I'll have to take time off.  It's a very busy sort of laziness. 

Time to let the dogs out.  Whatever else happens, the day is always punctuated with looking after the dogs.