THANKFUL FRIDAY

Instagram post by Cindy Maddera * Oct 10, 2018 at 7:53pm UTC

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Monday evening, while washing dishes, I noticed the water was not getting hot. Michael went to the basement to investigate and discovered that we had water in our basement. The drain had gotten clogged enough that water pooled causing the pilot light to go out on the hot water tank. It also fried the washer and dryer. That night I dreamed that I was trapped in a cabin with an enraged bear. The bear spoke english, but he was so blinded by rage that I couldn’t reason with him as I scrambled from hiding place to hiding place. He was angrily smashing furniture and ripping cloth with his large razor sharp claws, saliva dripping from his canines. I kept trying to calm the bear down and explain to him that I was one of the good guys and I just wanted to help him get out. He smashed the wood table I was hiding under and I woke up.

I don’t know if the bear represented Michael or the basement or a combination of both.

I am trying to negotiate with the insurance company on getting someone to help with the clean up process and with replacing the washer and dryer. Fans are blowing and the dehumidifier is humming in order to dry things out. The plumber showed up between two and six on Thursday to snake the drain. There is nothing for us to do right now but wait and make tentative plans on how we are going to tackle all of this mess. To add to our anxiety, the cat has been missing since Monday. The mood around here is at a serious low. I keep telling myself that it could be worse. We could have sewage backing up into the basement. Then I remind myself that even if we did, that wouldn’t be as bad as the first time I had sewage backing up into the basement, back when I was desperately trying to keep someone alive while trying to clean up raw sewage. You know that time when I was juggling Faberge eggs and I dropped all of them and they shattered into a million pieces? I suppose I am grateful that this time is not like that one time.

When I am not fighting off bears or wondering where the cat might be, I am thinking about the concept of not doing enough. Dr. Mary told me a story about one of her friends that she visits. The woman is 94 years old and she plays bridge every Monday with the same group of woman that she’s been playing bridge with for 60 years. Recently, this woman’s bridge partner passed away. Her name was Anne. Anne played bridge on Monday, caught a cold on Wednesday and then passed on from this world on Sunday. She was 92. Dr. Mary’s friend was devastated and said “I feel that I could have done something more for Anne.” I received many comments on Monday’s blog entry that expressed similar feelings in regards to a lost loved one. Wanting to do more for the ones we love is universal and often spills over to people we don’t even know. I’m thinking of that scene in Schindler’s list when Oskar Schindler breaks down and says “I could have saved more. I could have saved more.”

The knowledge that there are so many of us out there willing to do more for not only our loved ones, but for complete strangers, gives me hope. The trick is finding a balance between wanting to do more, doing what we can and accepting that we have done what we could. That acceptance part is probably the most challenging. It’s the tight rope of my Faberge egg juggling act.

UPDATE: The cat is home! He’s alive! With no visible injuries! Cleaners came and cleaned the basement. Everything that was in the basement is now in the living room/dining room and garage. Am I freaking out? You betcha ya!

GARBAGE

How I spent my Saturday morning.

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Saturday morning, I returned from grocery shopping and went straight to work in the basement. I organized the totes that had been pulled from the shelves and riffled through. Michael, when he's on the hunt for something, will open up totes and rummage through them and then just walk away. For ever. I put totes back together, organized old camp gear into one spot, took loads and loads of just plain garbage and placed them in my Bagster bag. When I'd done as much as I could in the basement, I moved to the garage, systematically moving from shelf to shelf and tossing things into a garbage bag. I organized gardening stuff like seeds and bags of potting mix. The animals at one time had nocked over a bag of grass seed and a bag of pebbles. I swept all of this up. Michael showed up just in time to help me haul out the garage garbage pile I had built near the door and to clean off a shelf containing random tools. 

There were two contractor bags full of stuff from our last basement clean out. One of them had stayed down there for so long because it was too heavy for our trash dumpster. It sat there for over a year. Every time I walked down to the basement, my eyes landed right on that bag. It was hard to miss since it was right at the bottom of the stairs. That was the first thing I hauled up the stairs. When I say 'hauled', I really mean hauled because that bag was HEAVY. There was a lot of me talking out loud to myself, counting steps, grunting and sweating, but I got that bag out of the basement and into the dumpster bag. After that, the rest was easy. Suddenly, getting rid of trash, didn't seem so overwhelming. It didn't take long for me to fill up my Bagster bag. The garage is now neatly organized and things are easier to get to without stepping on the wrong end of a shovel or falling into a pile of chicken feed bags. I also have a legitimate laundry space in the basement, where I can walk through with a basket of clothes without bumping into a stack of boxes and trash. The basement floor is clean, so when I drop an article of clothing while moving it from the washer to the dryer, I don't have to re-wash it or throw it away or burn it. The basement floor does not have a five second rule for anything. Now, at least in the area where the washer and dryer are, the floor is clean.

There's still things I need to get rid of, but they are all things that I don't want to throw away. They are things that need to be sold or donated or gifted away. My goal for the weekend was to get rid of the garbage and that is exactly what I did. My goal for the rest of this year and the following year is to remove unwanted and unused things from the house, clean out catch all drawers and never let any of those things make it to the basement. Because if it ends up in the basement, it will be there for the rest of my life. Someday, someone's going to have to come clean out my house when I die or get too old to live there on my own. I want to make things easy for that person. I think of the stuff that accumulated in just the attic of my childhood home. Boxes of papers from our school days, old clothing patterns, wrapping paper, things that had sat up there for so many years that it was now warped from heat and unrecognizable. So much of it was unsalvageable. At the very least I'd like to leave behind a good estate sale and not boxes of useless old mail with mouse chewed edges or carpenter bags of garbage.

At the end of the day, all that will be left to be dealt with will be the furniture, a small closet of clothes, small kitchen appliances, some art work and some nicknacks. All of this makes it sound like I'm planning for my death. I guess, in a way, I am, but really I'm planning for living. I am always thinking about the dirty garage or the gross basement. These things take up brain space whenever I am out doing fun things or sitting still on the couch. I am always thinking "I really should do something about the trash in the basement." Then I let myself get overwhelmed by the amount of work that is going to be involved and I do nothing. So now the filth and grossness has just become a guilt loop that plays always in the back of my mind. Instead of fully just being present in something, I am eighty something percent present and the rest percent thinking about the mess and being overwhelmed by the mess. 

I am stronger than that! I am a doer! When did I forget that? I do not shy from hard work. I tackle. Cleaning out the garbage is just one step towards reclaiming bits of myself that I've hidden away for some reason. It's like I've been in hiding and I don't even know why. Now I'm thinking about the next project that I've been putting off because it seems overwhelming and I'm totally ready to take it on. Look out hedges and over grown vegetation. I'm coming for you next. 

'CAUSE SOMETIMES WE'RE TEENAGERS

Fireworks

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Michael and I are incompatible sleepers. I think I've mentioned this before. Chris and I were the same way, though I was less afraid of sleeping next to Chris. Michael has long arms that flail. Any way, one of the many secrets to a successful relationship is separate bedrooms. People are rude and cranky when they don't get a good night's sleep. They also tend to direct that rudeness and crankiness towards the person who caused them to not get a good night's sleep. Michael and I have our own bedrooms. Michael's room has a window a/c unit. Mine does not. During the Fall and Winter, we have sex in my room. During the summer we have sex in his room. This system works well for us. 

The thing that throws a wrench in all of this is the size of our house. We are a two bedroom house in desperate need of a third bedroom. The Cabbage and Michael have been sharing his room, which is fine for now, but the Cabbage is quickly approaching seven. She needs her own space. Yet, despite this, we hem and ha between moving and just making this house work for us. That's because normally the Cabbage is only with us every other weekend. During the summers we have her Monday through Friday every week. This, of course, is usually the time when we start talking about adding on to the house or moving to something bigger. Talaura said to me once that midwesterners are spoiled on space. I couldn't agree more. It is one of the reasons for the hemming and hawing.

This summer Michael cleaned up the basement and basically recreated our living room in the basement with our old couch. He's arranged all of our not-sure-what-do-with left over furniture into a sort of comfortable den. He's got the old TV hooked up to our old Roku and he's placed the a rug down on the floor. There's a side table and a lamp and he's stuffed pillows into a ductless vent that just happens to be right next to my bed to reduce noise. Before, I could hear everything in the basement. (One time I woke up because I could hear a rabbit being tortured by the cat and I swore it was happening in the living room because the sounds were so loud. It was all happening in the cat's dungeon.The cat is a jerk.) Michael's made it really quite comfortable down there and because it is a basement, the temperatures are relatively ambient year round. This is kind of important because a.) Michael is always hot and b.) that part up there about our seasonal sex habits and how there is currently a six year old residing in the bedroom with an a/c unit. 

So the other day, I asked Michael if he thought the basement was cool enough. He looked at me and asked "Cool enough for what?" He can a be bit slow on the uptake sometimes and when he saw the look I'd given he said "Oh!...OOOhhh! I don't know, but we should find out." We told the Cabbage that we were looking for 'important documents' in the basement and then hurried down the stairs while tugging off clothing and giggling like teenagers. Then we soon found out that though we were acting like teenagers, our bodies are not as nimble as a teenager's. There was a lot of "how about.." "yeah, what about..." "wait...no that's not going to.." "maybe if you move..." "CRAMP!" Also, the basement is still kind of a dirty basement. At one point, I touched the wall with my fingertips and then immediately regretted it. So then all I was thinking about was my contaminated fingers. When we were not trying to figure out the logistics of what we were doing, we would have sudden pauses where we would whisper "wait! did you hear that?" and "is that the dog or the kid?" Then we would be very still while we listened for pounding foot steps indicating a child headed in our direction. Turns out the thrill of getting caught does not just apply to being caught by your parents in the basement.

We emerged some time later after finding those 'important documents', Michael with a twinge in his back and me with a sore shoulder. Michael is more determined then ever now to really make that basement work for us and has started talking about futons and some sort of curtain/wall system. Just as long as his vision doesn't include velvet paintings and lava lamps, I'm game. 

THAT UNCOMFORTABLE TWINGE

I know I should be writing and telling you things, but the malaise of hot summer just finally arrived here in KCMO. Michael woke up with a sinus headache and drippy nose on Sunday and I woke up Monday morning with the beginnings of a sore throat. I suspect the Cabbage may have something to do with this or the water park. I always came home from the public pool with some sort of ear/sinus/stomach funk when I was a kid. But I did put clips in the Cabbage's hair, clips that she had clipped to her snotty kleenex while I was brushing her hair. When the Cabbage dropped her sucker outside of Trader Joe's, Michael was the one to pick it up and swish it off in his mouth before handing it back to her. Public pool, snot clips, side walk sucker? Most likely all of the above. I spent yesterday on the couch waiting for my face to just give up and turn inside out. Today it looks like I'm just going to stare off at the computer screen and cough a lot. 

Things are at a standstill around here. The construction on the bathroom still has not started. They did tell me it would be 8-10 weeks before they could start. I just assumed that was something they told everyone, but didn't really mean it. They meant it. I told Michael the other night that he needed to tell me that we'd have a new bathroom by Thanksgiving. He told me that the first thing I should do is take a bath in the the tub. We've already talked about me and baths and cleaning the tub, showering and rinsing the tub again before I can settle in a tub of water. Look, I worked with Legionella for a few years. I still get creeped out when the misters come on in the vegetable isle at the grocery store. I know too much. Any way...we are still waiting for the new bathroom, holding our breaths for a week of inconvenience.

We've also done zip all nothing about sorting out the basement. In fact, I've added three boxes of things from Mom's house to the bazillion other boxes of useless crap. Every time I head in that direction with the intention of making some head way down there, I walk through one cobweb and that's it. I'm done. Really I just don't know where to start. There's too many boxes, too many spiders. Of course it seems like that now because I'm sick. Just the physical act of typing the last two sentences has exhausted me. 

Some day. It's starting to be my new motto. Some day we will have a new bathroom. Some day I'll deal with the basement. Really if that's it on my list of some days, it's not all that bad and I can wait for some day. Until then, I'm going to go blow my nose for the one thousandth time today.