On or about 01-26-10 23:52, Ardith Hinton allegedly uttered "Psycho... was -
Physio.." to James Bradley:

 AH>           I can relate.  We meant to shampoo the carpet
 AH> while Nora was in Sunny Hill, but she got discharged two
 AH> months earlier than we'd expected.  The upside is that our
 AH> daughter seems to be carrying on the fine family tradition
 AH> of being an Exceptional Patient (a term coined by Bernie
 AH> Siegel)... the downside is that with the addition of OT/PT
 AH> equipment there is more stuff to be moved now.  :-))

Somehow, we shuffle along.  I just made a huge purge outside with a lot of
help, and plenty of greed. Kijiji found me a couple of great independent metal
scrap dealers. They actually returned to help me organize later, so I didn't so
much mind dropping the few hundred $ in metal their way. I also handed them
some choice pieces I'd been meaning to get to. 

Now to start tossing my basement, and sort tiles, AGAIN. A sub-contractor
destroyed my sort - and splayed everything else as widely as possible - while
his partner distracted me, in preparation to install siding on my house. He
then refused to complete the siding, and left me with a disaster where there
used to be an acceptable mess. At least I've recovered enough to start running
my dishwasher again, and the laundry is once again back to the usual heaps. 

 AH>  I guess things got away on you when a rough patch in
 AH>  your life made it imperative to find a reason to get
 AH>  out of bed.  I won't say "in the morning" because I
 AH>  know you're a musician, and I'm a night person too!

Post op, I had a HUGE project underway for the front landscaping. When I
couldn't man the shovel like I had - raking was impossible - the kitchen and
the hygiene had to take a back seat. Once professor "It's a non-addictive
synthetic morphine" ordered me to palliative care, I found myself all loaded up
at auctions buying almost anything for $5, and loading up again to cart it
home. I wonder if I can assemble a forklift in my basement. 


 JB>  Ya... I don't know what I am going to use for motivation
 JB>  when the cat is no longer pestering me to go outside.


 AH>           Get another cat?  I understand that pets...
 AH> especially the warm furry kind... contribute a lot toward
 AH> human health.  :-)

Unfortunately, I've decided to take a pass on that one. I'd love a rotty, but
who's going to walk it? While a cat is lower maintenance, it still means
carting litter and cans of food that could desperately be spent doing other
things.


 AH>           Well... it could easily take me that long.  IIRC, you became
 AH> disabled about fifteen years ago & various things had to go
 AH> on the back burner while you were dealing with other
 AH> issues.  They probably won't go away in much less time. My
 AH> mother was no Susie Housekeeper either.  I realized when we
 AH> had to clean out her place that she didn't finish her
 AH> attempts to sort physical objects... but I remember that
 AH> she always found time to listen when I needed to talk, and
 AH> I know others appreciated it as well.  If I must choose I'd
 AH> rather be remembered as an Exceptional Parent.  How many
 AH> people do you know, for example, who read bedtime stories
 AH> like WAR AND PEACE to their young adult offspring??  I
 AH> enjoy it, and so does she.  There's where I feel I can make
 AH> a difference.  When I'm dead & gone, some SJ will have a
 AH> great time throwing out what I never got around to....  ;-)

If I hated my family, I'd just leave everything to them.  As it stands, I'm
contemplating how to word my will to p.o. the least people. I had a pretty
successful year for some sound equipment, and had a pretty fair set of speakers
(with some mundane stuff to make them work) to discard. Nobody in the family
wanted them! I finally convinced mom into them, but what a load of work that
was. Now, she's as thrilled as a bird in spring, but I had the same struggle
trying to give away tile when they first arrived. $4.60 a square foot on sale,
and nobody wanted them for free? I seem to have a few takers (The scrap metal
dealer was one.) trickling in, but what is wrong with my cast offs? Italian
porcelain and mosaic tile is too good for them?

 JB>  Sadly, I use a new piece of equipment, furniture, or
 JB>  flooring material to motivate me to clear out a space
 JB>  for it.


 AH>           Nature abhors a vacuum.  Whenever I tidy a cupboard & discard
 AH> several items, the remaining items seem to take up more

L!!! I know I have lots of air pockets, and everywhere a friend "helped" me
with, is turning up all sorts of hodge-podge. I have full confidence the sort
should be fruitful. Excruciating - to be sure - but I've always been a pretty
productive organizer. Now that I have a clear head, there's no going back.

 AH> space.  Whenever I discard some junk mail, more arrives
 AH> shortly thereafter.  Arghh!  If you know what motivates you
 AH> I reckon that's a very important insight.  I admit I keep
 AH> too much stuff... but I feel vindicated when Nora's rehab
 AH> aide (who is younger than either you or me & who probably
 AH> thinks I'm insane) says "Ardith, do you have a flour
 AH> sifter?" in the middle of a cooking project & I produce
 AH> three within minutes.  I suppose I'm doing much the same
 AH> thing you're doing when my pet charity calls to tell me
 AH> they're planning to send a truck to our area in the near
 AH> future.  I tell them I have something for them because I'll
 AH> have to produce something within a limited time & I'm
 AH> forced to use the "adrenaline pathway"... i.e. the
preferred mode of
 AH> reasoning for the 75% of the population who are extroverts.
 AH>  I can't sustain it for very long, though, because it
 AH> requires much more effort for an introvert to think that
 AH> way.  When you acquire something new which you're looking
 AH> forward to working on, and you must find storage space for
 AH> it where it won't be exposed to the weather, you're evoking
 AH> a similar response.  Reading between the lines... I think
 AH> you know adrenaline can be addictive, and you don't want to
 AH> get hooked on acquiring even more stuff as a way of forcing
 AH> yourself to clear the decks.  :-)

I could keep a charity shop in goods for years! Right now, I have to give the
trash man exercise. My task is to not burn myself out while carting the crap
out to the back ally. It seems that idiots have abused our Sally Anne shops
enough that they no longer pick up anything, and most of the other stores
screen those requesting pick-ups like hawks. When I come across a likely
donation, I try to set it in the vehicle for a likely recipient, and I am
getting pretty good at taking there more than I return home with. 


 JB>  I've never suffered with not having a "plan of attack".
 JB>  Now I need to find ever-more creative ways to attack
 JB>  the plan.


 AH>           In other words... if anybody has a bright idea about how to
 AH> deal with this stuff, you've probably heard it before!  I could
 AH> easily go into most other people's houses, select a few
 AH> choice items, and be quite ruthless with whatever else I
 AH> found there.  With regard to things like the clock which
 AH> was given to my parents as a wedding present and/or the
 AH> flooring you'd intended to use when you built your dream
 AH> home, there's emotional baggage to be dealt with too.  I'm
 AH> not sure what can realistically be done, apart from what we
 AH> are already doing.  :-)


Curtail your dreams, and try not to p.o. the neighbours?  





... James
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