On or about: 04-21-08  23:46, Ardith Hinton did engage James Bradley
regarding, but not limited to: Senior Moments...  2B.

 AH> [...] a grey- haired man with a cane, started chatting with the
 AH> receptionist.  I noticed him out of the corner of my eye but didn't pay
 AH> much attention until he told her he was a drummer & he was planning to
 AH> visit the "Ukrainian boutique" (by which he meant a
charity resale shop
 AH> nearby) after his appointment.  When he said that, I thought "No... it
 AH> can't be!"  AFAIK you weren't in Vancouver at the time & I
guessed he
 AH> was sixty or seventy.  But I just had to do a double-take....  :-)) 

L!!! No, I was nowhere near, and nowhere near as grey. I'm 45, BTW.

Q: Do you know what a Ukrainian suitcase is?
A: Plastic shopping bags, full of cloths.

...And yes, I'm still >95% Ukrainian, in case someone wants to get all
PC on me. 

 AH> I had older parents, both of them raised on the prairies.

What a coincidence. I had older parents, too! (Yes, I know when I'm being a brat. ;-)

 AH> [...]  As I type this message I am sitting at a table
 AH> my father built for me when I was twelve years old.  I must 
 AH> also confess I save string & rubber bands & other stuff 
 AH> which many people consider to be useless junk until they 
 AH> need it.  Then they either shell out money to replace what they
 AH> discarded  earlier... or come to me!  Some of them return the favour 
 AH> by giving us the old furniture & appliances which their 
 AH> favourite charities don't want because they aren't good 
 AH> enough for the poor folk nowadays, although they don't have 
 AH> a mark on them & still do precisely what they were designed 
 AH> to do.  Our friends don't have to pay somebody to haul 
 AH> their castoffs to the dump & I get at least a few more 
 AH> years of useful life out of them.  I wouldn't want to 
 AH> resort to the hard- core penny-pinching my parents did.  
 AH> But I appreciate what they taught me, and I'm glad to know 
 AH> there are folks who understand where I'm coming from.

If I ever need a length of string, you'll be my first call. 

You just reminded me, (Bobbin, and weaving...) I need to run the new serger
for a few hours. I have a little 9V serger, that I should donate, but I
would like to interest a little neighbour friend in it, rather than drop it
off at a Sally Anne. I doubt, though, that she would be dexterous enough
for a few years yet, but maybe my niece, or another...

I think this demonstrates how I try to work. I found the tiny serger (The
product might even be named Tiny Serger.) for a pittance. It came, missing
the wall wart, and the throttle. A battery pack, and exposed wires fixed
those, so now it is a cordless serger, and it's been plenty handy. At a
local pawn shop, I ran across a big serger, with the straight stitch, (It
might be designated as "4-thread".) all the wires, all the
accessories, including the manual and original box. It was priced like a
regular second hand sewing machine, and the threads were more wrapped
around it than threaded in it.

After ten minutes of my best guessing, the manual came out. Another five
minutes, I realized the manual referred to drawings printed *on* the
carcass, and I was soon sewing the plastic bag that had the accoutrements
in it. $130, and a "Smell ya later." I now have to repair the
factory second 400-thread count sheets I just picked up.

Now that the tiny guy is supplanted, I'll try to find it a good home, or
let someone else find a good home for it. I can't afford the space to house
my backup everythings, and it's good therapy for me to let go of those
things. I can also toss the bed sheets I purchased when I first moved into
my first house, but I doubt there's much there to donate.


 AH> Sounds to me as if you've done a great job of remodelling
 AH> your  house with stuff you got for next to nothing because other 
 AH> people didn't want it any more.  So you make mistakes now & 
 AH> then... I do too.  When we were cleaning out my parents' 
 AH> place I gave away a bunch of plastic flowers because I 
 AH> didn't know they might fetch quite a good price at auction 
 AH> in Calgary.  But that's nothing compared to what I heard 

Ya... The shipping would kill the profits. 

Now, a confession. I've only gathered most of the material to update my
house. I'm still cutting swaths, categorizing, and boxing stuff up to find
enough floor space to lay this flooring down.

Remember, I thought it was fun to load up on the pain killers, and load up
at auctions. I had little energy by the time I got stuff home to sort the
wheat from the chaff, so now I need to sort, and toss on an industrial
scale.

 AH> from my father many years ago.  One of his co-workers was
 AH> cleaning out his grandmother's house & didn't understand 
 AH> why she kept "all those jam jars".  I can well imagine the 
 AH> exasperated tone of voice.  Sometimes people say such 
 AH> things when in reality they don't want to know.  Maybe the 
 AH> old gal was a bit deranged... maybe she knew something he 
 AH> didn't.  I don't suppose he felt very happy, at any rate, 
 AH> when my father asked for a few more details & then informed 
 AH> him he'd just thrown away $14,000 in today's money.  Some 
 AH> people may think we're nuts.  OTOH, they may not have all 
 AH> the answers either....  ;-)
 
Comes to mind, "Find me a buyer." Sure, on Antiques Roadshow,
they can quote $14,000, but in my hometown, you could buy a dozen for four
dollars, and that's *during* canning season. New York, Toronto... No
problem. Mid-Manitoba, there's a glut.

There comes a point - when a collection of feral cats breaks one-hundred -
that you might be in over your head. Sure, I have my share of thread in my
house, but it isn't in a congealed mass of a variety of colours each
lasting three-feet or less. I suspect yours isn't either, as a three foot
diameter ball of frayed string does nobody much good. I know you would
concur, or at least I hope you could tell if you had a compulsion on the
note.

Now, another confession. I have more scraps of cedar than I'd likely ever
use, but I just might build a sauna, or shingle something with it. I too
have to be realistic with my endurance when gathering the stuff up, and
mostly, while fabricating something out of it.
 
It's a series of decisions that are very foreign to me, in what to
squander, and what to let go of and when. With practice, I know I am
getting better at it, but realistically, I know full well that I suck at
it.

 AH> Agreed.  Prednisone, for example, has certain mood-altering 
 AH> effects. These effects are well recognized among 
 AH> experienced oncology nurses.  They are also well recognized 
 AH> by many of the friends, family members, and neighbours of 
 AH> those who use it.  I imagine doctors - as a whole - are 
 AH> probably aware of such effects.  But according to the 
 AH> medical textbooks I've read these effects don't really 
 AH> matter because they're not life-threatening & because 
 AH> anyone who reacts in such a way must have been unbalanced 
 AH> to begin with.  I've lost count of how many people I know who reacted 
 AH> essentially the same way.  It's as if they have just been 
 AH> given a shot of adrenaline.  A few weeks ago we visited a 
 AH> friend who was taking it for her allergies.  We figured 
 AH> that out long before she told us. IMHO she's quite sane 
 AH> under normal circumstances... like all the others.  When 
 AH> she's hyperactive & can't sleep or when a neighbour is 
 AH> unusually argumentative it may not matter very much in the 
 AH> grand scheme of things.  But sometimes it's adding insult 
 AH> to injury.  If my three-year-old has a life-threatening 
 AH> illness, and others believe I'm a bad mommy because I can't 
 AH> get her to sleep at 7:00 PM as all good mommies should, 
 AH> they may find me rather argumentative too....  ;-)

I saw in a news-magazine feature, where a vaccine was driving people into
adrenaline rushes and auditory, and visual hallucinations. I forget what it
was engineered to protect against, but the test subjects were military
personnel stationed in North Africa or in the middle east, I forget which.
Statistically, afflicted patients were in such a minority, but the families
bludgeoned to death didn't think the percentage was insignificant. Because
the effect was "insignificant" in percentages, the manufacturer
was allowed to ignore the side effect, and it wasn't noted in the
literature.
 
 
 AH> Uh-huh.  Emotions *can* make people sick & those who spew 
 AH> negativity may be endangering your health.  But a word to 
 AH> the wise is sufficient....  :-)

I've been scolded at, and didn't realize the relevance at the time. Later,
a little light goes off, and that negative person seems like a genius. It's
up to the audience, if a message is received or brewed over. Sure,
"You no good, blablabla..." shouldn't be heard past that, but
sometimes reflecting on what that grumpy old man was spewing about stands
to reason if one has enough reasoning to devote to it.

An eleven year old that was renting next door, asked, "Why did the
place seem so special when we moved in, but now seems regular?" I told
her the truth, in that her and her sisters were a bit of a destruction
crew, and they beat that place up pretty efficiently. If they accept that I
might have a point, they can grow from it. If they listen to their mother,
I'll be the latest in a series of men who only know how to bad mouth them.
It's left to the audience if I'm just a grump, or if I might have something
valid to say.

This post for example; I doubt you have a house full of cat feces, or a
large ball of used aluminum foil, but if you did - or others reading, for
that matter - you could examine the situation and question the
circumstance. There's a chance I will be the bad guy for trying to make
light of a very serious illness, but I think I have license as a
"recovering" horder.


... James

___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.20

--- Maximus 3.01