Life in the 'Zipper' Lane

Levi’s stuff monkey must have diarrhea. He’s taken him outside three times this morning. Or maybe they’ve been fighting because all three times I’ve had to remind Levi to “get your baby” before coming back inside. In all the years we’ve been a “couple”---me and Levi---I’ve never been able to figure out how that dog decides which animal needs to go potty in the morning. His once favorite, a duck, hasn’t been outside in eons. His monkey and frog’s paw make it out a least once a week. Yes, I said ‘frog’s paw’. It used to be a whole frog bigger than Levi was at the time the frog joined the family but Levi kept beating it up and shortening its limbs and now that squeaky paw is all that survived. It will make the cut when it comes time to downsize Levi’s collection of stuffies. Oops, there’s that ‘D’ word I vowed not to use in so many future posts.

Since the ‘D’ word did come up I’ll just do one paragraph on the topic and then move on to other happenings this week. I opened up a filing cabinet drawer in the garage that I hadn’t opened in almost a decade and I was stunned to find three bundles of type-written papers containing copies of every single word I’d written at a once-very large stroke support website where I volunteered for 4-5years. The bundles stacked together measured eight inches tall! I had a ton of time-consuming, up-front and behind-the-scenes responsibilities on their message board plus I kept a blog there---was even on the board of directors---but eventually the site owner got so demanding it wasn’t funny. It’s a classic story of volunteerism, I suppose. You work hard, you’re good at what you do and they keep piling more and more work on until you call “uncle” and quit.

Make that two downsizing paragraphs…. Anyway, I let the bundles sit on my work table overnight trying to decide what to do with them. I've often said I wanted to write a book about that period of Don's and my life and there sat a treasure trove to help with that. On the other hand, I’m getting ready to open a new chapter in my life that, hopefully, will give me something more current to write about. I finally cut the bundles open, tore each sheet down the middle, mixed them all up and filled up my recycling box. Unless you’re a wanna-be writer, too, I don’t expect others to understand how truly difficult that downsizing decision was to make. But I have no regrets. Just seeing all those bundled up pages brought painful emotions to the surface and made me realize that no matter how much time passes I can’t go wading through the fine details of living on that website again.

New Topic: I think I shocked everyone in book club last week when I announced I’m dropping out. I like this group of women and they seem to like me, but I can’t concentrate on fiction when I have so much reading to do to research stuff I’m selling, and I won't be one of those members who never reads the books---too many of those in any book group. I’m sure they didn’t understand why I'm quitting now when I'm not moving anytime soon and I didn’t bother to explain how this is my last rodeo, so to speak, to make some money selling off my past. They did invite me to the summer luncheon in August and I will probably go. Maybe I'll bring my newly researched pair of 1899 handcuffs for show and tell. It's unique patent revolutionized police work.

Afterward, I went over to the office supply where I got a bunch of colored, stick-on dots to mark stuff in the house. Green dots go on stuff that gets moved with me, yellow goes on things I’ve identified to sell on e-Bay, blue stuff gets sold at the local auction house and so on. The dots will simplify the process so I’ll only have to glance at something to know a decision has already been made. Next I stopped by Bed, Bath and Beyond to look at dishes and bath towels. I’m not telling you why because I’m embarrassed to admit I’ve turned my sun porch into a Hope Chest of sorts. Okay, I’ll spill the beans on the towels; I bought new bath towels last winter but my new place will have two bathrooms with the same aqua color accents so I wanted to get more of the same towels while they’re still available and that will simplify my future laundry sorting days. Hey, I’m at my best when I’m living in the future. And dishes? That could be whole blog all by itself.

My cleaning girl is not very good at cleaning. But I love her for our great artsy-fartsy conversations. What does that say about me that I’ll clean my own sink drains after she leaves and this after I mentioned it to her in the past and I always leave an old tooth brush labeled “sink” down in the drain that’s calling out, “Clean me, clean me!” And this time I resorted to pulling the appliances away from the wall before she came or she’d just wash the countertop around them. I’ve decided I can’t be pleased. My last cleaning girl used to take everything off the countertop and set it all on the floor. Bugged the heck out of me that she was transferring yucky-do germs from the floor onto those nice, clean and sanitized counters when she’d put the stuff back where it came from. I finally spoke up about it but there again, I liked her and it was hard to be critical, knowing she had low self-esteem issues.

And so it goes living here in the 'zipper lane' where the past and present are merging until they are one and the same and they are creeping ever so slowly into my future.  ©

Levi and his monkey down for their afternoon nap.