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. ©
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. |
