From The Bottom UP
- Another one of those days when I’ll be lucky to get dressed before noon. Do you really need to be uncomfortable to be productive? I went through a whole stack of stuff on my desk. When it just gets too much I pull from the bottom up. Found a $20 Walmart gift card. Now that’s like getting paid to do an overdue task in your give-up clothes. I shred old school papers that won’t change the world. I found stuff from Pup’s big job limbo last winter. The most stressful issue was the old employer would neither let him truly quit nor be helpful with any information so we could find his retirement and sign him up for healthcare. It was the cruelty of indifference and he was caving in on himself. If someone laid thousands of dollars in the middle of the street and it was yours, all you had to do was pick it up, most of us would. He was so battered that he just didn’t care. Now that he works for Big Sell he’s got retirement, healthcare, and a bonus coming that will make him debt free. He even suggests he’ll pay us back for the amount we covered to get him in a better position. I like that. It’s not about money but it is about him believing he’s capable of making changes in his life that he can take credit for. So, maybe I was the one that got it all set in motion but he ultimately did the heavy lifting and I appreciate that. Paying back what it cost him to transition makes it his good work. I never say when you going to pay me. That aggravates his father but there was a very positive change in the father-son dynamic when unsolicited the guy says “I’m just about zero on the outstanding bills and will be able to square it up with you soon.”
- So I make it to the bottom of the pile on my desk. Gone. Awesome, not that there isn’t more where that came from. Washington State makes you pay 8 cents for the even more sturdy plastic bags that replaced the despicable ghosty ones messing up the environment. It’s such a load of BS I can’t even start. I bought real reusable bags from IKEA years ago when the Wimmen and I used to take our wild road trips. Store employees act like you’ve pooped in the shopping cart when you pull one out. They’re clean and strong, nothing wrong with them. I’m sure it’s not cutting into the bottom line if I don’t pay for 3 or 4 of those BS plastic bags. I try to get Hubbin to at least get paper as I have uses for those but he defiantly drags the crap plastic in. So I fill them full of paper from the shredder and stuff the garbage can in his office FULL of these bags of “it can never come back” so he HAS TO haul them out of the basement. Even if he won’t acknowledge the validity of the effort I make every day toward the common good he KNOWS I did something and making him carry it out of the house is as close to passive aggression (he’s much better at P-A than I am) as I can ever manage.
- Most of the roast I made last night is still in the fridge. I can’t eat that crap – even though it’s good -as the timing doesn’t work with insulin and bedtime. The premise is we are making good dinner choices available, modeling behavior, for Wu when he gets home from 10 hours at work. It’s preemptive to his living in town with his brother and having to think about feeding himself. I’m all in for that but a complete meal is already in the fridge this morning when Hubbin asks me to think about dinner tonight. THERE’S A WHOLE MEAL IN THE FRIDGE NOW. “Do we have potatoes?” he asks. I know there are potatoes in the fridge. It’s part of the meal.”No, do we need more?” I respond. “Well, if you’re not going to support me…” he says. Wait, he asked me a question about potatoes. Nobody said anything about my stance on supporting Hubbins. This is the Sunday autism fun and games thing, not a potato issue. I know what this is. 35 years ago he had a friend we’ll call “Urkel” and when we first set up house Hubbbin kept telling me Urkel was coming over. “Urkel sure likes chocolate chip cookies” he’d say, “would you make some for when he comes over?” Week after week I’d make these effing cookies and Urkel would never show up. Urkel wasn’t much of a friend it seems and pretty soon I didn’t care if I ever saw Urkel or another effing chocolate chip cookie. Now he’s reprised the act to “won’t you make dinner for your (grown) son?” I do not mind fixing food for people, even if it’s the food I don’t dare eat, but THERE’S A WHOLE MEAL IN THE FRIDGE RIGHT NOW!
- This week it is finally going to get hot. We have declared everyone gets a day off on Monday. We will see how that works. Not everyone understands what a day off means. Tuesday I managed to have another full day out of the house. Three doctor’s appointments and I got voluntold I will be conduction the monthly book group in the evening. Train Dreams by Denis Johnson. I know the places. I have the Denis stories. It’s not a rough gig. It is just a long day. Wednesday I’m going to lock myself into the basement office. Hubbin has a new 3D printer to assemble and plans that involve WU. I’ll recharge for another busy day on Thursday. I usually have to go to town on Thursday to get neurofeedback. It’s the trip across town that exhausts me.
- At some point, all this stuff has to be out of the way. The walls in the Bang Bang house will need to be washed, and then there’s painting. The grass needs to be watered desperately and now there’s a schedule because the city is full of effed-up rules. We have to inhabit that house because now there is the distinct risk of squatters (a problem even out here in the woods it turns out) and I’m not quite sure how I’m going to deal with some of the remaining neighbors from when we originally lived there. The good ones all died off. The new ones I do not know and don’t care to. I’m not usually antisocial but I don’t like people pooking their nose hairs into my business.
- Okay, I was dressed sorta like a presentable human by 115pm. I’d started laundry, done dishes, etc, and made Puka elderberry iced tea by then and had the flop sweats even though the A/c is cranking away so a shower was welcome. Made my back hurt less anyway. Get back to my desk and the tea, cell phone, and !#$% bags are still upstairs, add Vienna sausages to my 2nd round trip. My brain needs protein.
- I move no less than 20 manuscripts from the computer desk to the work desk. I manage to flip my tea over and get wet where wet shouldn’t go – so it’s good I just cleared that particular space. I discover a ridiculous collection of jump drives and yes! A “lost shaker of salt” but there’s still more to do. I hate the work desk. It’s ugly and inherited from the former owners of the house on the lake. It accumulates crap like a curse.
- Now that I’m prepared, presentable, and have everything I need there’s the place where true productivity stalls. Take what you can get.
I love your sense of humor. But I have a hard time understanding what you’re talking about most of the time! I too didn’t get dressed until about 11:30 — I went ahead and cleaned the kitchen and family room while I listened to music and didn’t get out of my nightgown until a shower and lunchtime.
@darkmadonna as I have to write about some things in a kind of code it’s sometimes hard for me you keep track of too. Even though OD can be semiprivate I feel like some things still need to be handled delicately. It’s not like I have a lot of incredibly dark secrets but I haven’t mastered how to approach the places where I intersect with other people I care about. My latest approach to keeping track is to use the bullet statement as a kind of road report to my future self. I hope I can figure it out later.
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I purposely make at least one big meal a week so that if I don’t feel like cooking I can just open the fridge and say, “Look! Food!”
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Okay, some of this really made me laugh. Like “voluntold”. hahaha And your description of the cursed desk is outstanding. I think, perhaps, that cursed desk should have its own story written about it.
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