I don't write a lot about family things anymore outside of our direct unit of 3 humans plus one dog, because I'm not sure who reads this blog. I once found out that someone from my office 20 yrs ago was reading, and she sent me a terse email because I'd said some things about her that she didn't like. I pointed out, it's true though. You do that thing. And maybe it's super shabby of me to let you know it bothers me in this way but. It's true. Sorry you found out about how I hate when you talk like a baby to us in the office, instead of talking like a grown up.
And then the whole thing with a certain bank happened, and they used my blog against me. So. I have kind of not written in my true voice with how I see things in quite a while.
And I think folks from that certain bank still read my blog when I post, so. Hi. How are you, bank?
I send extensive long detailed updates that need to be voided from my mind and heart via email to C and Linda. They are the only two I feel I can grouse to.
In the spring of 2021, we found out some stuff was going on with Doug's aunt. She and her son (Doug's cousin) live in Virginia, about an hour from here. We thought we helped her sort out a few things, we thought she understood what to do, we didn't hear back from her after we went out to visit.
And the situation got even more grave and bothersome, as we came to find out at Christmas Dinner.
Because of that, for the past few weeks, we've been trying to help her out with this situation which has gotten wildly out of control. There's a lot of background on this that I won't expound upon (though it is quite the story).
The county is now involved in her life and wants her house cleared out. Yes.
It's a hoarding situation just like on TV only without the dead animals, diapers, and giant bags of trash (thank goodness). It's all relatively "clean," it is just a lot. And I mean a lot. Like too much. Doug called it an "archeological dig" to get through to find the coffee table. He was super proud of himself for getting a path to the recliner so she can safely get there to sit. I thought he was being ridiculous until I got there and saw the place for myself, and then I congratulated him for the work he did.
We've been there three times, the first time Doug and Geoff moved a whole lot of stuff out to a storage unit with his cousin, and the next visits had me participating in was a sort and purge. Over and over.
Part of me initially thought we just need to pick everything up and move it to the storage unit, and then sort after. But no. I wanted to go through before things went to storage. Mostly to clean things.
After all, if you have 7 boxes that you can reduce to 2 boxes, and the equivalent of 5 boxes goes in the trash, that's space saved in the storage unit.
This could be us every weekend for the rest of the year if we dedicated ourselves to it (but we will not, we cannot). When we got there on two Saturdays ago 2 people couldn't stand next to each other, and by the time we left, all four of us could stand there. This is what it looked like. Believe it or not - this was progress.
Look at all that damn floor you can see. Clearing this space out was 4 hours of work. But.
It was a temporary victory. When we came back the following Saturday, it looked like I hadn't done a damn thing. I walked into the room and almost screamed. I went outside and breathed heavily, and almost screamed.
But I started to think about it. Okay, alright, okay, okay. They were bringing things from upstairs and bringing it to the Living Room, and I was able to sort and pack and organize things without having to go upstairs to the other messy messes of rooms.... But see below for what I walked in on, and imagine how horrible I felt upon seeing it.
Damn.
We could keep doing this. A week on, a week off, whatever. But.
The problem is the level of urgency with this situation at this point.
The county wants to send in a crew for thousands of dollars at her expense (thousands of dollars she does not have, of course), to remove everything. Remove it to where? Who knows. Probably a landfill. Thing is, she actually has items of dear value. And separating the wheat from the chaff is super important before someone else comes in to sweet everything out. Thus the 7 bags of trash 3 boxes of stuff to go to the storage unit is something helpful. But I would need 2 weeks vacation to just daily go in there and do things.
If I had two more people with me for the sorting/purging, (Doug is doing a lot of the heavy lifting and putting stuff into the jeep to take to the storage unit) I think it would go much faster. Doug can't really work inside - he's allergic to cats (she has one cat) and he's allergic to bullshit. He walks in there and flips out and it makes him upset. He stood there last Saturday and just looked at the dining room and said "This is ridiculous."
Yes. It is.
She's in her very late 70s, and thinks she's going to achieve/complete projects she has in her brain.
Last week was about me putting watercolor paints and a canvas into a box to go to storage and she was mad about it. "I'm going to start painting again."
Sure you will.
But she won't. She never will. I mean, she does not have the restorationist skill level at this point that she may have had when she was my age. She can't and she won't.
So moving this to storage gets it out of the way. The county won't come, and just take all her assets to the dump.
She emailed me today saying "things are missing" and asked if I threw them out. An iron rabbit (it's outside in the front patio) a basket (she has like 100 baskets, what basket. which one), a remote control for the TV (never saw it), a small glass box with 2 dogs in it.
I won't even get into the fight she had with her son as to where the storage unit keys went. She blamed him for losing them, and then called him "irresponsible and disorganized." I literally sat on the floor and laughed, that she'd blame him for being ... irresponsible and disorganized.
Doug said most of the stuff she says is "missing" is already most likely in the storage unit. And she just needs to relax because more stuff is going to move over so ... deal with it.
I wish I took more before and after pictures so we could track the progress, show the county how much is working. But I didn't want to make her feel shame by taking pictures.
This is Friday night. Doug and I have not discussed going over tomorrow. She emailed me a few times through the week to ask where things are (ie: the remote control). She continually puts the "cart in front of the horse" as it were, prioritizing things like having Verizon come and upgrade the internet and TV boxes but, how's about we get things cleaned up first???
So I don't know what the latest and greatest is from Virginia. We'll see what happens. Cross your fingers we can help and get her where she needs to be.
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