(no subject)
Sep. 16th, 2006 11:50 pmOH HAI.
I have a question before I start to ramble. Embarassing as this is, I don't know how to upload my pictures from my cell phone (I have Verizon) without just emailing them.
Help me, flist, please!
chickadilly, you told me about a site that you used - what was it??
I am not at the Pyrate Party tonight as I spent the day at my dad's house filling the largest dumpster ever.
It's really awful when you see your bad habits at their zenith in your parents. We all thought my dad would sell the house when my mom died (now more than six years ago), but he didn't. It fell into disrepair, the cats took it over, and now...it's unsalvagable.
We went down ready to do battle - neoprene gloves, masks, second pair of shoes for the drive home.
Craziness:
I was cleaning canned goods from a lower cabinet, and some of them were unopened, but empty. O.O The physics of that kind of blow my mind (especially since the cans didn't have any defects/holes and weren't deformed like you might see with a bacterial invasion).
There were 3 water tanks and 2 water softeners in the crawlspace. Obviously my dad doesn't understand the concept of clean as you go.
We pitched 3 30-gallon garbage cans of coal, one of which was waterlogged and leached out its sulfur into the water. Pollute, much?
I cut the grass with the scythes and sickles we found in the shed (strangely, the one and only place we had nostalgic feelings). Fun!
This is what the dumpster looked like about 1/3 of the way full:

That's a 40 cubic yard dumpster; the walls are 12 feet high. The wheels on the left belong to one of the three push-mowers we chucked in there.
The only things we went through were some Christmas boxes that were in the garage. And thank goodness they were stored there - we opened one and my baby blanket was in there! If it had been in the house, I would have had to trash it. Yay.
I forgot to take a picture before we closed the door (because I had just put a bag of dirt and leaves in and it broke, covering me from shoulder to wrist in cat yuck and dead leaves), but here's what it looked like before we left:


The horrible thing? We didn't have room for most of the furniture, some of the lawn stuff/tools, and we didn't take anything down from above the garage. AND, my dad rents a storage garage that has, "3 or 4 engines, my old truck, and I think more Christmas stuff." DEAD. He's probably going to need a 20 yard dumpster to get rid of the rest - maybe another 40 yard, since there's still the riding mower & roto-tiller to get rid of. Cripes.
I see my worst habit at work here - the hoarding. There was a decent amount of stuff that had never been used, but bought in the quest to be sure said item was on hand. Or my dad bought it and it never made its way to the right spot - buckets of OxyClean, Swiffer wipes, trash bags. I am much more organized and less wasteful, but I dread being that old lady who has 36 bottles of ketchup in the pantry. Three or four packages of yellowed computer paper, 4 staplers/tape dispensers - the list went on and on.
The first step in recovery is admitting you have a problem, yes?
My poor dad - I forget sometimes that he's 72. He worked right alongside us and got into the crawlspace and hauled and moved and swept like he was our age. He's not a spring chicken anymore, and I think he was irritated that we kept checking on him and telling him to take breaks. Silly geezer.
My uncle is in the hospital after having a heart attack. He is nearly blind, has raging diabetes and high blood pressure, and he's already had two previous heart attacks. They're going to put him on dialysis after catherization because his kidneys are barely functioning (they won't be able to clear the dye from the catheterization procedure). My dad is pretty upset, and I hope my uncle pulls through, at least enough to pass away in his sleep. ):
I dread going to sleep tonight, for fear of being paralyzed by stiff muscles in the morning.
I have a question before I start to ramble. Embarassing as this is, I don't know how to upload my pictures from my cell phone (I have Verizon) without just emailing them.
Help me, flist, please!
I am not at the Pyrate Party tonight as I spent the day at my dad's house filling the largest dumpster ever.
It's really awful when you see your bad habits at their zenith in your parents. We all thought my dad would sell the house when my mom died (now more than six years ago), but he didn't. It fell into disrepair, the cats took it over, and now...it's unsalvagable.
We went down ready to do battle - neoprene gloves, masks, second pair of shoes for the drive home.
Craziness:
I was cleaning canned goods from a lower cabinet, and some of them were unopened, but empty. O.O The physics of that kind of blow my mind (especially since the cans didn't have any defects/holes and weren't deformed like you might see with a bacterial invasion).
There were 3 water tanks and 2 water softeners in the crawlspace. Obviously my dad doesn't understand the concept of clean as you go.
We pitched 3 30-gallon garbage cans of coal, one of which was waterlogged and leached out its sulfur into the water. Pollute, much?
I cut the grass with the scythes and sickles we found in the shed (strangely, the one and only place we had nostalgic feelings). Fun!
This is what the dumpster looked like about 1/3 of the way full:

That's a 40 cubic yard dumpster; the walls are 12 feet high. The wheels on the left belong to one of the three push-mowers we chucked in there.
The only things we went through were some Christmas boxes that were in the garage. And thank goodness they were stored there - we opened one and my baby blanket was in there! If it had been in the house, I would have had to trash it. Yay.
I forgot to take a picture before we closed the door (because I had just put a bag of dirt and leaves in and it broke, covering me from shoulder to wrist in cat yuck and dead leaves), but here's what it looked like before we left:


The horrible thing? We didn't have room for most of the furniture, some of the lawn stuff/tools, and we didn't take anything down from above the garage. AND, my dad rents a storage garage that has, "3 or 4 engines, my old truck, and I think more Christmas stuff." DEAD. He's probably going to need a 20 yard dumpster to get rid of the rest - maybe another 40 yard, since there's still the riding mower & roto-tiller to get rid of. Cripes.
I see my worst habit at work here - the hoarding. There was a decent amount of stuff that had never been used, but bought in the quest to be sure said item was on hand. Or my dad bought it and it never made its way to the right spot - buckets of OxyClean, Swiffer wipes, trash bags. I am much more organized and less wasteful, but I dread being that old lady who has 36 bottles of ketchup in the pantry. Three or four packages of yellowed computer paper, 4 staplers/tape dispensers - the list went on and on.
The first step in recovery is admitting you have a problem, yes?
My poor dad - I forget sometimes that he's 72. He worked right alongside us and got into the crawlspace and hauled and moved and swept like he was our age. He's not a spring chicken anymore, and I think he was irritated that we kept checking on him and telling him to take breaks. Silly geezer.
My uncle is in the hospital after having a heart attack. He is nearly blind, has raging diabetes and high blood pressure, and he's already had two previous heart attacks. They're going to put him on dialysis after catherization because his kidneys are barely functioning (they won't be able to clear the dye from the catheterization procedure). My dad is pretty upset, and I hope my uncle pulls through, at least enough to pass away in his sleep. ):
I dread going to sleep tonight, for fear of being paralyzed by stiff muscles in the morning.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-17 04:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-17 05:59 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-17 07:06 am (UTC)I should take pictures of the inside just to document how freaking disgusting things are. We had to wear masks because of the risk of toxoplasmosis from the cat feces and hantavirus from the mouse droppings. Ick.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-17 03:44 pm (UTC)My granny had perserves that were ancient. She never threw anything out.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-17 05:14 pm (UTC)Glad you did so much good work with Dad's house.
Sad you weren't here last night. It was quite humorous. We'll chat.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-17 05:47 pm (UTC)It takes a while to get used to but I don't have email so it's the only way to go.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-18 01:47 am (UTC)Anyway, if you google both "Verizon"" and "pic place" (or just "verizon + pic place") it should be the first link. It's called Pic Place.
Anyway, you just havve to register - it's free but takes a little while. Make a password and all that jazz -- then on your phone when you go to get your pics there's a option to upload to pic place - choose that and the next time you log onto the site your pics should be there!
you can only have so many pics on the site at a time - so I just download them onto my computer after I've uploaded them. :)