I thought about cleaning up getting the trash together doing the dishes but I didn't
I can't really tell you what I did I don't really know I watched some videos
Mostly I think I just kind of zoned out
I've had weird songs stuck in my head all day
I can't remember any of them except
Eddie vedder singing better man and not really the whole song just bits and pieces of it
But I know that's a song about an abused woman in a relationship but I don't think that's what it was about in my head today The first place sometimes there are songs that when I first listened to them I didn't necessarily pale out of attention to the lyrics
I just heard a little bit of the lyric and music
But also I could have heard it somewhere just picked it up and it got stuck in my head or it could be something to do with the time the song came out I don't know I don't know why it was stuck in my head so persistently
Tuesday the movers are coming Tuesday
I yelled at my mother the other day
I can't quite remember which day it was
I was sorting through a bunch of stuff because I'm trying to clear off the furniture that gets moved and there was the cedar chest and it was just covered with stuff and some of what it was covered with was Houston business journal newspapers
And I'm like can I just throw these away
She's like no
I tell you when she was in the hospital this was a lot easier the other day she actually dug through my trash bag because she thought I was throwing away things that she didn't want thrown away
She dug out this plastic tray and she's like no this goes to Texas art asylum
And it's like oh come on can't we just throw it away it's a plastic tray
It's a good thing she didn't dump out the trash can and look at all the pieces of things in it cuz I'm pretty sure there was other stuff in there she wouldn't have wanted me to throw away
anyway all Houston business journals must be kept I cannot imagine that we are going to move all the Houston business journals she wants to go through everything
I've been packing boxes and moving things around and she's been sitting in a chair going to papers
And okay whatever but it's getting a little old
But back to what I was saying so I'm taking the Houston business journals and I'm putting them in a tote not a tote bag like a tote crate thing and I'm not sorting them by date or anything silly like that I'm just taking them and putting them into stacks
Just Houston business journals that's it
So I get the thing cleared off and the tote of Houston business journals I was going to take it and put it someplace unobtrusive or maybe she'd forget about it and I could throw away later but I didn't get that far
So then the next day I come and the tote of Houston business journals has all these like plastic folders she's got these plastic folders that have the two little plastic buttons with the string that you kind of wind around right kind of like interoffice envelopes only orientated horizontally instead of vertically and plastic
So she likes to use those for her various articles and stuff just stuff so she looks through magazines and she pulls out the reason why I mean
I should preface this by saying I used to do that too I would buy magazines or newspapers or whatever because they were particular articles in them that I wanted to read and then I didn't read them and then I would say okay well I'll just tear out the articles that I bought the magazines for and I can throw the magazines away
And then you know those articles would get put into boxes and they got moved from place to place and eventually I would say well you know I haven't read this it's not in a place where I'm ever going to like sit down and you know pull it off the shelf and read it cuz it's in a box I've had it for x amount of time I'm never going to read it so I'm just going to throw it away
And I kind of came to that realization on my own and I was telling her about it I was like you know look she just saw those things away if you bought the magazine and you didn't read it when you bought the magazine the chances that you are going to go and find it and read it later are so vanishingly small that it's just not worth it just throw it away
And I told her about how I had done that and she's like and how many times did you cry because you do it away and I'm like never
But not only is she not throwing away these collections of articles and I should feel like I should be putting articles in quotes because they're theoretically articles but she's just tearing them out and jamming them into these plastic things and it's not like they're sorted by type of thing it's not like these are the articles about the stock market and these are the articles about how to paint cranes you know it's just an assortment of all kind of different things all mixed together so in the event that she wanted to find something they would be no way to do it no way
Okay so I have sorted there's this tote it has Houston business journals in it they're neatly stacked it looks pretty it should be thrown away or recycled but it's organized I come back in like the next day and she has been going through things and tearing out articles and putting them in these folder things and she has taken like a half a boxes worth of them and put them on top of the Houston business journals
And I saw that and I like exploded NOoooooooo
I'm like I took the time to go through all these papers and random crap and sort it and make it organized and now you have thrown things in with it so now it is another stack of crap that's not organized I'm like no no no no this is not okay never do this again
I organized it why did I do that if you were just going to f*** it up again
But she really seems as though she does not understand why that would upset me
And there's this bookcase I've been emptying because we're going to use it by the entry right so this bookcase she says you know if there's any bookcase any part of the house that I could say just pack up I don't need to go through it it's that one cuz that's all my art business stuff so I want all of that
And this bookshelf it's like three fairly narrow bookshelf things connected it's from a Kia I don't know the name of the style of a Kia but it's wood it's not that attractive but the proportions of the narrower ones are a little nicer than all the other shelves that she has that are wider
So this is three narrow bookshelf things connected to each other and the three of them together are approximately 4 ft
And it's tall he's taller than me I don't know exactly how tall it is it's not as tall as the ceiling I'd say probably it's 6 and 1/2 7 ft tall somewhere in that neighborhood
And what she had in there was like binders and these plastic folder things and papers and books and just an assortment of things that I guess they're more or less all art business but I couldn't particularly see any organization to it and I kind of you know whereas with most of the things I'm going through a truly random assortment of crap and trying to organize it and sort it with this I was not taking time to organize it sorted I was kind of trying to put things from shelves together but I was also trying to put things like you know binders together and you know organized things how they fit into boxes
That bookshelf took 14 banker boxes to contain it
So we were boxing up her books well I say we what I wanted to do I cleared off the table what I wanted to do because she started with this thing where she would cherry pick the books she would like flit around and gather some books and hand them to me and flit around and gather some other books and hand them to me and I was trying to get the bookcase emptied and we couldn't just empty the books from that bookcase into boxes it had to be some books from here and some books from there and some books from the other room ostensibly because she was wanting to organize them
She does not give a f*** about organizing anything anywhere ever but you know I don't want to discourage her from organizing and she knows that because she knows I want to organize things by like thing so again she's using the information that she has about me against me and I really don't understand what her I mean it seemed like she was just trying to empty the bookshelf as slowly as possible
And so but this bookshelf it's got like a section of books that has a little post-it note stuck on the shelf that says like creativity
And I will post it notes stuck on another shelf that says journaling you know so it's theoretically already organized and I'm like okay but isn't that whole section already books on creativity can't we just take them off the shelf and put them in a box
Because she was wanting me to work in that front room that I was working in that had all the art supplies and whatnot in them because in her mind that is the room of stuff that has to be reduced and is she really thinks that this you know 24/2600 ft² full I mean full of stuff she really thinks that that would fit into a 10x10 space because the front room is like roughly 10x20 and it is at least half stuff that could be gotten rid of and it's like okay but that's not all the stuff you have all these other rooms that are full full full full full of stuff
So I was working in there you know and I was stolen things away and I was not unhappy doing that but then you know it was like okay but you know I have to start clearing off the things that are going to move
And I can't remember when we started doing that but Jesus f****** Christ I feel like it has taken a month to get this bookcase into doubt and it still is not emptied out I mean I emptied out that one in the bedroom with the stuff that I just took off the shelves and put in boxes I mean that even though it was a lot of boxes it didn't take that long oh
Sorry I kind of went off on a tangent The the thing that I was saying basically or starting to say was that you know we boxed up a lot of her books it's not all of her books there are still more books but we boxed up a lot of her books and it was like 25 boxes of books which you know that's why I decided we really needed this other bookcase but so it was like weeks and it's 25 boxes of books
And then this one bookcase full of papers and crap is 14 boxes in you know a short amount of time
And that's going to go into what I was calling the project room because I was really hoping that it would become a room that she could do projects in instead of just being a room full of crap that was what I was trying to advocate for and she started calling it the project room and pretending like she's going to do projects in it but she absolutely is planning to completely fill it I guarantee you floor to ceiling with crap
And whatever but this art business stuff she has no plan to organize that maybe it'll get put into another bookshelf in the project room maybe it'll just sit in boxes on the floor in the project room I think that's a lot more likely
But I took all the books off the three tall white bookcases and the three short white bookcases and I was going through the stuff on the short white bookcases and trying to organize it but then I had left and when I came back she had filled it with stuff again and I'm like I had that almost empty
But she had a bunch of papers that she had to go through and shred things and whatever and I just keep saying okay but you know the movers are coming that stuff has to be cleared off and she's doing other things and you know at first I was thinking well the movers are coming on Tuesday so if they're still stuff on there on Monday I'll just go put it all in boxes but then I was like you know
No
So I'm like you know the movers if they come in and their stuff on the furniture they need to move they'll move it off the furniture and they might box it up or they might just put it aside depending upon how their instructed to deal with it but you know it's not going to be boxed up the way you want it to be boxed up it's not going to end up in a form that is going to be easy for you to find anything so you know maybe you want to do that I'm not trying to give you a hard time I'm not trying to tell you what to do but you know I don't think you really want the movers doing that
And she's like oh yeah plus they'll charge me $125 an hour so you know now she's kind of working on it but I don't know
And we went and got something to eat kind of in the middle of the day and then came back and worked some more well I worked some more I'm not really sure what she was doing
But when we went to eat lunch dinner whatever at like 3:00
I'm like look I'm trying to help you go through your stuff and I'm trying to help you move into this apartment and have it be open and airy and beautiful like your dream
I'm trying to make your dream come true
But if what you're going to do is just going to move everything to that apartment and fill it all with junk so that it becomes you know this expensive luxury apartment that's just full of junk I didn't sign up for that
And I'm not going to be wanting to come visit that cuz I just I will not be able to handle it and I'm not trying to be mean I'm just trying to tell you how it is
And she's like but I'm paying $500 a month to rent this house and you know I don't want that to go on forever and blah blah blah
And I'm like right and it can't go on forever because you know beginning of August they want the house I'm like and if we took it and moved it into a storage if we took it and moved it into two storages it would be cheaper than the house
And she's like but the house is air conditioned and if we take it to those storages it's going to be hot and it'll be harder to go through it in the heat and I'm like like I have told you several times before the idea was not to be standing in the storage trying to go through it The idea was we put it all in the storage and then you're in the nice apartment which is not full of crap and then you know we bring over a few boxes at a time and go through them in a calm and manageable way instead of it being just one big overwhelming mess because if you're in a clean nice place and you have to go through like two or three or four boxes well that's not an overwhelming task and then you just do that until you've gone through all the boxes but just a few at a time
It doesn't make any sense to make it sound like you'd have to stand in the storage to go through the stuff
So again it's like I'm explaining things very clearly and succinctly and where there cannot be any mistake and yet she's acting like I'm saying something completely different
And the stuff that she's been going through for like I don't know 2 weeks or something I don't know where this stuff came from but nothing seems less full there's just no area where it looks like things have come from now she had like a bunch of grocery store paper bags that had papers in them that she took to recycling but you know none of those bags were very full and I have no idea how much stuff that represents but I just don't know where it came from and now she's got four boxes that she needs me to write on
Now I understand she can't lift things and walk around a lot and whatever because she's old but why could she not write on boxes herself I don't understand
But she wants me to label them tax 1, tax 2, tax 3, tax 4
And I'm like I understand why are we labeling them that way why don't we label them with the years of taxes that they have in them
Well tax one actually contains tax material but tax two three and four have some other things in them that might be peripherally related to tax or perhaps are not related to tax at all
I think that is just representative of like where they were found or something along those lines because I think they were in a file cabinet or something
Anyway I dictated all this so if there's something that doesn't make sense I'm sorry I just couldn't handle typing it
I just said to myself man I just don't have anything to say I just don't want to talk
But I have the sense that you want me to tell you all about this stuff and it's just it's just not worth talking about I don't like I don't
I don't feel like this is an enjoyable conversation and I guess if you were here I would tell you about it but not because I wanted to tell you about it but because I would just be like do you know what that b**** did blah blah blah you know and I can't imagine that you would enjoy that kind of conversation so I can't understand why you would want me to write about it
And maybe I'm wrong maybe you don't want me to write about it maybe you want me to be writing something else
I don't have something else All I have is my sense
The I have this goal now to get her moved into this m************ luxury apartment and have this beautiful open airy whatever
And I really part of me thinks I can accomplish this goal
And the other part of me knows that she is just going to turn it into a s*** hole
I mean when Bob had his surgeries and whatever and then they wanted to send him home and she's like you can't send him home because he can't walk on his own and I can't support his weight so he needs to go to nursing home recuperation whatever it's called and then she had his sister and her niece and anybody else she could rope in helping her to clean out the house because she didn't want if a social worker or somebody came in she didn't want for them to both be sent to nursing homes as being you know unable to care for themselves crazy old people and so actually I helped too a little bit not very much actually what I did was probably not terribly helpful but Bob had been feeding the cat he would take the food the wet food and he would put it on a paper plate and then since he couldn't bend over this is before he had his surgery and stuff this was for years he had a bad back so he would take the plate and he would drop it from I don't know like 3 ft or something onto the floor and it would hit the floor and it would splatter up on the front of the chest of drawers that he was feeding the cat in front of now why was he feeding the cat in front of his chest of drawers in his bedroom instead of in some cleanable area I don't know but there was years worth of caked on revolting cat food on the front of the dresser and so I spent a day scrubbing that off other people were helping them or helping her you know get the clutter cleared but when I walked in that was the thing that said to me crazy old people so that was what I did and whatever
But during that time I mean I'm not going to say the house look nice or quite like some place a normal person would live but they got a lot of the floor cleared off You could see a lot of the floor not just little pathways because of course that's a telltale sign right and it isn't safe to live that way
So the last time I had been in the house you know it was in a much less hordery looking state
And in the ensuing years she said all this stuff about how she's going through stuff and getting rid of stuff and so I thought well you know I don't really believe that but maybe if that's true then it doesn't look any worse than it did last time I saw it but then of course you know it was all full
And you know there was an area that I had cleared out I had picked up trash off the floor and you know it's what a lot of this stuff is it's like boxes of stuff that she ordered that just sit on the floor and you know trash and whatnot so I had gone through and picked up some trash and thrown it away and cleared some space well she took you know a tote and then she took the box that the boxes shipped in so you know it's like I don't know 3 ft² square 3 ft by 4 ft it's a big flat box flat-ish box she put that on the tote and then she covered that with stuff that she was going through but she didn't like finished going through it she just spread stuff all over it and then just left it there
So then I'm cleaning the area again and you know I told her
Because she'd been talking about to the person who was showing us the apartment she'd been calling me her caregiver
And I'm like look I'm not signing up to be your nurse I'm not signing up to be your maid I'm you know willing to come by and check on you and stuff but you know and if the house is you know nice and all then I will be happy to stay and visit but you know I just want to make it clear I'm not signing up to be your slave
And she had been telling this woman at the this is a while ago now because it was when we were looking at the apartment she was telling this woman that I threw away her I thought she was saying olives but I guess she was saying almonds right You know like how I had thrown away her stuff and she's had maids okay
And it starts off like oh they're great and they're helping her and whatever but then before too long they become those little b****** who threw away her stuff and you know did XYZ and you know she demonizes people and so I was telling her
That that was not cool to be telling that person how I had thrown away her stuff and whatever you know that I wasn't signing up to be her nurse or her maid or her slave and I for sure was not signing up to be one of those little b****** so she just needed to get it through her head right then that that was not cool and that if I had thrown away her almonds then it was because they were expired or they had filth on the outside of the container or they smelled rancid or there was some reason why I threw them away because I'm not just looking to throw away her food but that if that was the way it was going to be I was not going to continue
And she's like oh I never said that blah blah blah
But then we had another little episode a couple of weeks ago where this woman who helps her Marion well I mean she is like Shirley's advocate or whatever I don't know but she helps my mom too
Somehow there was a mix-up and we were both there and my mother can't really handle being around two different people because she can't keep the reality straight right so she went outside with Marian and then Mary and came back in and said to me your mother told me to tell you that she's okay with getting a storage for just a little while that she's very overwhelmed and it's just very difficult for her that you wanted her to get rid of all her precious stuff
And I'm like what are you talking about
And she said well she just told me to come in here and say that to you and I'm like why are you coming and telling me messages from her I don't understand
And then my
