Giant Dwarf vs Packratitis

In 2009, I started this blog at the urging of my friend C., who, upon learning that I took a week-long staycation to purge my apartment of superfluous "stuff," encouraged me to write about the experience.  Five years later, here's what I have to show for it:  sporadic blog entries and the continuing saga of apartment purging.  Just like a hoarder's passion, it never ends.

It's been two years since I moved in with the Spazz and we are chock full of THINGS despite the fact that we have a three-bedroom apartment.  Yes, three bedrooms.  It's shocking when I think about it too.  So let me introduce my mother:

My mother is a well-known hoarder.  It spills out a bit in guest areas, but, in general, the hoarding is confined to rooms where a run-of-the-mill dinner guest can't see the disease.  That means that all three of our childhood bedrooms are crammed with stuff, including things we don't want to get rid of and know are safe on the mothership.  There are two more bedrooms, by the way.  They are also storage areas, and one of those bedrooms my parents actually sleep in.

So last June my parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary (don't worry, this is germane to the story).  My parents planned a grand trip to Berlin and Amsterdam and off they went.  A few days after their departure, I get a call from the Golden Child (our middle brother and the one my parents deemed to be the most responsible....and I'm good with that).

"Hey, you are not going to believe this," says GC.

"What?"

"You know how Mom and Dad left for Europe on Friday?"

"Yes."  Okay, I'm getting bit nervous because I can't tell from my brother's voice if something really bad happened.

"I got a call from mom's friend on Sunday.  She went to check on the cat (aka The Beast) and she walked in to ankle deep water."

"Holy shit.  What happened?"

"Apparently the reservoir on the toilet in the hall bathroom has a crack and the water kept slowly draining for a day and a half.  The reservoir self-fills, so the water kept filling and leaking."

Golden Child proceeds to explain to me how he contacted the insurance company and the disaster is no-fault so they'll pay for all the damage (famous last words in regards to an insurance company).  Then he says:

"THIS IS THE BEST NEWS EVER!"

And he was right.  Because almost half of the house was flooded, many items were destroyed.  Items my parents never needed and actually probably didn't know they had.  A few weeks later, the Spazz and I and the Golden Child and his very devoted girlfriend convened at my parents house to clean up what my mother considers "our stuff."

And there was a lot.  We filled a small dumpster and made countless trips to Goodwill.  And we barely made a dent.

So the Spazz and I drove home with two small shopping bags of keepers that I just couldn't part with and my beloved woven chair from my parents' living room that I've coveted for 40 years (and that's a whole other post.)  On the way, we started talking about our own hoarding issues.  Of our three bedrooms, ours is relatively junk-free and we use a second room as a guest bedroom and tend to have that one under control (for the most part).  But the third room, aka "the office"......well, that's a disaster area.  And we vowed to clean it up.  Two months ago.

Two weeks ago we started.  The room now looks worse than when we started.  But I have found some treasures so far.....so stay tuned for the next post.  I'll be enumerating the ridiculous crap I've kept for so many years.  It's truly staggering.

Giant Dwarf vs. The World-Wide Interweb

Yes, I have been off the blogger grid.  Way off.  For way too long.  Which probably upset no one.  But I'm back, which may or may not be good news to all 6 of my sometime fans, who have all probably already given up on me.  But the Spazz challenged me tonight:  after failing to teach me one of his latest Kenpo moves, the Spazz said I'm not doing anything new and admonished me for reading too much and not writing enough.  So I'm back.

Coming back was not easy.  Imagine my surprise when I tried to sign into my blogspot account and Google showed up.  WTF?  Apparently, the one email list I am not on is the one that would have advised me of this when it happened, and I have no idea when that was.  In any case, I had to figure out how to get on with my non-Google account which Google apparently accepts as it's own anyway. If you know what I'm talking about, you are ahead of me.  It's all binary to me.

So A LOT has been happening while I have not been blogging, but most of what I've been doing is falling down the internet rabbit hole on a daily basis.  It was bad enough before I got a smart phone a couple of years ago, but now it is decidedly worse.  I can ostensibly be on the internet 24 hours a day and it doesn't cost me a thing (the Spazz pays that bill).  This is very bad.

I work ten hours a day and when I come home it takes me at least an hour, if not more, to just get through the TON of junk mail in my email account.  Then I go to Facebook and it's over.  I get sucked in by every single post until it's so late I've now squandered valuable sleep hours.  Then, when I finally get off the computer, I get ready for bed, get into bed, and play Words With Friends and look for an interesting Bitstrip to post.  Maybe I'll look at the yoga schedule if I'm off the next day.  Maybe I'll check my email and Facebook again, because it's been ten minutes and there might be something important happening (there never is).

Finally, I get the fuck off the interweb, turn down the lights, and open my Kindle.  And I read.  I read so slow it can take me a month to get through a novel.  By the time I start reading, I'm already half asleep and doze off with the Kindle still glowing in my face.

And that's why I haven't been writing. 

But that's all going to change.  It has to.  Because, even though this blog is part of the Web of Evil, it's still something creative and I need to do this.  I really do.  So any encouragement, feedback, or just plain editing is welcome.

Now, if I can only figure out how to lose weight while I'm doing this.