Tuesday, January 3
Jan. 4th, 2023 01:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gottawonderToday I am grateful for:
Decent weather with sunshine. The night sky has been lovely in the past few nights. Clear stars and light from a partial moon.
Having the resources to pay the vet for the visit out to look at our goat. We just got the bill.
Being able to help Trainwreck, even in a very small way. After some deliberation, we chose to buy her a set of tires. She was driving back and forth to town on tires that were losing air, and at one point she got stranded with a flat and a stranger was able to bring a portable compressor to fill her tire.
She lives in the middle of nowhere, and the highway to her place is deserted most of the time. She wouldn't be willing to call a tow truck. There is a very real chance of freezing to death on the side of the road.
One part of me didn't want to help her, because she JUST SHOULDN'T BE LIVING THERE ANYMORE. Helping her in any way is almost enabling her to keep living in that stupid ghost town with all of her hoard.
Yet, for her, rock bottom might actually just mean dying out there.
I spoke with her today, and the conversation just served to highlight HOW MANY things are not really working or safe out there. She has a truck that also has shitty tires that don't hold air. She let the air compressor sit outside and it is too cold to pump air. It is too heavy for her to haul back and forth from the garage, so it has frozen up.
The snow has built up in her yard because I guess there must be something wrong with the tractor that she owns that has a blade for clearing snow, and at one point she owned a snow blower. The snow in her yard means she can't get her vehicles out easily (or at all?).
Now, if she weren't a HOARDER, she could actually park the truck inside the GIANT GARAGE that she owns, and be able to fill the tires inside the heated garage. As a hoarder though, she can't actually get a single vehicle inside what was once a professional mechanic's building, and it could probably easily hold three or four vehicles.
There is just a long, long list of things that need fixing, and with them broken a job is not getting done. When a job isn't getting done, like snow removal, other jobs can't be done, like hauling away garbage or hauling water in a tank for her house.
She is literally counting down the days for Spring, saying that "then she will be able to do something about her living condition".
She literally said that last spring, and by fall, her plan was to keep all of her hoard but "live" in a suite at our local lodge (which is more like apartments, since there ARE no cheap, rent-controlled apartments in that small town). Well, she neither got rid of her stuff last summer or sold her place like she said she was doing, nor did she spend the winter in an apartment in town.
So, that is what I have to tell myself: she chooses to be there. She has been offered help to get an apartment, help to clear her stuff, and was asked to go live with one of her sons. She said no to all of it.
I have to tell myself that on some level, she must WANT to suffer like this, and until something horrible happens to her, she won't be ready to leave or do something about her hoarding. I fear for her, but if she won't fear for herself, I can't force her to do anything.
Moving on.
I went to see River, and that was nice. R was there, working with her horses as well, so it was nice to chat with her.
River did well, but I want to start "cleaning things up". To get a faster, more correct response to cues. Not a "well, that's kind of right" response.
Once again, his responses to the cues I gave him to complete the rope gate were...puzzling at best. The gate requires him to halt beside it so I can lift the loop off of one post, then to turn and walk through the opening, then to back up so I can replace the loop on the post. He is absolutely capable of those movements, but he chooses to walk through the halt request, to continue walking away from the gate instead of walking through it and halting, and to do a weird sideways thing instead of back up.
I have been giving him lots of rewards for doing just part of the movement (big reward for halting, big reward for walking through correctly, etc.). Still he ends up giving up on listening to me, and wants to just leave and do something else.
Sigh.
I came home, had supper, and napped for a while.
I learned that there are about seven years of Shakespeare's life that have no record of what he was doing with his life before he became a playwright.
"'The Lost Years' refers to the period of Shakespeare's life between the baptism of his twins, Hamnet and Judith in 1585 and his apparent arrival on the London theatre scene in 1592. We do not know when or why William Shakespeare left Stratford-upon-Avon for London, or what he was doing before becoming a professional actor and dramatist in the capital. There are various traditions and stories about the so-called ‘lost years’. There is no documentary evidence of his life during this period of time. "
https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/shakespedia/william-shakespeare/shakespeares-lost-years/
Decent weather with sunshine. The night sky has been lovely in the past few nights. Clear stars and light from a partial moon.
Having the resources to pay the vet for the visit out to look at our goat. We just got the bill.
Being able to help Trainwreck, even in a very small way. After some deliberation, we chose to buy her a set of tires. She was driving back and forth to town on tires that were losing air, and at one point she got stranded with a flat and a stranger was able to bring a portable compressor to fill her tire.
She lives in the middle of nowhere, and the highway to her place is deserted most of the time. She wouldn't be willing to call a tow truck. There is a very real chance of freezing to death on the side of the road.
One part of me didn't want to help her, because she JUST SHOULDN'T BE LIVING THERE ANYMORE. Helping her in any way is almost enabling her to keep living in that stupid ghost town with all of her hoard.
Yet, for her, rock bottom might actually just mean dying out there.
I spoke with her today, and the conversation just served to highlight HOW MANY things are not really working or safe out there. She has a truck that also has shitty tires that don't hold air. She let the air compressor sit outside and it is too cold to pump air. It is too heavy for her to haul back and forth from the garage, so it has frozen up.
The snow has built up in her yard because I guess there must be something wrong with the tractor that she owns that has a blade for clearing snow, and at one point she owned a snow blower. The snow in her yard means she can't get her vehicles out easily (or at all?).
Now, if she weren't a HOARDER, she could actually park the truck inside the GIANT GARAGE that she owns, and be able to fill the tires inside the heated garage. As a hoarder though, she can't actually get a single vehicle inside what was once a professional mechanic's building, and it could probably easily hold three or four vehicles.
There is just a long, long list of things that need fixing, and with them broken a job is not getting done. When a job isn't getting done, like snow removal, other jobs can't be done, like hauling away garbage or hauling water in a tank for her house.
She is literally counting down the days for Spring, saying that "then she will be able to do something about her living condition".
She literally said that last spring, and by fall, her plan was to keep all of her hoard but "live" in a suite at our local lodge (which is more like apartments, since there ARE no cheap, rent-controlled apartments in that small town). Well, she neither got rid of her stuff last summer or sold her place like she said she was doing, nor did she spend the winter in an apartment in town.
So, that is what I have to tell myself: she chooses to be there. She has been offered help to get an apartment, help to clear her stuff, and was asked to go live with one of her sons. She said no to all of it.
I have to tell myself that on some level, she must WANT to suffer like this, and until something horrible happens to her, she won't be ready to leave or do something about her hoarding. I fear for her, but if she won't fear for herself, I can't force her to do anything.
Moving on.
I went to see River, and that was nice. R was there, working with her horses as well, so it was nice to chat with her.
River did well, but I want to start "cleaning things up". To get a faster, more correct response to cues. Not a "well, that's kind of right" response.
Once again, his responses to the cues I gave him to complete the rope gate were...puzzling at best. The gate requires him to halt beside it so I can lift the loop off of one post, then to turn and walk through the opening, then to back up so I can replace the loop on the post. He is absolutely capable of those movements, but he chooses to walk through the halt request, to continue walking away from the gate instead of walking through it and halting, and to do a weird sideways thing instead of back up.
I have been giving him lots of rewards for doing just part of the movement (big reward for halting, big reward for walking through correctly, etc.). Still he ends up giving up on listening to me, and wants to just leave and do something else.
Sigh.
I came home, had supper, and napped for a while.
I learned that there are about seven years of Shakespeare's life that have no record of what he was doing with his life before he became a playwright.
"'The Lost Years' refers to the period of Shakespeare's life between the baptism of his twins, Hamnet and Judith in 1585 and his apparent arrival on the London theatre scene in 1592. We do not know when or why William Shakespeare left Stratford-upon-Avon for London, or what he was doing before becoming a professional actor and dramatist in the capital. There are various traditions and stories about the so-called ‘lost years’. There is no documentary evidence of his life during this period of time. "
https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/shakespedia/william-shakespeare/shakespeares-lost-years/
