Friday, April 15
Apr. 15th, 2023 10:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gottawonderToday I am grateful for:
Beautiful warm weather.
I didn't have to go anywhere today, so I was able to do some things at home.
I started pulling up old weeds and grass out of one part of the garden, a path between two trellises used for peas and beans. I usually lay down mulch in there.
Since I cleaned the bedding out of the garage from the goat's winter pen, I piled it over by the area where I am going to use it.
I did clean out the winter goat pen, and took down the panels and stacked them in a shed beside the garage.
I ended up doing some organizing in the garage after I took down the goat pen. My husband has a lot of bits of wood meant to be burned in the wood stove out there, but he's hardly ever in the garage all winter, so it's just a big heap in that corner. I got a box and put most of them in there, and tossed a bunch of really little bits, and I took a bunch of cardboard out that I guess he meant to burn. I put it with the recycling.
I did a bunch of extra sweeping and cleaning and it all looks pretty nice now.
I called Trainwreck and she spent a fair bit of time telling me how sick she's been. She gets lung infections really easily, and just about every time they require antibiotics to clear it up.
She did quit smoking, and she actually has a goal that I hadn't heard before. Apparently if she can stay cigarette-free for a year she is eligible for some kind of additional health insurance at a much better price monthly that would help cover some of her costs. I have no idea what this about. Still, if it actually helps her, then good for her.
I tried to be very earnest with her about her situation, since summer is really the only time she would be able to do anything about her stuff, though she could actually at any time just walk away from it and go somewhere safer.
Since she has been ill most of the winter, and tired most of the time, and mentioned that she really hasn't even felt good enough to wash her dishes for the past two months, I asked her how realistic is it for her to expect to be able to clear out her house and be ready to move by this Fall?
I'm trying to see if she would accept help, as I know we could likely get five or six people with trucks ready to just throw it all out if she were READY to do this.
She says she's not ready to do that, and she just "wants to burn the whole place down". So I said "You're okay with burning it all down, but not okay with just letting people take what they want and throw the rest out?".
She's just got this useless "all or nothing" mindset. Burning it all down is still not taking responsibility for the situation and her role in creating it. Helping to actually remove it would help her process the enormity of her hoard, and see that collecting is a responsibility that she can't dodge.
Burning her stuff is just like how she just took all her hoarded horses to the auction and shut off the part of her that was responsible for having them in the first place and not being a responsible owner.
It's what she always does. "I don't know what to do with it all, just burn it or kill it or take it away so I don't have to deal with it anymore".
This is EXACTLY like those hoarding shows where the hoarder just shuts down rather than actually see what is around them that they created.
What I think will finally end up happening, is that she will end up in the hospital sick enough that they will send someone to her house to see if it is a safe place for her to return to, and they won't let her go back.
Or she'll just die out there and no one will know for a week or so.
Well, moving on.
I feel good about cleaning out my husband's shop. It's very gracious of him to allow me to have the goats in there when it is super cold. I appreciate it very much.
Roxy had a great day of being outside with me. I allowed her to be free to roam the yard as long as she stayed fairly close. I washed her leg off afterwards, and it looks okay. One spot at the top where it still needs to heal does look like there's a tiny gap in the incision site.
I learned that there are several different species of birds that are toxic to touch or eat. They don't so much produce the toxins themselves, but sequester them from their food sources (toxic plants and insects).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_bird
Beautiful warm weather.
I didn't have to go anywhere today, so I was able to do some things at home.
I started pulling up old weeds and grass out of one part of the garden, a path between two trellises used for peas and beans. I usually lay down mulch in there.
Since I cleaned the bedding out of the garage from the goat's winter pen, I piled it over by the area where I am going to use it.
I did clean out the winter goat pen, and took down the panels and stacked them in a shed beside the garage.
I ended up doing some organizing in the garage after I took down the goat pen. My husband has a lot of bits of wood meant to be burned in the wood stove out there, but he's hardly ever in the garage all winter, so it's just a big heap in that corner. I got a box and put most of them in there, and tossed a bunch of really little bits, and I took a bunch of cardboard out that I guess he meant to burn. I put it with the recycling.
I did a bunch of extra sweeping and cleaning and it all looks pretty nice now.
I called Trainwreck and she spent a fair bit of time telling me how sick she's been. She gets lung infections really easily, and just about every time they require antibiotics to clear it up.
She did quit smoking, and she actually has a goal that I hadn't heard before. Apparently if she can stay cigarette-free for a year she is eligible for some kind of additional health insurance at a much better price monthly that would help cover some of her costs. I have no idea what this about. Still, if it actually helps her, then good for her.
I tried to be very earnest with her about her situation, since summer is really the only time she would be able to do anything about her stuff, though she could actually at any time just walk away from it and go somewhere safer.
Since she has been ill most of the winter, and tired most of the time, and mentioned that she really hasn't even felt good enough to wash her dishes for the past two months, I asked her how realistic is it for her to expect to be able to clear out her house and be ready to move by this Fall?
I'm trying to see if she would accept help, as I know we could likely get five or six people with trucks ready to just throw it all out if she were READY to do this.
She says she's not ready to do that, and she just "wants to burn the whole place down". So I said "You're okay with burning it all down, but not okay with just letting people take what they want and throw the rest out?".
She's just got this useless "all or nothing" mindset. Burning it all down is still not taking responsibility for the situation and her role in creating it. Helping to actually remove it would help her process the enormity of her hoard, and see that collecting is a responsibility that she can't dodge.
Burning her stuff is just like how she just took all her hoarded horses to the auction and shut off the part of her that was responsible for having them in the first place and not being a responsible owner.
It's what she always does. "I don't know what to do with it all, just burn it or kill it or take it away so I don't have to deal with it anymore".
This is EXACTLY like those hoarding shows where the hoarder just shuts down rather than actually see what is around them that they created.
What I think will finally end up happening, is that she will end up in the hospital sick enough that they will send someone to her house to see if it is a safe place for her to return to, and they won't let her go back.
Or she'll just die out there and no one will know for a week or so.
Well, moving on.
I feel good about cleaning out my husband's shop. It's very gracious of him to allow me to have the goats in there when it is super cold. I appreciate it very much.
Roxy had a great day of being outside with me. I allowed her to be free to roam the yard as long as she stayed fairly close. I washed her leg off afterwards, and it looks okay. One spot at the top where it still needs to heal does look like there's a tiny gap in the incision site.
I learned that there are several different species of birds that are toxic to touch or eat. They don't so much produce the toxins themselves, but sequester them from their food sources (toxic plants and insects).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_bird
no subject
Date: 2023-04-16 05:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-04-16 07:04 am (UTC)She will literally say "none of it even means anything to me, I would be just as happy if it all burned down".
She says that aside from things like family pictures, she doesn't care about it. Of course, I think she's not being honest with herself.
Quite a lot of it is not junk (though it has become junk by being stored for so long), but it's stuff she doesn't have any use for.
It's good things mixed with junk. Bags of moldy old clothes that might be sitting next to some lamps that are okay (and maybe some that don't work anymore but are pretty, and COULD be used if you were an electrician and were willing to re-wire them), piles of books that are maybe ruined from mice, but also nice fabric that she had plans for, and nice curtains in a bag if they didn't get wet, it's junk and stuff that someone might fix, and some actual junk.
Bags and bags of bedding, likely half of it doesn't fit any bed she has. Baby clothes. Old magazines and books. Lots of oddities and collectibles, dishes, cheap glass vases, plant pots and furniture that needs repair.
She repeatedly says she wants to just burn it, and I think that's a way of not really absorbing the truth of her situation. She doesn't want to really understand how much crap she has, or try to remove it responsibly, she just doesn't want to deal with it anymore.
That's how she deals with EVERYTHING in her life, if it's too hard then she's just done with it. Relationships. Animals. Doing her taxes (just didn't bother filing for 20 years until she had to do them to get disability support, so she foisted a lot of that onto my Sister S who runs a tax return business). Even her kids she really didn't raise. She HAD kids, but she really didn't PARENT them.
Except for if I suggest just taking what she wants to keep into the house, and letting people come to the garage and take what they want, she won't do it. She also won't let anyone throw it away. Burning is fine, though.
It's like she can't accept anything less than "death" for this stuff. It's the only solution!
She has done that before, just had giant bonfires, but only after taking most of it on to the next place.
I think it mirrors her internal life. She would rather just die than try to look at herself and her issues, and how it's affected other people.