Friday, September 27

[gottawonder]

Today I am grateful for:

That I listened to my gut. For the last couple of days, Roxy has been a little off. Nothing dramatic, but off. She threw up once, which isn't necessarily a big deal for a dog, but her manner has been different. She's seemed uncomfortable.

Though of course it was late in the day by the time I made the decision to go to the vet, I did go.

It's funny, more than a few times now I've taken animals in and the vets there have kind of shrugged and said "their vitals seem okay...?" but when I said we should do blood work, they find something fairly serious.

The one time it was the lump on Roxy's leg that I said we needed to test when they thought it was "just a lump" and it turned out to be cancer, and with Fatty when he was a bit off, and he had pancreatitis (and lived a few more years on medication).

So, now it seems Roxy has pancreatitis. It's not clear to me if this is a spike in the inflammation that could pass, or if it's going to be a chronic condition.

What's weird to me, is that right away they wanted Roxy on a low fat dog food, but they did not want Fatty on a low fat cat food. I wonder why not.

So, though Roxy seems to be eating fine, drinking fine, and pooping fine (she was just a tiny bit less interested in food the last couple of days), she will be closely watched over the weekend, given the medications we got today mostly to settle her stomach, and get her tested again on Monday to see if the levels of pancreatic enzyme are lower in her blood stream.

So that was unsettling.

All of this happened late enough in the day that I did not go to the barn to see River or work with another horse during the woman with health challenges' lesson.

On the way home, there were some signs for a "massive yard sale" on a rural property that I thought I would check out, mostly from curiousity.

Holy crap, this was really something. The stuff looked like it probably hadn't been ruined a week or two ago, probably all brought out of a basement or a garage or something, but it was all just dumped all over the yard and left outside for people to pick through.

Stuff that probably was not garbage, if you felt like taking it home and cleaning it up, but it's not very appealing to buy a stack of frying pans that are just sitting on the ground full of rain.

There were such odd things, like dozens of coffee makers, but who knows if they worked? Just sitting with a pile of other stuff, like a probably not ruined dog bed (if you wanted to wash it) or a pile of dirty plastic kid's toys.

Lots of kitchen stuff, like crock pots (but just tossed in a heap, who knows if it worked?), shoes that actually looked fine but sort of all just sitting on the ground, clothes just piled on a set of shelves but have probably been outside for weeks.

There was likely EASILY fifty truck loads of stuff, just piled everywhere. Like I said, not necessarily garbage, but how do you know? Several camping tents in bags, but how do you know if they have the poles or if they leak? Old office chairs that were definitely garbage, a WATER ROWER that likely cost several hundred dollars but was not assembled, maybe never used, but who knows if it's all there? LOTS of exercise equipment in boxes but often turned over and spilled onto the other stuff in the pile.

There was an enormous stack of carpet remnants, large ones that could have been used for a single room. They looked like they had been new, and then just piled outside and now no one is going to use them. From a contractor, maybe? If they had taken them to a Re-store, someone could have used them. There were likely thirty rolled up carpet sections. Now they're garbage.

All I could see was stuff. I looked up the very long driveway towards the house, and it was stuff all the way on each side. I didn't even bother looking at it all, because I couldn't make any sense of it.

The guy who came out to "show me around" said it was partly his Mom's stuff, but said that as soon as she said she was selling the stuff her husband started bringing stuff and just dumping it on the property, and now it looks like he's just going to have to start taking it to the dump because it's ruined.

Their whole yard looked like a land fill. I was just blown away.

You could take every single thing we own and put it out in our yard and it wouldn't even have been a quarter of what was out there, and you have to consider that they still likely have a house full of the stuff they are keeping.

It all seemed so pointless, you think of what they spent to buy it all over the years, and the energy spent shopping and shopping, and then what, throwing it into the basement or a shed I guess, and then leaving it to rot outside.

If they had been conscientious, they could have taken a lot of it to thrift stores to be used, could have assembled the exercise equipment to see if it worked and sold it, but there was so much stuff, no one could do it in a reasonable time frame. It would have taken YEARS to clear it if you were trying to save things.

Now it's making me see my things again, as things that really aren't precious if I have to keep them in boxes, if they aren't being used. My stuff isn't garbage, so maybe I should just keep on top of getting it to the thrift stores when it no longer useful to me, so that it ISN'T garbage.

Probably a third of that stuff could have been useful to someone if it weren't just heaped outside.

So I came home, let everyone out into their pastures for a while, and when my Sweetie came home we watched the last episode of "1883". Whew, what a grim series.

Comments

[ratunderpaper]

Every time I go to a thrift shop I realise how useless and replaceable most of the old hooey is - old fake wooden bowls like the kind Lois used to use for potato chips, Hoosier glass vases, florist vases, cheap tumblers, bad art, millions of frames, old walking shoes, old trainers and runners, and so many awful knick-knacks.

I still have too many cheap glass mixing bowls that can't be microwaved, and far too many nasty old mugs.

[gottawonder]

Many of my objects just mean something to me because of their association with other times and people, just like the things you kept from Lois that don't have any "value" other than what you assign to it.

I would actually care a lot about an old bowl we used for chips and popcorn. For example, we had a big yellow one as kids, and I don't know where it went, but if I still had it I would be very attached to it in spite of it being very ordinary.

I have a bit of a tough time throwing out things I wore a lot, when they are too worn to wear again. Probably because they were "my shoes" or "my chore coat" for a few years and there got to be an intimacy to them. They do get tossed eventually, though.

What I saw at this "yardsale" didn't look like things kept because they once had sentimental value, it looked like a lot of those things were new but never or rarely used, then stored, and eventually taken to this sale and dumped on the ground. Stuff that aged out without really being worn out. It was just A TON of things like dog beds, kid's clothes, exercise equipment, garden stuff, and crap furniture. I got the feeling that NONE of it meant anything to anyone, so I wondered why they were keeping it in the first place. People generally don't form sentimental attachments to dozens of coffee makers and food processors.

[ratunderpaper]

The more that time passes, the less attachment I have to old or older things that don't have specific meaning.

Today (the 28th) was the day I grew up thinking was Lois's birthday, so it still resonates with me. I wound up using her old POTATO MASHER and a few of her other kitchen utensils to commemorate. There's an old metal spatula with a plastic handle that has deep historic grooves melted into it where it was set to rest against a hot skillet time after time. I decided not to part with it and today was a day of saluting something that was of its time and as such has a place in Ratopian history.

I used the masher to make guacamole.

[gottawonder]

That's the best of all, when you just use those things.

One thing I am starting to see, is that I don't have kids, and NO ONE will have the sentimental feelings I have for all the little things I've kept from my life.

No offspring will cling to our utensils, or my pictures, or my child hood stuffed animals.

So, it makes me sad, but I also know that whenever I'm ready to let something go, no one else will be upset that I got rid of it.

There are a few relics that I have from grand parents I never met, and I have no idea if anyone will want them, or what is the responsible way to rehome them.

My nieces and nephews won't care about things from people a few generations ago, likely.

I do hope somewhere out there, there will be a few romantic souls that will collect tea cups and whimsical animal figurines, beautiful art books and hand embroidered rustic dresser scarfs. That not everyone will only want new Ikea furniture that they won't miss when they move for the tenth time.

[ratunderpaper]

The harsh truth is that you can have a half dozen kids, and they can all grow up disinterested in your sentimental trinkets. There's no guarantee that anything will be cherished or passed along.

I'm unusual in wanting to keep some things of Lois's. Most people want to sell old loot for money.

[gottawonder]

I think people often over estimate how much an offspring will care about family history, family mementos, or even family.

I know a lot of people count on their kids being helpful when they are older, that they will spend a lot of time together when they retire, etc. In reality, kids are very busy, or to be honest just selfish, and they seem to almost always move away far enough that they might see parents on vacations or holidays but not much else.

Maybe not always the case, but often enough.

They might want a few things, but a lot of people these days don't want the heavy older furniture, they want stuff that they can just sell every time they move. They don't seem to want china or knick knacks or old books or photo albums.

People probably shouldn't hang onto anything for their kids unless they KNOW that they want them.

[ratunderpaper]

I was at a yard sale once and some grown grandkids were trying to sell off their grandparents' photos and ephemera, mostly for the value of the album and not the contents. There were cards of golden wedding congratulations, newspaper announcements, all kinds of stuff you would think would be considered priceless. If my family had been the kind to make tradition and keepsakes, I would not have put their albums in a yard sale.

[gottawonder]

That seems very callous, to sell personal items like that. Somehow worse than just throwing them away.

I understand that at some point, those things become the keepsakes of strangers you've never met, and the stories behind them are lost. I don't know what I would do if I inherited things from great-grandparents I never knew.

Usually these things just end up lost in a move eventually, or ruined by mold and damp, left in a storage unit that goes unpaid.

[ratunderpaper]

I'd probably like mementos and keepsakes.

I don't know anyone who has a storage unit, but I'm sure they're out there.

[gottawonder]

Sometimes people get storage units when they move from a house to assisted living because they weren't quite done with the sorting/giving to kids. Sometimes it's a weird kind of denial, like the assisted living place is temporary.

The friends of ours who have been trying to empty his parents' hoarded house for two years now; his Mom is in assisted living. She didn't want them to empty the house or get rid of anything other than actual garbage, because she kept thinking she could just move back there whenever she wanted to.

She didn't even want them to empty and sell HER PARENTS house that she still owned, and was also hoarded.

Not saying that everyone who owns a storage unit is a hoarder.

We had one while we were moving from Canada to Wyoming, because there was going to be a time lapse from when we emptied my apartment to when we would have a place to bring it. It ended up taking six months to get it to Wyoming.

From what I understand, lots of times people don't pay for the unit on time, and the owner of the unit immediately files it as abandoned, and one month later the contents go up for auction (the owner can't keep them because it's a conflict of interest).

I know that from watching YouTube videos about people who buy them and resell anything of value, and often there's personal stuff like family photos that end up being trashed.