#inktober52, #inktober, "Robot"

Bill Mumy used to buzz past my house very regularly in a very beat up VW bug.  He honked, he waved, I smiled and waved back.  My sister growled and slammed doors.  I thought Bill was romantic and determined.  Sis thought he was a long-haired, gangly, teenaged pest.  Oh well, teenagers do what teenagers do and apparently Bill and Sis weren't meant for a happily ever after together.  He got married in 1986 so I'm pretty sure he got over his unrequited love, or maybe it was just teenaged lust.  It's just one of those episodes of childhood that invariably makes me laugh.  I'm pretty sure Sis still gets irritated at the thought of it.

Years before this teenaged stalking, Sis sat on the floor with me in front of the TV and happily watched Bill as Will in "Lost in Space".  It was an admittedly lame show that was cheaply produced and inexplicably entertaining.  There was friendly robot who exclaimed, "Warning, warning, Will Robinson!" before they were attacked by aliens and everything got resolved in 20 minutes or so.  Wasn't even bad TV better when we were kids?

I think about today's robots taking away people's jobs and all the current uncertainties and think I could spend the day watching Lost in Space on youtube.  I'm not sure this is the best use of my life, but it would be a pleasant diversion since nobody has asked me to a Memorial Day picnic, not that I would go this year even if I were invited.  Whatever you're doing this year, please do it safely.

I've moved on from my ditch digging and started attacking my house.  I sat back in my easy chair and noticed the ceiling looked kind of dingy.  I spent a day washing it.  It's sparkly white again and I'm sore again.  I sat back in my easy chair and noticed piles of projects that never got finished (or started).  I moved my project materials to their proper homes.  On and on and I'm not finished thinking about other labor-intensive things I could do.  I think I'm just taking out my frustrations on my surroundings, but also getting some exercise.  Things look better so I feel better.

I'm never going to go full Marie Kondo or anything, but I have been asking myself why I have so much stuff.  I listened to a radio program this week which posed the questions, "Are you holding onto things because you're holding onto your past?  Are you ready to make space for new things to come into your life?"  Hmm...  I think I'm ready for something new.  Clearing space sounds like an excellent idea.  Maybe I'll paint the living room walls too.  On and on and on, there's no end to the stuff I could do.

Of course we haul our past around with us whether or not we keep reminders of it.  The only thing it took for me to remember Bill Mumy buzzing by my house was the word "Robot".  I don't need to keep every gift I received from every person I've cared about to remember them.  I used to, even gifts I wasn't all that crazy about in the first place.  It felt disloyal to throw them away.  I've gotten over that.  Mostly?

Anyway, I've got to get back to my projects.  Now that the ceiling looks great I've noticed the windows need washed.

Bill was adorable, wasn't he?  He kind of looked like Sis' son.
Maybe she should've returned his affections :)

"Pink"

I love pink.  Not the plastic pink in the girls' aisle in a store, but pink flowers and pink cheeks, pink awnings, pink lipstick, pink puppy bellies, pink, pink, pretty pink.  It's a living, happy color -- which has very little to do with what I've been up to lately other than the pretty pink scarf I tie on my head before descending into the pits of hell.

You may remember that I mentioned I've been on a dust elimination quest.  This has helped my sinus issues, but it didn't solve them, and I was running out of things to dust.  Then, a ceiling tile fell down in the basement.  I noticed a hint of an odd, indefinable smell and studied the old, crappy ceiling.  I've never liked these acoustical tiles, but I never felt like getting into the mess of tearing it down.  I don't spend any time in the basement other than wash clothes and store things anyway.

The tile on the floor looked disgusting.  I mentioned this to a buddy who reminded me of my plumbing disaster a few years ago.  He suggested that the mold in the basement may have gotten into the ceiling.  Ugh.  I went back to the basement and studied.  On my friend's advice, I put on a face mask before reaching up and pulling down another tile.

Mouse poop!  Eeks!  Disgusting!  My house has been defiled!!!

I knew I had a mouse a few years ago.  It got into the dog food and gnawed on a couple of my sweaters, but I found its corpse before I got around to murdering it.  Mouse problem over, at least that's what I thought.

I decided the ceiling had to go and started pulling down more tiles.  There wasn't a little mouse poop, there was a lot of it.  Eeks, eeks, yuck, ew!  Since it was trash day, I loaded up the bin and stopped for the day.

I woke up the next day obsessed about mouse poop.  Could it really be the thing that has been making feel lousy?  I looked it up online and found out it can actually kill you.  No wonder I feel so icky about the situation.  I pulled the rest of the ceilings down, loaded up the trash bin again, and bagged the rest where they are piled in the driveway awaiting next week's trash truck.  Included in that trash is mammal poop, mouse nest, and a bird skeleton.  I feel like I can't wash my hands enough at this point.  I've bought plastic gloves and disinfectant to wash everything I own.

In an odd way, I'm actually feeling good about all of this.  First and foremost, because I'm getting rid of something disgusting, but also because it feels symbolic.  I sometimes think of my house as a mirror.  The first floor is everyday life.  Upstairs is higher ideals.  The basement is subconscious.  I didn't know I had mouse poop and a dead bird in my subconscious, but I'm glad to discover it and eliminate it.  And in an odd synchronicity, my current art therapy painting recently made me aware of the disgust I feel towards some people in my past.  It feels like cleaning mouse poop is cleaning my brain too.

I have a lot of scrubbing to do.  I think I'll play some P!nk to make the chore go happily.

"Crown"

The weather was glorious in Ohio for a couple of days this week.  I went to the park and smelled flowers.  I listened to a deafening riot of frogs trying to get lucky at the pond.  I felt the sun on my face and was feeling generally at peace with the world when a man jogged past.

Joggers are common, but this guy stopped me in my tracks.  He was shirtless and had on tight, spandex, uh, what to call it?  Let's say it was less material than underpants, and the brightly colored British flag's X was clearly marking a spot that us Ohioans keep private.  He also had on brilliant lime green spandex on his wiry calves that were sort of like rippled knee socks, or maybe neon greaves?  He smiled, and I was dimly aware that he was good looking, but it took me some moments before I could put that whole picture together in my mind.  I hope to see him again sometime.  It was kind of like seeing an exotic and fascinating insect, or maybe a Sasquatch sighting.

When I look at Jane's blog, she never has such skimpily clad and brightly colored men jogging through the English parks.  What's going on in this guy's head?  Inquiring minds want to know.

Aside from these cultural exchanges, I can say that I don't care about the upcoming US/British nuptials.  We aren't living in a Disney movie.  If Princess Di's life showed us anything, wearing a crown comes at a cost.  I hope her son and his wife fare better than Di did.  And yet, Queen Elizabeth looks a lot like my grandma.  I have red headed siblings.  It feels like a family wedding, which leaves me wondering why I didn't get invited, but thankful I don't have to buy a present.

I'd like to say that I think monarchies are obsolescent and democracy is patently superior, but I watch the news.  Current events make me doubt the wisdom of letting some people vote, besides making me question the value of humanity in general.  It's like the old curse, may you live in interesting times.  We're living it.

Oh well, I've been waging a personal war on dust lately.  This goes against my general reluctance towards housekeeping.  My house is clean and tidy enough, but I've a theory that dust is causing some of my sinus troubles and headaches and I'm working on stamping out this scourge from my life.  It may kill me.  I did a thorough cleaning of all the hidden spots in, under, and behind furniture in one room and spent the following several days coughing, wheezing, and miserable.  When recovered, I attacked everything dog-related, including the dog.  This caused a couple more miserable days.  The dog's bath seemed to only create more shedding.  I feel like I'm losing the battle, but I shall persevere!  I'm feeling considerable sympathy for whoever cleans monarchs' palaces.

"Nest"

I'm not going to make excuses, though I do give you my apologies.  I just dropped off the web in August after faithfully posting every week since 2010.  I didn't get a horrible disease or die or anything.  Life just got stressful and I wasn't in a good head place.  I actually wrote posts the last few weeks, but I didn't post them.  Who wants to hear me whine?  I don't.  I'm sick of it.

Yet for all of that, I think people often post only the good stuff in their lives and I sometimes think that maybe we would all grow if we understood that other people have struggles to face even when their lives look perfect and wonderful to us from the outside?

Maybe some of those people actually do have perfect lives.  Good for them.  My life has been more of a challenge -- though the other day I was trying to have a good sulk and kept thinking of people I'm fortunate to have in my life.  I was very cranky that I couldn't even work up a satisfactory pity party for myself.  I decided to take out some of my frustrations by organizing my garage.  It's not going very well organizationally, but I have been burning off some excess anger issues.

There's an irony here too because I recently cleared out a friend's attic, basement, and office/bedroom.  There was a lot of stuff and I happily broke it down into categories and either stored it in better places or eliminated it.  It was so easy and satisfying -- at her house.  It's a lot harder when trying to clear out my own nest.

I'm a secret hoarder.  If you come to my house, you won't see that I have every significant object of my life, countless treasures from ancestors or garage sales, and of course, every art supply that I may need for the next masterpiece.  I'm just really good at stashing things.  I think it comes from having very limited personal space when I was growing up and sharing a room with two sisters.

I think I can be exactly the same way with my mental inventory.  I remember everything.  I've got all those memories stored in compact places in my brain, stacking things on top of each other and hiding them in a pretty box.  There's good things about that.  I've written a lot of posts about happy memories.  There's bad aspects to this kind of recall too.  I remember every awful thing that people have said and done to me.

In my garage, I have a lot of lumber stacked up to maximize the space.  It's mostly stored by size -- which is sort of useful, but not really if I have to unstack it to find wood for a project.  Think about that in terms of memories.  To address a past issue, I have to sort through ALL of my issues to find the thing that I can fix and move beyond.  It's as overwhelming as my friend looking at her basement and not knowing where to start because that was her memories and stuff.  Sometimes I think my brain could be fixed easier by someone else.

Back in May, I told you about a painting I started.  I've worked on it, but not very much.  That too is part of the reality that I don't see on the web very often.  Procrastination, other priorities, laziness, whatever, are a real part of life too.  I'm far from perfect, but I'm working on being better than I was.  I think that's all any of us can do.  I might even get a clean garage out of the process.

"Diary"

Dear Diary (Friday),

This hasn't been a good week, and to make matters worse, the pipes to the kitchen sink broke this morning while I was sleeping. A cascading waterfall ran down the steps, and water leaked through the hardwood floors to the basement, which may explain why water is also spraying out of the heating ducts?

I shut off the water and started mopping and sponging. I had to take everything out of the cupboards and sop out everything in there too. Piles of stuff are stacked up everywhere.

Then it started to rain outside.

I went to the store in the downpour and bought critical supplies -- chips, M&M's, and Pepsi. I don't care what Dr. Phil would say at this particular moment. Sometimes the best possible thing is to medicate with comfort food and take a step back. I can deal with Chinese printers who don't speak English, impossible deadlines, changing software, and so many other things, but plumbing brings me to my knees. I can see why the Romans gave up plumbing after Herculaneum got smothered by a volcano.

Dear Diary (Saturday),

I almost had a break down this morning when I realized water was still leaking above the shut off valve in the kitchen, dripping down the pipe, through the floor, and into the basement. I turned off the shut off valve in the basement, which immediately leaked a stream of very cold water down my arm, straight into my arm pit.

The obvious solution was to go to garage sales because I couldn't deal with any more water issues. I bought a planter for 50 cents. I may put a cactus in it because I don't want to look at any more water. I was up late last night sopping things up in the basement, and there are still puddles down there.

Deep breath and a time out...

I put a washer in the kitchen shut off valve, dismantled the water supply, and sat on the kitchen floor deeply mystified why things weren't working. It all looked like it should work. I made some adjustments to the fittings, reassembled, turned the water back on, and held my breath. So far, so good. Shhhhhh.... I feel superstitious about upsetting the plumbing god right now.

There's kitchen stuff all over the house, the basement is still a soggy mess, and I've just discovered another area in the basement which got drenched, but maybe, just maybe the worst is over? Or maybe the worst will be over once I pay for the water lost -- which I'm pretty sure would fill at least 3 swimming pools.

Maybe the bright side of all this is that my furnace ducts have been very thoroughly rinsed with water. I don't want to die of black mold, so I'm pretty sure I'm the only one in Ohio with the furnace set to 95 to push hot air through the ducts.

Dear Diary (Sunday),

My feet and ankles hurt, and the last thing I want to do on a perfect summer day is spend it in a dank basement. I've discovered that paint cans begin to rust and clothes get musty within 2 days. A fan will help water evaporate by moving air around. Wet cardboard boxes don't hold anything, and newspaper wrapped around dishes holds about 3X more water than the paper's mass. There are a lot of steps down to my basement, and even more steps going up. Above all, I have learned that I really don't need everything in the basement!