I said, recently, that, after caring for our dear Loretta, burying her cremains, and staying to get her affairs in order, Ellie is coming home; I was excited. I was also premature.
The work to get ready for the estate sale, scheduled for mid-January and for which Ellie has to be out by the end of December, is still significant and both Ellie and I have found it advantageous for Ellie to stay at Loretta’s to be close to the work. Moving home and driving eight or so miles to the work, is both unappealing and a huge hassle.
Of course, that’s not the whole story.
I also said in my prior post, “I will be sharing the space of which I have had exclusive (mis)use for over 10 months ... ” Consider that (mis)use. My belief is that it would not be unusual for a man, in my circumstances, to turn the place into what I would deem a pigsty. Used unwashed cups, plates and silverware are everywhere; clothes too; crumbs and other reminders of meals past are on the floor; seat cushions are in disarray; dust bunnies are everywhere and dust is an inch or so thick on all horizontal surfaces.
Except for the dust issues, none of that is me. What is me, however, is paper almost everywhere. Office paper. The kind delivered by the USPS. I collect these under numerous categories. One is, “Gee that was mailed to Ellie; she doesn’t need to see it now, but she should see it someday.” A pile begins. Another is information she and I should go over ... sometime. Pile 2 begins. An information packet that clearly has a home in my office in the basement; but I am upstairs and not going to the office right now, so I put it on the stove near the stairs to pick up next time I go that way. There are several subcategories like this, and so several piles accumulate on the stove. Another category is, “Yes, I really want to read this, but I don’t have time right now.” Anothert pile starts. I can’t keep track of all these piles, so I might start a second pile for a category for which I’ve already got a pile going. I have a serious tendency to do this to paper ( Ellie calls it a sickness; I cannot disagree much ) but Ellie would not put up with it. She’s not here, so there’s nobody to call me out.
I have not kept this a secret. Ellie knows I have work to do to make Ellie feel like something other than she’s moving from an estate project to moving to a fix-up project when she walks through the door. I want to do this and have not done very much yet. My excuse is that I am still spending a lot of time with Ellie at Loretta’s. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
| If you would like to comment but don't care to use the comment field, send an email to walter.comments@inkfounta.in. |
No comments:
Post a Comment