Rebuilding and renewal - 3

[AndrewP]

Wow--sounds like you've been crazy busy. A button jar?!?! I've had plenty of things wrongly taken after breakups--this time a potted plant, last time a bottle of champagne, but never THAT level of pettiness, lol.

There's a lot of stories around here of what weird stuff ex-partners take and what they leave behind.

I don’t think she took the button jar out of pettiness. She was not an organized packer, had people helping her quickly pack who would not have known whose stuff was whose, and as a hoarder with a prodigious amount of stuff, she probably couldn’t even remember what was hers versus his.

I think there was a bit from column A and a bit from column B. Her son certainly seemed to know that they had been rather free with the definition of what got taken or left.

Personally I suspect that if the item aligned with her interests, like the baking pans and the bath stuff, they left. She did talk about how with her former partner that he was complaining about her taking dishes as he would have nothing to eat off of and I know that she went in there (she still has a key to there but not here) when she knew he wasn't home to get "her stuff".

There's just so much that in hind-sight makes me go "ick".

At least being a minimalist kind of guy I'm not too stressed about the lack of "stuff". I have managed to replace the tea-trays. I can manage without the button jar. I only had to dip into it a couple of times a year. I was thinking today that I'm now pared down to the point that if I chose that I could probably move into a 1 bedroom apartment - not that that would make any sense for me.

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While I'm here, I might as well update. I still haven't gotten up into the stairwell but have managed to do almost everything else on my list while avoiding that task. I pulled the last of the cross-pieces out and so can almost imagine what it will look like - I think it will be great. I'm on my last week of vacation so fingers crossed that I'll be working on that.

I had a nice dinner last night. Roast pork, fresh bread, some wine. A candle to make it all romantic. It was nice. I then had a great soak in the tub which I needed because I did indeed clean up the workshop and since my back was sore did some other cleaning that required a lot of bending. Slept for about 12 hours.

I've discovered that I've become a somewhat restless sleeper. Since I wear a CPAP mask I have to semi-wake every time I want to turn. Before I would sleep on my back and not move at all but now I find that I'm shifting every few hours. When S and crew were here and up and active literally all night I was so very tired and know that I was even more restless then.

The last of the bread was used up as French Toast this morning so I went for a long walk around the village. Nearly 5 km. While I was out I had a nice chat with some neighbours. The one is one of our volunteer fire-fighters so got some more insight into that fire next door on New Years Eve. My heavens - the risks those men and women took. There were needles etc floating around in the basement, loose wires running here and there. He said that they were pretty close to asking me to evacuate and seemed pleased to know that we were all prepared even with bags packed. He said the neighbours on the other side weren't cooperative at all which is surprising. He said that there were quite a lot of risks in the structure with not just the fire and drug paraphernalia but also how packed and cramped the who place was. It sounds like there were a good number of modifications to the structure that undoubtedly had no building permit or inspection.

How it will all work out with the insurance and any possible re-building is still up in the air. My neighbour doesn't think that they will actually be allowed to rebuild. They were over the lot lines with the existing structure and it's a tiny postage stamp sized lot. If it comes on the market I'll certainly have to have some conversations with people who know more about this than I do about my options. I don't "need" more land and really don't have any spare cash to invest but with this property being zoned commercial having a street facing vacant space opens up quite a few possibilities.

As of midnight tonight we're moving out of lockdown and into a "yellow" / protect zone so the haircut I have scheduled for tomorrow should happen. It also means that restaurants will be able to open with partial seating so I'm going to ask my son out to brunch for next Sunday. I may also resume my past habit of taking myself out for dinner on Wednesdays. Been a loooong time since I did that. Areas to the south where I work and have friends are still in a tighter lock-down so it will be some weeks before I can see them. I will probably go back to my once-a-week trips to the plant.

I have left-over mashed potatoes set aside for tomorrow morning for "Fat Tuesday" potato pancakes for breakfast. One of my favourite things.

Just checked my signature line. Coming up on 5 years from bomb-day. What a different life I have than what I had. For one thing, I never made potato pancakes back in the day. Bomb-day was just before my birthday. I was 51 and my then wife was 50. I'll be turning 57 shortly. If the world hadn't pivoted I'd presumably be leading a comfortable life actively looking at downsizing and retirement. That's not the way the dice rolled though. At times like this I do wonder how she's doing and coping - more with just general curiosity than with any sort of compassion or concern. Having a vanisher is certainly a blessing as time goes on.

Well - time to start dinner. I'm going to make up some fresh biscuits to go with the left-over chili from Saturday.

[kml]

There's just so much that in hind-sight makes me go "ick".

That stuff was making us go “ick”!

I had a nice dinner last night. Roast pork, fresh bread, some wine. A candle to make it all romantic.

You’ll make the right woman a great husband (or live out boyfriend) someday.

You should ask a realtor what that property would add to the value of your home.

[kml]

Oh - and just because you CAN eat in a restaurant doesn’t mean you SHOULD. Indoor dining is particularly risky. I’ll keep getting takeout meals. With these new, more contagious strains, risks in restaurants will be going up soon.

[AndrewP]

Made it to page 3!

The life of a boring bachelor on vacation lockdown continues. It's generally been good although I'm doing too much "work work" including calling in to several meetings. I have another one this afternoon. It's annoying because it makes an un-movable hole in the middle of my day that constrains what I can do for the rest of it.

Been tinkering with my webcam some more. My neighbour asked me to take their house out of the shot. Originally when I'd asked them they were fine with it being visible but they were given the very good advice that it does mean that people online can see their comings and goings. I had to move the camera into another room and then do a lot of fiddling to crop them out of the shot. Learned a lot. I've also found that my camera will randomly change it's network address so did some more work to re-scan the network and reload routing tables automatically.

Been a fun little project still. And yes - he is still a computer nerd at heart.

There was of course no question on my complying with their request.

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So - I got some good news yesterday. When the store emailed me 10-12 weeks for my new stove I wrote back and said "ok" but asked if they had something comparable for a similar price. Turns out they do. So instead of a GE stove, I'll be getting an Amana basically identical stove (can't tell them apart) for about $25 more. Dealt with a very pleasant salesman over the phone who seemed happy that I was complimentary about them working to make the deal happen. The stove is to be delivered sometime next Wednesday.

While I was making dinner on Monday I discovered while in the middle of making biscuits that my biscuit cutters are gone too. Grrrrr. Again - not going to make a fuss about it but still annoying. Like really? There were 4 sets of cutters - just cheap ones in my baking drawer and she took them all. And they were all mine. Goes along with the theme though of entitlement and ignorance. Probably the thought pattern was that she bakes (actually rarely saw her bake anything) and obviously since I'm a man I don't. Well - more stuff for her to hoard while I get new stuff. EXCEPT that I can't find any of the darned things for sale. I do have a box of cookie cutters I set aside that I believe is still intact but biscuits should be round. I hand formed them for my dinner. I use a mix (gasp!) from the bulk store so that I can make 4 or 5 biscuits to go with my dinner. One of those single-person problems with recipes all expecting you to be feeding 12.

On the subject of S - another piece of mail showed up for her, I messaged her a picture of the envelope and set it with the others. I expect that she's changed her address on most things to her Dad's house. The first few times I did this I got back a "thanks" - now nothin. Which I'm fine with. I'm looking forward to having all of her stuff out of the house. I'll breathe even easier when that chapter is completely closed off.

I did have a laugh yesterday - it seems that her D19 (soon to be D20) is still following me on Instagram. There's been twice now that I've seen a like on one of my posts which by the time I check is gone. The extra effort to unlike is similar to the "un-follow" but perhaps she likes seeing pictures of food in a clean kitchen ...

I still believe that she and her boyfriend would have found a reason to move in here rent-free and jobless if things had continued. I now think that what I originally took for compassion and kindness was in effect just poor boundaries by S. She was known as the open door for all of her kids' friends but now I see it less as her being an "every-Mom" to just someone who didn't care who was around or wandering in or out. There were a few kids who I know would just go to her apartment to watch TV and eat snacks - not specifically to visit anyone. Just like S was fine with coming here with her dog and son for days at a time even before we were engaged. One of our fights was about that in fact where I had commented that I thought we were just dating after she was here for a nearly a week. She was pretty upset about that and of course I felt guilty. Perhaps something to watch for is that people with poor boundaries about others also have poor boundaries when it comes to their own interactions.

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I did get out yesterday and even though the hunt for a biscuit cutter was a dud (I'm going to see if I can find a small can) I did manage to get a haircut. I was getting rather shaggy and my barber got me in early on the first possible day. The guy in the chair before me was telling a story about a buddy of his who is single and swimming in poontang so it seems. He's on Tinder and according to the story there is a large number of available local single women who are all good looking and wanting to hook up. Yeah - don't really believe that and considering the nature of the story - well - ick.

My barber did remind me that I need to check with him before getting serious again as he's heard all the stories and knows many of the single guys also in the dating pool. He's kicking himself for not being more direct about the shortcomings of S that he had heard from her ex-boyfriend but then again regards that guy as rather a jerk and was discounting a lot of his opinions. I remember last time around though I showed him the local POF selection and he recognized a good number of the women and advised me to stay away from some specific ones that were just gold-diggers.

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Today's list is fairly quiet. I have a 2 hour meeting this afternoon as I mentioned which makes a bit of a hole that I have to work around. So no starting big projects today. I have a bunch of "office stuff" to do today. There's a local history book that I've been working on digitizing so that's reasonably high on the list for today. I also have to walk through - yet again - our raw materials planning process. That's probably going to hit me next week.

Reminds me of just before bomb-day. I had taken 2 weeks of vacation in the summer to replace the roof on the side porch and to take some courses online. My then wife was upset with me and pushed that we should just take off and go to Nantucket for a week. We'd never been there but she knew that there would be some museums in that area that I would be interested. She on the other hand had been scheduled to work that week. I pushed back. I already had plans, she didn't have time booked off and we ended up staying home and she was grumpy. I think that was one of the final straws in the "Andrew is no fun" narrative that led her down the path to her affair. She'd already been having drinks after work with OM at that point and was about to turn 50 which I think hit her "really" hard.

Looking back - if we had gone - it may have delayed the inevitable but perhaps not. I still think she would have gone down that particular rabbit hole.

I'd really like to go out for dinner tonight but think I'll skip it. Even though we have moved to a "yellow" zone here officially, the information from the public health is more cautious than what the politicians are saying. And the politicians are being taken to task in the legislature of what is seem as a premature loosening. The pub I would usually go to is indeed open with limited seating. Grrrr

Well - back to editing that book.

[Dawn70]

Re: S’s mail: stop texting her when you get stuff. If she is still getting stuff there but she has had stuff forwarded it is either junk mail or other non-essential stuff. Put it with the other stuff and let her get it then. She is not going to respond.

Re: biscuit cutters and button jars. I have 2 sets of biscuit cutter so I can send you a set if you don’t find some. Then you’ll have authentic Southern biscuit cutters. That HAS to be good Southern biscuit mojo, right? While I can see the point someone made that her taking these things may be less about being petty and more about being a hoarder who is disorganized and had a whole herd of folks come in and just throw her crap in boxes, I wouldn’t put it past S to be petty. I mean, her not responding to your mail text is beyond petty. It’s like Tom Petty level petty.

Re: weather. This is a bonus, Andrew, but I beg of you, please come get your d@mn weather! We got 7 inches of snow Sunday night into Monday. Yesterday, the temp was -1° when I got up at 7:00. We are getting another round expected to be 6-8” today with a high of 21°. Southern people are just NOT equipped for this. Cabin fever has set in and I’m just praying that we get the 50° temps this weekend that are forecast so I can go ANYWHERE BUT HERE! Send warm thoughts and snow plows and pray for Sparky because I am GROUCHY as all get out and we are trapped in this ever-shrinking house together. Did I mention we have no hot water? Blessedly we still have cold (VERY cold) water so I’m having to boil pots on the stove for bathing and washing dishes. We also blessedly still have power and our heat is butane so even if our electricity goes, we’ll still have heat and be able to cook (stove is also gas). Thank goodness we have a generator if power goes out so we can still have tv which is really the only thing keeping me sane at the moment. How do you Yanks and Kanucks do it? This S?CKS!!!!!!!!!!!

Rant over. Enjoy your vacay!

[kml]

I don't ever remember using a biscuit cutter in the house when I was a child, even though my parents made biscuits quite often - a water glass worked just fine as a biscuit cutter.

Maybe S has done you a favor in relieving you of some things - watch that netflix documentary on minimalism and it may make you rethink how many kitchen items you need! (And don't ay we didnt try to warn you to supervise or pack your things away - at least you saved the good stuff).

Many of us are on a tear during these lockdowns, clearing out stuff - I read that the Goodwill had three times its normal donations. I know I've been a part of that. Cleared out my closet and got rid of a lot of unnecessary clothes - now I can actually find and use the ones I have. And once CMM is gone, I will definitely do the same in my kitchen, which has too many multiples because of combining his stuff and mine.

Now that you are getting your new stove, how are you going to get rid of hers?

[kml]

I still have a lot of clearing to do - my garage especially - and have S to thank for the inspiration. Hearing tales of her hoarding definitely made me want to get rid of everything excess!!! Also, since my mom died, I've thought more about the concept of Swedish Death Cleaning. Because my mom had moved in with me about 9 years earlier, I didn't have to deal with too much of her stuff - it had already been winnowed down in the moving process. I realize if I were to suddenly kick the bucket, my kids would have a lot more stuff to deal with - and that's not easy when you're grieving. So my ultimate goal is to get rid of excess stuff, to organize paperwork so they could easily find what they need, and to enjoy living with less clutter. My house is pretty good now that I've done my closets - bedroom could use a little more work but not much. But my garage has been the dumping ground for not just my things but my mom's, CMM's, and all three of my kids at some point, and it's in definite need of a purge. The blessing AND the curse of having a 3 car garage. One third functions as a pantry and tool bench/tool storage. One third has a car in it. The other third has some nice sturdy 2 x 4 shelving the previous owner constructed. I need a fair bit of space for old chart storage. But if I could get everybody to cooperate and purge through the existing stuff, I could probably free up a quarter to a third of the storage space, which would make everything also more accessible. Too many Xmas decorations, for one thing. Old computers that my son will never use again. I already got rid of a treadmill and old vibraphone which were taking up space out there, but now it's time to get down to the nitty gritty.

[job]

I agree w/Dawn, i.e., stop texting her about the mail. Box it up and some day, she'll be back around to get the rest of her stuff and that's when I would make sure it was with her other stuff. She's a grown woman and should have by this time put in a change of mailing address.

I also want to send back to you this cold, snowy and icy weather that we have been experiencing this month. We aren't use to this kind of stuff each and every weekend. Daffodils are still sprouting up and the squirrels and bunnies are out today because it's sunny, but biting cold here. Come on spring!

I think you are going to find a lot more stuff missing. The only way that you will know what is missing is when you go looking for the items. She's like a child who sees something and just picks it up. Petty? Maybe. Hoarder, most definitely. She has so much stuff that she may not know what she has and what she doesn't have...but while you are off, take some time and just check all of the drawers and cabinets. I am not at all surprised to read that some things "walked". I'm sorry that you now have to go out and purchase replacements.

Glad to read that your stove will be here in a week. Where are you going to put S's stove when the new one comes? I hope it's going right next to the other piles of stuff on the porch so that she'll pick it up, right along with the box of mail.

I'm sorry you are having to participate in meetings, especially during the middle of the day. It sure breaks up your day to get some things done.

Try to get some "me" time in and rest up.

[kml]

Yeah, about the mail - can't you just write "Forward to..." and her current address and put it back out in the mailbox? I mean, unless it looks like some super-important government document that she might need immediately, why give her more reason to come by?

[AndrewP]

That HAS to be good Southern biscuit mojo, right?

I'm in many ways convinced that my son is still not dating because when we went down to Hilton Head SC for his sister's wedding he got a chance to eat "real" biscuits. Now don't get me wrong, we Canadians are the best at almost everything. Except biscuits. I'm sure that he is taking my advice to only date someone who can make "proper" biscuits. When we'd stop at a hotel he'd first scout the buffet to check the quality of the available biscuits.

I will admit that I'm intimidated by the thought of making such good biscuits myself much less my expectation that there is no recipe out there that will make just 3 or 4 biscuits at a time. If I ever do get back into the dating pool perhaps that's one of my requirements. You'd be my hero Dawn if you did have a small batch biscuit recipe that would work ok for a bachelor cook. I am a "from scratch" guy so am not really interested in boxed biscuit mixes out there like what I got from the bulk store.

On the other hand, my mother used to make what I called Farmer's Stew and she called "clean out the fridge day" stew. She would cover the top with a sheet of tea biscuit dough after it had cooked for a few hours and then bake that. The top was crispy and the bottom filled with stew gooey goodness. I'm literally drooling remembering that. Mother wasn't a great cook but that was THE one thing from my childhood that gives me such good memories.

Re: weather. This is a bonus, Andrew, but I beg of you, please come get your d@mn weather!

I also want to send back to you this cold, snowy and icy weather that we have been experiencing this month. We aren't use to this kind of stuff each and every weekend. Daffodils are still sprouting up and the squirrels and bunnies are out today because it's sunny, but biting cold here. Come on spring!

It should be cherry blossom time for you job. I recall being in your neck of the woods a couple of years ago right around now and loving how they looked.

I was going to make some snarky jokes about wussy 'Mericans but oh - my - heavens. Setting aside the politics, the fact that people are still without power in parts of the South and are dying is serious stuff. Up here we know how to deal with this sort of stuff and are generally prepared. I have a small propane space heater rated for indoor use and can think off the top of my head of a number of friends and relations who have secondary sources of heat if I needed to evacuate. Dealing with frozen pipes and such is as normal to us as watching for tornados or hurricanes is for those now dealing with ice storms. I hope that they can get things figured out soon to get people into shelters and take care of the more vulnerable. A few of the things I've read from the politicians and some others makes me upset. You take care of each other and your neighbours. That's what community is all about.

There's going to be such a mess when things start thawing as well - lots of broken pipes and I would also expect a number of house fires and carbon monoxide poisionings.

Now that you are getting your new stove, how are you going to get rid of hers?

Glad to read that your stove will be here in a week. Where are you going to put S's stove when the new one comes? I hope it's going right next to the other piles of stuff on the porch so that she'll pick it up, right along with the box of mail.

That's exactly what I'm going to do. I fished my 2-wheeled cart out of the garage and it's ready to wheel her stove into the front porch with her other stuff including her mail. I'm not planning on bothering to let her know that her stove is available - not my issue. It was "nice" of her to let me continue to use it. I get the feeling that she thinks that I'm a lot more helpless and disorganized than the reality.

Yeah, about the mail - can't you just write "Forward to..." and her current address and put it back out in the mailbox? I mean, unless it looks like some super-important government document that she might need immediately, why give her more reason to come by?

There's only 3 pieces of it and it's all related to her Dad's passing. I'm a bit surprised she's not had me even scan it down to her - but I'm not the boss of her. So - to me - at least some of it does indeed look like super-important government documents. I wouldn't know for sure because of course I've not opened any of it. It does fall into her usual pattern though of just ignoring things and letting them pile up. No clue if she's driving back and forth to see her D26 or S18 or if her D19 is still living with her former partner the next village over. All ways in which she could easily have her mail picked up. I suspect that she's nesting down at her Dad's former house and not going anywhere. The impression from the very terse message I got from her D26 was that she was pretty upset at her Mom and perhaps they're ignoring each other again.

I was thinking this morning that she is undoubted pretty confused and ticked at me - especially if her son's narrative is accurate that I'm the first guy in his memory who actually split from her. She maybe expected me to try to "win her back" rather than closing the door and start the environmental remediation. If she was on OLD she could look like a pretty good package - well educated, attractive, quirky, lots of cleavage. Ah well - just another 2 months of being a storage locker for her. By that time she may well have landed a new guy - it seems important to her and her daughters that they have a man in their lives and from some of the choices made, they're not overly choosy. And then he can "rescue" her stuff from her horrible ex-fiance who thinks more of his precious house than her feelings.

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Work seems crazy busy and one of our very small number of admin staff abruptly retired yesterday. Along with the meetings and such I've been trying to stay on top of emails - there are probably about 300 or so a day. It's going to be tough on me when I start taking on the new responsibilities. It looks like the key times are from about 6:30 to 9:00 am that a lot of decisions etc need to be made. I'm usually only part way through my first pot of tea at that point.

After yesterday's conference call on new systems / processes we had a secondary call with just us plant people. My boss was expressing real concern on how to go about my training - a legitimate concern. Not being able to be physically in the plant to share knowledge, collaborate and heck - just see what's going on will make it quite a challenge. I know that for what I'm currently responsible for that I'm itching to "just pop in for a bit" as I'm concerned that we're running out of containers.

I just now got to the top of my inbox and part way through my second pot of tea. Ah well - most of the noise is now taken care of - only 2 things that I felt a need to chime in on out of probably 250 emails. Going to try to have a quiet day here with minimal house-work. I did stay home yesterday and had an "emergency pizza" for dinner. I tried to watch some TV but was too fidgity to sit for long and went to bed at what would be a normal time for me.

I have been a bit wierded out in the past few days because I've been finding random long grey hairs around the house. Now I had long grey hair mid-way down my back but went "George Clooney" shortly after bomb-day - so like 5 years ago. Much cleaning been done since then. S has curly red hair that she keeps dyed. The length is about 6-8" or so - about what my ex-wife would normally have in recent years but considering that I rarely leave the house and usually lock the doors when I do, how could those have gotten in here? This morning's deposit was on my desk. No sign on the security camera of anyone coming or going either.

I have been thinking about my ex-wife more lately - perhaps this is why?

Weird.