Back From F'ing Florida - Part Four

Pre-frost Tulips

 

Middle of May: We had a killing frost this week. It zapped my asparagus, which turned the spears that had emerged into mush, killed all the new little leaves on my hydrangea bush, didn’t kill but definitely didn’t do good things to the peonies, which already have buds on them – we’ll see if they manage to open; and caused the tulips to bend to the ground.

We still apparently have a garden gremlin or a gnome – something has spent the last few weeks since I got my potatoes planted, which I do in potato bags, digging up the potatoes and tossing them out of the bags. I’ve countered by replanting the potatoes and putting old screens atop the bags, but the gremlin/gnome has managed to move the screens, or was aided by the nasty winds we’ve been having, and the potatoes it dug up and tossed into the nearest garden bed were turned to soup by the frost. Yuck. I may need to replant, if I can find more seed potatoes.

The alliums, however – except for the ones Rasta Furian dug up so he could have a nice poop smack in the middle of one onion bed, so I had to replant those this past week, as well as the pea seed he unearthed at the same time – the alliums, as I started to say, finally mostly look great. They like the colder weather.

But, it’s been so dry and windy that I’ve had to water the things I’ve planted four times already, unheard of this early in the season, and each time  -  thank you, Wind - I’ve gotten thoroughly soaked and consequently extremely irritable. The wind dries the ground out so fast not much is soaking down, because the ground is dry as bones. I’m not sure why I’m bothering trying to water, but I have decided to put a hold on planting anything more for the next week until I see how things change. This week all the plants that were in pots and needing planting out had to come indoors because it was too cold.

I got half the carrot seed in – not sure if it’s blown away; the beet seed – ditto; one bed of parsnips; peas – some of which have started to emerge, and fava beans which oddly have not, which makes me think, once again: gremlins. I’m seriously considering leaving jiggers of Irish whisky out in the garden, as a friend suggested last year when everything was so very, very strange.

A gremlin or gnome made itself a nice winter cave in the finished compost pile last winter, which we didn’t discover until the snow melted. It climbed over the compost bin wall, which is quite high – the bins are made of pallets set on edge – then dug down from the top of the pile, leaving an entry hole that was 6 inches by 4 inches, and made a dome over the top. Some other gremlin or gnome has been living in the house this winter. And in other gremlin activity, ever since some time last fall, the cold water faucet in the downstairs bathroom has produced only warm or hot water.

For those of you who are unsure – that’s a physical impossibility.

Four days after I got back from F-FL in April, the cold water faucet in the bathroom began producing cold water for me – but not for The Husband. He still only gets hot or warm water from that faucet. Go figure. And no, I’m not going to pour whisky down the bathroom sink drain, but I might try white vinegar and boiling water again – it worked on the growling and scrabbling gremlins last fall.

The fruit trees have been loaded with blooms, though the young peach trees have produced only a few reluctant blossoms. The black flies have hatched, and they’re hungry. There are lots of ticks, so I’m continually doing the “Is That A Tick I Feel?” spring St. Vitus’ itch. Too often it is a tick I felt crawling.

 My first day back seeing patients, I forgot I have to manually unlock the clinic door from the inside, so I accidentally locked my first patient out, and forgot I needed to turn my cell phone on, which I’ve not been doing because I’ve been avoiding phone calls from F-FL, so I didn’t hear her trying to call me; and I was down the hall in the treatment room having a love-up with my colleague, Petie the Poodle, who I hadn’t seen for more than two months, so I didn’t hear my patient knocking, knocking, knocking on the waiting room door. Eventually it occurred to me to go look. Fortunately, she’s patient and forgiving, and besides, Petie was there, so all was good. For those of you who don’t know, Petie the Poodle is a standard poodle who’s decided he’s a therapy dog, and helps me out a couple days a week. My patients love him. Mostly he takes a nap and snores, but he sometimes gives a hand or foot massage. Mainly, he makes the energy in the treatment room very relaxed, and provides me with extra exercise as I have to step over and around him.

I’ve discovered – shouldn’t be a surprise, because I describe this to my patients regularly, and I’ve experienced it once before myself when I was much younger – that I haven’t recovered from my last 2 years of care-taking my F-FL friend, and especially from the past year when I spent, literally, every free moment that I wasn’t treating patients, working in the garden, or paying bills, doing things for my F-FL friend. She was a 7-day-per-week, full-day effort that often lasted into the early hours of the morning, and I’m burned out. I knew I was exhausted, but now I’ve recovered a little from the physical fatigue, I realize it’s more than physical exhaustion, it’s burn-out. And you don’t recover from burn-out in a month. Or two. Or three – it takes many months. Last time I burned out it took more than a year, and I was never able to return to the editing work I was doing that caused the burn-out. 

The garden dragon, and all that is left of the garden frog after the winter. Clearly, it burned out!

 

You can get burned out doing stuff you love, or stuff you don’t love but have to do for one reason or another, or from stuff you hate but have to keep doing. Burn-out means you’ve used up your essential energy to the point where your mind and your emotions are no longer supported well by the nutrition you intake, the sleep you get – in fact, often you haven’t been getting enough sleep, which just speeds the process. Burn-out can include symptoms of deep heat, heat that feels like it comes from the bones. That symptom is not always present, but it is with me this time, and it should have been an early symptom that I paid attention to, but I ignored it – being a woman of a certain age it was easy for me to say to myself, “Oh, for some reason I’m having occasional hot flashes again. Darn those pesky hormones!”

It wasn’t hormones.

I also ignored the major irritability and obsessive thought that are real and obvious symptoms that are almost always present – obsessive thought is when you can’t stop going over and over and over in your mind the thing you’re working on and you might even dream it, which I did. And major irritability usually means that little things, insignificant things, as well as big things, cause you to become, in my case, a fire-breathing dragon. You feel out of control because you suddenly don’t have the energy to deal with the insignificant variations and vagaries that are part of daily life – so you flare and rage: burn ‘em up and get rid of them! Done!

Except, no, it doesn’t work that way.

Burn-out. From a Chinese medical perspective, it means you’ve used up so much of your Qi that your body is drawing on the kind of Qi that’s supposed to maintain our health and growth and long life. Burn-out can, and does, burn up your Yin – and Yin is our blood, and body fluids, the stuff that bathes and nourishes our brain and tissues, the stuff our body parts and bones and tissues and hair and nails and eyes and everything we can touch is made up of, the thing that replicates our cells and repairs damage. And eventually, it also affects the Yang of our body: our ability to circulate, eliminate, respire, digest, think, move, and our ability for the cells to communicate and do their work.  How it affects each individual, and how quickly it causes damage, has to do with each person’s state of health: how well they have taken care of themselves so far, what our genetic or acquired weaknesses are, how quickly we stop doing the thing that’s causing the burn-out, and whether we give ourselves the time needed to repair the damage done and allow the body to replenish the damaged Qi, Blood, Yin and Yang.

The dangers of burn-out? Depending on the person’s state of health otherwise, could manifest as heart attack, stroke, blown immune system, memory loss, mental or emotional break-down, dizziness, blood pressure changes,  injuries, a complete inability to function normally in the world. Burn-out, when not recognized and not reversed early and completely, is potentially fatal.

Not to worry – I’ll recover. I’ve recognized it, and I have tools!

Blue-eyed Mary, pre-frost

 

But I will tell you – some of the symptoms I chose to ignore? For the past year, there were times when I drove into the garage in the late evening when I got home from work and sat there, in the winter, in the cold, and seriously considered sleeping in the car because I felt too tired to get out and go in the house. Too many times I was too tired to get out of the car, walk around it to open the passenger door to retrieve my backpack and purse from the other seat, so instead I dragged them across the steering wheel. I started losing words. I was too irritable to write. I’ve been having physical fights with inanimate objects that won’t co-operate. I’ve been too tired to go to bed, and then spent the whole night semi-dozing the problems I was working on. My musicophilia got worse – phrases of music that repeat in my head 24 hours a day lasted for months, instead of a few days, and were almost impossible to eliminate (my brain’s been playing a verse of The Parting Glass almost constantly since March). My lists of things to do – a way I organize and have ever since I was a reporter – became incomprehensible, or, at least, I couldn’t follow them. Any and all of these were symptoms.

No, not the gremlins – those are real!

The problem with burn-out is that the early symptoms are easily explained away. We all have periods when we can’t sleep well, we’re over-worked, we’re exhausted mentally and emotionally, we’re really irritable, we have memory lapses. Fairly innocent and easily-fixed situations can cause the same symptoms, as can pregnancy, menopause, teenage hormone bloom, temporary alterations in work rhythms, short-lived periods of extra responsibilities; and some really nasty things can also cause some of those same symptoms, like severe depression, early senility on-set, heart conditions, uncontrolled diabetes, blood pressure issues, cancer…

My point is that we need to be aware of ourselves, and recognize what we’re doing and what that means in our own systems, and not ignore new and scary symptoms. And as for the things that cause burn-out: sometimes we can’t avoid the situation, such as I had, when you’re the only one who can do the excessive thing which has to be done now and quickly and until it’s finished. But be aware; as soon as you can, stop; and then give yourself much more time to recover than you can imagine is possible or necessary.  And if you can share the burden with someone else, do. Half-burnout is a lot easier to repair than full burn-out!

For those of you who are wondering: HRH the Hoarder hasn't responded to my letter, two weeks ago, asking her whether friendship can survive if only one of the individuals is communicating. I think I have the answer.

For the blog: herondragonwrites.blogspot.com    20 May 2023

Photos by Deb Marshall, except the one of Bob and his grandson - by one of the kids, I assume!

A sweet winter photo from Hawai'i!

 

 

 

Back From F'ing-FL - Part 3

 

More fun facts about F-FL: We had to eat in restaurants while we were in F-FL, except for breakfast, because we worked long hours every day humping heavy boxes, and by the end of the day we were exhausted. People approaching 70 should not do such hard labor, and definitely not for 5 weeks straight, 7 days/week, and if I ever make noises like I’m going to do it again, someone stop me!

Here’s the selection of “vegetables” available in all the restaurants we went to, except the estimable Da Vinci’s: French fries; sweet potato French fries; something called a “loaded” baked potato, that came encased in salt and therefore inedible, and had scattered over the top of it some tiny julienne yellow and white bits that had no flavor – these were also on all the “salads”; and macaroni and cheese.  Yup, in F-FL, mac and cheese is a vegetable. “Salad” consisted of chopped iceberg lettuce, sometimes with a very small blob of tasteless chopped up things that were the color of tomato, with the tasteless yellow and white bits, and lots of thick, sweet, glop on top.

Everything in F-FL was breaded, including - the one time I found some on a menu -  broccoli. I ordered a chicken sandwich at a Dunkin’ Donuts one day out of desperation, and ended up with a lump of breaded chicken on a croissant with the little yellow and white bits on top.

And all the fruit, including the strawberries which were supposedly in season down there, were tasteless, except for the one time I managed to get to a farm stand. Asparagus was also in season, but finding some in the grocery store was almost impossible – I got one of the only 3 bunches available one day, and it wasn’t fresh. Something called “winter squash soup” was so sweet it resembled pudding. And “sour dough” bread wasn’t.

Sweetie’s Diner did have a wicked fine lemon cake, however. Both Sweetie’s and Da Vinci’s are in Ft. Pierce, if you ever have the bad fortune of being there. And there’s an interesting little store somewhere in the Peacock District that is jam-packed with strange and interesting things. I got some wooden crocodiles there for my nieces, and a shirt from India. And if I’d wanted, I could have had a moose statue, or statues of a giraffe, a lion, and some other critters – when I say “statue,” I mean big, like many feet tall. They filled the sidewalk outside the store.

What I think about now I’m home again

Can a friendship survive when one of the friends becomes a care-taker for the other, especially when the one needing help doesn’t really believe she does, and is mad as hell about how it’s being undertaken?

And, maybe more to the point, when the one being care-taken chooses not to communicate, about anything?

My friend in F-FL has become a hoarder, and, like all hoarders, she doesn’t believe it. And, like all hoarding, it eventually created health and safety issues. And, like for all hoarders – the stuff has become more important than the people.

Hoarding is a mental and emotional illness, often developing out of fear and feelings of unworthiness, emptiness, or insecurity. I’ve known, and liked, several other hoarders. They’re all the same, and yet, all different.

When I was in college, I rented a room one semester from a really nice, intelligent, artistic lady whose kids were away at college. She’d recently gone through a nasty divorce, during which her ex-husband had disappeared with all their money, leaving her and the kids without an income, and for at least a couple of years, they were often hungry, cold, and in despair. By the time I met her, she had built in her basement a maze made of walls of packaged goods, through which one had to wend one’s way to reach the washer and dryer. The walls were head high, and she knew exactly what foods were located where in the maze. If one of her kids came home from college and took a few things to bring back to school with them, only minutes would pass before all hell broke out. It didn’t matter that some of that stuff was long past its expiration date; she wasn’t going to be left hungry and needy ever again.

Another hoarder who I liked very much had an entire house full of stuff: coat closets filled to the top with unopened mail, a refrigerator filled with multiple, open but barely used, containers of dressings, mustard, relish, ketchup, mayo, relish, pickles; and rotting piles of once-fresh produce and meats that she was sure she was going to use up any minute now. Her car couldn’t be put into her 2-car garage, because when you opened the doors, a mass of stuff fell out – it was piled ceiling-high with trash and not-trash, and it was hard to tell the difference. Below the laundry shoot in her basement, there was a mountain of decades-old dirty clothes that was almost ceiling-high and at least 50 feet in circumference. Over the years, field mice had gotten into it and made tunnels and nests, had babies, died, peed, pooped…and her cats had gone after the field mice and added to the pee and poop. And mold grew… that mess took a group of specialists in hazmat suits and respirators to clear out. She also had the stereotypical ceiling-high piles of newspapers in her living room, and a refrigerator-carton filled with deyhtcades-old catalogs, and a walk-in closet filled to above waist-height with stuff she’d bought and never used, just tossed in there “to deal with later” – clothes, books, shoes, notepads, you name it.

F-FLF's living room before estate sale

She is a very intelligent, successful business person; but her hoarding started when she got divorced and was left with two young kids to raise on her own. And like all hoarders, she didn’t believe she’s a hoarder – we just didn’t understand the sentimental reasons for keeping stuff, or that a single mom ( by the time I knew her, her kids were in college) had not enough time for the niceties of doing laundry regularly, putting new purchases away, sorting through her frig, and all those catalogs and junk mail and piled-up newspapers might contain important info, so she needed to go through them before getting rid of them. Because - you never know, even decades later. And don’t toss those baby clothes at the bottom of the laundry pile, because they were her kids’, and she wanted to keep them for grandchildren. She, by the way, like my F-FLF also had enough underwear to clothe her entire neighborhood for a couple of weeks.

Sigh.  You can’t argue with a hoarder, because they literally don’t see what we see. Where we see gross excess and filth, they see luxurious spaciousness, comfortable abundance, and they also see the things filling that space as those things were in their once pristine state, not the moldy, mildewed mess the things have become. And they always, always have multiple, perfectly sensible reasons why things are as they are – single mothers who work often don’t have enough time to keep up with chores; hoarders with other illnesses often are too tired or depressed to manage their environment (though they always seem to have time and energy enough to acquire and collect more stuff); some people are more sentimental about objects once associated with a baby, or a loved but dead relative, or a lost life-style; some of us are  often on the edge of financial disaster, so we need to keep some back-ups on hand.

Oh, We New Englanders

Some of us come by the tendency to keep stuff naturally – New Englanders, who are the group I have genetic history with, have always had The Four Rules: 1. Don’t throw anything out, it or parts of it might come in handy later; 2. If it’s new, it’s too good to use, so set it aside and use up the old one until you really can’t possibly use it any longer; 3. If it belonged to, or was made by, someone who’s now dead, don’t use it because that circumstance makes it precious. Save it for the next generation, even if, whatever it is, is beyond ugly, useless in the modern world, been used hard, or you hate it; 4. If you personally spent money for something, even if it doesn’t quite fit, doesn’t look good on you, you’ve outgrown it, or you no longer like it - don’t get rid of it, it’s too good to get rid of. You may be glad you have it, later.

Time was, when we as a culture actually owned a lot fewer things than most of us do now, and we had a lot less money to spend on more stuff, these “rules” served us well. But it also explains the barns full of “string too short to be saved”: old windows with rotting frames, semi-shredded screens and broken tools, and attics full of moth-eaten great-grandma’s clothes and great-great-grandpa’s cigar humidors and old boots and mildewed overcoats, broken children’s toys and ancient, rusty cookware with missing handles. 

It also explains the old folks I lived up the road from in Maine, who lived in a trailer parked next to their lovely old Colonial house. He was a retired pastor; they’d had kids, who’d grown up and moved away decades ago.

They carefully collected and filled their house – literally – full of things they were sure their kids would want, once they’d set up their own households and had space for the stuff. Decades went by, the kids never came for the treasures; and one day, a passing antiques dealer stopped at the trailer and asked if he could take a stroll through the house and maybe offer the old couple some money for things he could sell on. Well; they thought about it, and finally decided it wouldn’t hurt to let the guy take a look and see what he would offer. Maybe the kids would be as happy to get some cash, even more than the treasures, after all.

So they handed over the key to the house, and Antiques Guy happily went next door. The house hadn’t been opened in a long time, and it took him awhile to get the old lock to work, and then the door was hard to open, probably swollen with time. Finally he managed to yank it open: and a whole wall full of rotting stuff fell out onto him. He hastily shoved it all back in the door, slammed the door shut, locked it, and got out of town as fast as possible.

 The Four Rules also explain the several packages of brand-new but decades-old sheets my grandmother had stashed in her linen closet when she died. I was actually happy for those, and have put all but one set – which I still have in its original packaging, because I may need it later – to use. And it explains the hand-made moccasins I bought in 1984, but only began to actually wear 2 years ago.

I’m willing to concede that there’s hoarding, and then there’s hoarding. When the stuff you have is based on real need, and/or doesn’t interfere with your ability to move around in and use your living space, and you aren’t constantly adding to it just because something you don’t need catches your eye and you want it – it’s a controlled, not-illness kind of hoarding. We almost all do it to a small extent, and sometimes to a large extent – artwork, “collectibles,” books (it’s not hoarding if it’s books unless it’s out of control and you can’t bring yourself to get rid of the ones you know you’ll never read again – or can’t recognize that you actually won’t read a lot of those books ever again), intriguing food items you’ll never actually eat that clutter the pantry, shoes, comic books, baseball cards, candles, etc. And don’t forget the stuff we New Englanders stock-pile in our cellars in case of winter storms knocking out electricity for days or sometimes weeks at a time. Some “hoarding” just makes sense – as long as we follow the “first in, first out rule,” and actually rotate the goods every few months.

But when you have piles in your living areas that you have to dance around or that you regularly trip over; or you can’t use a closet because it’s jam-full of either trash or stuff you’ve had a long time but never used or never use now; or if you’re continually buying things you want, don’t need, can’t afford, and don’t have a place or use for; or if the darker side of collecting has set in and you can’t get rid of even the rotten things, the mouse-infested things, the things causing fire hazards or other health and safety issues, or your neighbors can’t bear to look at all the rusty junk piled up in your yard – it’s an illness. And, unfortunately, it’s dangerous.

Tracing the Path of Illness

My F-FLF has the illness. Her trip into hoarding is complicated, and I’ve tried to follow its path, but it’s hard to say when interests and background, unfulfilled ambitions and personal oddities made worse by some chronic illness, morphed into Uh-Oh. When we (Cousin P and I) moved her out of her condo permanently into her dad’s house two years ago, Uh-Oh had clearly started; in the two years since, Uh-Oh has become Oh No! and the very dark part of hoarding is manifest.

Hers is a long story, and included in it are all sorts of things that in her case have probably added to the problem. She was an Army Brat; her bio-father was abusive; her adopted father who rescued her and mom wasn’t close to his family and had his own past issues, and was also career Army. She inherited Lupus from her mom who had RA. As a young woman she had anorexia, which is another mental illness that warps the mind so it sees not reality, but excess where there is meagerness (kind of interesting because hoarding is the opposite). She has OCD, which certainly added an enabling layer to the anorexia, and then the hoarding. She’s intelligent, but never accomplished the things in the world that her intelligence would cause one to expect from her – lupus became her reason not to, and for whatever reason, she didn’t pursue ways to work around it, or to achieve things she wanted to do, in spite of it. And then she added a long list of other ailments to her “why I can’t” reasons.

I’m in some ways a bad friend because, because of my medical training and the patients I’ve treated who have every ailment she claims to have, I don’t have a lot of sympathy for her “why I can’t” list. And I’ve conducted some experiments, and proved to myself that her list is more a handy set of excuses than true restrictions. Having said that – there is clinical depression; and buying stuff on line is easy, always available, and gives a blast of endorphins when one does it, and when the package arrives. And if you’ve had a too-indulgent father who has bailed you out of financial straits – well – I suspect that’s how The Hoarder was born. In her case, not just one urge or disappointment or scary situation, but an entire array of them.

Part of F-FLF's bedroom at assisted living, in May

I can’t decide whether being able to trace this path is useful or harmful when it comes to maintaining a friendship with someone for whom I’ve also become a care-giver. There are other more recent medical problems – some developing memory issues, some developing personal hygiene issues, questions about proper meds dosing, uncertainty about whether some of her “diagnoses” are real or ones she’s invented for herself – I know some of them are fictional because she’s accidentally told me so when she wasn’t paying attention, but they’re very dramatic. She’s become unable, or unwilling, to manage all the practical parts of her life – bill paying, answering her phone, checking her voice mails, managing her finances, doing laundry, and so on.

And here’s the thing, and maybe it’s my problem, and not hers. She no longer communicates. She doesn’t answer emails, she doesn’t answer letters, she doesn’t call unless she wants something, and I don’t call her – though I email and write several times every week – because I don’t want to shout at her. So – is she still my friend? This has gone on much longer than the last few months. It’s been so for the last year or more. We used to talk on the phone, but only if I called her. I now hear about her circumstances and activities, or lack of them, from third parties. (I also hear how angry she is at her cousin and I because we had to get rid of a lot of her stuff when she moved to assisted living, from third parties.)

Does she need to be my friend any longer? Do I even want her to be? I discovered, spending time with her two years ago when I went to help her after her father died, and then when Cousin P and I went down to move her out of her condo and permanently into her dad’s house, that she’s changed a lot since I first met her, more than 40 years ago, and I don’t really like who she’s become. She’s become paranoid, expecting home invasions to imminently happen, afraid of public transportation, Ubers, taxis, etc. She’s become at least mildly racist. She’s converted and become very religious in the church that I was raised in and got over long ago. She’s become anti-abortion, anti-women’s rights, and very socially conservative. She tsks when gay people appear, having become anti-gay marriage. I’ve not asked about transgender issues because I don’t really want to know. She insists that the man she divorced after a very short marriage, more than 30 years ago, is still her husband. She’s become even more snobbish about her intellect and the lesser intellect of other people than she ever was. And she’s also become pretty unfriendly – she seems to be more interested in what acquaintances can do for her than in developing the relationships.

Several months ago I tried to explain to her that a one-sided friendship isn’t a friendship. I reminded her, as an example, that I wrote to her – postcards and letters – 6 days every week, and had done so for almost 2 years; but she never responds. Would she, please, for the 5^th time I’d asked, email me once a week so I could be sure she wasn’t lying in a pool of her own blood because she’d tripped over something and it was the weekend and her care-giver wouldn’t find her body for at least 4 days? She thought about it for a moment or two, then said, “I suppose that’s reasonable.”

So to answer my own question: yes, I think a friendship can survive when one of the friends becomes also a care-giver for the other – if the one being cared for remains a vital, active part of the friendship, and if capable, of the care-giving as well.

I think I’ve lost my friend. And I’m not sure why it bothers me so much. Her hoarding has, and will continue, to create problems in my care-taking of her; but hoarding isn’t the reason I’ve lost my friend. And I'm just very sad, and alternately frustrated or furious.

For the blog: herondragonwrites.blogspot.com    8 May 2023

Photos: of the AL room, sent by her local care-giver; other photos Deb Marshall

 

How my rhubarb looked just 4 days ago! It's thrice the size now!

 

 

Back from F'ing Florida - Part Two

 

The lizard recovered!

Things I stole in March:

4 shirts

19 books

4 DVDs, two never before opened

A teacup with a rose hip design, but no saucer

A brightly-colored ceramic lizard that broke in transit, but can probably be repaired

A bottle of “Angel Bake,” whatever that is: it appears to be rose extract

A book bag, to carry some of the books in

2 boxes of note cards and 4 packages of cute little stiff writing paper with envelopes, too small to be very useful, and all so old the envelope glue no longer works

4 French linen kitchen towels

Things I didn’t steal, but removed to inaccessible places:

A dozen books or so, to the library at the condo where I was staying

Four boxes of books to the library at the assisted living place my friend moved to

A box of DVDs that are hidden out of sight somewhere at assisted living where my friend can’t find them, but other people can locate and use

My sanity and compassion

Things I gave away, sold, or tossed in a dumpster:

300 towels

6 bed pillows

3 or 4 dozen toss pillows

A lot of framed artwork

8 handbags and totes

Enough lady’s undies – apparently unused – to deck out 10 women for 2 weeks each

2 dozen bras

Untold quantities of nearly-empty bottles of god-only-knows-what

18 boxes of DVDs and CDs

10 boxes of cookbooks

8 boxes of religious books, including 7 King James bibles, especially notable because my hoarder friend is Catholic, not Protestant

4 large garbage bags of shoes, boots and sandals, barely worn or never worn

A linen closet full of bed linens

Many, many, many, many boxes of clothes, many of the clothes still bearing price tags

3 boxes of sweaters

5 fake fur throws

7 sets of silverware

4 sets of kitchen knives

At least 5 teapots

Too many glasses, mugs, cups, saucers, dishes – sets and individual pieces – and bric-a- brac -  too numerous to count, but the mass filled 4 giant cupboards that were each 8 feet tall by 5 feet wide

8 bookcases full of books, plus several boxes of children’s books, books on wildlife, science, languages, and tea. Yes, two boxes full of books about tea, mostly about drinking tea.

2 boxes of books about Japan

All the stuff that usually gets sold when you’re emptying a house that’s for sale: a generator, microwave, toaster, pots and pans, bake ware, hampers, tools, and so on.

A lot more. A whole lot more. Before we sold/donated/stole what we could, we filled a large dumpster to overflowing with trash. After we sold/donated/stole/gave away what we could, we filled another dumpster half-full of rejects, including dozens and dozens – ok, hundreds - of hardcover books.  The new house owner was left with a sofa and recliner, both in really good condition; a bunch of artwork; a lot of glassware and dishes and mugs; 3 tall bookcases that weren’t compromised by black mold – yes, we found black mold, which destroyed 2 bookcases and a number of packed boxes and books – a china cabinet; a giant glass-topped coffee table; several lamps; screen room (like a porch only different)  table and chairs and lounge chair; and a bunch of framed artwork, as well as an Oxford English Dictionary (small version), atlas, thesaurus, and some other reference books. And some wicked-interesting roof vent thingies that would have made a very interesting garden tchotchke if I could have figured out how to get them home. I would have happily stole them.

The Florida room, where we found black mold under (and in) some of the boxes and bookcases

 Things we moved to a smallish assisted living room:

7 bookcases full to overflowing; a giant 13-foot china closet, also full to overflowing. At least  a dozen large pieces of artwork and a bunch of smaller ones; a small freezer; enough clothes, 15 or more boxes of shoes, and enough other stuff to fill a double closet to over-flowing; 20 toss pillows, 8 bed pillows, 5 loaves of bread and 2 cakes, 16 packages of mochi, and boxes and boxes and cloth bags and duffels of god-only-knows- what, two or three jewelry cases; and a 3+-foot-high stack of old magazines and catalogs; an ironing board and iron. A shower chair, which doesn’t fit in the shower because of the other stuff piled in the shower. A box of family mementos. A box or two of DVDs and CDs.

Along with that stuff, a full-size bed with headboard and 6 drawers below, 5 lamps, a tv, a cd/dvd player, a stand for same, and enough more books to cover the tops of the 4 shorter bookcases 3 feet high, and more stuff atop the three 7-foot-high bookcases, plus a recliner chair and a peacock chair, a set of 3 stacking side tables, a fake fur throw, a fake-leopard-skin rug, dishes, glasses, mugs, teacups, knives, silverware, microwave, water filter pitcher, toaster oven, Corelleware that fits into micro and toaster oven, some kitchen utensils, like big spoon and spatula and can opener and so on, at least 6 kitchen towels, pot holders, toilet paper and paper towels and tissues and garbage bags, a couple of trash cans, towels and bed linens, a clothes hamper, laundry detergent, dish detergent, a bathroom shelf-thing that fits over the hamper,  at least 2 teapots, and I’m not even sure what all else that we moved to a fairly small room at assisted living.

To all this my friend quickly added new linens, has made several on-line purchases and one in-person trip to the grocery store and filled her dorm-size frig with fresh foods and her freezer with frozen tv dinners and half-gallons (yes, plural) of ice cream, and canned food, and lots and lots of treats, because she doesn’t want to go to the assisted living dining room to eat (because she’d have to meet new people and have a conversation. God forbid.) Plus more little bowls and some trinkets she liked the looks of, and more stuff – books and we don’t know what else – from Amazon.

And, according to my FFF, what we moved wasn’t enough.

The black horror in moving mode: this went to her AL room

 When we left, most of this stuff was still in boxes and piles and tumbling out of cupboards and filling the shower and hall and causing tripping and making it impossible for the closet doors to open, or to gain free access to the toilet boxes were piled high between bed and wall, clothes and stuff was piled on top of both chairs, and all the stuff prevented the housekeeping staff from doing anything in the room.

Because, as happens with hoarders, the hoarder didn’t want us “touching any of my stuff!”  So, in the end, she wouldn’t let us find places in her room for what would fit and get rid of what would not. And, by the way, what in hell did we do with her (fill in something inappropriate here - she had lists pages long) – “I wanted that! You didn’t get rid of it, did you?!!”

Yes – the answer is, Yes! We did get rid of all that stuff. Because your room is already a health and fire hazard, and you don’t have room for, or any need for, any of the stuff on your list. So we got rid of it. You needed the money we could get for selling it more than you needed another pile of stuff that the assisted living place will eventually come in and clear out of your fire-trap of a room.

The description and lists above don’t even begin to describe what really went on down there. The entire first two weeks, I rarely said anything to my hoarder friend that wasn’t either shouting, threatening to leave while shouting, or talking loudly and vigorously in my “you aren’t listening” voice, which some of my patients and students are all too familiar with: loud, carefully enunciated, slow, and accompanied by a glare. At one point I remember at one point saying, “I expect you to put as much effort into your move as we are; if that means that you’ll get sick and end up in the hospital, as you claim,  then good, it’ll get you out of the way so we can do what needs to be done!”

No hospital stays were involved, by the way; it’s a frequent threat that worked on her father but not on us (“us” being me, cousin Paula, and care-giver Deb). But it would have made life easier. Last time we had to move her, we were lucky in that she a root canal the first of the days we were doing it, so afterwards we plopped  her in a motel room with no way to leave, and turned off our cell phones.  Which we needed to do often once we’d moved her to assisted living this time, also!

The last week, and a few days in-between when we took a break from the house clearing  and went to attempt to help her get her room in order, were more of the same. Except I was exhausted mentally and physically by week 5, and when she replied, “Good, go!” to my threat to leave if she wasn’t going to cooperate and let us fix the health and safety hazard that her room had been since we moved her, I did. Go, that is. And didn’t look back.

But I did give the Director of the place a head’s up. And now it’s their problem, which I’m sure they’ve dealt with before and will deal with again, in a way my FFF won’t be happy about, in her room.

Part of her room at assisted living 

Right now she’s not talking to me. Not only did I write her a long letter about hoarding and that she can’t continue that way now she’s at assisted living, and suggested that she show my letter to her psychiatrist to see where that took her; but she’s told her care-giver, who’s still going to help her once a week (not with clearing up the room! No, no, no!) to help her settle and get a new ID so she can vote, and other things, that we “maliciously and purposefully got rid of stuff she wanted.” Sigh.

The assisted living place my F-FL friend moved into, by the way, seems like a gem. It’s not a large place, but it’s not a small place, either; but it feels like a small place. There’s an exercise room, the residents can use the laundry room if they want to do their own laundry, there’s a computer room, and a lovely little garden on the back side that my friend’s room looks out on. The residents have been working on it, and on the far side, there’s barbecue gear that I’ve been told by the resident “ambassadors” that help newbies meet people and learn about the place, is the site of evening barbecues and music and fun during the summer. There are a couple of park benches out there, and picnic tables and lawn chairs. The place has a library – we bought two more bookcases for it so some of my friend’s books that won’t fit can fill. She’s already started organizing all the bookcases. The library has two comfy chairs, and we brought one of her large lamps that wouldn’t fit to the library so one could comfortably sit and read. There’s a table and chairs, and a book club.

The place also has a salon, and small bank accounts that let residents get $40/day out of, to use to go to lunch or a museum or some other thing the place sponsors trips to. They have a van; it takes residents to MD appointments twice a week, but there’s a PCP who comes to the residence and sees patients in their rooms; a mobile lab also makes the rounds to collect lab samples when needed. A games room has been mostly taken over by a group of women who are fanatical about jigsaw puzzles – once they’re put together, they somehow glue them and hang them on the walls, and some are really lovely. There’s a porch with chairs, and a sun room with chairs and couches. An activities room just steps from my friend’s room has an ice cream bar where they have socials in the summer, and weekly movies with popcorn. On Monday mornings a priest comes to say Mass there; on Sundays a protestant minister presides. The ambassador told me they sometimes have music groups, and other times bingo, cards, and even plays are presented there.

All the staff members can call all the residents by name. The place is pet-friendly; many residents have pet cats, which you don’t see unless you visit their rooms, but there are also two dogs that belong to the Director and the Director of Nursing – Sunshine and Bella, who has the run of the place. And I met many little dogs belonging to residents, sometimes trotting along next to their person, other times riding in their person’s walker basket. Absolutely adorable!

I met many of the residents while I was there, and several were eager to show me their rooms – neat as pins, comfortable, attractive. Many, like my friend, are Army brats, or Navy or Air Force brats, and all eager to meet another Brat and talk about the same places they lived and the same experiences they share. There are scheduled trips to different stores in the area. And everyone I met was friendly and pleasant, most of the folks were pretty active, going out for walks around the grounds regularly, and a few still drive. Even those using wheelchairs or walkers were up and about. The dining room is small, with 4-person tables and several seatings. Many options are available at each meal, and they change daily.

It seems like a great little place, where, if she made even a small effort, my friend could possibly make several friends. I’m thinking that’s not very likely. So far she’s refused to eat in the dining room, taking her food back to her room to eat alone; instead of hanging a wreath or other welcoming thing on the hook that hangs outside all the resident’s room doors, she’s hung a giant wooden rosary (I asked her if it was to repel vampires, and she didn’t answer). She doesn’t like the dogs. She doesn’t want to go in the van with anyone. She doesn’t want to do laundry during the day when the laundry room’s open – she wants to go in the middle of the night and needs special permission to do so, which she is unlikely to get. She doesn’t want to talk to the ambassadors, and she doesn’t have any interest in the book club, because she’s a snob and assumes they won’t read anything she’s interested in. She doesn’t’ want to meet the other Brats.

She has gone to watch a couple of movies – they serve popcorn, and, she told me, she doesn’t have to talk to anyone.

And in the meantime, you have to shuffle sideways through her room to reach toilet, or bed, or chair and bookcases. And she keeps tripping over the stuff on the floor. And she can’t take a shower, and she hasn’t washed her hair in more than 2 months, even though we agreed she should go to the salon once every week or two to get it washed.

Sigh. Back home, I have fourteen 3-ring binders of stuff concerning her, and that I did for her. Only 4 are currently in play, and only 3 often. Cousin Paula has retired and has taken over the finances part of the job, and I’m dealing with medical and, to some extent, social-related, but it’s hard when your friend doesn’t answer letters or emails. I’m wondering if our friendship can recover and go on.

But that’s another story. Yup, there will be a Part 3.

 

For the blog: herondragonwrites.blogspot.com   2 May 2023

All photos from F-FL by cousin Paula; any others by Deb Marshall

 

What it looked like before I left NH on March 1; how my heart feels still.