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.

 

Back from F'ing Florida: Part One

 

Johnny Jump-Ups

I didn’t get eaten by alligators. I did come home, as predicted, a totally mentally and physically exhausted ball of ashes held together by spite; but a month of not humping hundreds of heavy boxes and shouting threats and doom-saying predictions – and having too much rain to plant much of the garden – has brought me back around. Mostly. I was crazy enough to get out that I actually flew, on Southwest, on April Fool’s Day!

There  were a very few nice things about Florida:

An Italian restaurant named Da Vinci’s, the only place where the food was actually food, and the little old lady there named Anna who waited on our table and was the only one in FL who figured out how to make the coffee milk I euphemistically call “coffee” and remembered it and didn’t pretend it was weird. And who gave me actual delicious vegetables instead of pasta when I couldn’t face typical F-FL food any longer.

 The grocery store in Vero Beach where I found cheese from Vermont.

The very, very lovely and varied flowering trees and bushes, that mostly I couldn’t get names for – but who knew there’s a yellow magnolia? And there’s something called a Christmas palm that has green and red flowers on it? And that coconuts actually grow on those fake-looking trees?

 Also, the incredible birds that largely don’t look like our birds, with a few exceptions – including the excellent peacock who wanders downtown Ft. Pierce, and for whom all traffic stops. They even have a few blocks called the Peacock District.

Ft. Pierce peacock; in front of the town offices

Fun things? Where we were staying, on the 6^th floor of a huge condo building with 2 elevators, there was an L-shaped screened-in balcony. The night I slept out there was the only comfortable night I spent. One night we were treated to a fireworks display way off across the river, that we never could find out what the reason for was; and every morning there were manatees floating around the docks, and several times we saw fresh-water dolphins (who knew there were fresh-water dolphins??) and pelicans that spent the day setting upon the piers. Note: real-life pelicans – at least, these – don’t smoke pipes and wear cap’n’s hats. I was disappointed.

Below that river side of the balcony was a swimming pool. There were three little black birds that spent hours in the pool, standing on the steps into it, bathing and drinking. We also saw vultures, ibis, many kinds of long-legged, long-beaked birds (no flamingos unless they were white and I didn’t recognize them); and the black bird that two years ago shouted at me whenever I went down my friend’s driveway to get the mail out of the mailbox (trip down: oh no! oh no! oh no!; while I reached for the mail: uh-oh! uh-oh! uh-oh!; while I returned to the house: nyuh-aah!: nyuh-aah! nyuh-ahh!) was still there, but the only time I heard him was when the moving van, when pulling into the driveway, got caught on, and partially brought down, the phone wires strung across the driveway (entirely too low). Poor bird flew into a nearby tree and spent the next hour shouting: Oh-No! Oh-No! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!  Over and over again. I swear.

Lots of geckos of many colors, and some very pretty many-colored geckos. All named Bob, apparently.  Aross the street from the condo was the ocean; so on many nights I could hear the ocean waves crashing. And – get ready for this – the ocean in F-FL is warm!. I couldn’t believe it. Only got to wade (and get splashed waist-high) in it once, because we were too busy, but still, it was great.

In 5 weeks, I only met one (yes, one) person who actually grew up in F-FL – everyone else was from everywhere else, many from PA, NJ, and environs. The area where our short-term rental condo was, was filled with part-time full-timers, retired full-timers from away, and the road – a very long road – resembled a geriatric strip mall of condos, little cottages and trailer parks, and a few truly giant homes. They all had beach names: Beach Front; Beach Side, The Dunes, The Pier, The Pier on the Dunes, The Dunes on the Beach, Manatee Cove, Pirate Cove, Beach Pirate Cove, Manatee Dunes – you get the idea.

 I did meet a guy in the condo library – the condo had a library!  and grocery carts you can borrow to carry your stuff from car to apartment in – who for all his childhood and until just recently, spent summers near Lake Winnipesaukee, in Wolfeboro, in fact. We discussed the proper pronunciation of Konkid, Boskwine, Lebnan, Klayamot, Kankamangus, New Hamsha, and other local spots. Yes, that is how a native pronounces them, you fakers!

Back home: All winter, the garden gremlins who caused such destruction in garden, and then the house when they moved in for the winter, caused the cold water faucet in the bathroom sink to run only warm or hot water. My threats that stopped them from growling in the pipes and wall didn’t have any effect on the cold water faucet. Sometime in February or March, something – something large enough to climb over the compost wall and from the top dig a large den in the compost, with a hole opening from the top, large enough for – well, for a gremlin or garden gnome – sorry, The Husband covered it over before I got a chance to take a photo of it, but it was at least 6 inches wide by 4 inches high and included a domed top – and by the time I got back from F-FL, the cold water faucet was suddenly producing cold water again. 

Early rhubarb

So I’m holding my breath to see what’s going to happen, besides ticks, I mean, in the garden this year. So far it’s too cold and wet to plant anything except alliums, and has been too wet to plant even alliums unless I wanted to do it in galoshes and a raincoat. However, the garlic, planted last year, is well up, and the asparagus is also about 2 inches up, and the rhubarb is about 5 inches up, and the Johnny-Jump-Ups are rioting amongst the garden beds. So, the last 3 days between showers I managed to get the leeks, 2 of the onion sets, and the shallots planted, with fingers crossed. The storm we had the other night left an unexpected duck pond in the side field, and water coming up through the cracks in the cement floor of the cellar and the drainpipe down there.

Earlier in April, we were temporarily visited by a pure white duck with a black streak across his back, a teal head, and a very long very red beak. This, the internet tells me, is a Merganser; but the lady he was accompanied by was not a lady Merganser, she was brown and spotted all over. A dalliance? Or, maybe, garden gremlins in disguise? They were heading for the kitchen pond, which had just started quacking with tree frogs, before the peepers came out. I haven’t seen them since, but what a sight! The woodcock, when it’s not pouring rain, is calling for a mate in the front field; I hear owls hooting back and forth at night; the bird that built its nest atop the lighting fixture at the top of the stairs in the garage outside The Husband’s studio is back; and it looks like the three birdhouses in the garden are occupied, or, at least, being investigated for future occupancy.

Emerging plants

My world is mostly back to normal. The Sailor and I went to the 5 Colleges Book Sale the weekend after I got back to NH, first time since Covid. My cats forgave me for being gone pretty quickly, but Biscuit, the little black female, left this plane while I was in F-FL. She had a cancerous tumor on the side of her neck that had grown to the size of a baseball, and she’d just worn out. Her ashes wait to be planted in the grave bed next to Catmandoo’s. As usual, we ran out of fire wood too soon. As usual, the driveway was a mud pit for most of March – glad to have missed that! I’ve read something like 10 books in the past month, which is more than I read all last year; and I also caught up on months’ worth of magazines that had piled up. And I’m planning the garden, and 3 new raised beds.

I’m also down to just 4 3-ring binders, out of 14, about my F-FL friend’s stuff. But more on that, later.

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

All photos Debra Marshall; peacock and other F-FL photos Paula Lisciotto

That's me in back, and cousin Paula and her husband Len in front; we're on a boat going out to look for dolphins and other F-FL wildlife. What we did the last day, after the hoarder kicked us out of her room. But that's another story...

 

 

Mid-December Arrives

The new well cover, before the snow

Mid-December and the snow is coming down pretty steadily. Everything is covered with pom-poms and ribbons of snow, and I’m guessing that the bears have finally settled down for a long sleep.

A raven, yesterday, managed to figure out how to nab part of a suet cake from the wart railing yesterday. They’re used to swooping by and snagging the chunk without having to, barely even, slow down; but the roof over most of the wart that was put up this summer has made that maneuver impossible unless the raven’s coming from the north and I’ve helpfully put the suet chunk on the far north corner of the railing. Which I hadn’t; and it wasn’t; so it had to do a swoop around and crunch up with a lifted, half-closed wing to avoid the nearby post holding up the roof. Which was that much more entertaining to watch!  As always, once the raven had the suet in its clutches, it flew off towards the pine tree, laughing all the way. I’m looking forward to this winter’s suet snags!

Looking out the window today, it’s almost a white-out when the wind blows, and the birds are having a hard time getting to the bird feeders, which are hung under the wart roof, so once they manage to get there they can eat comfortably. The seed and suet balls I put on the railing for the ground feeders this morning are covered up with snow already; squirrels and doves and woodpeckers will dig them out tomorrow when the snow stops falling. A few determined doves have shown up from time to time, doing their best to brush the snow off to get at the goodies. We have buckets of water stashed in the bathtub for toilet flushing, and pitchers of water on the kitchen counter for drinking, in case we lose power, and I’m keeping the tea kettle full, and the pot on the woodstove filled.

The cats gave up after trying a few brief forays out this morning, and are all curled up in various places doing their own imitation of hibernating, broken up from time to time by a rough and tumble. There’s an almost full pot of curried vegetable-tamarind soup in the frig, plenty of cheese, and a loaf of onion-dill sourdough bread on the counter, with more stashed in the large chest freezer down cellar. There are candles to hand; the Coleman lantern broke awhile back, but there’s an old-fashioned  Aladdin lamp if it’s needed, and flashlights, and a battery-powered string of fairy lights that throws a surprising amount of light in the total darkness, if we lose electricity.  I’m hoping we won’t, but it looks like one of those kinds of storms… good thing the Husband decided to bring in lots of wood for the woodstove, yesterday!

Yup: that was awhile ago!

 It feels like a day for a nap, but I’m torn between that and going up to the cold bedroom to finish the Christmas-wrapping chores, or down to the cold cellar to fold the huge mound of laundry that came out of the dryer yesterday. Nope, looks like I’m not hanging clothes out on the line during the winter! My grandmother used to do so on her porch; the water would freeze in the cloth and a sharp snap when she took it down would send the ice flying, and the clothes would come in, mostly dry. But those were the days when everything got ironed, including undies and sheets, which would finish the drying process, and I’m sorry, but there’s no way that’s happening in my world! I grew up in that world and it was the chore girls were given, and I can’t think of a more mind-numbingly boring stupid activity to waste time and energy on.

I think I’m going to go curl up with Lynxie and read, which will turn into a nap. I deserve it – I’ve spent pretty much every spare moment for the last 2 months and more, doing research, writing explanations, redoing budgets, and calling service people, in preparation for moving my friend in Florida into assisted living, cleaning out her house and selling what she can’t take with her, and putting the house on the market this spring. Movers: check. Dumpster rental: check. Sale of non-working car: check. Real estate agent: check. Estate sale agent: check. Travel agent: check. Consignment shops: check.  Cleaners: check. Law firm: HA!  Medicaid sign-up: check. List of odd places not to forget to change address with: check. Legal papers sent to assisted living facility: check. Pre-paperwork filled out and sent to friend to finish: check. Thank-you call to residences she toured but rejected: check. Multiple consultations with cousin Paula, who’s dealing with where we’ll stay and car rental: check.

Yup. A nap. Move over, Lynxie!

 

For the blog: herondragonwrites.blogspot.com

December 15, 2022

All photos Deb Marshall

Old and wise