Hell Day, part 2
Yesterday S and I spent nearly 5 hours at the fire house together. It was our weekend date. T stayed at home and likely just binged Netflix. My hands were black when we were done. Our goals for the day were to:
Find all the important paper. I think we did. We opened every single drawer and touched every piece of paper. Walgreens receipts from 2013? Got em. Tax returns? got em. Random jewelry appraisals - yup - got that to. (for the very same jewelry that is currently in the back of her car riding around for the last 5 weeks EVEN THOUGH we were bullied in to getting that jewelry safe and bringing it into the basement). Ask me if I found any bank or investment statement from any time after she retired in 2017. I didn’t.
Fill up the garbage cans. Done. It took us like a second. I know I’m irritating in the way I keep asking why we don’t have a dumpster. I have to assume we are just saving our pennies because S is definitely closed for discussion on the topic. So we move garbage from the lower level to the main level. We move from the kitchen to the garage. We move stuff into the pickup to be thrown in the dumpster at work, or into the work warehouse. We are touching that garbage multiple times. And it is really really too bad that she has been collecting lovely note cards for 40 years. Her collection is impressive. But we have never one time received a note on a note card from her AND… fire. ruined. Goodbye.
Investigate the contents of the filing cabinet she has brought up to S a handful of times but never to me. (wasn’t even scandalous - disappointing.) Definitely full of appliance user mantels… including but not limited to VCR, record turntable, boom box, cable TV, former appliances, etc.
Empty the hall closet she keeps talking about. (peanut butter, mayonnaise, coffee, 8 bottles of Murphy’s wood oil, paper towels, 10+ bottles of toilet bowl cleaner, paper napkins, toilet paper, 4 more bottles of round up, etc and so forth).
Remove the furniture she said can go. This was the hardest. Those chairs were his grandmothers. They were not comfortable. The print was horrendous. Smoke damaged. But they were indestructible. S had a sledgehammer and they were really holding their own for quite some time.
Days like that are both physically and mentally exhausting. Our roommate is not participating in this part of the project. She is not necessarily even caring what is happening. Not even curious enough to ask what happened or how it went. Steve found 3 framed pictures of her parents and grandma that he was sure she would like. We got home and while I was in the shower furiously scrubbing the day off of me he brought them down to her and this was her only response.
Oh good you’re home. Now you can help me get the fertilizer down on those plants.