Chickens-Home-Roost (or at least Raccoons) in Everyday Ramblings

Here we are up in the Northern Hemisphere in the dog days of summer. My sweet peas are still flowering but a lot of other stuff is done.

We have high fire danger because of super low humidity and wind. So far so good at least locally. At least we don’t have a heat dome so far. And the current heat is only going to last a few days before we get a break.

I was over at Fred a couple of days ago, I had just gotten there and had cleaned and refilled the bird bath and I heard a noise out on the patio. It was the middle of the day, and I had the door open still airing out the smell of the chemicals the cleaners used on the rugs. I stepped out to look and there in the rhododendrons was a family of five raccoons staring back at me intently. Mom, and five kits. This is their time of year. It is a hard life for them. I don’t begrudge them water. I don’t feed them though. And I have the luxury of not having chickens.

Fred looks rather disheveled right now. Everything is out of everything. All the drawers, file cabinets and bookcases and almost all the closets are empty. There are boxes and stuff that needs to be put in boxes. I started with the books, and they are all over in the storage area. I have three days to get everything else over into storage as well. Blessedly, the storage area is right across the hall and there are no stairs so this could have been a lot more complicated.

Up until now I have been sorting stuff. Art supplies together, office supplies together, electronics…But starting tomorrow it is going to be, get the stuff out of the apartment.

This is all such a challenge and much of it is of my own making. Chickens home to roost and all that. I have so many empty boxes! Stuff I have bought, gift boxes, electronic boxes. Mr. Finch was sick when I moved in. I had another friend in Seattle who was sick before I moved in, and I was going up there a lot. Then my sister got sick. And my job was super stressful from day one and I was going to yoga a lot to manage said stress.

Then after Mr. Finch died, I started teaching yoga, and trying to have some sort of social life that never truly panned out. All this time I never did anything with my stuff. It got moved into the back of closets or under tables or in cabinets. It is not like I had a lot of stuff. Funky used furniture mostly. Gifts and other people’s stuff. But it accumulates, a bit like racoon kits.

Now this situation is making me address this in a time crunch situation.

I am grateful I have a place to live, I am grateful I have two places to live while this is going on, I realize I am privileged in spite of the horrible communication, uncertainty and all the attendant anxiety.

Mrs. Sherlock is coming over tomorrow morning with a homemade fruit tart to spend a couple of hours mostly giving me moral support and encouragement. She is wearing a heart rate monitor for her doctor for another week. I sure hope they can figure out what is going on.

Kes and Most Honorable are coming up with more boxes, tape, tools, and a hand truck so we can get the furniture all moved on Saturday morning. That gives me Sunday as a fallback day for all the rest of the stuff.

Then I have a week where the new flooring gets installed and hopefully the water pressure in the kitchen gets fixed.

And then if the baseboards get put in and painted the following Monday, I will be moving everything back in. I was talking to a retired psychologist this morning who is one of the coffee guys and he said I could pretend I was in charge of all this.

We laughed. I don’t think I am that good at self-deception.

It is going to take me at least six months to get this stuff all back into some semblance of order. That is something I will have some control over. I hope I can make it a time that feels meaningful and not a time that feels like a burden.