happy new year! -- keys to my own apartment. in france. (i'm no longer renting)
House has been badly rekt since a little before Thanksgiving. In order to tip the balance of order to prevent my morale from plummeting I've been emptying my service pit. Did I mention I have a service pit? Yeah guy I bought the house from figured covering it in plywood was inadequate to the purpose of keeping his 8, 12 and 16 year old daughters from falling in so he filled it with dirt and garbage. "Dirt and garbage" started out with me paying my slack-jawed yokel to empty it out but as it turns out, not only was he a junky he was also a pussy. I started with a bucket on a pulley from the rafters but it turns out a 5gal bucket full of dirt and rocks is heavy. So then I went with a block'n'tackle but what they don't tell you is that coiled-core rope on a b'n't spins like a mutherfucker and ceases to be a b'n't. So then I grabbed my chain hoist which I use to move FrankenKerns around but holy shit chain hoists are stupid for lifting 200lbs. So then a buddy lent me his unused Harbor Freight winch but the minute it had any load it ejected its planetaries and crumbled to dust. So then I went to HF and bought a new one, hooked it up to a used UPS battery, hooked the UPS battery up to a trickle charger and now we're in fully-mechanized "it puts the lotion in the basket" territory. I've found a bunch of busted sewer pipe in the service pit. Also a 40 gallon barrel of oil. Also a bunch of carpet, which prevents me from just scraping along the bottom. But I've also spent an awful lot of time in the rafters of the garage and that's where things get interesting. That's one woman's life, nearly every document, from 1973 to 1975. Bank statements, bills, letters, report cards, medical intake forms, tax returns, car tabs. It's an easy fifteen pounds of documents, including a typing textbook, two yearbooks, a handful of hairstyle guides, a broadway musical script and a few rolls of negatives. It took four days just to go over. But holy shit. It was like sitting down to have a drink with a ghost. There was this guy. He was born rich, never had to work, but his dad had just died and his mom was unwell. He lived all alone in this castle on a hill with his dog and his '65 Mustang GT. He was a drunk and he was irresponsible; he owed Columbia House the equivalent of $600 for a bunch of Burt Bacharach 8-tracks. And there was this lady - she and her husband owned a restaurant out in the sticks and she owned and operated a three-chair hair salon. She drove a '72 Riviera; he drove a '68 Beetle. The restaurant went under and her marriage was on the rocks; she had a 22-year-old son and an 18-year-old daughter and even though she was overdrawn at every department store and hair supply house in a hundred mile radius, her daughter still managed to be voted "best dressed." Pretty sure the guy ran into the lady while she was making ends meet waiting tables. They totally hit it off. She kicked out her husband and he got an apartment; it probably helped to stay ahead of the law because he was a drunk driver. He paid her bills and sent her cards, she dealt with a dying mother in a nursing home and a dying mother-in-law in another nursing home. He refused a breathalyzer and Oregon suspended his license and forwarded his new address to Washington; he got arrested and sentenced to 90 days in minimum-security detox. And he wrote her and she wrote him and once he was out she bundled up all her shit and bailed on the sticks forever, leaving the kids, leaving the husband, and moving in with a newly-reformed, newly-sober fellow ten years her junior. She never had to worry about money ever again. Neither did her kids. The lady and the guy lived happily ever after, becoming well-loved social butterflies in a number of communities over the 35 years they had left together. And when he died, nobody wanted to find the box of letters. I found the kids. Tried to get them all this. I was told that it was a painful time they chose not to revisit and if I could please "throw it all away" they'd appreciate it. Two sides to every story; I have no doubt in my mind those two loved each other deeply and made each other very happy. I found this under the box.
A bit late but so be it, with the day off it slipped my mind :) Happy new year to all! We've booked a 2 week vacation for late spring and I'm super excited for that. Plus we've got a few weekend trips including a spa weekend and backpacking in Big Sur. Going to be cold but fun! Apparently Pinnacles National Park's campground is privately run and as such wildly expensive compared to other national parks which is a shame as we were both looking forward to that. Got some super nice wildlife binoculars for the holidays and they've been super cool so I'm excited to take those on some hikes.