Wire

One of the items in my dad's workroom is electrical wire, quite a bit of electrical wire. Last week I was so excited to find somewhere that takes it for recycling. However Michael told me they will ship it across the world and melt it down and...he suggested the Habitat for Humanity Restore. I had already tried that with a previous suggestion of his and they were not interested in what I brought, so I was not too hopeful about them taking it. But today I stopped by with a small trunkful of electrical wire and they took it!

And in an additional note, we are corresponding with someone at Habitat about what we are going to do with my dad's home. It is nice to deal with people who are up front. Today we arranged a time for a realtor to come out and access a home value.

Looking thru stuff at my parents I found this classy black and white photo. I remember the relative on the left visiting with his son (the 3rd from left) when I was a child. They were from California and I remember sitting in the backyard with the son during a lightning storm. We were facing opposite directions and pointing out whenever there was lightning. He had never seen lightning before!

I asked my uncle how they are related to us, but my uncle isn't sure. I do think the man on the left is probably standing next to his mother. The three of us on the right are me, my mother and my little brother.

I also remembered when they visited when the boy was a teenager that he smoked and how surprised I was by that. I was in fact a bit horrified, my parents didn't think it was a good idea, but seemed to be more understanding that teenagers sometimes did such things.

Michael has a small retirement pension/annuity that is offering a cash out option. I did not have a very helpful response when he first told me about it. "If they are offering it, it is certainly because it benefits them not us!" Luckily we had found a fiduciary advisor after my dad died to consult and had a positive experience with him, so today we spoke to him about the annuity/pension and I'm grateful for that conversation.

Finally, I left the house this AM in an attempt to go for a jog. The air was so thick I only jogged 1/2 block and then turned into a walk. Oh well, it was still a nice walk. I saw a house or two with fans in the windows - no AC - and am reminded not to take that luxury for granted, even though Michael just got upset with me for turning the temperature up (he is working upstairs in the hottest room during the day).

In The Mail

#1 - I finally put my dad's 2019 taxes in the mail.

#2 - I've felt quite unproductive over at his house recently with the two rooms I haven't touched (his work room and the garage). I walk in, and then I walk out. I don't know what to do with that stuff. I don't know what stuff should be thrown away. I don't know what stuff could be useful and where to take it. Today I did another round upstairs. Nearing the final load of his laundry. We started emptying his closet a little earlier than I wanted to, mostly because I knew what to do with the stuff in there, but then I was sad so I left the last of his clothes. I also emptied two shelving cabinets in the living room that I am really hoping someone will want. My brother has been doing a great job of posting things on CraigsList but so far no one has bit on that, maybe some new photos without our personal items in it will help.

#3 - My partner is talking to a member of his family on the phone in the background. I always appreciate when he reaches out to them as they don't communicate too frequently.

#4 - I think I just signed up to be an election judge for the first time. I say "I think" because it said I needed to sign up for training but then didn't give me any training options so who knows. I originally put my name down for this before the whole CoVid thing blew up, but now it seems especially important since most of the election judges are retirees and may not feel comfortable doing this.

#5 - I have read a woman's blog - first from the border of Belgium/France and now from Italy - for close to ten years now. She took a break from writing for a couple weeks because she was so busy with translation work. But she just posted about how happy she was to be writing again - to the 6 or so people who read it - and how appreciative she was and I feel the same way. I genuinely appreciate her perspective, I always have, but this became especially true with the virus this spring and getting her firsthand perspective of things in Italy.


http://centaurwalking.blogspot.com/

Willow River State Park

For the past 5 years my niece and I have done an annual camping weekend. This year our reservation was cancelled because of CoVid and the park being closed. That actually turned out well though because now we are camping on weeknights so the campground and park will be much less busy. This, like all plans these days, was one I wasn't sure we'd be able to do and I'm super grateful to be able to continue the tradition and for the gorgeous weather today as we head out in a few hours.

It always takes a lot of time and energy to prepare to camp, but now I think I'm pretty much ready, and it helped that I woke up with the early sun to finish things up.

We started reading a delightful book by E.B. White recently called Stuart Little and I look forward to finishing that with her.

My partner and I had a hard conversation on a tricky topic today, but it didn't lead us into a downward spiral. We were connected enough that even though it isn't resolved we are still connected.

Turn Back Round

#1 - My brother has been posting some of my dad's furniture on Craigslist. Randomly the son of one of dad's friends wanted some tray tables.

#2 - I'm starting to feel a bit guilty as I'm usually over working on things at my dad's 2-3 days a week, but I haven't been over there since Monday. I was thinking about going over yesterday, however a friend emailed that he wanted to go to the George Floyd memorial and I said I'd go with him. This is a friend that I realized, after Michael pointed out, doesn't usually reach out to me so I was glad to oblige. Also until yesterday I'd only seen one friend since this isolation thing started.

#3 - And today I ended up taking a walk with another friend, maintaining a little more space than in the past. When I got home Michael wanted to exercise. It's so much easier to motivate if someone will move with you. I also really appreciate the Macklemore Pandora station for motivation and energy.

#4 - We did our couples group over Zoom this AM. We joined this group back in Oct and have both really enjoyed it. We'll see what it turns to next. We were supposed to meet once a month Oct-May and then take a summer break and decide if we'd continue. Things kind of fell apart when we couldn't meet anymore, but one of the couples volunteered to lead via Zoom today. I really hope we continue in the Fall as I've found it to be a positive and enriching experience and at least having met each other in person makes it work on Zoom, even though it isn't ideal.

#5 - I pulled into the parking lot of a big store today thinking I'd go in for a few things. As soon as I saw how full the parking lot was, I turned back out again. I'm grateful that I have that choice.

Unscheduled Comment

It's not my normal schedule to write, but I wanted to share something I just experienced. I spent the last two nights at my dad's out in the suburbs. The first night was planned, the second I ended up staying because otherwise I would have returned home after curfew.

This morning I debated between driving or biking back. I ended up deciding to bike, not only because of the turmoil in our area, but I also heard a potential for hail in the forecast. At my dad's house I could leave the car in a garage.

It was close to lunch time when I arrived in Minneapolis so I thought I'd pull up to a restaurant we tried for take-out last month that was on the way. It was boarded up, the beginning of Lake Street, where much of the turmoil has been this past week. Because I was already on the street, I decided to continue biking down it. If there was too much glass I'd pick a new route. Michael had biked down Lake Street on Saturday. "How did you bike down it with all the glass?" I asked him after, "Weren't you concerned you'd get a flat?" He said there were lots of people out with brooms. "Where were they putting the glass? Were there dumpsters?"

"They just dumped it into burning buildings," he said.

So I had this surreal experience of biking down a street full of boarded up buildings. And I want to be clear, I turned south before the worst of it, I did not approach the worst of it, yet what amazed me is I've never seen Lake Street so clean. There was no glass. There was no trash. Usually I would have to be more careful about biking. There were people scattered along with brooms and trash bags, but it seemed most of the street clean up had already been done.

Eventually I got to buildings that were burned/devastated, something that couldn't be cleaned up by people with their gloved hands. But all along the way I held both images in my heart, the destruction and the caring hands that followed behind.