Mission: Impossible--Retrieval of Christmas Decorations

I didn't really decorate for Christmas this year.  I put the red and green poinsettia wind sock out.  And the adorable brick snowman I bought at an arts and crafts fair is sitting prominently on the almost empty shelving  unit in the living room.  Those are the only two things that I purposely and intentionally put out to mark the Christmas season.  As I've sorted through Christmas stuff, a wooden angel and a mechanical angel have been placed on a shelf.  But that's because I want to keep them and I just set them there until I get a bin emptied.

I've mentioned before the sheer magnitude of Christmas stuff that was in this house.  Before my mother passed away, I had pulled out all of her old stuff from under the eave on the east side.  I had sorted through all that while she was still alive.  I wanted to go through it again, because now I could actually get rid of some things.

Under the eave on the west side of the house, I discovered, much of my Christmas paraphernalia had been moldering.  Unlike the east side, which can be accessed through the infamous Cubby Hole, the west side is accessed from the stairway.  Unfortunately, you need to either have a ladder for stairs (which, of course, my dad had, but was probably pilfered by my oldest brother) OR you need to be small and have some upper arm strength.

Back in the day--like 30 years ago!--I was small and strong.  After pulling out the boxes right in front, I used to hoist myself up into the storage area using only the railing (which is slanted, of course!) to brace one foot on, while depending on my upper arm strength to do most of the work.  I'd crawl in there and push the boxes to the opening.  Most times, there was someone there to pull the stuff out as I moved it within reach.  My dad used to do that or, once in a while, my sister or brothers.  When we moved back here 13 years ago, it was my daughter, then 11, who climbed in there to push the boxes to the front.

Letting my daughter do this job was like the passing of the baton.  Giving the control to the next generation.  Truly, an historic moment.

For two or three years, I put up a small, slimline tree up in my room in an attempt to keep me and my daughter as a family unit.  After my dad passed away, I didn't do a tree up here, since he had died the day after Thanksgiving and I wasn't feeling festive.  Subsequently, we mostly decorated downstairs, making me, my mother and my daughter into one family unit.  It was at that point that I stopped retrieving my Christmas stuff from under the west side eave.

The roof over that particular area was leaking.  Well, the roof was leaking in a few places, but the worst damage was over the eave where my Christmas stuff resided.  The roofers had to replace boards, which left the storage area exposed.  Oh, they put tarps over it, but wind and rain would blow under.  I knew that a lot of my stuff was ruined and I kept meaning to pull it out and see what I could salvage.

Well, since I am packing up to move into my own place, I decided I'd better go through that stuff.  I knew I had a plastic bin with ornaments that should be fine and I was hoping my nativity set was still in good shape.  Last Saturday, I asked my daughter if she would help me.  I got a grudging yes, but not until after the first of the year.  But I wanted to do it now!

So, on Sunday, I removed the cover to the storage area and pulled out what I could reach.  The first thing was my large bin of ornaments.  Great!  As I gripped the handles of the bin, I was getting excited--right up until I pulled it out.  There was black, heavy, moldy dirt covering the top of everything.  Ugh!

I tried to hold  my breath as I carried the bin down the few steps to the living room, trying to avoid tripping over Khai and only partly succeeded.  Both in holding my breath and not tripping. If the living room wasn't so filled with boxes and bins, I would've fallen face first onto that dirty, yucky bin!  As it was, I managed to get the bin onto a stack of boxes as I fell over Khai.  My chest hit the edge of the box and my breath whooshed out, blowing bits of nasty, moldy dirt all over anything nearby.  At that point, my bronchi decided it had enough and sent my into coughing spasms.

The coughing was so strong I that I was doubled over.  I tripped over Khai (again) and shuffled around stacks of boxes to get to my purse and find my inhaler.  Getting light headed because I couldn't draw in enough air, and coughing so hard I thought the end was near, the thoughts that went through my mind were incongruous.  I was worried about the bit of nasty black dirt I got on my shirt.  And I was afraid Tabitha would be attacking Bebe.  Or that she was going in the storage area and how would I get her out?  I finally got to a kitchen chair and as I started to sit down, Khai jumped on the chair.  I couldn't stop the downward motion of my derriere, so I sat on him.  He really didn't like that much.  But I won.

Just sitting helped a lot.  I was reaching for my purse, when I spotted my cup of tea.  It was lukewarm, but that was okay.  The act of swallowing helped settle my lungs or bronchi or whatever.  I do have face masks.  Upstairs.  Past the stacks of boxes, past the cats, up the stairs where it was blocked by the cover/door to the storage area.  Fortunately, I made that trip in my head before I actually got up and tried it.

After resting a while.  I went back to the stairs and the yawning depths under the west side eave.  Tabitha was sitting on the stairs, just a few steps above the floor of the opening where she could see into the gaping maw.  She had a look on her face like "I'd like to go in there, but it's yucky and I've never done it, so maybe I shouldn't".  Feline ambivalence at it's best.  She did, of course, meow at me.  I patted her head and turned my attention back to the task at hand.

There was a cardboard box that I could reach.  This time I was more careful, turning my head as the box came out of the filthy mess that was the storage area.  There were a couple more boxes that I couldn't quite reach, so I got an idea.

I remember putting one of my mother's canes with her walker behind the recliner. After telling Khai to get out of the way, I grabbed the cane and headed back to the stairs, once again tripping over Khai.  Tabitha was still on her step, watching, and meowing at me.  This time I just shrugged.

Wielding the cane like a medieval warrior, I jammed the handle of the cane into the next cardboard box and pulled it forward.  After retrieving a couple of boxes, I saw another plastic bin!  Yay!  That stuff should be okay, too.  The only problem was, the bin handles were rounded and so was the cane handle.  It kept slipping out from under the handle.  I pondered this a moment.  I looked at Tabitha and she said something in Felinian (cat language--my word).  But I got the message!  Carefully I took the cane and loosened the lid of the bin.  That it loosened so easily meant that it wasn't snapped on.  I grimaced at what that might mean to the stuff inside, but I persevered.  Without dislodging the lid, I slipped the cane handle over the side of the bin and pulled it towards me.  It was a huge bin.  When I finally manhandled the bin down into the living room, I decided I had enough to get started sorting.  When I put the cover/door back on the storage area, I made sure Tabitha wasn't in there!

No, Tabitha was in the living room.  Walking on the boxes and bins.  The ones from storage.  With the nasty, black, thick, moldy dirt on them.  Which was now on her paws.  And, in pawprints, on the rug.  Thank you Tabitha Darling.

Next mission:  Sorting and Packing

I Need Apartment Hunting for Dummies

I am apartment hunting for the first time in my 50 years on this earth.  Sounds a little dramatic?  Well, it is for me.

To give a little background:  I moved out of my parents' house the first time a few weeks after I turned 24.  Just before that birthday, I had decided it was about time I got my own place.  I had even started buying flatware.  Then my sister and brother-in-law told me they were moving to Florida.  They had been renting what I optimistically called a carriage house.  Most people referred to it as a salt box.

I don't know the history of this little house for certain, but I have come up with a plausible hypothesis.  This little two-bedroom house was the original house on the property, probably built in the late 1800's.  It boasted a full basement (unfinished), a living room with a bedroom off it, a kitchen with a bedroom off it, a tiny bathroom (with a wonderful claw-foot tub, but no shower) and a small room that was an add-on some time in the 20th century.  Quite noticeable was the fact that there wasn't a square corner or level floor anywhere.  Well, maybe the basement was level.  For real, you didn't need a level or plumb line to see it.  Anyway, a much bigger house was built on the lot, leaving the little house for servants quarters, a guest house or related living.

I loved that little house.  I rented for five years.  My daughter was born when I lived there.  There were sidewalks and stores within walking distance.  I let friends talk me into saving up to buy my own place.  I--we moved in with my parents, where I tried to save toward a down payment on a house.

Another five years later and I was anxious to get my own place again.  At the time, the realtors were proclaiming that you could own for less than you could rent.  I had a realtor friend so I ventured into the homeowners arena by buying a condo on the other side of town.  I didn't want to be too far from my parents as they were my primary child caregivers.

It was a great condo--almost.  Almost 1000 square feet, two bedrooms and a decent amount of light.  On the ground floor, we had a small patio and I was allowed to plant flowers at the edge of the landscaped rock beds.  We were there more than four years when I decided I couldn't stand other people's noise.  There really was no insulation between units.  I repaired a hole in the back wall under the kitchen sink.  After I removed the moldy pieces, I realize I was looking straight into the neighbor's undersink cabinet!  Nothing but one sheet of drywall separating us!  The ceilings were no better.  When I was in my bedroom, I could hear the guy upstairs peeing in his bathroom.  (He drank a lot!)  It took 13 months to sell the condo, though, so we were there for five and a half years.

Back to my parents, while I tried to save and look for a house.  With the same realtor friend, I finally found a nice house in an older neighborhood.  However, the buyers backed out of the contract because they got a better offer.  This turned out to be a blessing as I was let go from my job just four months later.

Now, thirteen years after moving back into my childhood home thinking I was going to buy a house, I must move out again.  This time for good.  My Dad died eight years ago and my Mom died two months ago.  I also realized it would be the first time I would being living on my own since my daughter's birth 24 years ago.  I'd only had two and a half years on my own before she was born and most of that was spent with a boyfriend.

It's weird.  I'm scrolling through craigslist.com, looking at maps of various towns, cities and neighborhoods within them.  Prior to this, I knew of four neighborhoods in the city of Chicago.  Garfield Ridge, Clearing, Roseland and Pullman.  Well, five, if you count The Loop.  I don't want to live in Chicago's city limits, but rent is dirt cheap in some areas.  Except I wouldn't want to live in most of those areas.

To find cheaper apartments in the suburbs, I have to go west.  So far, Joliet would give me the most bang for my buck, so to speak.  Maybe it's the state prison that turns people off.  That doesn't bother me too much.  I've lived with the tollway as a close neighbor to the north and I've seen many strange people (and not just as in unknown) because of it.  To the south is an enormous apartment complex.  Actually two complexes.  Or is it three?  It keeps changing names.  The complex is right around the corner and is subsidized housing.  Now that alone doesn't mean there are bad people.  But the sheer volume of humanity there ups the odds of the not-so-nice and downright bad people living next door to you.  Which is evidenced by the number of sirens we hear in there each week.  If I read about a shooting in my village of Justice, nine times out of ten, it's in that complex.

This weekend, I am going to see a couple of apartments in Joliet.  I had hoped it wouldn't come to this.  I had hoped something would fall in my lap, like it did when I was 24, but oh, well.  I'll deal.  And I'll drag my daughter, best friends or whoever I need along with me!