i contain magnitudes

[the_siobhan]

Old Man's old apartment has been emptied. It was a looong day. I picked up the van at 10 AM and dropped it back into it's parking stop at 11 PM. I ate a sandwich and drank a beer and went straight to bed, did not pass GO, did not collect $200. I am genuinely shocked that my muscles don't hurt today.

The few items he's keeping are now in his room waiting to be unpacked, cleaned, and arranged. Everything else is in the storage locker. At some point when I have more time and spoons I'll go through the boxes and figure out what can be donated or given to family members.

My sister and her husband helped, which was brilliant because it would have taken me two days without them. But there was a thing that happened a lot, and I'm wondering now if it's maybe a neuro-typical/neuro-atypical divide because it seems to be a flavour of conflict I have regularly.

There have been a few occasions where I've had to move on a deadline and when people are helping me I always say, "Just throw it all in a bag, I'll sort it out when I'm unpacking. And boy howdy, do people NOT WANT TO DO THAT. "These things are old." "This thing is beat up." "Why would you want to keep this?" Look, I have not actually decided whether or not I am keeping it, but I also have not decided to throw it away, because I am not thinking about any of those things right now, just put it in the box. Then there has to be a fucking discussion about it.

And I get that people don't want to pack and carry stuff if it's just going to end up in the trash later. But it has to leave this place no matter where it's going, and if you ask me to use the thinking portions of my brain today it will drain all the blood out my carrying-things and driving-in-traffic portions of my brain and I will run out of steam by 4 PM and have a fucking melt-down in the parking lot. Just put it in the fucking van and let me worry about the rest later. Nope. Gotta have a conversation about every single fucking stick of furniture Jesus Fucking Christ.

I finally just started saying, "Oh Housemate is taking all the _X_ so I'm keeping that for me. Yes, every single pillow in the house. Honest."

That mostly worked.

Then I did a 10-hours work shift today because I'm behind on all my deadlines and tomorrow is the in-office day and I know I'll get fuck-all useful done. I did manage to dig out all my office clothes but I haven't tried any of it on yet, so I guess I'm winging it tomorrow. At least I'll be wearing a mask so I won't end up biting anybody.

Probably.

Maybe.

Hopefully.

Comments

[cornerofmadness]

I'm glad it got done

[the_siobhan]

Oh gosh, me too.

[cornerofmadness]

I can only imagine

[greylock]

Nope. Gotta have a conversation about every single fucking stick of furniture Jesus Fucking Christ.

I'd probably be guilty of that.
But ye gods, that is a looong day.

[the_siobhan]

Likely. I mean everybody else does it.

I won't lie, I find it kind of fascinating when it's not actively pissing me off. If I tell people my back hurts they're usually willing to work around that. If I say my brain can't do a thing they respond by insisting over and over again that I make my brain do the thing.

[greylock]

Brains are invisible. People assume they are all wired the same, OR they have an extra special insight.

[warriorsavant]

When Nom's father passed, and he was a bit of a hoarder, Nom & her brother had thought to carefully go through everything, take what was useful, sell what was sellable, then yeet the rest. In the end, we spent maybe an hour going through and taking a few useful things and bits of memorabilia, then hired someone to haul away the rest.

[the_siobhan]

Yeah, I would have considered that if he had died. But since he's alive I'm throwing stuff away without his permission and some of the stuff we put in storage has strong sentimental value to him.

[dissectionist]

I wonder if being like, “Since we’re on a tight deadline, I don’t have the capacity to sort everything, pack, and move all at once. I literally cannot deal with ‘should we take this’ discussions today without losing it. Either you make decisions about what stays and goes without me and take care of packing what you want and throwing the rest into a garbage bag, and meanwhile I’m just going to pack everything to sort out later, or we both throw everything into boxes and I’ll help you sort it out later when we aren’t on a tight deadline,” would work.

[the_siobhan]

Honestly I don't know if that would work or not.

I also don't necessarily trust her not to be overly aggressive in what gets thrown away. A few times she said, "Oh he doesn't need that," and while that's true - it belongs to him so he has a right to have it if he wants it and we can find a way to make space for it, you know?

[kest]

I understand the temptation because that's probably best if you DO have time, but if it was me I would also understand, not making decisions right now, yes, everything goes, yes everything. I suppose there could be some kind of compromise of letting them make a pile of things they think are trash and then at the end after they leave you can just throw all of that in a bag anyway when they can't see. People, my god.