Dummie or Complete Idiot?

You know how you just know some things? Not just knowledge things, but all manner of things in general. For example, the other day I am out engaging in my vile, filthy, deadly habit and I just knew that the guy walking up the sidewalk was going to ask for a smoke. From half a block away I knew it. I suppose he has asked in the past, which is why I just knew he would ask again, and despite my best efforts to become invisible, there he was offering up a quarter and asking away. Another example. I just know the Mrs. will ask what I did today, which is more apt to become a focus upon what I didn't do. Again, it is probably the number of years of exposure to the Mrs. and her way, yet I just know she will do it. Another example, to which you might relate better. When driving, you just know which individuals are going to run the lights and stop signs, you just know that when you are in a hurry the slowest drivers will be in front of you, and you just know that when you need the wipers is when you will remember you didn't change them. Still, all these examples pale to that intuitive, hunchy-type knowing that borders upon paranormal. Not that I have any specific examples of that kind of knowing, but I am certain I have had those moments at various points in my life. I just, well…know it.

Still, I encountered another of those "I just know it" (or in this case, "knew it") moments this morning when I checked my email. See, over there (to the left) is a link to a site called SwapSimple. Interesting site it is, based upon a style of barter, and chock full of books, DVDs, and video games. Formed in part as an alternative to getting screwed by the campus bookstores and the used book buyers, the site invites people to join up and meet other swappers who might have what you need or need what you have, as relates to college texts and college distractions. Being farther removed from college than I may want to admit, I joined to appease a certain member of the genetic distribution, and have listed a few things from the clutter. I won't say how long ago I joined, but I will say that an item I listed yesterday became the first one of the many items I have listed that I need to ship out because someone else wants it. Funny thing, I just knew it would be snatched up in a very short time. It was the knowing that made me hesitate for weeks even listing it. It was the knowing that made the decision to list it yet another decision process, that being whether to yard sale it, eBay™ it, halfdotcom it, or SwapSimple it. It was the knowing that brought back memories of American Colonial History, and the slightly disgraceful sociological event that made Salem a common name, and I don't mean the cigarette (although there is some warped significance to an item that is ignited and burns and smokes being associated with the name 'Salem').

Again, a reminder: overwhelmingly college-aged member base SwapSimple has.

What did I list? Hehheh. After considerable internal dialog of a moral vein, along the lines of fighting a temptation to keep it and read it versus fighting an urge to incinerate it versus fighting the desire to visit Pastor and let someone else make the decision, I listed a book upon the SwapSimple site. It came from Mom's stuff. It is called The Complete Idiot's Guide to Wicca and Witchcraft.

Yet another rousing post of nothingness

Quite honestly, I've not done much at all in terms of the project. I suspect that it is because, quite honestly, I've not done much at all in terms of life. Post taxes stress disorder, I suppose. Today is a new day, however, so I am prepared to do battle with the clutter yet again, and tackle the required tasks needed to finish up with the guest room. Of course, the considerable wind whipping up today whipped up, in just the last few seconds, a new chore, that being the repair of my garage door. The fun never ends.

It's

And now for something completely different, a man who has just finished filling out his tax returns.

We can see by his head resting upon the table, this is a very tiring and trying process, but one which enjoys an annual invasion into the lives of most, excluding those with money who can afford the means to not pay taxes, let alone not fill out and file the returns. We know this because it is common knowledge. As the tax deadline is looming, it would not behoove the man to rest quite yet, but all attempts to arouse him have bordered on the obscene and have not managed to succeed to this point. In the spirit of community, it may be good of us to assist the man with the filing, as long as the filling has been finalized, so let's just take a peek, eh? We'll just move his arm, like so, and the pistol, like such, and carefully avoiding the pool of blood we find that he has indeed completed the form, and properly signed it. Finding no check for the $4600 in taxes owed, however, we must assume that he fell asleep prior to cutting the check, although it seems his wrist was more readily available than the checkbook. Not to worry, we'll just include the Form 666z-BM, the standard "Monthly Installments of Turnip Blood and Pig Wings" form, with the "will pay in full when soul is sold on eBay™" box checked.

In related news, George 7, Democracy 0.

Also to be noted, a rather large Yard Sale will be held weekend after next, barring unforeseen circumstances of apathy and drizzle.

A final note: God exists by two falls to a submission.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled program, already in progress.

Keeping the day job

I amaze myself at times with the number of distractions I can create to keep me from working on the project. Granted, I have listed a few new things on eBay™ in addition to the relists in order to reduce some of the new clutter, but it seems hardly enough to give a glowing report of things accomplished. A few of the distractions of late could be deemed legitimate, such as finding the required documentation for the caseworker who will hopefully present some financial assistance to pay off the HUGE debt accumulating with Mom's care. Or gathering up the items needed to complete the joyful task known as Tax Return Filing. I really don't mind filling out the forms, I just have this aversion to seeing how much I owe. This is probably why I have so many distractions for the distractions. One of my recent efforts to avoid battling the Tax Return Filing Beast, as well as to reduce the amount of sleep I receive, involved following through on one of those things that could be found on a "things to do before I die" checklist, if I had such a thing. Understand that this goes beyond the more common "things I ought to be doing," such as going to the Fitness Center and working out. The change of seasons allows me a bit more time outdoors, which tends to be less expensive than the Fitness Center, so I've been taking longer walks, generally on a daily basis. PT Lori might take comfort in that, especially if she discovers that I haven't been to the Fitness Center for a few weeks. In a way, "I ought to be working out" is being accomplished, just in less of trackable fashion. No, the recent effort to which I refer was definitely a "before I die" kind of thing.

It began with a sleepless night. I am not sure why it happens, but there are times when my brain decides to go into hyperactive mode just about five minutes after I go to bed. I have adopted the '30 minute rule,' which basically means that if I am still awake 30 minutes after I go to bed, I get up and do something. Usually the something is turning on some late night show or putting in a movie or following random links on the internet. This particular departure from the bed, however, I sat down at the computer and typed out the chaos that kept me from sleeping. The end result was an effort at creating [drum roll] a stand-up comedy routine. Hehheh. For years I have harbored this desire to determine if I could actually do such a thing, given my involvement in theatre, but self-censorship and self-doubt interfered with ever engaging in the activity. This time, however, I decided that the only way I would know if I could do it was to, well, do it. I took a small piece of what I wrote, found a local open microphone opportunity and sullied forth to discover that I was funnier five minutes after going to bed than I was hours before going to bed. Granted, the venue was not exactly the best for doing stand-up, so I might attempt once more to get up on stage and make perfect strangers laugh, but I will have to let the recent experience fade into the scary recesses of my brain that hold such things as auditioning for The Full Monty and taking the Jeopardy contestant test. In the meantime, I have a cluttered room calling out to me, and it isn't full of people wondering why the heck I'm there.

Nothing, really

It's not so much that I haven't been working at the project, it's just that I really had nothing to say about it, so I didn't sit down to write anything. I mean, I suppose I could go on about the little details of how I finished vanilla-ing the south wall of the guest room, or how I finally got Mom's previous bed assembled and immediately piled with things, or how I brought in one of those metal shelf units and can now keep the listed eBay™ items in one place other than the couch or love seat. Heck, I even managed to take some pictures of stuff to list, which I will be doing shortly after I post this. No, the absence of new posts is not directly related to any failure of the project, just not anything interesting to share. Well, not anything interesting that is directly project related.

I have had other topics of interest that I could have typed up and posted. For example, when I realized at some point a few days back that it was rather amusing how ALL of my prescribed meds barring the injections state "May Cause Drowsiness" as the first side effect. It is amusing because fatigue is one of the most prevalent problems that MS has tossed into my life. Fatigue, meet drowsiness, drowsiness meet fatigue, time for a nap. Or I could have written about how I have this not-so-secret ambition to show others the influence people like Bill Cosby, Bob Newhart, George Carlin, Robin Williams, and Richard Pryor have had on me. Mix that with Benny Hill, Monty Python, a healthy portion of Lewis & Martin, Abbot & Costello, and the Marx Brothers, and it explains a bit about my sense of…perspective. Perspective that caused me to suddenly think of putting up a post entitled "Read this and get ten bucks" with "buck, buck, buck, buck, buck, buck, buck, buck, buck, buck" as the body. I might have done it, too, had I not suddenly thought of it at 12:04 this morning. Just would not have had the same effect.

Nope, there really isn't anything for me to post, as regards the project, which is what this blog is all about. Perhaps some inspiration or event will occur, but in the meantime, I suspect I better get to working with those pictures and listing stuff. Fun, fun, fun.

So…How Much Is Postage?

I am fairly certain that I previously discussed the difference between a collection and clutter, but it bears worth repeating at this time. Clutter, loosely defined, is a jumble of items. A vast disorder of things, just a notch above the total chaos of the nest of a pack rat. A collection, again loosely defined, is an accumulation of items, generally with some common connection. Unless it is Sunday, then a collection is an accumulation of cash, but that is hardly relevant to this discussion. Well, sort of. More on that later. The common connotation associated with a collection is one of order. Granted, the order is not always clear upon first glance, but generally a collector has some structure, some way that individual items fit within the collection. Shelves lined with Beanies, grouped by family or year of release. Cabinets of curious curios, matched by size or style or origin. Walls filled with art, bookcases filled with books, racks filled with CDs. And albums of, well, stuff that one puts into albums. Like stamps or coins.

As I go through Mom's worldly possessions which she can not have with her at the skilled nursing facility, and which is taking up a considerable amount of space in my house because the unskilled storage facility is full, I have found her "stamp and coin collections." Ahem. The woman has stamps. Hundreds if not thousands of stamps. She also has a few albums. Funny thing is that most of the albums are empty or nearly so. Hear me laugh. Why laugh, you might be asking? Mostly because of another key difference between clutter and collection. The latter, organized in some attractive fashion, has value. The former, while having inherent value, is functionally worthless. Want to guess what an old envelope full of stamps is worth? Not much. Want to guess what those same stamps are worth in an organized album? A lot more. The same goes for coins. Mom has a serious number of coins, most of which qualifies as pocket change, but a few of them may actually be valuable. Hard to tell, though, when they are all jumbled up together in a margarine tub. I attempted to tell Mom that an old pill bottle of coins was closer to a church collection than a coin collection, but the concept was lost in the paranoia that I was going to do something with her "collections." Gee, maybe I will do something. Perhaps something like organize them.

Of course, for the moment, that organization is pretty much going to be along the lines of "this box is stamps" and "this box is coins."

Old Habits

The chat with the Geriatric Psych dude who met with Mom yesterday, and subsequent reflection upon said chat, brought about that battered phrase regarding learned behaviors and the difficulty of removing them. Not just Mom's. I've my own box of habits, as most humans do, and not all of them the greatest things. The One Room project stems from the habit of keeping. There's the habit of putting things off, which explains why I miss bill deadlines or sticking that dang needle into the zone of the day or not posting as frequently as I could. Lori (the PT), the MS clinic, and Dr. Mike are all in line behind the family in urging me to lose the tobacco habit. These habits are among those I have that I am willing to work at removing. This time of year, however, brings out another habit which I enjoy, although it does tend to get the mood swings going. Let's just sad that "Madness" is appropriate in some cases.

Yep, it's time for the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament.

For as long as I can recall, I've loved basketball and loved to pick the tourney. Even the Mrs. gets into things this time of year, although for her it is mostly the watching and rooting. I average about 75-80% correct picks, which explains why bets don't enter the picture for me. Granted, I have participated in a few "office pools" with little return on my investment, but I think sports is too volatile a thing to risk reducing available funds. For me, it's about the bragging rights and verifying the coach instincts. In fact, one thing I miss the most is coaching, which explains just a bit of the sadness that hangs in the air. Still, the fun of watching the underdog win at the last second, even if I picked the higher seed, pushes away most of the negative emotions. Anyone who picked Duke this year knows what I mean. Wait, I picked Duke.

Oh, well.

As of this writing, I am 10 of 16, which pretty much means I blew it this year, although only one of my Sweet 16 is gone. Also as of this writing, I am only relisting things on eBay, and slowly making space in the house for the things that are cluttering up the guest room. I expect that come Monday I will be locking myself in the guest room with the goal of taking pictures of stuff to sell and getting things back to working order before the next round of basketball. By the way, for those who care, I look forward to watching Coach Roy take on his old program in the finals.