Every year, come September, I am a prisoner in my house. It’s not just me; my neighbors are in the same boat. The f*cking swifts blow into town and everybody and his brother decide to come to see them.

Some of my neighbors are even more annoyed and actually do something about it. One got signs for the bottom of the street that say “Local Access” but that just meant that when the hill was full, people would stand in the street. It was nuts today.

But I did see a friend who hasn’t been in the gym since last winter, and my old General Chemistry professor from 1992-ish whose husband happens to meditate with my neighbor! I didn’t know that. I also saw some mylar balloons stuck in the power lines and called it in to the emergency number around 6PM because they were near some pole transformers. I wasn’t sure if it warranted a call to the emergency number, but a repair crew came about 9:30PM and took them down. The mylar balloons just being near the power lines caused a sizzling sound and could have cause a blackout.

I’ve been talking a lot about getting rid of a bunch of stuff out of the house and here’s a picture of my dad’s desk back shortly after he passed away in 2007. You can see all the stuff that I had to sort through and may understand why I gave up at some point.

There’s more of my dad’s stuff all throughout the house, and that’s the reason I took extra time off to get rid of some of it.

I knew I’d probably laze around and be lazy about doing the only difficult thing of my day (besides waking up), going to the gym. Wednesday I had breakfast with Megan and the combination of staying up late reading a bad thriller, waking up every time I rolled over onto my arm where I got my tetanus shot, a greasy diner breakfast, and way too much diner coffee made me feel kind of off all day. I figured, what the heck, I’m on vacation, and I took another day off.

Every day I’ve been taking furniture to the Community Warehouse and miscellaneous other stuff to Goodwill. Today I think I sorted through the crap that was in and on my dad’s desk because it was random and uncategorizable. They’re beginning to recognize me at both places. The guys at the Community Warehouse are more friendly, and one asked me if I just wanted a key so I could bring stuff in when I felt like it. Goodwill isn’t unfriendly, but just a lot more businesslike.

I have a lot more stuff to sort through, but at least I made a dent in things. The problem is that I keep finding interesting but useless things, like this menu.

It’s probably not worth anything, but it is interesting to look at.

I almost got up a little early today because my spider alarm went off. I’d call it a smoke detector but the only times its gone off, spiders have crawled out of it (plus, no smoke).It’s all a bit ridiculous if you ask me.

I also had my normal plans disrupted because of a trip to the doctor. What I thought was a problem turned out to be not much of a problem so instead he gave me a ‘flu shot. Then, just for fun, he also gave me a tetanus shot since he didn’t have whooping cough boosters without the tetanus mixed in. We’re protecting all the weird Republican/religious kids whose idiot parents don’t understand what vaccinations are for.

In any case, my arms were sore, more from the ‘flu vaccine than the tetanus shot, and I felt a bit tired so it didn’t make any sense to  miss the Monday night football game go to the gym so I stayed home tonight.

Oh, and I did get rid of 57 more books, most of which were coffee table books. I was going to get rid of more stuff but, hey, I can’t do everything at once, especially with two sore arms.

I didn’t get much done today besides going out to dinner for my brother-in-law’s birthday. I thought about clearing out some more stuff from the house, but really just ended up watching football. I got some gardening fabric down on my new dirt farm, also known as the front yard, but that didn’t take much doing.

Yesterday I got rid of some more furniture and a bunch of books. I tried to take the books to somewhere I like to take books (Title Wave Used Books) but they were closed, thanks to budget cuts I’m sure. They don’t answer the phone, the web site is useless, and the only way you could know when they’re open is to drive up to the sign in front of the door. Instead of driving around with books all weekend or carting all the books back into the house, I took them to Goodwill where they treated it all like garbage. I’m not sure why I even try taking anything even slightly fragile there. At least the Community Warehouse has been super nice and I expect Title Wave will be nice as well (they have been in the past).

Ah well, I’m on vacation.

The reason I took a couple of weeks off BEFORE leaving for my holiday is so I could move a pile of dirt to the back yard (done), and to take a bunch of stuff we don’t want to Goodwill or somewhere more deserving. In my head I decided I was going to do the yard work on the weekends and the getting-rid-of-stuff during the week, so Tuesday was supposed to be my first day of sorting through all the crap that’s been accumulated in the house. Unfortunately, I got sick on Tuesday and my ailment precluded any efforts that took me further than several feet from the bathroom. Or is that farther? Anyway, you get the idea. Wednesday I still wasn’t feeling that great and I noticed that my lymph nodes were swollen. Hooray, I’m sick around Labor Day again.

Today, I finally got a chest of drawers and a fine Solid-State Stereo with an 8-Track Tape player to the Oregon Community Warehouse. My sister had never heard of them, but here’s a description:

Community Warehouse is a volunteer-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit agency that collects and redistributes donated furniture and household goods to low-income people in Oregon and southwest Washington.

I’m not sure they can use the stereo, but the chest of drawers was usable. Lots of my other junk is probably going to Goodwill, even though I know they’re not the best organization, I figure they can sort through my crap and make money off of the stuff that they can sell and dispose of the left. Everything on the household necessity list (pots, pans, dishes, etc) is probably going to the Community Warehouse, but the everyday detritus of life is going to Goodwill.

My first real day off is probably Tuesday, but my last day at work until the week of Thanksgiving was Friday. So Saturday is my first day of vacation. On the first day of vacation I had a nightmare that I was getting fired. In reality, I think they’re going to have to wait two months to do that. Then, of course, I went to the gym and then I started moving a really big pile of dirt.

The picture is actually from the END of the day when I had most of it moved. The second day I finished moving it but it took all day. The reason I had the big pile of dirt is because I had a big hole in the back yard. Now the big hole has a bunch of dirt in it.

I didn’t count, but every one of those lumps is another almost-immovable wheelbarrow load of dirt. I should have hired someone to do this, but sometimes I’m not all that smart about such things.

I hope the rest of my vacation isn’t going to continue in this manner.