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.
Every time I hear someone say they are going to watch the swifts I wince and tell them to take everything home that they arrive with because of all the cleanup you guys have to do.
Your Dad’s desk looks just like my Grandpa’s desk only with more fun stuff. That is a challenge and a half. It’s nice that your Dad was engaged with all that stuff but yeah, going through it would be a nightmare. My Grandpa also has a storage space and when he talks about me “inheriting” the stuff in there I look around at the empty jars and flower pots he can’t bring himself to throw away and think I’m going to have to take a week off from work just to chuck it all in the dumpster.
I cleaned out his bookcase once and threw away the 10 year old AAA map books. He has never quite forgiven me for it. Even after I took him to AAA to get new map books.