Kirkkitsch’s Blog

Operation Cleanout: Day 1

Well, I made it back in one piece. P spent the night on Wednesday, so we could leave at 8am. I used to get a little twinge of excitement when I knew he was staying overnight, but it’s slowly dissipating. I credit that to the fact that I’ve grown weary of offering for him to spend the night, only for him to either feign that he is going to, then not and/or just giving me the same excuse of “I like my bed.” Fine. So, it came as no real surprise when after about 30 minutes of sharing my bed, he said he was going to go sleep on the couch in the living room; Apparently I snore…loudly -or- as he put it “a medley of sounds.” Whatever you say, Lord Vader.

ANYWAY, the next morning, we left around 8am. Oh, and did I mention that I found out after I got home from work that my water had been turned off? Of course. Why not? It’s not the first time. Again, I got busy and forgot to pay it, so we were unable to take a shower, brush our teeth and/or use the bathroom for the time being. PLUS, it gives me something else to deal with when I get back home. Wonderful.

We arrived in my hometown around 10am and checked into our hotel. I had originally booked 2 rooms (one for me and P and one for N), but after some thought, it just seemed more economic, not to mention practical, to just get the suite with the King-sized bed and sofa sleeper. I initially felt guilty because I thought N would be all weird about sharing a bedroom with me and P, even though there is SO not anything going on there. After some minor drama, I dropped the bomb, N consented and there we all were, sharing a suite in the Holiday Inn Express.

So, with my mom at a care facility for the day, I called my dad to make sure she wasn’t there and to tell him that we were on our way. I DIDN’T tell him that we were staying in a hotel for the next few days, simply because I didn’t feel like having to contend with him in any social capacity while there, nor did I want to have to go through the inevitable “How much is it costing you?” conversation. A question that I quickly learned to loathe over the years. I always wanted to say “What fuckin’ difference does it make?” because no matter what I paid, my parents always had 50′s prices ingrained in their brains and I was instantly labeled ‘wasteful’ and/or extravagant. Yeah, that’s me all over.

ANYWAY, we arrive, and back up into the carport (I’d purchased 4 57-gallon Rubbermaid storage containers), so that we could easily load/unload. I introduce my friends to my dad, and we go inside to get started…only to find out that each of the 3 closets, the china cabinet, the linen cabinet and the entire contents of my mother’s dressers, have literally been ransacked and liberated of any and all “good” items: jewelry, shoes, purse, clothing, lines, etc. I was truly shocked. I mean, I knew that his sisters (3) had come by and taken “some” of the clothing, accessories, etc. to either “sell” (yeah, right) and/or keep, but 3 PACKED closets (1 walk-in!)? Wow. I didn’t bother trying to talk to him about it, because it would go absolutely nowhere, so I just told N & P to just start taking ‘what was left’ of the contents of the 3 closets he ‘allowed’ me to take, and put their contents into the back of P’s truck. Meanwhile, I salvaged what I could from the dining room and living room.

Had I known that there was so little to contend with, I never would have asked my friends to help me. It was easily a one-man show. And even though so much stuff had been taken, we still managed to fill each 57-gallon container to the brim, as well as the back of P’s truck. And though I was unable to beat the vultures to our Christmas decorations and/or the majority of the jewelry, I DID manage to get my hands on a few items that I REALLY wanted (surely left behind because they had no monetary value):
- An old tin with a photo of a fox hunt on it, filled with matchbooks my parents collected over the years.
- A very old wooden box with hinged lid, that belonged to my grandfather.
- All the quilts (they didn’t look EVERYWHERE, and I know where they’re kept).
- A large, elaborate, framed Christmas scene needlepoint that my mother did back in 1980.

So, we carried the containers out to the back carport, near the back gate entrance, and left them there (to be picked up on Friday, after we’d checked out of the hotel…unbeknownst to my father). We then went back to the hotel, where P parked his truck, then everyone got into my truck and off we went for lunch. I took them to a place that my mom and I used to eat, before she became immobile, called ‘Taylors.’ They have THE best cheeseburgers and french fried potatoes (that’s what N and I ordered), while P went for the daily special: chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes w/gravy and mac & cheese.

We went back to the house, and finished up around 2:30. As I was leaving, my dad goes “how am I gonna pay the rest home?” I was like “what?” I’d offered several times in the last few months, whenever I would talk to him about us coming out. He never accepted or acknowledged it, so I stopped mentioning it. NOW, he pulls this sad-face routine outta his ass. I was like “I guess you’ll just right a check on our joint account.” A little backstory: My mother and I had a joint bank acct. in which her SS check deposited each month. Sometimes I wrote checks on it to pay for the dentist, health insurance, etc. Once my mom was “out of the picture” he swoops in and wants access to the account. The moment he accesses it, he changes the name of the account to read HIS name, my mom’s name and my name, then orders checks accordingly. Then proceeds to take out $300. SO, I swoop in and beat him to $600, I tell him, to pay for a new water heater, leaving $600+ in the account, so I KNOW there is money in the account to pay the $75 one-day fee to the “rest home” that he seems so distressed about. He goes into some sadsack routine about how he “guesses” he’ll write them a check for $45 from his account and $30 from the (newly) joint account. Unaffected, I say “That sounds like a good idea. Bye.” But he continues to bemoan the $45 and the $30 for so goddamn long, that I end up just telling him I’ll send him a check, just to shut him up.

ANYWAY, after getting back to the hotel (which was SO nice, by the way), we all take turns taking showers and naps. We then go out to have dinner at the newly re-vamped Pizza Hut. Everything we ordered was really good and everyone seems to be enjoying themselves (except when P scalds his mouth with the molten-hot pasta he ordered). Afterwards, we drop by the video store that I wanted N to see, because they still carry a great selection of laserdiscs (since there are STILL so many movies that are not available on DVD, N likes to collect the laserdiscs and burn them to DVD+R). The store is owned/operated by a girl whom I knew when I was growing up. Her parents and my parents were friends, so we vicariously became friends as well. She’s a few years older than me, but she was always really cool. And she still is! As it turned out, they (she and her husband) had expanded and turned half of the store into a coffee cafe called Jitter Beans (cute!), while maintaining the other half as their video store. A VERY groovy concept that I personally love. As it turned out, it was a big hit with everyone: P got the smoothest, best cup of coffee “ever,” and fell in love with the store mascot, a cat named ‘Pothole,’ while N and I both went ballistic in the used VHS section (and later on, laserdiscs). We promised to return the next day, once they’d had time to dig out all the laserdiscs (they’d since stopped renting them).

We returned to the hotel, where we stayed up late, watching episodes of Fawlty Towers and Bill Maher’s Religulous {SO good. Highly recommended. I’ve since bought it myself} (thanks to N bringing his portable DVD player and an assortment of DVDs).

Tomorrow: Day 2

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