Repository for Lots of Things, Including Problems

Posted on June 18, 2012 by reginadma

The neighbors, or whoever “they” are that drop off stuff on the curb near my house in Bloomingdale are very busy these days bringing stuff to the curb.  And whoever takes that stuff away therefore has also been very busy.

And, voila.  All this activity means I have a problem.  Let me explain*.

What was it, last week maybe, this television and suitcase appeared together.  As I rode my bike past these new items, I thought, “wow, that’s a big dump**.”

A couple days after these two things appeared, I happened to be walking by, minding my own business of course, when I noticed the suitcase was full of clothing.  In fact, a pair of jeans has tumbled onto the grass and due to rain fall, everything was soggy.  The scene was definitely…sad.  Sad to me anyway because,  similar to how Michael Douglas in “Wonder Boys” and, I think Robert Downey, Jr. (or was it Tobey McGuire [“take a bow, James,”]) created a whole life for the character Vernon, I envisioned a scenario for how this suitcase full of clothes ended up on the curb, now soaking wet, that wasn’t happy.  How could it be? The situation didn’t seem as though someone was just getting rid of excess clothing, and the suitcase from what I could tell was in pretty fine condition and it didn’t seem like something that needed to get tossed out.

If you look close enough at this photo***, you can see clothing spilling out of the suitcase.

It wasn’t when I conjured a sob story about a suitcase and some clothing that my problem began, because I will have you know that is perfectly normal behavior, but sometime around when I decided I wanted to take a second photo of the suitcase with the tv to get a better angle of the clothing spilling out.  You know, to really document the moment.  I rode up to the curb on the day I’d decided to take the second photo and came to a stop on my bike, I wouldn’t say with a horrified feeling, but something akin to horror.  I kinda stared at the grassy curb area.  The suitcase was gone.  I stayed there for awhile.  I concluded the situation by saying “bah!” out loud, (fist in the air) and continued the distance of 30 feet to my house.

It gets worse.

A couple days ago, these items arrived:

Television now accompanied by a corner of a bed frame and a lamp stand.

My problem continues, because just yesterday when I walked passed the repository curb, there was a box for an office chair with the other three pieces and I thought, “well, that’s pretty boring, but since it’s part of the documentation project, I have to take a photo.”

However, this morning, the box was GONE.  No evidence, no documentation of the existence of the box.

I have increasing anxiety about this curb: When next will something arrive? Why, WHY didn’t I take a photo when I had a CHANCE? (and staring off into the distance wistfully about what could have been.)  Thoughts filled with questions like, what parameters do I need to set for this project–do I take just one photo of each new thing and that’s it, or, like I thought I would do with the suitcase, is it best to show multiple angles?  How much do I care about the photo?

Why am I thinking about this repository curb so much?  Honestly?  I mean, it’s a problem.

*I find it amusing when people write, “let me explain,” as though a) people care to know more and b) as if someone was like, “wait, I don’t get it,” and then you’re like, “let me explain.”

**Meheheh

*** Looking closely at photos (and more, saying out loud to look closely) always reminds me of the American version of that movie, “The Ring,” when Naomi Watts is looking at that photo of the horse falling off the cliff and sees a little speck within the print and as she looks closer the speck turns into a fly she picks off the page.  Esh, creeeepy.

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Mystery Solved. The Problem: Who’s Gonna Clean it Up?

Posted on June 8, 2012 by reginadma

You’ve all been to my house. You know I’m not a neat freak. You know you’ll come to a cozy home, lots of food on hand and I’ll put a glass of wine in your hand while we’re hugging hello. There will probably be a few dishes in the sink and…I’ll stop there.

I keep the fridge comfortably packed, and the summer CSA ensures this.  Mmmm.

One day, I noticed the pooch licking the floor near the fridge and of course just thought, “yup, just like a lab.” and then I said to the pooch, “Hey! Come on! [clap clap clap] Move along buster!” He looked up at me uninterestedly while continuing to lick the floor. Oy!

That was a couple days ago.  I didn’t think much of it because the pooch is always on the search for food. His desire to located food increases even more so after he eats…it’s odd living with a being that doesn’t have the capacity to feel satiated.  Like, if he got into his dog food bag while I wasn’t around, it would be bad…*

And then today I noticed this:

You might not be able to tell what this is from this iphone photo. (My iphone is the second version ever made…it’s dying I think, but that’s another “story”.)  But, this photo is of a dried-up substance on the floor.  What you can’t tell from this photo is that this is the exact spot the pooch was licking not two days before.  What the heck? No. I cannot have this on the floor.  This goes beyond dishes in sinks and piles of clothing that I’ll eventually fold and put away…or truthfully I’ll just make an awesome, slightly wrinkled outfit from the pile.  Either way, the pile goes away, right?  Right workout buddy?

And then, shifting things around in the fridge to make room for some soup I just made, I discovered this:

The container of whey I was saving for smoothies…You might not be able to tell from this photo, but this container is empty of whey.

No!

* During a party at our house, while we were distracted by engaging stories and clinking wine glasses, the pooch did manage to dig his way into his dog food bag.  Luckily however, he got so excited by his find, what probably seemed to him an endless supply of food, the jackpot if you will, he almost immediately started hyperventilating and made, unknown to him, a very dramatic scene.  We pulled him away from his bag of food and gave him a bunch of hugs and tried to calm him down.  Showered with attention, for a short moment a head immersed in a never-ending supply of food, that’s one lucky kat.

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Book Project Update: I finished a book!

Posted on June 6, 2012 by reginadma

Social media helps us chronicle the passage of time so that, unless we journal or keep a detailed calendar, we might not have noticed the comings and goings of some things in our lives.  Not that these things are insignificant, but often, chronicling the waxing and waning of certain events  happens haphazardly if at all.

Specifically, I’m talking about when we start and finish a book.  Years ago I signed up for GoodReads, an online book club of sorts where you can tell all your friends what books you’re reading which ones you want to read, and which ones you’ve finished.  (And many of us, upon creating our profiles, front-loaded our profiles.  Of course I read Uncle Tom’s Cabin. In fact, I’ll write a review about it [probably with the same level of analysis from when I read it the first time, seventeen years ago.])

Basically, GoodReads keeps track of when you pick up a book and when you finish it. Like this book I completed last month and can display actively for my book project:

Cuba: From Columbus to Castro and Beyond by Jamie Suchlicki.  I started reading this bed book* May of 2011 and I just finished it May 2012.  My proclivity towards literary snobbery forces me to note that of course I’ve read lots of other things in the meantime.

Don’t be silly.

I think 2012 has been a slow reading year.

Technically though, because I lost my copy of A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again by DFW (during a crazy New Year’s Eve trip with some great people) and had to read the remaining story via PDF, and therefore could not visually display it as the first book of 2012 I finished, I am displaying Cuba…in the second quarter of 2012.  Yes.

Cuba almost killed me.  Clearly.  How many nights, with only 50 pages left,  did I just read 2-3 pages even, determined to finish, thinking back to when I was first learning about the native inhabitants of Cuba…so long ago it seemed.  It wasn’t that the book was boring at this point–Castro’s dictatorship.  Contrarily**, it was a great insight into the motivations of Castro that I’d never read about before.  This  new knowledge allowed me to talk to my workout buddy about the status of Cuba’s foreign policy and tenuous global position (especially after the fall of the Soviet Union, I tell you what…the book is a bit outdated) and I could just feel the Cuban knowledge seep into my medium-term memory.  Hey, some nights, for lots of reasons, you only read 2-3 pages of a book.

* Really long (but utterly fascinating) blog post I wrote about Bed Books.

**I find that word kinda annoying I think.  Contrarily.

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Chair as Art. Art as Chair.

Posted on May 24, 2012 by reginadma

So, the air conditioner and the second chair disappeared and this little piece of art work showed up one day…

 

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Document This Phenomenon

Posted on May 24, 2012 by reginadma

And this arrived…how seasonal.

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Assumptive Things

Posted on May 19, 2012 by reginadma

On my block in Bloomingdale there are two entrances to the alley where some of us have garages.  The alley is a bombed out looking space, but I’m not going to get into that right now–just to say there are tons of alley cats in the alley, which I don’t mind because they keep the RATS away (a problem in DC), but apparently, because I saw one run across my front patio area literally 3 days after moving in, like some sort of deleterious opposite-day welcome party, the cats do not keep the possums away, and, can you blame them?  Possums are soulless creatures that you do not want to mess with, you just walk away, just walk away.

In the west entrance to the alley is a repository for lots of things.  Being new to the block I have no idea how long the curb has been a things-repository.  At first I thought the house immediately to the right of the alley entrance must be the culprit.  I realized I was making assumptions about my neighbors.  I’d like to think I came to this realization due to my Coro “What Is Going On” training–a training that helps individuals derive facts, not feelings about a situation.  But no.  No.  I just thought any one house, without being the home of a hoarder would not have so many things to toss out…and hoarders don’t get rid of things.  I assumed it was this house, these neighbors because the “first” thing tossed out was a tv–a really old wooden framed tv.  My immediate bougie* thought?  “They should get that recycled.”  It seemed normal enough–it seemed like a thing the people who lived closest to the tv on the curb would do.

The tv disappeared and then awhile later, another tv appeared, and then there were two tvs, and then those disappeared.  I would like to think I realized those neighbors couldn’t have that many tvs.  My assumptive conclusions about my neighbors held strong for quite awhile, and what I thought was, “how could they have that  many tvs?”

Since then, lots of things have come and gone.  I’m talking** mattresses, bed frames, vacuum cleaners–the list goes on.  And, a light bulb (that I picked up from the trash heap on this curb) went off: ohhhh, it’s probably not the work of just those neighbors…probably lots of people bring their stuff to this curb…

I don’t completely understand what’s happening: is this spot a communal dumping ground?  Where does the stuff go?  Often, the items will be on the curb for a few days to, annoyingly*** a couple weeks.  Clearly this cannot be coming from one house.

I then decided I should document this phenomenon.  Why?  Well, a) it’s apparently what “we” do****; b) my books read in 2012 documentation project is off to a s l o w start and I need to document something, because…see point a.

So, this chair happened.  Actually, a couple days later someone topped it with a vacuum cleaner but since this new documentation idea***** was nascent, someone snagged the vacuum.  Or, to not make assumptions, I can safely say the vacuum cleaner was gone one day.

 

 

A couple days later, this second chair arrived…somehow.

It’s nice to know that someone or someones (maybe not the person or persons dropping off all these things) has a sense of humor.

 

 

 

 

*I wax bougie.

** “I’m talking” said in the same tone as Kim and Cookie in the Outkast interlude. Yes, a trigger.

*** see *

**** You know, we, as in all of us. We blog, we tweet, we point things out.

***** So, I says to the workout buddy, “You know, as soon as I get excited about documenting this, ‘it’s’ gonna stop…”

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Why we think to our highest ability and work hard

Posted on March 16, 2012 by reginadma

Here’s the thing:

You just never know

And nobody’s perfect.

I also wanted to add this little section I just read from Pandora about Bill Withers because to me, this is in a simple form, what “it’s” all about: “Withers wrote ‘Lean on Me’ based on his experiences growing up in a West Virginia coal mining town. Times were hard and when a neighbor needed something beyond their means, the rest of the community would chip in and help.”

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Tossing hats into mixes

Posted on January 14, 2012 by reginadma

It’s 2012, I’ve read a lot of blog posts about resolutions and non-resolutions–more resets of behavior change, and the idea of “why not start with 2012?”

I fall into the camp of being not a resolution-type person.  If I were to have one, I guess I would want to Be Nice to Andy. (#BeNicetoAndy to follow my progress*.)

I am doing two things in 2012 that are dependent on the projects starting 1.1.12.

The first is a book project–that technically I could start at any time, but, you get the point.  Last year when my Workout Buddy and I lived in Pittsburgh (what what!) at some point we started stacking the books we’d finished reading on top of a bookshelf.  I think it was out of lack of space to put our books (I’ve made the quip before, our need for book space comes from the result of a literary cultural head combining with a philosophy lawyer head.)  I thought I’d start 2012 off by intentionally doing this same thing.

Here’s our space for the books:

I currently have to finish one last essay in DFW’s A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.  I’ve been reading this for a long time.  I highly recommend it.  I talk about it all the time…all the time.  Ask anyone that has had a conversation with me in the last 3 months and that person will probably tell you I mentioned this reading…or they’ll say, she was babbling about David Lynch, tennis, and luxury cruises…a lot.  So, until I finish DFW, and unless I take on Infinite Jest I’ll be highlighting our reading throughout 2012.****

The second project is to run 1,400 miles in 2012, or roughly 25 miles a week.  My marathon training friends have told me, “Wow, that’s ambitious.  I only run that many miles when I’m–” you guessed it: “training for a marathon.”

The Workout Buddy and I got a pooch, so now I can be outrun by both of them.

Anytime upon hearing this, I mentally smack my forehead for not thinking this challenge through a bit more, and assuming the Workout Buddy will complete this challenge with me, to which, most days he replies to my whining that we need to go for a run, “hey, it’s your challenge,” and outwardly say, “yeah…it will be okay.  It’s a challenge, it’s supposed to be hard.” I mean, it’s only one year, right?  Only one glorious 2012.

* I guess I like to wax neurotic.  So, to complicate this [feigned] brain issue, I’ve added a list of new triggers.  Not music, but questioning whether something I say or do could be construed at snobby or self-centered.  So, when I write, “follow my progress” I say this in an air of eye-rolling ridiculousness, BUT, my fear is that people might read that and think, “wow, what a jerk. ‘Follow my progress?'” And so, hence the DFW** obsession with asterisks and explaining myself more than is needed***.

**Not comparing myself with that guy. Not at all.

***I’ve said before, I do have a partiality for pointing things out that make people roll their eyes…I just can’t find the blog post where I mention this before to prove my track record. Trust me though.

****I’m currently also reading Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, so be warned that soon I’ll probably start mentioning System 1 and System 2 brain functions.  I’m reading Paris Spleen by Baudelaire (more poetry in 2012 and beyond), and I’ve come back to my book on Cuba–I’m still in the process of learning about the indigenous peoples of the region.

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Posted on January 7, 2012 by reginadma

On the Jumbotron

 You handle things well or not

Two kinds of people

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Posted on December 28, 2011 by reginadma

Bad situation mitigated.                                                   Fodder for poems and other such suches, sure. Steinbeckian relief served in a tin cup, by the fire drawing in the sand, figuring next figures:                     At least I have coffee.

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