The Storm's Aftermath

Well it certainly has been an interesting few days here at The Farm  as I become more and more obsessed with completing this challenge.  Every day I try to think of what else I can sort when I get home.  It's getting a bit out of hand but in the best of ways.  Since my last post I've been working intermittently on stuff as I haven't been home all that much.  I did get a new refrigerator delivered this morning.  And that is where this story begins.  Well, actually, it starts about two months ago....

Now, if any of you recall, the US was hit with a freak storm back in June - apparently called a "derecho" - that started in Chicago around lunchtime and by midnight was slamming the Mid-Atlantic.  I stood in my spare room upstairs (I realize...not the best decision) looking out the window as the lightning lit up The Farm in ways I have never seen before.  The wind was blowing the rain in every direction you can imagine.  If I was smart, I would have set up a cot in the basement and slept there.  But what we've learned from this is that I don't always make good decisions.

That storm knocked out power to my house for about three days and a storm later that week knocked it out again for a day.  Once that week was over, my refrigerator was making awful sounds and not really keeping cool.  Also the microwave was shot, but that's another story.  I eventually unplugged the fridge because I couldn't take the grinding noises anymore, then cleaned out and threw away all the contents.  With my job feeding me three meals a day, it wasn't overly necessary for me to have a working refrigerator and I am curious to see what my electric bill is going to be without it.  But as the summer came to a close, it was time.

So I contacted the old landlord to let him know the situation and a couple days later I got a call from the local appliance store to schedule delivery.  How lovely.  But then yesterday evening when I arrived home I realized that throughout this whole project I had been focusing mostly on my bedroom for starters and the mud room was kind of a disaster.

I keep my shoe rack in the mud room for two reasons: A, because my shoes tend to smell on account of how I don't like to wear socks and 2, because when I get home, I like to immediately kick off my shoes before coming inside.  I sorted and organized all the shoes, discarding three pair to the donate bag and four to the trash.  The hardest part was my favorite sneakers...this pair of Sauconys that my dad bought me one year on spring break.  They are quite possibly the most comfortable shoes I've ever worn. I knew it was time, though, when I could do this:

Since the delivery guys would have to come in through the mud room, I knew I needed to do some serious work in there.  And after the shoes were put away (and some mourned) I started tackling the rest of the room.  The first ridiculous thing I found was this half-full bottle of champagne.  If my memory serves me (and it usually does) this is leftover from the mimosas we made on Christmas morning.  IT IS THE END OF AUGUST.

Next up is what is perhaps the most random collection of items to be found in one bag.  A Royal Albert serving platter, a casserole dish, my copy of Breaking Dawn (don't judge), a gladware sandwich container, my favorite pair of flats (been looking for them for a while), my Hester College umbrella (roo roo roo go hogs!), and two bottles of nail polish (Ms. Can't Be Wrong & Ocean Love Potion).  This is my life in a reusable shopping bag.

Speaking of reusable shopping bags, I also found proof that some of them actually are biodegradable!  This bag has been sitting on a shelf in the mud room for approximately 19 months.  Every day, the sun has risen and shone directly in the screen door and onto this bag.  It is falling apart.  I touched it and it crumbled in my hands.  This was a good find!

This one is kind of weird and I am pretty unsure how it ended up here.  A quart-sized ziploc bag full of sweet relish packets.  I don't even like sweet relish all that much.  I prefer dill 100%.  Add this to another of life's great mysteries.

All in all, the mudroom produced a bag full of trash, a box full of recyclables, and a broken down ironing board.  Speaking of that ironing board, I remember visiting my friend Kristin in North Carolina the summer after senior year, going to Walmart and seeing it with the fun blue bubbly cover, and then calling my mother and asking her to go pick one up for me to take to college.  That ironing board has moved 14 times.  It's had a good run.

But what is likely the best find of the entire project up till now is this.  From approximately November 2011-April 2012 there was an awful smell of rotting death that was lingering around my kitchen, living room, and sometimes spreading throughout the house.  Last night, while cleaning the mud room, I moved the snow shovel and found this pile of gooey looking sawdust in the corner.  It was kind of dark in there so I waited till tonight to inspect and clean it up.  I'm not even sure Dr. Temperance Brennan could identify these remains, but I did find what appears to be a mouse arm in there.  It's all cleaned up now, but I am impressed that something so small could cause such a stench for so long.  Well played, Mr. Mouse, well played.

Days to go: 31
Bags to go: 30

The Science Fair

One of my many life accomplishments, but one I leave off my current resume, is that I placed First in the Alaska State Science Fair in the 5th grade.  My project that year was called, "How Much Vegetable do You Really Eat?" and basically was nothing more than determining what percentage (by weight) of various veggies was actually water by using the fancy new dehydrator that Mom and Dad got for Christmas that year.  I was pretty proud of that project, and would have had the opportunity to take it all the way to the national science fair if I had only been in the SIXTH grade!

But tonight, I'm here to talk about a science project of which I am not proud.  But first, let me tell you about what all was accomplished this evening.  I am very aware that the idea behind this challenge is to FILL 40 bags and get them out of your house.  However, tonight I tackled, emptied, and sorted seven bags o' junk and one box full of things that are so old they are now irrelevant, so destroyed they are no longer recognizable, and in one particular case, so rotten that it is no longer possible to determine what it once was:

As you can see, this bag contained a collection of travel mugs and such that I brought in from my car approximately eight months ago.  And I think that at one point in time, that might have been an orange in there with them.  Once I took out the travel mugs and put them to soak in bleach water, i went to throw away the bag and noticed that it weighed practically nothing.  It had rotted away so much.  Had I still been in sophomore year biology class with Coach Lange (may he rest in peace), I would have been all over identifying what kind of bacteria was growing on that gem. Not tonight.  It went straight in the garbage.

Other exciting finds tonight include what is perhaps the best valentine I ever received.  This past winter, Marisa and I got a little obsessed with the final season of One Tree Hill and the fact that Nathan Scott was missing because he was kidnapped by the Russian mob for reasons we couldn't be quite sure of.  We literally walked around asking everyone we saw, "WHERE'S NATHAN?!!?"  And then on Valentine's Day, this was  what I found: 

While I'm on the subject of holidays and cards, I found the birthday I bought but never sent to my dad last year.  I put it in the "To be Mailed" bag, which is good, since his birthday is next week....

And, my most exciting find of the night (aside from the tin of Blue Diamond wasabi & soy almonds) was this set of pens from Ken Dixon Automotive.  Ken Dixon had this brilliant idea - they had several hundred thousand of these pens made and went around to almost every business in the county and left the pens there for customers to use when signing receipts.  Just about every server at every restaurant in the county has a pocket full of them.  And for giveaway pens, they write really nicely.  The funny thing is that, apparently, when you actually GO to Ken Dixon Automotive to buy a car, they don't give the pens away for free.  

With all that emptying/sorting/organizing done this evening, I am proud to say that I have three bags of trash...

and a roasting pan full of stuff to go.  This being the first non-trash item, it is worth noting that all of the stuff seen here actually belongs at work.  So while my house is getting a clean sweep, the same might not be said for my office.....

Days to go: 38
Bags to go: 35

The Bedpan Incident

This story starts long before the actual bedpan incident.  Approximately four weeks ago I started taking horseback riding lessons at work.  I figured it was the one program I know the least about, so it was high time I learn.  A week ago today was my third lesson, and I have been riding this beautiful percheron named Bo-Vine, So-Fine (so named because of his cow-like markings), but we call him Bo for short.  Oh, and did I mention that he's the biggest horse EVER?

It was getting to the end of the lesson and we had learned how to "reverse" (did anyone else just get the Cha-Cha Slide stuck in your head...you know, "REVERSE, REVERSE...REVERSE REVERSE"?) our horses.  So our instructor had set up an obstacle course in the riding arena that included 10 posts between a set of cones, a figure eight around some barrels, "parking" in a "parking space" and then backing out, then trotting a victory lap around the arena.  

Now, back up another week to my previous lesson, when we worked a lot on my balance while trotting.  A lot of it has to do with the fact that my left ankle is significantly weaker than my right.  It goes back to a high school softball injury that never healed quite right.  So in this most recent lesson, when it came time for me to  do my victory lap, I was fairly confident that I could make it the whole lap around the arena without too much trouble.  

But I was wrong.  Bo and I were almost finished when I started to lose my  balance, regained it, but over corrected a little and just came right off and hit the ground.  From about six feet up.  I just laid there, probably yelling a mixture of obscenities and 'oh, God!'s.  After lying there a while and attempting to stand up, we called an ambulance.

I will spare you the rest of the painful details about getting strapped to the backboard, an ill-fitting collar, and a rather bumpy ride to the hospital.  Once I got into my room, initial assessments completed, et cetera, I OF COURSE had to pee. And since I had yet to be x-rayed or CT-scanned, they wouldn't let me up to go to the toilet (not that I probably could have walked at this point, anyway).  

So in comes Amber the nurse, Maria the CNA, and a bedpan.  After getting me all undressed and situated, Amber promised me that I was appropriately positioned on top of the bedpan.  SHE PROMISED.  But then I couldn't go.  It wasn't like I was bladder shy...I pee with other people around all the time.  It was because I am used to going while sitting down, not while lying flat on my back.  But Amber, being the professional she is, walked over to the sink, turned on the water, and it was like MAGIC.  

Magic that I quickly felt running up my back.  When I said something, Amber and Maria both assured me that there was nothing to worry about, that there was no urine pooling underneath me, so it was going to be fine.  Except then when I was finished and she took the bedpan away, she realized that I, in fact, had not been totally peeing into the bedpan.  

BUT AMBER, YOU PROMISED!!!  hahahahahahahahahhaah

I felt so bad, though.  And after they cleaned up the mess I'd made, they just covered me up with a gown and some blankets.  I'm not sure if it was the pain, the drugs, or just me being ridiculous, but I felt the need to tell all three people who came to take me to various x-rays and scans that I was pantsless.  

This is my life.  And this is my bruise:

Pretty sweet, huh?

Umm...GROSS!

So over the 4th of July weekend we took a little road trip up to New York to see the parents. We being me, Emily, and a half dozen people from CGT. On Sunday we went on a boat tour of the St. Lawrence Seaway. I made the conscious decision not to wear sunscreen since I have a wedding in about a month and had been totally rocking the farmer's tan. So it needed a little evening out.

And even out it did. I got a pretty intense burn. So much so that this past weekend, my skin bubbled and blistered and I had to take a 30-minute shower just to scrub it all off. But I couldn't get it all and it was pretty nasty.

And what I'm about to tell you makes Kashmir a real pal. I told her I needed an awkward favor and she immediately agreed before I even told her what it was. When I informed her that I needed her to help me peel the extra dead skin, she hopped right to it. That, my friends, is a true friend.