July 4th

[indigo_rose99]

Albuquerque. Again.

Five hours of sleep.  I'm pretty sure my dreams woke me and then my worry about the day killed 3 hours of sleep.  2:30am: Why am I awake? Grrr.

At 9am we drove from the  hotel to my brother's place. T started organizing the Trailer of Doom while it was still cool and I started working up to the subject of hospital bills with my brother. He seemed convinced that the hospital would not hunt down his estate like a slow fat calf. I'm dubious,  but mostly because I'm the one who has to live with the consequences if he is wrong.  I convinced him to let me file the file-able stuff on the table next to the door. With many promises to only touch paper,  I convinced him to let me file the waves of paper drifting around tools on the dining room table. And finally swearing I would only file or throw away the few categories of paper I had so recently encountered,  he agreed to let me go through the tsunami of papers on his desk.

Tsunami. It flowed over the edges, lapping at the walls. I took bag after bag of recycling out.  Evidently my brother stops opening his mail when his life gets busy. Forget cancer. He had  stacks of unopened mail from almost as far back as he bought the house!

While I cursed my brother's low end unresponsive shredder, T rearranged the contents of G's huge storage trailer, labeling boxes, discarding empty boxes, and stacking bins on top of each other to make a path. G complained that T was not working on the screen door first. Since T was outside,  G complained to me. I think I mostly kept my thoughts about G's growing resemblance to our crotchety maternal grandfather to myself.

It was about 2pm before we thought to break for lunch. Turns out Albuquerque restaurants close on July 4th. Who knew?! After driving to the third closed restaurant suggestion,  I started calling ahead and we ended up at a tasty Mediterranean place. Win!

After lunch was more of the same. T worked on the door. I switched to cleaning the bathroom floor, and the girlfriend (E) finished organizing the laundry as a makeshift pantry.

By 8pm, the door was no longer trapping us,  the pantry had open shelf space,  the bathroom was back in order, and I was convinced we have found most of the outstanding hospital bills.

Tomorrow, we drive home. Yay, holidays are so much fun!  I can't WAIT to have this much fun again!

Comments

[reedrover]

You have plenty of my sympathy. Living alone while ill seems like a fast way to accidental hoarder-house syndrome. I admire your patience and fortitude in dealing with your brother during these long months.

(Mom did most of the stuff corralling for Dad, and never let mail go unopened. That doesn't mean all the bills were found or paid on time, but at least there wasn't a dumpster-worth of miscellany to sort later.)

[texpenguin.livejournal.com]

You are amazing.

(I have 6 months of unopened mail in a basket by the door, and 2 years' worth of filing in a box on the coffee table, and I don't even have the great :-/ excuse of cancer. You and I live in very different parts of our brains!)