Okay, I can’t take it, I need a break.
I know, I know, I haven’t been working very long, haven’t got much of anything done, but … this is just …
Sigh.
I did a bit of sanding and got interrupted.
So then I went and tried to get some boxes together and … well, I did. So now there’s … well, there’s boxes to pack the crap from the store into. And I know where there’s plenty of paper for wrapping… though I’m definitely not confident in my ability to safely pack delicate and fragile items for long-term storage. Which is just part of why the entire thing is so stressful.
Maybe I should just go back to sleep, get up later, work all night and get the store empty.
That would work.
And I wouldn’t have to deal with my father while I did it.
Which might help.
So, have I mentioned what’s happening with the store?
My dad made an agreement with one of our former renters, Jim. Jim and his wife suffered various debilitating illnesses last year that reduced their ability to make new product and run their shop, so they couldn’t afford to keep it up and moved out. They seem to be doing better now (I only saw them briefly, myself) and my father has arranged to trade shop space for having the shop open. That is, Jim will open/run the shop on weekdays and in exchange, the front half of the shop will be filled with his products. Our furniture will be in the back. This isn’t a problem, visally; the store is small enough that one can see all the way to the back without really walking in the front door. In fact, since I don’t like working retail it isn’t much of a problem at all, once it gets going. There’s even a possibility that Jim will gladly work weekends, too, saving me the trouble, which would be great.
Except that, of course, there’s all the stuff still in the shop from when it was my grandparents’ junk. (Err, collectibles and antiques.) And not long ago my father had me move about half the stuff out of the back half of the shop into the front and the other half of the stuff from the back half of the shop into boxes which are also sitting in the front half of the shop for now, but which … need to be deployed elsewhere. And now, before the end of the day Wednesday (for I shall surely be out of town on Thursday, and in Phoenix to get Heath and … shop for stuff for dad, and on Friday Jim and his wife Nancy will be here to start setting up the front half of the shop), I have to get all of everything out of the front half of the shop, product, shelves, everything. The product is double-thick on the shelves, and basically all glassware and other fragile things. It’ll be a joy wrapping two thousand little things in paper and stuffing them into boxes. A joy. Then, disassembling the shelves … which I don’t actually know how to do… and then, what else? Cleaning up, generally. Oh, and finding someplace to put all the boxes of stuff. That might actually be the hardest part, since it will basically require several long hours of working with my father directly, shuffling other things out of the way and these new things into where the other things were. Well, except several nested layers of that. It gets complicated. It will certainly involve a forklift.
I’m just complaining, aren’t I?
I think that’s okay, though. I think I determined that the blog is mostly for me and only a little bit about other people. For my own mental well-being. Because seriously. I don’t have any friends to talk to about this stuff. No one to “bounce it off”, no one to help me vent my spleen, as they say, no shoulder to lean on. So this is it. I put it out into the internet and … well, if my friends read it, that’s something, and if they don’t, it basically has the same therapeutic effect for me. Well, until I find out my friends don’t read my blog. That usually stings for a bit. But then I get past it. I mean, it’s not like they ever see me or I’m important to them in the ways I wish I could be important to someone in.
Okay, this is getting off topic, I think.
I was planning on posting about … about packing up the store within only a couple of days. Perhaps about the fact that my dad, for some reason he refuses to express, has been in a bad mood for the better part of a week, and takes it out on me. He might also be taking it out on Heath if Heath were around, but Heath’s in Phoenix. So it’s me. ‘Cause he’s not going to take it out on his dying parents.
So every little thing is a problem, whether it’s a problem or not, and more than likely he’ll make it out to be my fault, or that I should have known better. I’ve never known better, never known what to do when I haven’t been told, I don’t know why he thinks that’ll suddenly change. I asked him a question about boxes earlier, because I hadn’t really figured it out yet and thought he might have thought about it. But it seems only to have upset him. So I went and figured it out on my own, I thought, and took this break. But just now I heard him rummaging around on the other side of that wall, and went to see that he was upset with me because the way I’d figured out to do it when he hadn’t told me what to do wasn’t the way he meant for me to do it. So I’m wrong again and he’s still upset.
Or this morning… with the vacuum cleaner. Two days ago I expressed my interest in vacuuming my room. Yesterday I asked him if it would be alright if I took the canister vacuum upstairs so I could vacuum my room. This morning, before I woke up, he decided that it was suddenly time to clean the house, and he needed the vacuum. He waited until he was actually at the step where he needed the vacuum, then called me, waking me up, asking for the vacuum. Not dressed, it would have taken me longer to get out the door than he allowed before I got another call from him, upset again, saying he’d simply swept the floor instead, and I didn’t need to bring it down. Except that by then I was dressed, and I had just finished vacuuming the couple of square feet of floor I hadn’t got to last night, and I carried it downstairs, where he didn’t need it at all. And where, because he was cleaning the floor, I couldn’t eat breakfast. But then I was too awake and too hungry to go back to sleep, so I just went upstairs again and checked my email.
This has not yet been a good day.
I suppose that’s why I needed to take a break.
And now I hear him moving things around outside. Who knows what he’s up to now. He certainly hasn’t asked for my help in any way yet, but … what do you want to wager he’ll be upset at me for not helping him? I should have known he needed help. He shouldn’t have to ask for it. At least, that’s what he seems to think. I think he should ask for it. Every time. If he needs help, he should ask. And I’ll help. He’s feeding me, providing shelter and internet access, I should help out when he needs it. But he should ask for help when he needs it. It isn’t hard. And then I’ll be able to tell the difference between the jobs he does where I’d just be standing by, watching him work, unable to help, un-needed there yet unable to do anything else, and the jobs where he actually needs help, where two hands are not enough, where I have something to add other than just being someone to take frustrations out on when things don’t go his way.
I’m so tired. What was the plan for today? Take a nap? Get something done first, then take a nap? Well, I did a bit of sanding, did another layer on that project, pulled out boxes for packing the store up … ate breakfast … what else do I need to do, now?
Damn, I think I hear the chainsaw. What the heck could he be doing now?
I just want to go back to sleep.
__________
I did. I just spent a little over an hour asleep. Now, it’s time to go face the dad.
