WebKittyn Warbles
Monday, February 02, 2009
Moving Again, Then and Now and My Dad’s Den
Busy Work
For those who weren't here for it... When I got out of the hospital on May 3rd I didn't return to Dobbs Ferry where I had been living with Darkstar since '96. With my dad still in the rehab place and with my own kidney stuff we decided it would be best for me to live up here. I wanted to help take care of my dad so here is where I came.
However, this is not a normal house. When my dad closed the bookstore the inventory moved to the house. It wasn't so bad before the moved up here, we lived in a big house with 4 floors for the books and some went into storage. We're talking 20,000 books.
When they moved up here they did get rid of some of the books but they took about 15,000 to the new house. The new house is half the size of the old house. It was originally two bedrooms, one bathroom, pretty big living room and kitchen with dining area. The old coot who had the house before us wanted more so he added a den in the back of the house overlooking the pond. The den has eight windows covering three sides of the property, its own bathroom with a big shower and its own private entrance. It also has a wood-burning stove (with the pipe that goes out like a chimney) and it's all wood-paneled. Big room. The den became 'his room' and that's where they spent 99% of their time together, each of them in their recliners with the view and the fresh air. He was at peace in this room and he would spend hours watching the birds. This room sold him on the house.
They didn't need more, my dad's lungs weren't good enough to allow for stairs and since I wasn't moving with them they chose the smaller house with the more property. Having the full acre pond full of fish, turtles and frogs was better to them than a big empty house.
But the books had to go somewhere.
The 2nd bedroom was turned into the mystery book room. There's a twin bed in there but literally no room for anything more. Bookcases line the walls and down the center of the room are back-to-back bookcases. The living room became a book room, there were 4000 books in the living room. The halls were lined with bookcases and let us not forget the kitchen full of biographies and non-fiction. It was always an adventure to come up here, I would come home with boxes of strange books.
But we're talking about space here and that's what was seriously lacking when I got out of the hospital. I had to have a place to live. The normal thing would have been to move into the 2nd bedroom but there was no place to put the books. The garage was piled floor to ceiling with books that hadn't been added online yet.
I spent a few weeks sleeping on the couch with no room of my own until it got to be too much. My mother called another book dealer she knows and the woman and a friend came down a few times and took a lot of books from the garage. No charge, just take them. What they didn't take Darkstar spent days putting in bags that my mother brought to the hospital for them to do what they do with donated books. There were at least 10,000 books in the garage.
Once the garage was emptied it was decided we would convert the living room into my bedroom, it had less books to move than the 2nd bedroom. Okay, so it has a piano and a sofa, why not. Darkstar came back up a few more times and we had to move all the books out of the living room. The 'good' books were in there, the rare ones. They had to be moved into the hall AFTER the hall books were moved to the garage. Then the rest of the books in the living room went into the garage, still in their original sections. This was not an easy task and it took a lot of time. I was pretty useless since I was adjusting to dialysis in Kingston so he did 99% of the work.
Finally the living room was emptied and the conversion began. In came the bed and the computer table became mine. Every time Darkstar came up he would bring boxes of my stuff and it was slowly put together into a sort-of bedroom.
Half of my stuff is still in Dobbs, I haven't been down there since November '07. I couldn't go down there for the longest, I couldn't miss dialysis and then I've been so freaken' sick. Plus there is snow and I don't have a car at the moment so it's been hard to get there and who has the money for a truck to rent to put stuff like a pink dresser in. It sucks for Darkstar, he's got two great rooms down there he can't do anything with but we had been planning for him to come up in February and I would go down there for a week and do the final sweep of what I want to take and what can go.
That was then, this is now.
The day after my dad died (Christ, has it been a week already, it feels like a lifetime but no time) my mother came to me with a request I wasn't sure I could handle. Move into the den, make that my room. She wanted it to be completely different than Chuck's den and that was her best idea. I was hesitant, it's hard to be in the den. Towards the end he was in the den 18 hours a day and it's full of him. His big desk he's had since the bookstore days. All the Waterford crystal desk stuff my mother gave him. All his pictures and papers and the medals his own father got for dying in WWII. The silly things he loved so much and kept in here like the cardinal with the turning head and real bird sounds, the stuffed toy 'wolf in a can,' the stuffed black bird that chirps. The electric chair that's only a few months old (not that kind, the kind with the remote that raises the head and feet). I wasn't sure I could handle being in here but it was so important to my mother and she's suffering twice what I am so I said okay.
Darkstar and I started Sunday. Here we go again. First we had to take all of my books that I'd put in the living room and put them on my father's bed. The bed was covered in books. Then we had to do the same to the DVDs which came to 4 kitchen garbage bags, one duffel bag and one extra large pink tote.
Once that was done we started in here. The desk was buried in books, there were stacks 3 rows thick next to the desk. Add to this that mixed in with the books were pictures, old money he liked to save, sentimental items. It wasn't just move books, it was hell. It was like erasing Chuck from his room even though I know that wasn't it. I had to stop so many times, every time I would find something special I would lose it.
Darkstar was a saint. He threw himself into what needed doing and managed to be there for my mother and I even while dealing with his own sense of loss for his second father. He would have stayed as long as we needed him but it was decided he would leave Saturday morning so we had to have it all done by then. We could only do so much at certain times, as much as my mother was the one who wanted it done it was too much for her to see his stuff going into the garage so a lot of it was done late at night or when she went out.
By Thursday night we had managed to clear everything out. It was creepy and empty and hard to be in here but we did it. Then we realised we were short two bookcases so down to the basement we went and emptied more which he brought upstairs like a pro. I wasn't ready to sleep in here yet so I spent a few hours in the wee hours crying and preparing myself.
Yesterday we started as soon as he woke up. First the bed came in and that made it real. Then the TVs had to be switched and re-wired, as did the Bose radio he wanted me to have that Darkstar and I gave him for Christmas a million years ago (when Darkstar was 8, he saved up all his paper route money for his half). Next the bigger of the two (the non-electric) recliner had to be taken apart and brought inside. He moved the desk down so it was in front of the 3 windows facing the pond and the back of the land. He put the bookcases where I needed them and did a hell of a vacuum job.
He helped me bring all the books in from my dad's bed and helped me organise them how I wanted them in the cases. He made endless trips back and forth and helped me with all the knick-knacks I love that I put on the shelves in front of the books. He sat there with me and gave me silent support when I sat down for the first time at the desk. I loved this desk so much as a kid, I always thought he'd give it to me but not like this. I took out the Waterford crystal letter opener and made stabbing motions and played Sherlock Holmes with the matching magnifying glass. I put my favourite radio station on the Bose and cried when I found the monogrammed Cross pens and 'Lone Wolf Mystery Books' rubber stamps used.
I left the DVDs untouched. I've got all of his DVDs now and I plan on getting lost for a day or two sorting them all and splitting them into ones I have to watch, my favourites and putting the rest in alphabetical order. I've got a separate bookcase for boxed sets (we gave the man entire sets of the Sopranos, Buffy and Angel) so when it gets to be too much I've got that to keep me busy.
Darkstar had to go to sleep early last night so it was my first night in here and it was hard. Waking up in here was hard. I woke up at 7:30, puked my brains out, sent my pressure through the roof, popped a xanax and went back to sleep from 10:30-1.
I haven't touched the bathroom yet, I freak out every time I go in there. Hanging on the door is the fuzzy flannel shirt he wore all the time since he came home from rehab and the big blue monk bathrobe Darkstar and I gave him that he loved. The medicine cabinet is full of his after-shaves. It's only been a week and a few days, I can't handle the bathroom yet. It's hard enough opening the desk drawers.
Tonight was the Superbowl, first one without him. It was hard, this is all incredibly hard.
Being in this room is hard.
*sigh*
For those who weren't here for it... When I got out of the hospital on May 3rd I didn't return to Dobbs Ferry where I had been living with Darkstar since '96. With my dad still in the rehab place and with my own kidney stuff we decided it would be best for me to live up here. I wanted to help take care of my dad so here is where I came.
However, this is not a normal house. When my dad closed the bookstore the inventory moved to the house. It wasn't so bad before the moved up here, we lived in a big house with 4 floors for the books and some went into storage. We're talking 20,000 books.
When they moved up here they did get rid of some of the books but they took about 15,000 to the new house. The new house is half the size of the old house. It was originally two bedrooms, one bathroom, pretty big living room and kitchen with dining area. The old coot who had the house before us wanted more so he added a den in the back of the house overlooking the pond. The den has eight windows covering three sides of the property, its own bathroom with a big shower and its own private entrance. It also has a wood-burning stove (with the pipe that goes out like a chimney) and it's all wood-paneled. Big room. The den became 'his room' and that's where they spent 99% of their time together, each of them in their recliners with the view and the fresh air. He was at peace in this room and he would spend hours watching the birds. This room sold him on the house.
They didn't need more, my dad's lungs weren't good enough to allow for stairs and since I wasn't moving with them they chose the smaller house with the more property. Having the full acre pond full of fish, turtles and frogs was better to them than a big empty house.
But the books had to go somewhere.
The 2nd bedroom was turned into the mystery book room. There's a twin bed in there but literally no room for anything more. Bookcases line the walls and down the center of the room are back-to-back bookcases. The living room became a book room, there were 4000 books in the living room. The halls were lined with bookcases and let us not forget the kitchen full of biographies and non-fiction. It was always an adventure to come up here, I would come home with boxes of strange books.
But we're talking about space here and that's what was seriously lacking when I got out of the hospital. I had to have a place to live. The normal thing would have been to move into the 2nd bedroom but there was no place to put the books. The garage was piled floor to ceiling with books that hadn't been added online yet.
I spent a few weeks sleeping on the couch with no room of my own until it got to be too much. My mother called another book dealer she knows and the woman and a friend came down a few times and took a lot of books from the garage. No charge, just take them. What they didn't take Darkstar spent days putting in bags that my mother brought to the hospital for them to do what they do with donated books. There were at least 10,000 books in the garage.
Once the garage was emptied it was decided we would convert the living room into my bedroom, it had less books to move than the 2nd bedroom. Okay, so it has a piano and a sofa, why not. Darkstar came back up a few more times and we had to move all the books out of the living room. The 'good' books were in there, the rare ones. They had to be moved into the hall AFTER the hall books were moved to the garage. Then the rest of the books in the living room went into the garage, still in their original sections. This was not an easy task and it took a lot of time. I was pretty useless since I was adjusting to dialysis in Kingston so he did 99% of the work.
Finally the living room was emptied and the conversion began. In came the bed and the computer table became mine. Every time Darkstar came up he would bring boxes of my stuff and it was slowly put together into a sort-of bedroom.
Half of my stuff is still in Dobbs, I haven't been down there since November '07. I couldn't go down there for the longest, I couldn't miss dialysis and then I've been so freaken' sick. Plus there is snow and I don't have a car at the moment so it's been hard to get there and who has the money for a truck to rent to put stuff like a pink dresser in. It sucks for Darkstar, he's got two great rooms down there he can't do anything with but we had been planning for him to come up in February and I would go down there for a week and do the final sweep of what I want to take and what can go.
That was then, this is now.
The day after my dad died (Christ, has it been a week already, it feels like a lifetime but no time) my mother came to me with a request I wasn't sure I could handle. Move into the den, make that my room. She wanted it to be completely different than Chuck's den and that was her best idea. I was hesitant, it's hard to be in the den. Towards the end he was in the den 18 hours a day and it's full of him. His big desk he's had since the bookstore days. All the Waterford crystal desk stuff my mother gave him. All his pictures and papers and the medals his own father got for dying in WWII. The silly things he loved so much and kept in here like the cardinal with the turning head and real bird sounds, the stuffed toy 'wolf in a can,' the stuffed black bird that chirps. The electric chair that's only a few months old (not that kind, the kind with the remote that raises the head and feet). I wasn't sure I could handle being in here but it was so important to my mother and she's suffering twice what I am so I said okay.
Darkstar and I started Sunday. Here we go again. First we had to take all of my books that I'd put in the living room and put them on my father's bed. The bed was covered in books. Then we had to do the same to the DVDs which came to 4 kitchen garbage bags, one duffel bag and one extra large pink tote.
Once that was done we started in here. The desk was buried in books, there were stacks 3 rows thick next to the desk. Add to this that mixed in with the books were pictures, old money he liked to save, sentimental items. It wasn't just move books, it was hell. It was like erasing Chuck from his room even though I know that wasn't it. I had to stop so many times, every time I would find something special I would lose it.
Darkstar was a saint. He threw himself into what needed doing and managed to be there for my mother and I even while dealing with his own sense of loss for his second father. He would have stayed as long as we needed him but it was decided he would leave Saturday morning so we had to have it all done by then. We could only do so much at certain times, as much as my mother was the one who wanted it done it was too much for her to see his stuff going into the garage so a lot of it was done late at night or when she went out.
By Thursday night we had managed to clear everything out. It was creepy and empty and hard to be in here but we did it. Then we realised we were short two bookcases so down to the basement we went and emptied more which he brought upstairs like a pro. I wasn't ready to sleep in here yet so I spent a few hours in the wee hours crying and preparing myself.
Yesterday we started as soon as he woke up. First the bed came in and that made it real. Then the TVs had to be switched and re-wired, as did the Bose radio he wanted me to have that Darkstar and I gave him for Christmas a million years ago (when Darkstar was 8, he saved up all his paper route money for his half). Next the bigger of the two (the non-electric) recliner had to be taken apart and brought inside. He moved the desk down so it was in front of the 3 windows facing the pond and the back of the land. He put the bookcases where I needed them and did a hell of a vacuum job.
He helped me bring all the books in from my dad's bed and helped me organise them how I wanted them in the cases. He made endless trips back and forth and helped me with all the knick-knacks I love that I put on the shelves in front of the books. He sat there with me and gave me silent support when I sat down for the first time at the desk. I loved this desk so much as a kid, I always thought he'd give it to me but not like this. I took out the Waterford crystal letter opener and made stabbing motions and played Sherlock Holmes with the matching magnifying glass. I put my favourite radio station on the Bose and cried when I found the monogrammed Cross pens and 'Lone Wolf Mystery Books' rubber stamps used.
I left the DVDs untouched. I've got all of his DVDs now and I plan on getting lost for a day or two sorting them all and splitting them into ones I have to watch, my favourites and putting the rest in alphabetical order. I've got a separate bookcase for boxed sets (we gave the man entire sets of the Sopranos, Buffy and Angel) so when it gets to be too much I've got that to keep me busy.
Darkstar had to go to sleep early last night so it was my first night in here and it was hard. Waking up in here was hard. I woke up at 7:30, puked my brains out, sent my pressure through the roof, popped a xanax and went back to sleep from 10:30-1.
I haven't touched the bathroom yet, I freak out every time I go in there. Hanging on the door is the fuzzy flannel shirt he wore all the time since he came home from rehab and the big blue monk bathrobe Darkstar and I gave him that he loved. The medicine cabinet is full of his after-shaves. It's only been a week and a few days, I can't handle the bathroom yet. It's hard enough opening the desk drawers.
Tonight was the Superbowl, first one without him. It was hard, this is all incredibly hard.
Being in this room is hard.
*sigh*
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