Stuff - Part One

Copywrite 2009
Kyle Ervin

There are no two ways about it…my parents have a beautiful home. It’s the type of place people dream about living. The type of place you might see gracing the pages of Sunset Magazine. The entire backyard has been landscaped in the Tuscan style sporting a wrap around veranda covering the patio, sand stone planters, stone pavers and brass sculptures. Oh and the fountains, I forgot about the fountains. And that’s just the beginning. The culminating feature (an homage to my father’s love for wine and wine making) is a ½ acre zinfandel vineyard that climbs up the rock wall terraced hill. Walking out their backdoor is like stepping into your own little slice of idyllic Italy…until you trip over the box stuffed to the brim with 5 year old Scientific American magazines.

You see (and there’s no gentle way to put this)…My Parents are both world class pack rats. I mean they’re not so bad that there’s only a single path through the whole house…but that could be because they live in such a big house.

Lest you think I’m being dramatic I will list some of the items they have around their house…

2 lawn mowers
6 ladders – the local fire department envies their ladder collection
16 pet kennels of varying sizes from kitty sized to large dog
5 dog beds – they have two dogs.

I’ve given much thought to this issue, applying my rather keen powers of psychoanalysis and come to this conclusion…Sure my pops probably has some OCD tendencies and Mom definitely shares my Attention Deficit Disorder but that’s not the crux of it. The real problem is that my parents are both very smart, capable and even handy people (can you tell I still want to be in the living trust). They have an almost superhuman ability to rationalize why they’re keeping stuff – “Someone might be able to use that someday”… “I paid good money for that”… “I’m going to fix that”. And when my dad says he’s going to fix the electric air compressor that I broke almost 20 years ago, you know he can, so you let him keep it even though he bought a new one almost 20 years ago. And when my mother says she’s going to fix the dog bed that popped a seem, you know that she can, so you let her keep it, even though the dogs are plenty comfy on the beds they have now.

Another part of the problem is that my parents have a seemingly unending capacity to acquire new stuff. My mom LOVES the antique shops and has now learned that the local Goodwill sells some brand new Stuff. My dad LOVES The Home Depot and the Vintners Supply Store. It’s a recipe for disaster.

Recently, though, their quantity of stuff has reached a level so vast that even their ability to rationalize has been challenged. They’ve become frustrated because their yard is so full of stuff they can’t use it in the manner for which it was designed. They’ve become annoyed because their eight person dining room table is so cluttered with stuff one person would be hard pressed to sit down at it to eat.

Recognizing that they’ve started to soften their grip on all this stuff and hoping to stymie the inevitable avalanche that will eventually land on my sister and me, I packed my family into the minivan for the 375 mile trip north.

We arrived at their home in Brentwood, CA on a Tuesday evening to find that my sister, who had been visiting but was supposed to go home to Indianapolis that morning, had decided to stay a few more days and help out with the cleanup. This was pivotal…it meant we could double team them. Before I had even arrived she had already convinced my dad to rid himself of any magazine older than Jan 2008. This was a total coup when you realize he had issues (still in the plastic covering) going back to before the millennium.

It was great to have sis on board and the two of us decided to keep our sights reasonable, hoping to just get the garage cleaned out to the point that my dad could have a workspace for his large collection of very nice woodworking tools. We started to attack the piles early the next morning. We had a trailer that we were loading up for the dump, a Goodwill pile, a hazardous waste pile, an automotive parts pile (to go to the Pick-and-Pull), an all metal pile, two large recycle bins and a garage sale pile– I started to fight the garage sale pile because I doubted they would actually follow through with a garage sale, but I realized that having that pile might increase their willingness to give stuff up so I let it go and we started sorting.

It has to be mentioned, and here’s as good a place as any, that July in Brentwood, CA is ungodly hot. It regularly clears triple digits and when we were there it was averaging about 105°…please don’t forget that’s 105° IN THE SHADE. I started every morning by donning my big straw sunhat and applying a pint of sunscreen.

One of the first things I tried to tackle were the numerous boxes of miscellaneous stuff my dad had stored on his garage shelves. There was one box that had nothing but telephone chord in it…probably a good 500’ of telephone chord! Professional kidnappers couldn’t use that much telephone chord. I tried to get that one to the dump pile but my pops seemed to think someone might buy that at the garage sale…so – garage sale.

Going through the boxes I sometimes had to chuckle at how organized their disorganization was. They had one box that was filled with those disposable Tupperware lids. It was actually marked “Unmatched Plastic Lids 5/05”…These lids had NO corresponding containers…for 4 years –Recycle bin.

The sorting started smoothly as sis and I started tossing the stuff that was ‘easy’…stuff like the 1960’s curtain rods and the roughly 1000 cubic feet of polystyrene foam that had been the packaging for various electronic devices. But as things got tougher I had to resort to some duplicitous tactics like hiding stuff at the bottom of the dump load and asking mom about things I knew she didn’t care about and asking dad about things I knew he didn’t care about. I’m not proud of these means…but I sure am happy with the ends.

As we sorted I found evidence that my pops had been entertaining thoughts of organizing his garage for sometime but had never gotten to it. For instance, he had collected 5 garden size trash bags…let me repeat that…5 garden size trash bags!... filled with empty, cleaned cottage cheese, margarine and peanut containers that he had planned to use to organize his thousands of miscellaneous nuts, bolts and screws – Recycle Bin.

The chemical collection was also amazing. My dad’s obsessive compulsive tendency to clean the carpet was evident in the 5 different carpet cleaning detergents that he had throughout his garage. He also had 16 pints of car oil of varying weights, 2 gallons of kerosene and about 10 gallons of paint. This was just the stuff I let him keep. He also had fiberglass resin for a boat that he got rid of some 25 years ago, numerous solvents, epoxies, polishes and cleaners – Hazardous Waste Dump. Note: We exceeded the hazardous waste dump 15 gallon per-trip maximum and were required to fill out two slips.

Tucked in there they also had four large brand new wine racks, that I assume were intended to be in the wine room until they purchased the temperature controlled walk-in wine room – Garage Sale.

It took us 5 solid days of effort, and I have to say I was pleased with how willing my parents were to 'get ‘er done'. We only had one major blow up over a 20 year old microwave my mom was saving for her patio kitchen (which is a pretty good record considering the amount of stuff we got rid of). Dad even told me a few days after we’d left that he was able to go with the momentum and clear almost everything off his patio…which means he can finally have his neighbors over for wine and Bar-B-Q like I know he’s wanted to. It’s great to see them finally in a position to use their home as a home instead of a storage space. And with maybe just one more trip up north and five or six more days of work we’ll be able to get the inside cleaned out as well…at least there’s air conditioning.

Morning Sickness

There’s a story I like to tell that took place while I was courting my wife some ten years ago. She was a brand new teacher in Orange County and I was still living in San Jose some 360 miles to the north. During her various breaks from school, she would hop on a plane and come up for a visit.

On one of these visits, she and I were on a date at the movies. About half way through the movie she excused herself and went to the restroom where she stayed for quite sometime.

Our relationship was serious enough that we were commuting over 300 miles to see each other, but we were still in the ‘trying to impress each other’ stage. So when I asked her if everything was OK she kept a stiff upper lip and told me she was fine.

After the movie, she told me she was ‘a little under the weather’ so instead of going to dinner I took her back to the house. She was very quiet all the way home and we had almost made it when, in a very urgent tone, she told me to, “Pull over!”

I did as I was told and pulled into the shade of a large oak tree that was hanging over the road way. The moment the car stopped she shoved the door open and began puking.

She was mortified. We all know, on the list of things not to do in front of your date, barfing has got to be close to number one. I mean I’m sure it’s above farting and definitely above sneezing a sticky snot ball down to your chin (which can actually be a great ice breaker).

The reality was I didn’t care that she was puking I was just happy that she was in my life. When we got home I made her get into her PJs and lie down. I brought her glasses of water and stale 7-up and I held her hair and rubbed her back as she knelt over the porcelain throne.

Many years later, her mother would tell me that it was after this inauspicious visit that she was certain she had met the man she would marry…she knew that a man who would take care of her when she was at her worst was probably going to be a pretty good guy to spend the rest of her life with.

Today, my wife is pregnant with our fourth child. And today I can’t overstate just how important it is for you ladies to find a man who can take care of you when you’re puking your guts out.

My wife has had some level of ‘morning sickness’ with each of her pregnancies. But this time it is really horrible.

First off ‘morning sickness’ is a totally inappropriate title for the malady she suffers. Her nausea seems to come immediately after consuming any type of food or beverage day or night and stays with her until said food or beverage finds its way into our plumbing.

There was, of course, that total guy part of me that wondered if she was faking it just to get out of doing the dishes…you know ‘playing the pregnancy card’. That was until I heard her retching. My god what a noise…It’s a sound that no human could produce on purpose…a sound that only the sudden, involuntary constriction of every single torso muscle can produce...a sound that makes you want to lose your cookies too.

We’ve tried just about every possible remedy. My wife has never let anything remotely resembling a drug enter her body during pregnancy. So we started with eating crackers before she got out of bed. When that didn’t work we moved on to ginger ale and when that failed she even tried Coca Cola. Finally, after many remedy attempts and after a trip to the emergency room to rehydrate her we even tried an anti nausea drug.

None of it has had much of an impact. Since we first found out she was pregnant she’s actually lost about ten pounds. Thankfully, both of us have developed a little bit in the way of ‘cushion’ in that regard over the past eight years so we’re not too worried as of right now. But it’s really starting to get ridiculous.

It’s so bad that she’s started to create lists of foods that taste good both on their way down and on the way back up. So far bananas are very high on the list while any kind of nut ranks on the bottom.

My wife is a resilient lady though. The consummate multi-tasker, she has figured out how to do just about everything while barfing…including driving. I hold the wheel, she works the pedals and the bag. We make a pretty good team…on very straight roadways.

As for me, luckily I’ve been a dad for seven years so I’ve become immune to the smell of bile. Though driving her around has become something of a challenge. It’s like having a severely drunk passenger all the time. I know you’ve all been there at least once…driving slowly, avoiding any kind of sudden breaking, straightening out curves as much as possible and avoiding speed bumps at all costs. And despite my best efforts I will inevitably receive a punch in the shoulder should the vehicle lurch in any manner.

Fortunately, we’re prepared for the inevitable. We’ve stashed a large box of Ziploc bags in the minivan. I can’t tell you how many curious glances I’ve received as I walk a Ziploc bag of vomit from the car to the nearest trash can. I’ve got to admit I kinda like the attention. I’ve even started crafting a jingle to sing as I stroll…sung to the tune of the Bag-O-Weed song from The Family Guy.

Bag-o-Puke

Bag-o-Puke

Everything’s better with a bag of puke!

Bag-o-Puke

Bag-o-Puke

Everything’s better with a bag of puke!

…Of course I have to click my heels together when I toss it in the can. And this is how we manage to get through it…by keeping a smile on our faces.

You know, we still look back on that date 10 years ago with great fondness. To this day, whenever we find ourselves driving past that old oak tree hanging over the road I will commemorate the day by pretending to puke all over the floor of the car. My wife will hit me in the shoulder. We will both laugh.

And here we are 10 years later…I’m still holding her hair, rubbing her back and standing ready to hand her a glass of water… and I’m still so very glad to have her in my life.