Reasons 49 and 1 why I don't like people. Otherwise entitled "Whew."

So, last week went better than expected, in that my mom and I did not kill each other, and she did not spend much time rehashing the past. Possibly because both my remaining uncles were losers who refused to help sort through Gramma's possessions once it became clear to them they would not be making any money out of the deal. We all went by the storage unit after Uncle John's service on Monday, and the oldest uncle took an expensive lamp and something else, and my aunt his wife took the dishes she wanted, then took the lampshade and bulb out of the lamp and left them for me and Mom to deal with, and they all cruised. My younger uncle was supposed to come back the next day to help me and Mom pull furniture out of the unit so we could go through and remove any personal items we might want, and he called me the next morning and said he couldn't make it. Then the next morning he called my mom and out and out refused to come help. So she and I had to find a charity to donate the appliances to, which took 4 days, on accounta the first charity that was supposed to come flaked out - which is a mini story all its own. So finally, on Thursday, we gave up and pulled all the furniture we were able to move out so that we could at least take photographs of the antique organs in the back corner for the auctioneer. That was a lot of fun, since my mom is 70 years old and has a bad back, and the space was stacked up to the rafters with heavy stuff like electric massage chaise lounges from the 70s, naugahyde (pleather) sleeper sofas that weigh about a billion tons, ash bookcases, oak rocking chairs with high backs, kitchen chairs, exercise equipment, an old RCA rear projection big screen television, plate glass mirrors, boxes of office equipment, an old Army filing cabinet from WWII that was The Colonel my grandfather's (not the cool Grampa I adored), the double doors from the fridge which were removed for some reason and were pretty heavy, an old (like at least my age) braided rag rug measuring roughly 8x10' that I have photographs of Gramma crawling around on with baby me on her back (and if you don't think THAT's heavy, think again), a coffee table made from the roots and a cross-section of a California Redwood tree that I snagged my arms on about a million times and remember very well from my childhood, having learned to color on it, an old desk from around the 40s, antique bedside dressers scavenged from what used to be my grandmother's vanity way back in the early 20s, an antique 4-poster headboard, and a plethora of other items. We moved out as much of it as we could, but we couldn't get to the boxes in the other back corner, because the dressers and bookshelves standing on top of the sets of fullsize mattresses were just too heavy to get down. We used sliders to move the desk out so I could take pictures of it and the organs. I should have taken pictures of the huge dresser that was behind the desk, but I forgot to. By the time we moved all that out so I could take pictures, I was pretty exhausted, and then we had to put it all back. It took us the entire day to move it all out and then stack it all back in.

As for the charity who flaked, they were supposed to show up Wednesday after lunch and never did - Clue #1 - so I called them around 2:30 to find out where they were. They were going through a drive-thru (I heard him ordering), and the guy said oh, they'd be there at 5, and then asked me when the storage place closed. Clue #2. I told him 6, and he sucked the breath in through his teeth in a sound that clearly said that wasn't going to work for him, which made me wonder why, since he said he'd be here by 5. Clue #3. He said okay, they'd try to make it there by 4. I said great and relayed that to my mom. We were bummed, but we continued moving stuff out of the unit, trying to get to the stuff we needed to. By that time, we'd already moved the front half of stuff out of the unit 3 times and in twice. Five o'clock rolled around, and there was no sign of the truck. I called the charity and got the first guy's son, and he said he'd call the truck and see where they were. He put me on hold for over 10 minutes and then came back and said he couldn't "find them" and he'd call me back. Clue #4. I called him back at 6, and he said they'd gotten caught up at another pick up and were running late. I said well how late, because we really needed the stuff picked up before Friday, and he said too late to come by that night, but they'd be by the next day (Thursday) "between 12 and 1." Clue #5. I asked if we could be the first pick up scheduled, because we had to move other items out of the unit, and it absolutely had to be done before Friday, and we could not do it until they came for the appliances, and he said "12 and 1 is our first pick up, ma'am." Really? You don't pick up your first donation until the middle of the day??? Clue #6. I stressed how important it was that they show up as early as possible, and he said no problem. The next morning, I called and got the first guy I'd spoken to, and said I was just touching base to make sure they were going to be there between 12 and 1. He whipped out the snotty and said, 'Ma'am, I told you yesterday, we would come to get that stuff on Saturday,' like I was an idiot, to which I replied, "No, you didn't," and he cut me off with this shitty little rant not to talk to him like that, that he was not one of my children, and I had no business speaking to him like that and being rude, and that I could just call back and speak to another representative when I could be polite, and he hung up on me.

Oh, no, you di'int.

I immediately called back and the coward let it go to the machine. So in a very modulated and cultured tone of voice - my Disney heroine voice, in fact, less the saccharine - as we were exiting my mom's hotel and crossing the parking lot, I left a very calm and detailed message telling him that in point of fact, he had told me they would be there yesterday, and we had waited the entire afternoon, at which point he said he'd be there by 5, but had neither actually showed up or called to cancel, that I had spent my entire day waiting for him, I had depended on him, and he had not show up. Then I had been told by another representative at his company that he would arrive between 12 and 1 today, I had believe that and depended on that, and he had screwed me over, so now, HE COULD SHOVE IT UP HIS ASS. Which, yes, I shouted into my cell phone as we were crossing the parking lot, causing my mother to have about 8 million conniptions AND a kitten, she was so appalled. I then flipped my phone closed and apologized to both my mother and the man who was walking past us at the time, and roughly 7.2 milliseconds later, my phone rang. I look down at it and go, "Gee. Guess who it is," and she asks if I'm going to answer it, at which point I say, "no." She says well maybe he's calling to say they're going to come pick the stuff up, and I said doubtful - he was more than likely calling to tell me off, and I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction, and oh, gee, I don't have voice mail, so he won't even have the pleasure of leaving me that. I hit the silence button on my phone, and we headed to the storage unit again, where we called my cousin, and she arranged for another charity to come and pick the stuff up the next morning. Which was great, but also meant that we had to move the damned appliances out ourselves so that we could get further into the unit, to the organs. Which is the day we spent the day moving all that stuff out. And let me tell you, by the end of that day, any shame I might have felt for cursing at a guy working for an AIDS charity had completely gone the way of the dodo, the lameass ***********r. That was one hell of a bitch of a day, and I was really pretty pissed off, not only at him, but at my lameass uncles for leaving my mother to deal with all of it on her own. They didn't even know I would be there, and it turns out the older one had promised my mother he'd come up on Thursday to help, and not only did he not show, he never even called her to say he wouldn't or why he didn't, even by the time she left Saturday afternoon. But I guarantee you the day of the auction, he'll be there with his hand out for a cut of the sale money. Which I told my mother I'd be really f'g pissed off if she gave him, not for the money's sake but for the principle of the thing. You may remember when Gramma died, these same two uncles accused me of stealing their inheritance because I took home some stuff no one wanted and some to mail to my mom so she wouldn't have to take it on the plane and to mail to Gramma's relatives on my GG's side. Also Gramma's sewing machine which doesn't work and which my mother had given her, and since no one else wanted it and I hadn't taken the china cabinet and antique buffet, dining table and chairs Gramma left to me because I don't have room for it all, they all announced I should have. They wouldn't let me have the grandfather clock that I wanted either, but it's been sitting in that storage room for the last 5 years, getting filthy inside, with the original bill of sale on top of it. My uncle said at the time that his boys wanted it and that they should have it, so he refused to let me take it. Imagine my irritation to see it sitting there, and then to find the bill of sale on top of it with the original price of $623 in 1973. Which is exactly why they didn't take it: it wasn't an antique and it wasn't valuable. Losers. But, NOW I get the clock. :) At this moment, it's sitting there with a pink post-it with my name on it. Ditto Grampa's armchair.

So all's well, I suppose. Now I have to send the photos I took and the unit inventory to the auction people, and the auction will be some day in December, the day of which, I will meet Mom at the unit, where I will pick up the clock and armchair (and I think the rug) and the boxes we aren't selling, and haul them all back here, where some of it will be sold to used booksellers, and the rest will go to a thrift store. I'm sure when my uncles show up for their cut of the sale, we'll go into this again, but let's not till then, shall we?

The week was really emotional, because it's really hard to come to grips with strangers buying my gramma's stuff, let alone for cheap so that they can turn around and sell it in another auction or on eBay to other strangers. I had a hard time letting go of things, and I'm sure it will be worse the day of the sale. It's hard to see things you grew up loving in the only place that was really home to you and know that other people who don't care for those things and don't know what they really are will look at them with a stranger's critical eye and pay all of $5 for the green bookshelves that housed Jonathan Livingston Seagull and World Book Encyclopedia and your mother's yearbooks and photo survey books of far away and exotic places to which your grandmother had travelled and the handcarved knicknacks of those travels and heavy bronze elephant head bookends and bookends with spinning Old World globes. They won't care that you slept in that four poster bed every single time you stayed with Gramma throughout your childhood and into maturity. Or that you have a recurring dream about that very same bed. They won't care that you had Sunday dinners at that table, with a hand-tatted white lace tablecloth and engraved sterling silver service and Beaver Cleaver water glasses and roses Grandmother grew, cut, and arranged herself in a cut crystal vase in the center, or that dessert was strawberries from Gramma's own garden and still warm from the sun. They won't care that just looking at any one of those pieces of furniture, you are instantly transported back in time and can see it as it once stood, with all the trappings of life carefully laid out upon it and smell the room it was in, from the smell of books and wood and dust in the den to rosa damascena in the bathroom or roast beef and gravy in the dining room. They won't care you learned to color on that redwood table or played horsie with Gramma on that rug. The happiest times of your life will sell for pennies on the dollar, to cretins who will see no value in any of it beyond what they think they can get for it at auction somewhere else. It lends a whole new perspective to estate sales, let me tell you. I was never someone who bargained with people having sales anyway, and I can guarantee you now that I never will become one. It's a hard thing to see from the other side.

At any rate, the week is done, and now I'm back at real life, with a boatload of stuff to do this week, not the least of which is my taxes. So...yay!

And um, stuff.

Today, I went to get Napoleon's license, and TB asked me to go through the cats while I was there and see if Meows was inside. That was tough, and then when I was leaving, some asshole was turning in his dog, which looked like it was maybe 3 years old, tops, and I'd guess actually right around a year. The woman warned him she couldn't guarantee the dog would not be put to sleep, to which he replied, "That's okay."

That's okay.

Then he went out and got the dog and brought it in, and it was a pitbull mix that looked just as sweet and trusting as can be, but while I was watching went from happy dog to a dog shaking with stress, and it just broke my heart. I went out to the car and called TB, sobbing. I couldn't drive for a while, I was so upset. I wanted to beat the living daylights out of that asshole. It was on the tip of my tongue to snarl at him, "Why don't you at least fucking take a week to put him on Craigslist, you fucking prick," but I didn't, because this is LA, and men here don't think anything about getting physical with you later when you call them on their bullshit - as you know I have experienced more than a few times here - so despite opening my mouth and taking a breath to say that, I didn't, and now I wish I had. But I was so upset, I went down to Big Lots and bought $80.11 worth of blankets and towels (10 60x70" fleece throws and 8 bath towels) and turned around and took 'em all back to the shelter. Which made me feel a little better, but the only thing getting me by was the mantra, "I believe God will help and save that dog, because I asked him to," because I said a prayer to God and to Jesus, and my faith sucks it, but I really need to believe that God will give that dog comfort and help him not to be afraid and then send someone to adopt him, because that's the only thing getting me through. So if you don't mind, please say a prayer and cross your fingers or whatever it is you do when you need help from above, so that God knows that poor dog needs help. And maybe while He's at it, he'll sling some charity around the entire shelter. And I believe that if you have faith - 100% faith - that God will answer your prayer, He will, but you have to have faith. And I'm really not good with that, so I said that mantra for the next hour and a half, and I'm still saying it, because if I have faith, that dog will find a home and hopefully won't be too horribly freaked out while he's in the pound. The way he was shaking really crushed me. So please spin some help that way, huh?

Peace out,
Katie