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Quiz and random thoughts
Jun. 3rd, 2006 01:00 pm( First the quiz. Not too far off, sadly. )
As some of you know, I spent Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday in Brooklyn. A friend of the family is going through some tough times. She's (so far as I can estimate) in her late fifties, but dealing with several physical disabilities: near-blindness, limited range of motion due to an accident some years back, and other problems. She's also dealing with having been ripped off in a major way by a close friend, and fighting with her brothers over their parents' belongings. I was talking to her on the phone a couple of weeks back and she said that her Christmas decorations were still out. The friend who stole from her had helped her put them out, and she just couldn't make herself work with them. She got too depressed. I offered to come up and help her put them away.
When I walked into her apartment on Wednesday, I was greeted by piles of stuff. The apartment looked like a storage locker. She'd become a hoarder. Well,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
torberg would argue that she's always been a hoarder, but I would argue not like this. Piles taller than I am. Two fax machines, one not even out of the box. Four microwaves and two televisions in the kitchen.
The good news is that she's aware of the situation. The bad news is that she thinks she just needs better storage solutions. I started talking to her about purging and cleaning out, and she seems to be aware that she needs to "downsize," as she puts it. I just hope she does it before something falls on her and really hurts her. She always seems to have a reason for keeping something. And it sounds plausible until about ten minutes after the conversation and you think, "Wait. No. No one needs four microwaves, even if you're stripping one for parts to fix the broken one, and another is on loan until you get the second one fixed, and what's the fourth one for again?"
What's even more frustrating is that she does have some truly beautiful things. She's got a phenomenal Tiffany lamp collection. She has some truly incredible Norwegian art. And it's completely hidden under piles and piles of crap. In the next five years she wants to move out of New York City and into an over-fifty-five community someplace. That's not going to be possible unless she lets go of at least 75% of her stuff.
Does anybody else remember a TLC show called Clean Sweep? They could have made a two-hour special out of this apartment.
In other news, I read Whispers of the Dead, by Peter Tremayne on the way up to New York on Wednesday.
Now, I used to love these books. They're part of the reason I got interested in medieval Irish culture and history.
Most of the short stories are awful. I'm so disappointed. I wonder if it has always been so. I suspect it has, remembering a lot of the criticisms from past books. The mysteries are elementary to the point I was able to figure out the killer in the first few paragraphs in most. Fidelma, the protagonist, has become something of a Mary Sue, only not as likeable.
The good news is that they provide very interesting bits of Irish medieval history. And they're more entertaining than most straight history books. But not much. Ah well, perhaps Peter Tremayne will find his way back the way Mercedes Lackey has, to a certain extent.
Don't look at me in that tone of voice. In Exile's Honor and Exile's Valor, she found the original, humorous, self-deprecating voice that made her so popular in the first place. And I'm really enjoying the Elemental Masters series. The only one I walked away from feeling ho-hum about was Gates of Sleep. Serpent's Shadow is my favorite so far, mostly because Lackey not only stepped outside her usual formula, but she took a giant step outside. Rather than the creepy, sexual, sado-masochistic villan, there's an antagonist with a plausible, even sympathetic motivation: Indian independence. I'd recommend any of these books.
As some of you know, I spent Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday in Brooklyn. A friend of the family is going through some tough times. She's (so far as I can estimate) in her late fifties, but dealing with several physical disabilities: near-blindness, limited range of motion due to an accident some years back, and other problems. She's also dealing with having been ripped off in a major way by a close friend, and fighting with her brothers over their parents' belongings. I was talking to her on the phone a couple of weeks back and she said that her Christmas decorations were still out. The friend who stole from her had helped her put them out, and she just couldn't make herself work with them. She got too depressed. I offered to come up and help her put them away.
When I walked into her apartment on Wednesday, I was greeted by piles of stuff. The apartment looked like a storage locker. She'd become a hoarder. Well,
torberg would argue that she's always been a hoarder, but I would argue not like this. Piles taller than I am. Two fax machines, one not even out of the box. Four microwaves and two televisions in the kitchen.The good news is that she's aware of the situation. The bad news is that she thinks she just needs better storage solutions. I started talking to her about purging and cleaning out, and she seems to be aware that she needs to "downsize," as she puts it. I just hope she does it before something falls on her and really hurts her. She always seems to have a reason for keeping something. And it sounds plausible until about ten minutes after the conversation and you think, "Wait. No. No one needs four microwaves, even if you're stripping one for parts to fix the broken one, and another is on loan until you get the second one fixed, and what's the fourth one for again?"
What's even more frustrating is that she does have some truly beautiful things. She's got a phenomenal Tiffany lamp collection. She has some truly incredible Norwegian art. And it's completely hidden under piles and piles of crap. In the next five years she wants to move out of New York City and into an over-fifty-five community someplace. That's not going to be possible unless she lets go of at least 75% of her stuff.
Does anybody else remember a TLC show called Clean Sweep? They could have made a two-hour special out of this apartment.
In other news, I read Whispers of the Dead, by Peter Tremayne on the way up to New York on Wednesday.
Now, I used to love these books. They're part of the reason I got interested in medieval Irish culture and history.
Most of the short stories are awful. I'm so disappointed. I wonder if it has always been so. I suspect it has, remembering a lot of the criticisms from past books. The mysteries are elementary to the point I was able to figure out the killer in the first few paragraphs in most. Fidelma, the protagonist, has become something of a Mary Sue, only not as likeable.
The good news is that they provide very interesting bits of Irish medieval history. And they're more entertaining than most straight history books. But not much. Ah well, perhaps Peter Tremayne will find his way back the way Mercedes Lackey has, to a certain extent.
Don't look at me in that tone of voice. In Exile's Honor and Exile's Valor, she found the original, humorous, self-deprecating voice that made her so popular in the first place. And I'm really enjoying the Elemental Masters series. The only one I walked away from feeling ho-hum about was Gates of Sleep. Serpent's Shadow is my favorite so far, mostly because Lackey not only stepped outside her usual formula, but she took a giant step outside. Rather than the creepy, sexual, sado-masochistic villan, there's an antagonist with a plausible, even sympathetic motivation: Indian independence. I'd recommend any of these books.
