Laying Barry and all his stuff to rest

When we closed on the house yesterday, it was with the understanding that Barry's friend Richard would remove the remaining items out of the house today and take the last piece of furniture tomorrow. Richard called to confirm he was letting himself in at lunch today and again after work, like we agreed, and I thought all that would be fine. Around 9pm I took the dog for a walk over to the new house. When I got close to the house, I noticed a lot of items out for the trash. Upon further investigation, there were a lot of perfectly good items out for the trash. It looked like Richard had just given up and cleared the counter tops into a trash bag.

So there I was with my head inside the trash can digging around in a dead man's belongings by street light when my new neighbor wheeled his own trash can out. Sensing that this might look a little odd (since there was no car in the driveway and I was dressed somewhat shabbily), I introduced myself as his new neighbor as of the closing yesterday. He introduced himself as Rick and we chatted a bit. I sheepishly explained my trash can diving as going through everything that Richard had thrown out that day and pulling out what I could for the thrift store or ourselves. He smiled and said his mother who lives with him was good friends with Barry and they had been going through the trash themselves, pulling out things that were valuable, including Barry's college diploma.

I love my new neighbors. They're my kind of people.

We parted ways and I returned to my task at hand of sorting trash on the curb. Soon I realized I had more piles than I could handle and would need some storage containers. I called my parents and they drove down with some plastic tubs to hold everything and we brought it all inside to sort. We ended up with two boxes to go to the thrift store, one box for my mother to take home (sigh) and two boxes for me to keep (I am my mother's daughter). I also retrieved the bag of dog treats, paper towels and bean dip that I had purchased and brought to the house yesterday out of the trash.

We dragged the last of Barry's belongings downstairs and into the living room. I put a note on the fridge that everything inside was ours and a note on my rescued bag from the trash that they were "Rich and Genie's items - please don't discard." I thought about adding "(again)" to the end, but figured that was implied. They can remove the last of Barry's belongings tomorrow and then tomorrow evening Daddy can change the locks on all the doors. I also specifically left a note that anything they didn't want they should leave and I would take it to a thrift store.

I know it's hard to sort through another man's life all through his house, but they were the ones in such a hurry to close in 30 days. I'm encouraged by the concern all of our new neighbors have shown for Barry, his home and belongings, in that I hope they are as caring and neighborly towards us once we live there. My parents have always said that you should never take great neighbors for granted. Maybe instead of having Barry's family sort through and discard all of his stuff, he should have asked his neighbors to do it. It would have saved us all the trouble of going through his trash to rescue family photos and diplomas after the fact.

That's how we roll in the OV

We're about to close on our new house Monday, which means we will have two homes (and two mortgages) in the neighborhood known as Ocean View in Norfolk, Virginia. Rich has been exceedingly patient with me and my unreasonable desire to only look for homes within approximately three square miles of our current home. We have literally ruled out houses for sale while walking the dog because of their location. Rich: "What about this house? It looks nice." Me (warily): "I don't know. It's kind of far away." Rich: "You do realize we got here on foot from our current house."

Finally, though, we are both content because I have a house that is still walking distance from the beach I love so much and the parents I love so much and Rich has a two car garage and a yard large enough to hold our own camping events. (The site is wet; no original containers. Pets must be on a leash at all times.)

In an effort to explain that I'm not the only one who has this fierce commitment to a zip code, I started collecting vanity license plates that had an OV theme. It's starting to get out of hand, so I decided to post what I've amassed so far. There are several others that traffic (and stalking) laws have kept me from snagging, but I'll get them eventually. Vanity plates are only $10 a year in Virginia and what better way to show your "spirit" than with 6 to 7 cleverly arranged capital letters and numbers? Click the image below to see the entire set on Flickr.

Oh, and as a special Friday night bonus feature, I offer you Double Dog: Vlog Challenge from Video Gum. I can't stop watching Gabe's resulting video because the lipsynching makes me laugh uncontrollably every time! I also should make a video response to Gabe because he makes fun of LiveJoural and I won't stand for LJ haters.

May is my favorite month

May is my favorite month. Cinco de Mayo is one of my favorite holidays, just because I like saying the name and drinking Dos Equis beer. There are May poles and May flowers from all those April Showers and it's also the month we celebrate Towel Day in commemoration of Douglas Adams. It's also the month I was born and I share this birth month with my father. I share a lot of things with my father, including the initials GAP (I've added an S to mine recently), significant height and extremely long toes, an overactive sense of worry and a healthy love/hate relationship with the Volkswagon Vanagon.

When I was about 12, my mother asked me what I wanted for my birthday. Out of nowhere I told her I wanted a trampoline. None of my friends had one and I had only jumped on one maybe once or twice before in my life, but flying through the air like that seemed like the greatest thing in the world. My mother said she would take it under consideration.

A few days later she was asking Dad jokingly what he wanted for his birthday. Our family has never made a big deal out of birthdays so I'm not sure my parents have ever bought birthday gifts for each other. Dad pondered it for a minute and wistfully said he'd like to have a trampoline. I think you could have knocked my mother over with a feather as she wondered if she had anything to do with my birth or if it was all a dream since I had obviously sprouted from the same pod my father had.

Since the planets were aligned that my father and I would have wished for the same birthday gift despite the 36 year gap in our ages, it seemed only fitting that we should share a trampoline as our present that year. If our life were like a storybook, I could show you a photo of my father and I jumping on this trampoline in the spring sunshine. But our household never seemed to work that way.

CostCo happened to sell trampolines and we did manage to buy one and get it home to the backyard where it was covered with a tarp until we had time to assemble it. The bright blue tarp-wrapped gift sat out there for the month of May and June and probably July as well. I remember pestering asking my mother when we could put the trampoline together, but she would always patiently say that Daddy had to help and we was very busy at the time.

By the end of the summer, I had decided to take matters into my own hands. I dragged the tarp off and found snips to snap the metal bands around the water-damaged box that held our birthday present. The box was full of steel pipes, some springs and a mat. How hard could this be? I read the instructions and got a little disheartened at the illustrations showing two people assembling this structure, but still assumed a little extra time could make up for the lack of extra hands. Needless to say, all I managed to do was drag a bunch of pipes around the back yard and get really frustrated.

We never did get the trampoline assembled and parts of it are still probably in the back yard somewhere at my parents' house. When I was 12, I was grumpy that we couldn't just go out and buy something like the rest of the world, assemble it and enjoy it. I didn't understand why our lives had to be so much more complicated than that. As an adult, though, I marvel that my parents could manage to pick us all up from school and make sure we were all fed and happy between everyone's different schedules and obligations. I can only imagine the strain of putting other people's needs and wants ahead of your own for years and years. I don't think my parents have been to a movie together since the early 60s and they've never been on a vacation since their honeymoon in 1968 (nestled in the middle of Daddy's tour of duty in Vietnam).

I just spent nearly two hours on the phone with Dad talking about the house we're supposed to own as of Monday. He was calling to ask if he could talk to a plumber he knows about the best way to add this extra bathroom to the house we'd like to have. My parents only have one working bathroom in their house now and that one you have to hold the handle to flush the toilet and there's only hot water to the sink because the cold water line leaks. So while they manage with that, Daddy is talking to me about if we would want double vanities in our master bathroom or if one sink would do. It's hard sometimes for me to even talk about it with him.

I never talked to Dad about the trampoline, but I can only imagine he was frustrated about the whole thing too. He was working two jobs at the time and his youngest child was about to become a teenager, that age where they suddenly want nothing to do with their parents. He probably marveled at the coincidence that we wished for the same outlandish item for our birthdays. It had to hurt his stomach every time he thought about the tarp-covered box in the back yard as much as it probably broke his heart to see I'd opened it and dragged it all out only to abandon it in frustration.

So now almost 20 years later, we're buying a house only a block from my parents. I could tell you I've already bought a trampoline to assemble and enjoy with my dad but he'll be 67 this year and I'm not sure either of us need to deal with the aftermath of his breaking his hip in our back yard. My new wistful plan is that we might have enough money in our renovations budget to add a tin roof on a back porch for my father and I to sit and listen to the rain. Maybe that will happen by next year's April showers.