In the last month, I have been in one of those periods of time when I'm not very communicative online or posting at all. Usually, this is because I shut down when I'm focusing on something that is driving my anxiety and the only way I know to handle it is to fixate until it gets resolved.

Overall, a lot has happened and this is a little retrospective of my last month.

Disposition

As I posted in August, my dad died of heart complications. As much as he and I talked about the end, there is a stark difference between preparing for ones death and being one of the people who has to pick up the pieces. My younger brother had to take on the majority of the burden, but I still have my share.

This last week, I was in Michigan to help take apart my dad's house. It was a daunting task, but I was able to help in something I'm good at: processing large amounts of data. In this case, it was going through forty years of accumulated notes, which I posted about on Octodon while I was going through it. There was a lot more than that, but it was a good slice of interesting things to find in his notes.

Along the way, I'm also getting a sizable hunk of furniture and the random debris that I could find useful along with a number of things that invoked an emotional response or memory (like his fusion reactor or the particle accelerator diagrams).

Cleanup

Which led to the two weeks before when I frantically cleaned up the flood damage and everything that happened in the entanglement, my three years of bad luck. Things like dragging the water-damaged bookcases up, throwing out ruined stuff, and cleaning out the accumulated things that were shoved into any available space just to get them out of the way of danger.

That was a lot of work and I think I pushed myself well past my limits since I hit a point in the middle of moving and my right shoulder just gave up with a sharp pain. I've been treating it gingerly for a few days now but it is going to take at least a few weeks before I can pick up anything heavy with my right arm.

Fortunately, we were able to rent a dumpster again this year and filled it with everything, so I had a lot less clutter. Plus, with some money from the estate, I was able to get some shelves and organize it.

I was also able to finally take out the last hunks of wood and find out the full scope of the mold growing on the drywall. It wasn't pretty, but it only bad on about a dozen 4x8 sheets instead of twenty.

Laundry

As my luck goes, the week I got the money was also the week that the clothes washer died completely. So, a portion of that went into replacing it, the dryer that was on its last legs, and the microwave that died in 2021. Two of them got installed last week and I'm hoping (but don't expect) that the washer will get in this week.

Cracked Pipe

Back in December 2021, I found out I had a cracked pipe in the foundation. With funding (and things like someone stealing $12k from me), I couldn't do much because of everything else going on. But with the money I got, I was able to have the plumber jackhammer the floor, find the broken pipe, and repair it. And, in his words, “there were all types of things wrong with it” including the entire bottom half of the joint being broken off and it dumping a good portion of every dishwasher run into the the slab.

While the plumbers were cleaning up, the hydraulic that automatically closes the door between the garage and the house tore itself out of the side along with a large fist-size hunk of wood and pulled out of the steel door too. So, that is going to be something I'll have to replace at some point.

As things go, this was a major drain of my attention because it was always there underneath my feet, another flood waiting to happen without warning.

Cleaning

While I was gone, Partner went on a cleaning binge so I came home to a clean house. That was nice. And we finally figured out what to do with the closet doors that have been breaking since 2020 and we decided to take them out entirely and it looks much better now.

We're also going to put a rug on the ruined carpet until we can tear that out… later.

The Pause

Now I'm in a brief pause where I have immediate deadlines. My brother got me a Pod with my stuff from dad's house, so I have to finish repairing the basement by May when it shows up. I already have the bulk of the basement shuffled into one room, and I have a clear set of tasks that have to be done before that:

• Replace the bathroom that got demolished by repairing the cracked pipe.
• Replace the rotted drywall (and maybe run some conduit to key rooms).
• Replace the flooring with something other than naked concrete.

Oh, and take it easy for a few days before something else time sensitive hits me. Maybe play a few videos games, watching some movies, and just… not do anything.

Luck

I'd like to say my entanglement is over, but it is still tracking at something relatively significant about every three weeks (maybe about once four weeks now). We are in year three right now, but this year, I've lost both parents, a dog, significantly damaged my leg and sciatic nerve, had to do a major repair to my car, and a whole slew of other things.

Using my dad's estate money helps with repairing and recovering from the last three years. I can't say how grateful I am that it came when it did, but I'm really hoping this is a sign that things are looking up (you know, except for losing my dad).

Work

Work has also been hitting me pretty hard. Not much to say about that, since I don't really give details about what I do, but we have quarterly releases and the end of February, May, August, and November are always rough times. Hopefully I'm near the end of that since we're past code cut-off and working toward QA cut-off.

Moving Forward

The thing is, I usually have good luck, so the only thing I can do is the same thing I always do when it comes to these things:

Just keep swimming. - Dory, Finding Nemo