SHOPPING IN MY OWN BELONGINGS

The final one of my children has finally moved out.

Some people would take this as a serious reason for withdrawal.  I've seen grown adults reduced to jelly over the fact that their babies have left the nest and the realization that they've only their spouse as company.  I've also seen grown adults reenact their teenage years, which isn't any prettier the second time around.

Personally, I am shopping. No, not shopping at stores nor online.  I am shopping in my own home.  I am finally using the time and space I've gained to go through mountains of belongings that I had neither time nor space for until now.  Years of stuff.  Years and years and years of it.

So far, I am completely amazed at things I'm finding: My tent (which was not put away damp nor without the poles as I've long believed), four (count 'em ... four) sleeping bags (that survived the washer and dryer and still have workable zippers), an old drill (with all of the bits), empty notebook binders (I could open my own binder store), unmatched socks, shirts I have forgotten about, and underwear that I didn't even know I owned.  I actually bra shop in my own drawers.  Yes, I dump about five bras in the clothing bin (someone is going to be very happy ... and well-frilled), and I discover about five bras that are still like brand new that I salvage for myself.

My craziest find has been in the bathroom.  The bathroom sink cabinet has never had a shelf in it, so things just end up in there willy-nilly, sometimes in containers and sometimes just loose.  In the bathroom I discover three bottles of shampoo, five deodorant sticks, multiple containers of hand soap, several containers of sunscreen in varying SPF's, and enough fingernail stickers to open my own salon.

At this rate, everything old is truly new again.  I discover clothes, toiletries, and personal items that I never understood how much I needed them all until I try to throw the stuff away.  I am hit horribly by the "I Might Need These Someday" blues.  The only solution is to pack up the bags quickly, leave the house immediately, and put them in clothing collection bins (or, more appropriately, the trash) before I change my mind.

Now, if I could just find the time to get at my kitchen with the same fervor as the rest of the house.  Next!

A GHOSTLY TALE

There's no campfire, at least not yet, but I am going to tell you a ghost story, just the same.

I have lived in the same neighborhood for nearly twenty-five years.  My children and I used to live a couple of houses over (I can still look into the old apartment windows from here), right next door to one of the most haunted houses around.  My daughter refused to sleep in the neighbor's haunted house (she came home crying at 3:00 a.m.), renters wouldn't stay longer than six months, and a state police officer once witnessed the form of a woman cross the street and disappear right into the side of the house.

Other than constantly losing silverware and occasionally feeling like we were being watched, the rest of us on the short street accepted strange noises and strange occurrences and strange sensations of being watched.  It's just part of our daily (and nightly) routine.  Nothing (except the damn silverware) bothered me as this isn't my first rodeo with spirits in an old house in which I was residing.

Those are stories for another day, though.  Today it's all about the missing camera.

I own a camera, a really fine digital camera, a Canon Powershot S5IS.  I've had it for a decade, and I've taken no less than 50,000 photos with it.  I used to shoot soccer games and lacrosse games all through my youngest's high school and club sports experiences and right through his college career.  This did not happen on purpose.  I showed up to the freshman soccer pre-season with a camera, and the head parent volunteer said, "You.  Camera.  Team photographer.  GO!"

That was how it all started.  That camera went everywhere with me, and I never misplaced it nor lost it nor left it behind anywhere.  Never.

Fast forward to the Great and Terrible Merrimack Valley Gas Fiasco of 2018.

During the time the gas company was in my neighborhood, which was many months as my street intersected with the town's Ground Zero gas connection, the workers left my house wide open twice.  I don't mean just unlocked -- that happened routinely.  They left my front door gaping open for everyone to see, anyone and all who passed through the very busy five-way intersection that peers directly into my front door.  Then, there was a huge fight between the gas company supervisor and my landlord, resulting in the workers dumping a pile of metal, wires, piping, materials, insulation, a new furnace, and two new hot water heaters (they brought the wrong one the first time) in my basement as they were ordered to vacate the premises.

It was during this time, pre and post altercation and subsequent gathering of "all the tools," that my camera case, a black bag that looks very much like something electricians or plumbers might carry, went missing.

Now, if I know me, and I do, I was reasonably certain that I hid the camera and bag somewhere after coming home to find my door agape.  However, I couldn't remember doing so.  I had it in September, that I know, because I downloaded pictures from it.  However, the photos from the altercation mess -- those pictures were all from my phone.  I didn't have the camera for Thanksgiving nor for Christmas.  At first, I figured (because I know me) that I hid it really well.

But then ... I started searching for it.

I began with the small, relatively shallow closet where I hide most things I want out of the way but to remember that those things are there.  I use this closet daily, so there would be zero chance of me misplacing the camera and case.  However, I was shocked to find it wasn't there.  I looked again.  And again, and again, and again, as if I could not believe my eyes.

After that, I took the house apart from top to bottom.  I searched every drawer, under furniture, in the basement, at work, in my car, at my sister's house.  There was nowhere ... NOWHERE ... that I did not search.  I tore the closet apart.  Then, a few days later, still not believing the camera could be gone, I tore the closet apart again, taking every single thing out that was not on a hanger, and pushing each item on a hanger to the side, one by one, as if perhaps I had strung the case to the closet pole.

Finally, I tried to file a claim with the gas company.  Did anyone, any of the workers at all, accidentally pick up a camera case before departing back home to Indiana, California, Florida, South Carolina, or Kentucky ...  In other words, the camera was gone.  I did not file an insurance claim because in my crazy mind, I hoped the camera might one day return, but it seemed unlikely as I searched the house yet again.

In the months since then, I have cleaned out the basement, broken down the bedrooms, and gone through every inch of this house as I rearrange it following my final child's exodus.  I need to pare down if I intend to move to smaller quarters either by choice or by force (the landlord is redoing the townhouse connected to mine; this one will be next).  My mind is blank about the camera, knowing it will never turn up, but I feel nostalgic melancholy when the time comes to move the small shelf of audio-video equipment, complete with its missing space for the camera case.

A few days later I am driving around doing errands when the camera suddenly pops into my mind.  Well, I tell myself, it's probably time to start seriously thinking about replacing it ... or not.  I have a cell phone with a camera.  To Hell with it all.

I arrive home, go to put away my sneakers, open the closet door, the same closet that I use EVERY DAY, and there is the camera case, sitting right in the middle of the closet in a place so obvious that I actually would step on it if this were a normal work day and I were reaching for a pair of pants to wear.  Not only is the camera case completely in the open, but my other shoes and boots, the few pairs not in a shoe holder, have been moved away very carefully and with intention.  There is an oddly shaped circle of boots and shoes surrounding the camera case like it's a bulls-eye.

There.  Is.  No.  Way.  I.  Missed.  That.  Camera.  No way, no how.  I emptied the closet multiple times.  No way, no how, no dice.

I take a deep breath and open the case.  Yes, the camera is there.  I check the last picture taken.  This is where it gets strange (if you're not already creeped out): The camera has no new pictures, but it is in a mode I never use, not ever, and the date and time have both been reset to zero, as if time and space do not exist anymore to the camera now or in whatever dimension in which it has been.

It has taken me a few days to adjust.  I still open the closet daily, but I am now looking for a hole to another dimension.  Hopefully it's not a window to Hell.  I decide to take the camera with me on a hike, just to test it out.  It keeps returning to zero time on zero date.  I let it be for a few hours then carefully reprogram it to be this time and this day.  So far this is holding.

I don't know where the camera has been, but I sure as shit wish when it reappeared in my closet that it had also returned the missing silverware.  Maybe next time.

HARD TO "HANDLE"

My son has one of those foam-topped scrapers to clear snow off the roof of his car.  All winter he has left it inside the house with the shovels, where scrapers and shovels all wait patiently to be used in case of snow.  It has snowed maybe three times over the winter, so there isn't much call for the foam-topped snow-clearer. 

Mostly we just trip over it.  Occasionally we step on it and it clunks into us, the long handle catching us in a rib or an eye or right in the kisser.

As spring rolls in, my son moves out.  He rents a small moving truck for the big stuff, and I load a bunch of smaller stuff into my car.  I love my son, but I want to make damn sure he takes that rather aggressive foam-topped snow-clearer with him.  I unscrew the top part, shove the foam scraper into a random moving box, and I place the handle in my trunk.

Moving day is overcast with intermittent bouts of rain.  It's dark, it's dreary, but it's relatively warm (for April in New England).  I help unload some stuff off the truck, but mostly I concentrate on my car.  I carry in boxes and clothes and other stuff, like glassware and coolers of beer. 

It's raining in earnest when we finish.  I pull my car back into a regular space and accompany my son back to the truck rental place.  I hang out for a bit, head out with them for dinner, and eventually get on the road well after dark.

Fast-forward a few days -- I am loading groceries into my trunk when I notice something in my way.  I reach in to move whatever it is that is keeping my bags from sitting flush with the trunk surface.

Damnitall!

Inside my trunk is the handle to the foam-topped snow-clearer, the same doo-dad over which I have tripped all winter; the same item I purposefully packed myself in my own trunk to take to my son's new place.

Oh, well.  At least now I have an excuse to crash HIS place for a change.  Hopefully it won't snow in the interim.

SPRING IS NOT MY FAULT

It's my fault!  I'm sorry!  I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'M SORRY.

The sun is out, and the temperature is in the high fifties.  Out comes the big broom, and I sweep the patio clear of its winter debris.  Into the cellar I go, battling cobwebs and stuff that was moved during the gas crisis (so the plumbers could access the furnace and hot water heater), stuff that I never put back from where it came.  I find the metal bistro table, two collapsible chairs, and drag everything to the back door.  I scrub the table and chairs, then I scrub the four plastic outdoor chairs and small plastic mini-table, drying everything with paper towels.

Yes, folks, I am doing this!  The sun is shining; life is fabulous: I put out the patio furniture and I pretend that it is Spring.  Yahoo!  First cup of tea on the patio for the season!

And then ... the wind comes.  Not just any wind; the Wind of A Thousand Spring Haters.  The wind howls so strongly and so loudly and so incessantly, that I worry the roof will blow off my house, or that the walls will implode, or that the trees will come down, or that the power lines will snap, or that my sedan will blow away.

Around ten p.m., I realize that I had better secure my belongings.  I trudge outside, careful not to get blown off the patio and flung into the backyard, and madly begin stacking the plastic chairs.  Then, I secure the grill with extra bricks.  I fold the collapsible chairs and wedge them against the fence, holding those chairs up by the stack of plastic chairs.  I put two bricks on the top the the bistro table and head back inside.

Once in the house, the world is hit by a wind gust so torturous that I at first believe a nearby train has jumped the tracks due to a possible tornado.  It sounds like the entire world is ending.  When it's safe to peek out the window without fear of glass shattering in on me, I suspect that the bistro table will not survive the night, even with the bricks.

Out I go again, desperately trying to fold up the table that is threatening to take off with me attached.  I finally get the table partially down, roll it back through the doorway, and lean it against the kitchen wall.  Soon after, the rain starts.  Friends begin texting me: "It's snowing where I am."  Where they are, by the way, is mere towns away.

A few days later, it is again lovely out.  Cautiously and with great trepidation, I roll out the table one more time and set up the bistro area.  Of course, it rains and rains and rains for days after I do this.  However, I do NOT unstack the plastic chairs, staving off the wintry conditions suffered by the western half of the state.  So, for that, anyway, YOU'RE WELCOME.

As for the rest of it, though, I am so sorry.  I truly believed at the time that Spring had Sprung.  I realize now my mistake, so I'm keeping my snow shovels upstairs and will not put them away until I am ready to trade shovels for air conditioners.  That should ward off any more of Mother Nature's antics.  Really, though, so sorry.  I won't do it again!  Until next Spring -- you all totally know I'm going to pull the same stunt next year.