Hoards
My father, the old dragon, passed away with his hoarded lair filled to the brim and left to whoever was intrepid enough to raid it. Treasures could be found there; treasures too precious to part with: paperclips, the literature they staple to your prescription bag, three printers (two not working) five CPU towers going back as far as the 80s, office supplies to last a lifetime, batteries of all shapes and sizes, empty boxes, bags, and piles upon piles of paper all needing to be filed. Oh, and tools. Lots and lots of tools.
It doesn't help that I tend to hold on to things for animistic or sentimental reasons. I fretted over throwing away a lock whose combination has long since been lost to the ages. It was Dad's lock and he thought it important.
I really don't know what half the tools do. Engineering, sound engineering, low voltage wiring? Just something he bought because it was nifty? Bad luck for me, I do know what the other half does and thus my brain screams, "Don't get rid of it! It's expensive! You'll need it if you ever run wire through walls!"
Suffice to say, I don't think I'll ever have a need to run wire through walls. But, still, what if???
Another specter peering over my shoulder is Purpose. My mother is a playwright. The office is teeming with scripts - paper bound, or saved on 3.5 floppies formatted for Ventura or a shitton of other programs no longer around. Wordstar. My mother refused to learn Word Perfect or MS Word.
Ventura, you ask?
The first version of Ventura Publisher was released in 1986, and distributed worldwide exclusively by Xerox until Ventura Software sold the source code to the former company in 1990. The original Ventura Software ceased operations in February 1990, and a new Ventura Software Inc. was formed at that time, an affiliated company of Xerox. The developers from the original company worked with the new Xerox Ventura Software company to produce Version 3.0 Gold. This was released in late 1990. Besides DOS/GEM, it was also available for Win16, Mac, and OS/2. - Wikipedia
Hilarious, no? I can't purge any of the computer crap until I sit down and sort through all those damn 3.5 floppies. I'll have to transfer the data to pdf or Word.
Unlike the typical hoarder, my father used all this stuff. Much of it was stored where he could find it, be it a reel-to-reel player (for my mother's music) or a thingy to determine the load on an electric thingamabob. He was a brilliant man and quite capable of pulling off miracles.
So, without further ado, welcome to the hoarded office:
That's AFTER I began grouping like items. You can't see the SIX bookshelves filled with scripts that reek like stale cigarette smoke (my mother never opens a window when she smokes.) Also missing from view are the three printer stands. EVERYTHING is covered with SOMETHING.
Hey, his workshop area in the basement is ten times worse. God give me strength.
And now the rub.
The dragon's mate - my mother - lives on, prowling and clutching things to her - Treasures too precious to part with. My mother is fine with purging all his clothing but refuses to let me throw the rusted-out BBQ away. We will NEVER use 1970s speakers (those huge things!) but I CAN'T purge them. 30 years of Macy's parades on VHS. Nope, those MUST stay. Can we put some of the angel knickknacks away? There are over 30. NO. They all have MEMORIES.
My father clung to purpose and usefulness. My mother clings to the past. It's as though she's just waiting to die. No new memories to make. No reason to change.
I've been pushing to get the downstairs into shape. The living room houses her chair, the TV (blocking the fireplace), my dad's broken chair, bookshelves...
Those bookshelves. This has become my pet peeve. Particle board/laminate cheap ass things that absorbed twenty years of nicotine. She has them everywhere. The living room, the dining room, the stairs. I won't go on. You've heard my whinging before.
My hope is to turn that office into either a dedicated bedroom for Better Half and me, or else make it my own office - a place where I can write.
And my links from my old blog went wonky. Raaah Son of a ditch.
UPDATE: 15 February 2021
I finished the office a few weeks ago.
