Sunday 7 October 2012

Big Rivers And Books

Ahoy there!  

I am taking a small break from paddling upstream way of life that is dehoarding.  To catch up with how you all are, how I am, what the date is, is that a new haircut? It looks lovely.

So how is the mighty Dragon Hoard? 

Still hoardy, with Dragons popped on top like slightly irate cherries.

But you could have guess that one I think.  The interesting challenge of a blog is how many different ways I can say “same shit, different day” before we all fall face first into our keyboards snoring.  (I sometimes wonder if eventually I will reach a madly hysterical point in blogging when I just open a post with “Dear Readers, AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” and just batter my keyboard with a cardboard box before pressing send. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA… oh wait. No. *smacks self in face*)

I may be a tiny bit sleep deprived.  I am having the weirdest dreams about cleaning. One night there was a full scale nightmare about trying to scrub the cooker which had stuff falling over it. The following one was about cleaning the bathroom.  Once I had found the bathroom.  Then there was the one about filling the wheelie bin and trying to get it down to the street to be emptied.

It appears that whatever I am thinking about just before I sleep, whatever I am doing during the day, my brain seems determined to do a rerun of it.  I am a long way from the days where my brain played entire Words With Friends games in my sleep, my brain is set on sleep action.( Actual coherent words.  It is more than I ever manage when conscious, I will be honest.)  It is getting to the stage where I wish my body joined in with the brain on the sleep cleaning.  It would be amazing to wake up to that!  In the meantime I am gently trying to bore myself to sleep by staring at comfortable looking couches and beds on Pinterest. The hope is that my brain fixes on these and I could have a nice peaceful dream about sprawling out on a comfortable piece of furniture.  Knowing my luck I will dream about dreaming of sleep, fall down a rabbit hole and utterly confuse myself but even that would be better than my nightly housekeeping horrors.

So a fuller status report without the dream cleaning?  Autumn has well and truly fallen over the Hoard.  So my awake hours have been filled with preparations to at least ensure the Hoard is wind and watertight. Well less Hoard care and more preparations for the survival of the inhabitants.  The UK is generally a land of milder, very wet and miserable winter weather with occasional attacks of genuinely wintery snows, winds and temperatures that stab you in the lungs when you venture out of doors. So I decided to get ready for either, or indeed both. The garden has been cleaned out, cut back, swept up and hoard items pushed out the house to molder out of the sight of a beady eyed Major Dragon were snuck into the bin. The gutters have been cleared of what looked like an entire hydroponics garden. The garage has been arranged to minimise the damage of its leaking roof.  A rubbish pick up has been arranged for garden rubbish.  The outside tap has been shut off. Next up is digging out the goat paths to the radiators to discover if they are still working and attempt to clean up/bleed/etc to let the house be heated somewhere slighty above igloo level. Since I don’t hold out much hope of that, I have washed all my bedding so I can make a hibernation nest.  I am not good with winter.  I spend most of it sitting next to a radiator in about 20 layers complaining bitterly.  Is that Dragony?  Must be I guess.  I need to be kept in a steadily heated, slightly moist environment.  My quest for this is near religious. (lots of failing with wailing and rending of clothes)

Let me show you a clueless Dragon’s holy books.

 2012-10-06 11.45.17 HDR

2012-09-29 12.24.48 HDR

Yes I pursue the science of home comforts in a religious way.  I think a lot of children of hoarders might do the same.  But that might be another post.

The first book has been a constant companion for years.  Getting workmen in is…difficult.  I do my best to make it happen but I will attempt a lot of simple things to ensure we don’t have to do without anything crucial.  This is one of the bonuses to learning hoard survival.  You learn more than that, you learn quite a bit of just basic survival.  Come any apocalypses and we may find we have a jump start on disaster management.  And generally CoH’s agree that we develop some interesting skills from living with hoard and hoarder.  I am only just starting to become aware of that.   That is another thing that might grow into another post of its own once I have finished thinking about it if anyone is curious.

The second book was a buy from Amazon on a whim.  It was a penny plus postage so I thought it was worth the gamble.  The first book tells me a lot about how to survive various domestic disasters but the real danger of living in a hoard is well, forgetting how to actually live.  Disaster management, hoard survival are all very useful but that is the temporary emergency shoring up and not a long term solution.  Sometimes you are buried in stuff for so long you really can’t remember what it was like to live in any other way. 

You could say I am digging this time to find the me that was here before the hoard. It would be nice to find Major Dragon too but one step at a time I guess.