Easter Sunday
My dad co-signed for the car, and we've been hanging out over the weekend. Kay and I spent Sunday over at his place, which is starting to look a little rough. My dad will be generous with the needs of someone else, but he won't spend any money on himself and, over time, the house and all of his things have begun to look stained, strained, threadbare, or dilapidated.
This creates an odd phenomenon, because it's the house of my youth and all of the stuff is the same. Same hand towels, same carpet. Same deck, unsurprisingly. Same couches, same chairs, same speakers, same dishes. Same cabinets, tables, and stools. Except over the years they've become as faded and washed out as my memories of the place until the only thing that remains untouched are the plants outside which bloom and flower every spring.
It's trippy, man.
But I don't especially think that holding on to a bunch of stuff that's decaying is really good for the psyche. Kay and I need to get a steam cleaner for the carpet here because as long as we have it, it needs yearly cleaning, and we'll probably drive it over to my dad's place and just clean those carpets there, too. Same thing with a power washer on the sides of the place - it's not that hard, so why not? I have to refinish the deck here, and he offered to help, so why not refinish that deck, too? He spends more time out there.
New towels at Ikea or wherever follow the same philosophy - every time I go over there, I don't want to dry my hands on towels that are falling apart and he's not gonna buy them for himself, so I figure he's helped us a lot and we'll just give him some new ones.
I haven't been able to get over there very often, but I really think that he's getting older and he needs to be kinder to himself. He's not in bad physical shape, but he drinks too much and doesn't engage in any hobby past playing out, which runs until late, anyhow. Maybe coming over more and doing other stuff will help break him out of the funk he's in - doing exactly the same thing every day is bad for you, and I just feel like it's a bad sign when someone's ignoring stuff they used to want to do in favor of watching stale TV and surfing depressing news on the internet. Making the place really legitimately clean again is probably a good step in the right direction.
This creates an odd phenomenon, because it's the house of my youth and all of the stuff is the same. Same hand towels, same carpet. Same deck, unsurprisingly. Same couches, same chairs, same speakers, same dishes. Same cabinets, tables, and stools. Except over the years they've become as faded and washed out as my memories of the place until the only thing that remains untouched are the plants outside which bloom and flower every spring.
It's trippy, man.
But I don't especially think that holding on to a bunch of stuff that's decaying is really good for the psyche. Kay and I need to get a steam cleaner for the carpet here because as long as we have it, it needs yearly cleaning, and we'll probably drive it over to my dad's place and just clean those carpets there, too. Same thing with a power washer on the sides of the place - it's not that hard, so why not? I have to refinish the deck here, and he offered to help, so why not refinish that deck, too? He spends more time out there.
New towels at Ikea or wherever follow the same philosophy - every time I go over there, I don't want to dry my hands on towels that are falling apart and he's not gonna buy them for himself, so I figure he's helped us a lot and we'll just give him some new ones.
I haven't been able to get over there very often, but I really think that he's getting older and he needs to be kinder to himself. He's not in bad physical shape, but he drinks too much and doesn't engage in any hobby past playing out, which runs until late, anyhow. Maybe coming over more and doing other stuff will help break him out of the funk he's in - doing exactly the same thing every day is bad for you, and I just feel like it's a bad sign when someone's ignoring stuff they used to want to do in favor of watching stale TV and surfing depressing news on the internet. Making the place really legitimately clean again is probably a good step in the right direction.