OK, I said I’d be back at the end of the week, and here I am. You wonder where my travels took me, I bet. Was it an exotic destination? Sand, surf, and sun perhaps? Nope, it was to the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia. Was it at least an enjoyable excursion, a step away from the humdrum of home? Again, nope. The weather was as hot as the Devil’s asscrack and my task once there was just about as enjoyable.

Some of you will be aware that my mother died in February 2022. Since then, my father has been on his own in a house way too big for even two people, and with failing eyesight and no means of independent transportation, so I’ve been making frequent trips up there to help as much as I can. Fortunately, I had sone great help with this from my niece and nephew as well as their father, who stayed close to my parents years and years after divorcing my sister. As of February 2, 2024, those trips became unnecessary, because my father died. It was not a pleasant end, I’m afraid, but it least it was not trauma; for months I’d been very concerned about him navigating his way to the basement down some fairly steep stairs. He beat those stairs, but he couldn’t win against his failing body, I’m afraid. I’ll get further into all this in future chapters, but I wanted to get it out there.

Since my dad’s death, I have been working at clearing out their house. I don’t think they quite met the definition of hoarders, but gottdamn did they keep a lot of shit! I’ve been sorting through two lifetimes worth of stuff, and dumping most of it on the curb the night before trash pickup. Six bags are the limit, so six bags it is. Including the trip up there the week Dad died, I have been unpacking that house on seven trips (at thirty gallons per bag, that’s 1,260 gallons of trash), and it’s difficult for even me to see what progress I’m making. Eventually, I’ll get a dumpster delivered, and I hope to get an estate sale underway at some point, but it seems like I’ll never be finished with the place. I am learning a lot, though: Lots of family history I was either unaware of, or had forgotten, or just never seemed important, the ins and outs of probate, what sells and what doesn’t in estate sales, how empty a house feels when the people who should be there aren’t, and never will be again, and most painfully, once someone is gone, you can’t ask them any more questions. I know that part seems self-evident, but when the recognition of the fact swoops in, it’s a gut punch.

I’ll pick this up again later. For now I have some critters to tend.

Naw, I’m not going to subject you to inane discussions of the weather.

Only other inanities, I promise.

I’m currently re-watching Succession, after spending the last few months re-watching other HBO serieses. Dang, they got some shit right over the years! Of course, everyone in Succession is awful, awful, awful, but still it’s difficult to look away. I used to think that I’d be good at being rich, but now I’m not so sure. These people-fictional, I know-are miserable, despite free-flowing booze, grub, and high thread count sheets. I’m not completely convinced that I’d pass on the opportunity to have that kind of money, though. I mean surely, I’m the outlier, right?

I’ve got some fairly heavy lifting to do over the next few days, but I’ll be back at the end of the week with something more substantial.

A friend recently asked me if I’d given up on the blog. I guess because I’m writing this now, the strict answer is “no,” but I sure have been gone a while. It’s like so many other things in life; when you get behind, it’s so difficult to take those first steps toward getting caught up. But here I am, and I have some news to report.

It took some of yesterday evening,a nd all of this morning just to be able to get signed in here (and into the Surly Farmer gmail account). At some points, I was ready to pull an Elvis impression on this here computer, but cooler heads prevailed. I have felt overwhelmed by both technology and systems in the past couple years. And for reasons that will probably become apparent to you astute readers, my patience with things fighting me is as thin as the plastic produce bags in the grocery store, which, yes it’s true, are also frustrating me on a weekly basis.

I’ll be travelling the first part of this week, so it won’t be a deluge of wild postings here, but I’ll try to drop in tomorrow for some kind of thematic note before returning at the end of the week and letting it all hang out.

I hope everyone is well and is still receiving their emails to let them know Surly is up and about again. Until next time!