Deterioration

Deterioration.
Old houses which need painting.
Our house.
The kitchen cabinets and drawers ordained with smudges and nicks.
Same with the bathrooms.
And interior and closet doors.
The door downstairs with exposed scars where our grand dog, Yerba, scratched it eight years ago.

Stacks of to-dos all around the house remind me of my body's deterioration in the last seven years.

The over thirty boxes behind the living room couch that contain lord-knows-what...
Books and trinkets and photos and dvds and tapes from when I cleared the rooms on our ground level for the installation of hardwood floors, in 2009.
Boxes of stuff from Mom's home after she died, in 2009.
I have three king-size sheets thrown over the boxes.
Which makes the area look like an ongoing project.
A project I've not touched since 2009 when the boxes were loaded.

So much stuff to be organized...
The strewn stacks downstairs in the so-called office, which I avoid.
The somewhat-orderly stacks in the dining room which is now another office space.
The deeper stacks in Daughter's old bedroom, which is now another office area.
The few small stacks in Son's old bedroom, which in my mind, I plan to make the office.

While convalescing after my revision hip replacement surgery in August, 2016, I mentally went through the whole house figuring how I'd rearrange and decorate.
I even tore out a wall and added a bathroom and partial kitchen on the ground level.

A library.
I'd love to organize all the books I have.
Many are in those boxes behind the couch.
Including a set each of The Annals of America and The Great Books from Britannica.
I've thought that I'd like to read all The Great Books.
But I'd probably get bored with them.

When I was in elementary school Mom sold Compton's Encyclopedias.
Mr. K recruited her as a salesperson.
He was the principle at Oakwood Elementary where all my siblings and I went to school.

Mr. and Mrs. K used to come to our house and play bridge with Mom and Dad. Their daughter, Margaret whom everyone called Bunny, would come with them. She was one year older than me. We would play in a room away from the adults, but I don't recall what we played. I do remember when she got a straight pin stuck in her ankle. The pin was hiding in the shag carpet, and when Bunny sat down cross-legged, the pin lodged in the soft spot of her ankle. One of the adults pulled it out.

Mom became the number one salesperson for Compton's in the United States.
I think she held that spot for five years, into the early 1970s.
She sold Avon before she sold encyclopedias.

Compton's got bought by Encyclopedia Britannica.
Mom then sold Britannica, but she wasn't the number one salesperson.
Still, she sold plenty of books.

That's how I got my set of Great Books and Annals of America.
And a set of Encyclopedia Britannica.
All of which I still own.

This all happened years before Dad's wreck, before he became a quadriplegic, in 1983.

After the wreck, when Dad was rendered paralyzed, upper management at Britannica called Mom.
"Rae," they said, "If Ted will fly up here [to Chicago], we have a cargo van that we'll sell you for a dollar. It's not plush, but it can be converted so you have a van for Albert."

The van served well until Dad's death almost thirteen years later, in 1996.