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What Is That? – Part III

“What is that?” is the most common question the kids have asked while cleaning?  This is the third installment.  You can read the first two here and here.

This week we got a terrifying glimpse into the garage.  We also continue to find gems in the basement and ‘Great Room.’

What Is That?

The answers so far include:

a car wash coupon with no expiration date, but no indication for which car wash 🙁

7-10 empty paint cans

MORE Christmas lights!

Some sort of specialized router table

Noah’s Ark

a 6th Nativity set

a picture of the original Gerber baby

every paper to every house my parents have ever built (seriously!)

a quilt given to my parents as a wedding gift

a 1960’s (?) stove top oven

the Scepter of Dagobert

a glass door shot out by a neighbor kid with a BB gun

a filing cabinet full of work contracts

3 sets of jumper cables

a never-assembled children’s rocking chair

a Princess Leia action figure

the RMS Republic and the Tsar’s Treasure

a Chewbacca action figure inside of a Star Wars star fighter

a twirling baton

a 1990’s expired fishing license

enough weather liner (for doors or windows) to circle the globe

3 lawnmower carburetors

4 refrigerators

the Florentine Diamond

a pellet gun

life jackets from before there was life

a broken wooden oar

the REAL source location for the Spiders of Mirkwood

 

and finally….

the pool table my parents bought me when I was 15 – a gift to shut me up!   (For two years anytime I was asked “what do you want?” the answer was a “pool table.”  Eventually the persistence paid off.)

 

Stay tuned for next week, which will hopefully be a video/picture version of “What is that?”

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Feeling Numb

I haven’t posted much lately.  That’s because I’ve been feeling rather numb.

NUMB

As someone with depression, numbness isn’t new to me… and yet it is.  While I have also been feeling quite emotionally numb, what I’m referring too is an actual physical numbness that has taken hold of my left arm.

Tuesday of last week I lost feeling in about 1/2 of my left hand and a good portion of my forearm.   My pinkie, ring finger, the portion of the hand below them, and down into my forearm to my elbow is all tingly and numb.

I don’t think I’m having a slow heart attack, and I don’t remember hitting it on anything.  I have no explanation for why this has happened.  At first I thought my arm had just fallen asleep, but it hasn’t woken up for a week now.

REACTION

I haven’t done anything about it yet.  I called the VA and there was a 15 minute wait on the phone to schedule an appointment, so I hung up.  Waiting that long would have made the rest of me numb too!  If it doesn’t get better than I’ll be force to call back I’m afraid.

I mentioned it at my mental health group meeting last week and one of the VA guys said that my Ulnar nerve runs down the arm and if it were pinched it would cause numbness in those fingers.   I was interested in that, so I looked up more info on it.

ulnar nerve numbness

Turns out he was right.  I often rest the inside of my elbow on the edge of the desk while on the computer.  The cause, symptoms,  and other info here was exactly as I’ve experienced.  Gold-star for Alan!

I says it can go away in a few weeks (!?!) at home.  If not to see a Dr.  If it doesn’t go away then it may need some surgery (!!!).  So, I won’t be spending as much time at my computer desk.  So if you don’t here as much from me you’ll know why.

Post about the insurance call I mentioned last week is still coming.

Josh will hopefully be posting about his first Scout Camp, so look for that upcoming!

Thanks for all the love and support!

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Examining My Motivation

This question was asked  during church this week… “What motivates you?”  I was able to sit through about 10 minutes of discussion before JR started fussing.  He was loud enough that I needed to leave so that he didn’t bother the rest of the class.   So I sat with him in the hall and thought about that singular question… what is my motivation?

Searching for Motivation

The first answer that came to mind to me is “I have no motivation.”   I didn’t share this with the class, but kept it to myself.   I do find it very hard much of the time to find motivation to do anything.  I’m in a depressed mood much of the time.

Even when I have the desire to get up and do something, quite often the chronic pain is there to change my mind.  I want to get up and be outside doing things, but knowing they are going to hurt while doing them AND continue hurting long after I’ve stopped makes it extremely difficult to do much at all.

Fear of pain

But that means that I am motivated to stay docile because of fear of pain.  Having many times experienced headaches so bad that they leave me vomiting or blacked out, I find pain avoidance to be highly motivating.

Now, because I know that continuing to gain weight will also cause more pain, I do find motivation to do what I can.  Even 8 years after being medically discharged I am still trying to find the threshold between activity and pain.   The same fear of pain that sucks motivation from me, also makes me want to get up and do what I can so that I don’t get worse.  It is a balancing act that I often feel I am failing at.

Love of family

Love for my family is the one thing that consistently overcome my fear of pain.  I will do what NEEDS to be done for them even if I know it will be painful.  Right now this is happening with getting my parents house cleaned out.  We NEED a permanent place to live.  Every day I wake up stiff, sore, and nauseated from pain.   But the clock is ticking toward start of the next school year, so I get up and get moving.

Before this though there were many days when I probably would have stayed in bed all day.  Or if I did get up, I wouldn’t go anywhere as I hate being in public.  If it weren’t that Julie hates this and it makes her feel bad, then I’d never leave the house.

But making Julie happy and wanting to see the kids is enough to get me out of bed and dressed.  It’s really been the only thing getting me to church for years.  Don’t misunderstand,  I love my church.  I have a deep and abiding faith in Christ.   But the pain and PTSD would be enough to keep me from attending except that Julie wants me there with the family.   So I go, for love of the family.

Other motivation?

I don’t know if I can come up with another one.  I don’t do much pleasure seeking, I don’t care about money, I’d rather not be famous.  While at Fort Huachuca I lost the will to live, and am only still here today because of my love for Julie and the kids.   There are occasionally things I would like to do, but they all largely go unfulfilled for reasons previously discussed.   And even when I do something that I “want to do” it is largely unsatisfying.

I have good moments of laughter and love, but am largely unmotivated toward anything in particular.   My decision making paradigm can basically be boiled down to pain avoidance and love of family.

I’d love to hear… what motivates you?

Andrew with his puppy
Andrew circa 2015 with our Great Pyrenees puppy ‘Chief’
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What Is That? – Cleaning Out My Parents House

We have concluded the first full week of cleaning out my parents home in preparation for remodeling it.  Sometime later I’ll share some pictures to show what we’re doing.  In the meantime…

“What is that?” is the most common question the kids have asked while cleaning?  So far, the answers have included the following:

What is that?

a record player

hard foam insulation

every tax return my parents have ever filed (back to 1967!)

an entire case of unopened  Christmas lights

my Garbage Pail Kid collection

DB Cooper’s parachute

a slide projector

a dead mouse

a live hawk

a hand made Raggedy Ann doll

5 boxes up empty picture frames

my Yell Leader uniforms from high school

1990 World Book Encyclopedias (follow up question from the kids, “what’s an encyclopedia?”)

the watch my grandfather wore throughout WWII

the Amber Room panels

a gallon jar of  strike anywhere matches

another bag of unopened Christmas lights

a handmade foozle ball game

my handwriting papers from 1st grade/Kindergarten

20 years of my mom’s day planners

a 1960’s baby stroller

6 blocks of 22LR rounds

Amelia Earhart’s plane

30+ thimbles

my mothers Prom dress and my father’s Prom suit

grandma’s yearbook shirt (she embroidered over each signed name)

30 years worth of Ensign magazines

Another 2000 unopened boxes of Christmas lights

a dozen 72-hour kits

enough flashlights to signal Alpha Centauri

more antiques than the Smithsonian

Jimmy Hoffa

a Nintendo NES system

my youth sports trophies

the Treasures of Priam

the doll my mother was given as a newborn by a traveling salesman

the deer antlers that hung above my bed as a child

bugs… lots of bugs (Nikki supplied this answer)

two butter churn

a manual nut chopper (?)

and finally…

a wooden box that Kraft cheese used to be sold in

 

 

And The Hits Just Keep On Coming…

That kids have been fascinated by what we find.  Every item has its own history lesson attached, many of them about the family member who owned it.   We’ve enjoyed the stories we’d have never heard otherwise.  It’s even better when both Mom and Dad have drastically different stories about an items origin (“this came all the way from Egypt!” “No, we bought it at a store in Provo”)  Good time!

I wouldn’t say that we’re quite yet half way done with the house, and that doesn’t include the three car garage.  So I am sure that we will find some more absolute gems… maybe some religious relics and possibly a lost city or two.

I love you Mom…