Just Look At This Mess!

 

Standing in the doorway facing the long wall between the hall and the kitchen

I chickened out spending the night. The mess was worse than I imagined and I have a good imagination with past experience to feed it. 

Carri dropped me off about 4pm and came back with my dinner about 9pm and I still did not have a safe path between the bedrooms and the kitchen through the living room. 

While I continued advancing along the long living room wall towards the kitchen,  Carri started  clearing the kitchen floor.  She was about to leave just after 11 and said she really hated leaving me there with no way to ask for help. She caught me at a weak moment and I agreed. 

I'd just been thinking how exhausted I was and how my back kept seizing up on me and how I still had to rearrange all the stuff I'd set up in the office to make room for a bed on the floor as neither the couch nor Ed's bed were safe places.  Plus I would have had to sleep with all the lights on so I could find my way if I needed to get up in the night.  Plus the toilet was gross.  Plus the stench from the bathroom had been so bad all day I had to come out on the balcony to breath normal for a few minutes at least twice per hour.

It took me half an hour to gather the essentials--purse and puter bag and a couple USB lamps so I could find my way to my bed in Mom's room. Then we had to shut down all the lamps I'd set up in every room. 

Mom is having her shower this morning so Carri won't be free to bring me back over until after Mom has had lunch.  We are hoping to figure out the phone situation first too.  If my nephew Levi can't figure out how to make Ed's phone load past the provider's logo screen, he will try to transfer its SIM card to my smartphone that has no SIM card.  If Ed's service doesn't work in my phone I'm going to get a pay-as-you-go SIM card for mine.

My idea that I could be finished with this before the weekend is a fantasy.  It is a good thing the landlord gave me access through the end of the month as I may need more than a week.  Hope I can start spending the night soon though as I'm loosing at lot of time toward making a dent in the mess by having come home to sleep and then not be able to get back over before mid afternoon.  If I can only work at it six hours a day it would take me well past the end of the month.

This whole ordeal is costing me more than emotional stress and time.  It's costing me money.  I've already spent the $IK I saved over the last year towards my own moving expenses as my spot on the waiting list for low income housing has been advancing for five years and that was their estimate at the time I signed on.

One step across the threshold and a slight turn to the left.
Looking across the living room towards the kitchen.
The lamp shade is sitting where Ed sat but I put it there having found it on the floor.
The rest of the couch is piled with stuff he was keeping safe.
So much for my preferred option for a place to sleep.

Stepping past the end table aiming at the floor in front of the couch.
Looks like he'd be setting the full kitchen trash bags on the wall but without tying them off so they would tip over and spill.  Then he was tossing empty beer cans on top of all that.
There were factors other than the drinking in play.  Navigating the balcony and stairs with a trash bag and cane meant he couldn't hold onto the rails so taking the trash down to the dumpster was a daunting ordeal even when he was sober in the mornings.

..

Standing on the edge of the living room carpet looking at the kitchen table.
An island of sanity.  Sorta.  This was his cigarette making station.  See he could be organized when it mattered to him.

A slight turn right looking across the kitchen.

Another slight turn right looking at the sink and counters.
These were not nearly as bad as I expected.  No standing water.  No cooking prep mess.
Once it is safe for me to walk around in there I can deal with that in an hour. No worse than cleaning up after a single meal.

Another slight right turn.  Based on the condition of the stove top I don't think he'd cooked since the last time he cooked for me in March.  Based on the content of the trash he was living on deli subs and potato or macaroni salad.

The towel holder I crocheted for him last fall.

Standing in the kitchen door facing the front door.
The hole in the wall is where he hit his head in a fall summer 2019.
The whiteboard paper hanging on the coat closet was something I bought him for his programing flowcharts but he used it for to-do lists and calendar.  But he hadn't added anything new to it in over a year.

The best reason of all for not spending the night even with a working phone.

The scarves I crocheted for him.
Still hanging on the closet door in the office where I hung them last fall.
I spotted the poncho on the bottom of the mess on the couch at the end where I sat.

Standing in the office door looking across the hall towards the far wall of the bedroom past the foot of the bed which is out of sight.

The bed and the floor beside it where they found him.
The bed was supposed to be flush with that lamp table though so they must have had to push it towards the window to make room to maneuver him onto the stretcher.