Cleaning up the mess in my apartment - a short post

 

RQS and I planned to do some cleanup work in my apartment today.  Guess what?  In less than two hours, she pronounced the place almost ready to have the cleaning lady start working in my place again.  The word "Almost" is the key word here.

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As I go into the nooks and crannies of my apartment, I find more things that can either be thrown out or donated to charity.  Today, we filled up another 3-4 bags for charity, as well as more bags of trash to be thrown out.  The dining room table is almost clear, and there are less boxes in back of the love seat in the left of this picture.  I couldn't have gotten this far without RQS's help, and I'll always be grateful for this help.  But I know that payback will come when I have to do the same for her at her apartment.

Once we finished dinner, it was time to go out and do some recreational shopping.  When I do this, it is always for things I could use, and not just for entertainment.  For example, today's shopping bag contained 4 LED light bulbs, Command Strips for damage free mounting pictures on walls, and a mouse pad that I can keep with my Chromebook computer.  On the way home, we stopped at Mickey D's for a treat before returning to my place.

On the whole, we accomplished more in 2 hours than I could get done in a week.  It's nice having someone around to help me be the best I can be.

Now to clean up the mess in my apartment

 

I only wish my dining room table was still this "uncluttered".  Right now, the whole apartment (including the table) is filled with clutter.  But how did it happen? And, how can I eliminate the clutter?

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Before Covid, the clutter in my apartment was being kept to a manageable level.  The bi-weekly (then monthly) visit by my cleaning lady gave me the incentive to keep this place neat enough for her to come in on a regular basis.  However, the pandemic got in the way of everything, and I no longer bothered trying to keep the place "neat".  (With what was going on in my life then, as mentioned in my former blog, I was too depressed to bother keeping the place neat.)  Now that I am feeling much better about life, and have a solid relationship with a new girlfriend, it's still hard to get this place in order.  I no longer have the energy to do much of anything without some assistance.

Over the past year or so, I have been donating bags of clothes I no longer wear to charity.  God knows how many bags I've already donated.  But now, things have slowed down a bit.  Yet, I have much more to get rid of, and RQS will help me prune things some more.  I'm a bit embarrassed to have people come into this place, and I will have to make room for an electrician to work on every outlet.  We have aluminum wiring on our 15a circuits, and they need to make sure that the proper connectors are being used, so that we don't have an electrical fire.  I'm going to be quite busy soon!

With all the effort I'm likely to make, I expect one important thing to come of all of this - a less cluttered apartment.  Let's hope that I can keep it that way.

My dress was not delivered like they said

 

I have mentioned this dress before.  It's something I plan to wear on Gala night on my upcoming December cruise.  However, it was not delivered as claimed, and I had to make some phone calls regarding the "delivery".

But first...

My alarms were set for 9:00 am, 9:30 am, and 10:00 am, so that I could make it to Arts Westchester by noon for Gallery Sitting. These alarms were needed, as I needed extra incentive to become fully conscious this morning.  Once conscious, I scanned my email, got ready to gallery sit, then drove to White Plains.

I got to White Plains with a minute or two to spare.  But no one was coming down to open the gallery.  So, I waited on the stairs for a few minutes, then went upstairs to find out what was going on.  Arriving on the 3rd floor, I found it virtually empty.  But I found someone who could help me, and the gallery was opened.

Halfway through the afternoon, I took a break for lunch, then returned for the rest of my shift.  And things were very different when I returned - AW's staff was preparing the gallery for a function to be held the next morning.  Just before I finished my shift, I received a message: Game Night was being cancelled, as the hosts' home had no electricity.  So, I figured that I might as well drive home.

Arriving home, I noticed a giant box in the hallway - someone had ordered a large shipment of toilet paper from Amazon.  At the same time, I received a message: UPS claimed that it had delivered my dress.  But the dress was nowhere to be found.  So, I put my dinner to be in the refrigerator and started to make a claim with UPS and to tell Lane Bryant that my dress wasn't delivered.  The long and short of this is that Lane Bryant decided to refund my original purchase, and place a replacement order to get a dress to me by mid next week.  Hopefully, there will be no other complications with this transaction.

I'm glad I don't work in the city anymore.

 

Lately, the temperature has broken the 90° mark, and people are sweltering outside. If I had still been commuting to the city, I'd feel as if I needed to take a shower to feel fresh when I got to work.  Even though I went to the City this past Monday, it is not something I'd want to do every day anymore.

There was a time where I would have been glad to put up with the headaches of commuting.  Not anymore.  If I can't get to work with a short drive, I don't want to consider the job.  I no longer need the money, and work is only something to keep myself busy.  Although I will do some volunteer work now and then, I would prefer to get a job that pays me - people care more for a person's work when they have to pay for it.  People don't care much for things that have not been assigned a specific value, and "Free" is something that is rarely valued.

And this leads me to think about the current day....

RQS and I have each been thinking about buying new mattresses.  My mattress has a sagging middle, while RQS's mattress has edges that no longer provide adequate support.  Too bad we couldn't combine our bad mattresses to make one good one.  Due to the weather, we won't be doing any mattress shopping until autumn, as both of us want to look at the Saatva mattress in their NYC showroom.  This will be an excuse for the two of us to take the subway into Manhattan, and explore the city a little bit.

In cooler weather, I'd feel no problem in going to RQS's place.  But when Summer comes, traffic gets fouled up even more the closer I get to RQS's apartment.  It seems that the combination of commuter traffic, stadium traffic, and airport bound traffic brings all the roads I want to use to a stand still when the weather gets warm.  RQS and I have an agreement - she takes the train up to see me during the summer, and I will drive down to her place during the cooler weather.  So far, this has worked out well for us.  It's too bad that we don't live closer to each other.  But this can be changed at some future date.

If I were still working in the city, I'd leave my car in Croton for weekends and stay at RQS's during the week.  Although my commute would likely have taken the same amount of time as taking the train from Croton, I'd have had the benefit of being with RQS all the time.  Since I am no longer working, I have to think about the day that I will no longer be able to drive.  At that time, I want to live in a place where both RQS and I will be able to get around without the need for a car.  If only such places were easy to find....

Retaining Walls and Building Repairs

 

How would you like to live in a building where its retaining wall has failed?  Well, this is the type of issue co-op boards should feel are their highest priorities.  And my board considers issues like this our highest priority, 

Yet, things get in the way of boards doing their right thing by their shareholders.  For example, the Surfside Condominium's collapse could have been prevented had its Homeowners Association (HOA) both maintained the building properly and repaired it as soon as signs of possible failure were detected.  However, many buildings constructed during a building boom are often shoddily built.  In the case of this building, it was doomed to collapse from the day it was built.

Could Surfside have been saved?  Maybe.  It would have taken a strong HOA and willing owners to supply the funds needed for the needed repairs. But this was not the case.  People balk when presented with a high repair bill.  If they can avoid it, smart people sell out early, leaving other "fools" to pay the bills for repairs - but they can't always sell out.  Currently, as a result of the Surfside collapse, many buildings in Florida are going through mandatory inspections and expensive defect remediation.

So I go back to the failed retaining wall in the picture.  If you were thinking of buying an apartment in the building adjacent to the wall, would you do so?  I wouldn't. Instead, I'd wait until the wall has been repaired, and be sure that all assessments for repairs have been made and collected.  Luckily, this is not my building and not my retaining wall....

A trip to lower manhattan that achieved nothing

The Oculus.  It's a beautiful work of architectural art.  But it was an enormous waste of money to many people, costing over $4,000,000,000 to build.  Supposedly, it is a transit hub.  Yes, you can reach many of New York City's subway lines here, as well as the PATH tubes.  But it is more of a shopping mall than it is anything else.

If you look closely at the above picture, the Oculus is more of an upscale shopping mall than anything else.  When one enters the building from one of the subway stations that reach its corners,  one can't help but notice the beauty of the place.  It is attractive.  But then one notices how many stores are located in this building.

But why did I end up going here today?

To start, I've wanted to go to the 9/11 memorial and museum for a long while.  But I refuse to pay full rate to go there, when I could go there for free after 5:30 pm on Mondays. So I tried to get tickets for today (I'm writing this on a Monday) and found that I was locked out.  Thinking that it was first come, first serve (such as MoMA was on Friday Evenings before the pandemic), I decided to try to go to the museum.  

 

To start, the Northern half of Metro North's Hudson line was impassable due to damage from abnormally heavy rains.  Although I could take the train from Croton-Harmon station, I had no idea of the operational confusion that would exist when I returned to Grand Central Terminal.  All I knew was that I was on a train which would make all local stops on the way to Grand Central - I'd make it to the memorial by 5:30 pm.

Arriving in Manhattan, I couldn't help but notice the heat.  And it felt worse as soon as I entered the subway.  As planned, I made it to the memorial shortly after 5:30, and found out that I had to get my tickets in advance.  They went "on sale" at 7:30 am, and were "sold out" shortly afterward.  This explains why I couldn't  get tickets via the online portal.

My next stop was the Oculus.  It looked sterile compared to the rest of the city's infrastructure.  Did I mind being there?  No.  But I wouldn't go out of my way to see this place or to shop there.  There was nothing there that I would buy, and most of the people I saw there were on their way to go to other places.

 
Finally, it was time for me to go home.  When I reached Grand Central, I found out that trains running on both the Hudson and Harlem lines were affected by washouts. And again, I ended up on a train making all local stops.  Arriving at Croton-Harmon, I considered myself lucky.  All I had to do was walk to my car.  Others had to get on buses like this to go to stations in Cortlandt, Peekskill, Beacon, and Poughkeepsie.  No one knows when the tracks will be restored enough to support daily commuter travel to/from New York City.

Reaching my car, I noticed that the weather was now perfect for being outside.  This was a perfect time to be wearing a nice flowing dress (which I was) and wish the daylight could have lasted a bit longer, so that I could finally enjoy some time outdoors.  No one can control when the sun sets - and that is a good thing for us.

Sinkholes and other headaches

 

This is the view of a road across the river from me.  I often used this road to return home from my (then) girlfriend's place before I was married. So I'm very surprised that this road would fail in this way.  Yet, I shouldn't be surprised, given the rain we've had lately.  Some TV weather reporter noted that our area received as much rain in one July day as we normally do for the whole month of July.  

Could this excessive rain be related to global warming?  To me, I can't be sure.  But when one mentions Global Warming in some circles, people become irate  A recent article in Fortune reports that many meteorologists are experiencing extreme reactions from the public because they choose to report weather related news honestly mentioning how climate change may be affecting local weather.  Even the weather has become politicized!

What about reports of global warming is so bad?  As I see it, they expose the possibility a given class of people are willingly ignorant of a demonstrable truth, and refuse to see their part (if not responsibility) in causing a global problem.  No one likes to admit that they are wrong.  And when a person's survival depends on being wrong, how can they afford to believe an inconvenient truth?

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In the past 5 years, we've seen excessively hot temperatures in the Pacific Northwest.  People living in homes which never needed air conditioning, now swelter during parts of the summer.  Wildfires in Quebec are producing particulates that result in this year's summer smog in New York, Chicago, Toronto and Montreal.  The world is changing around us, and global warming can explain it.

You'll note that I am not making any prescriptions on what society should do about this problem.  Instead, the first step to a solution (as I learned from a therapist) is to recognize what the problem is. And that's where I am annoyed.  Although I say that global warming is a theory, it is the one with the best evidence to support it.  It's a theory we should take seriously, as the risk factor is great.  We shouldn't be pointing fingers, labeling people as evil.  Many people still depend on the industries (e.g. coal mining) that have caused our problems.  We can't solve the problem unless we can give these people a way to both survive and prosper while retiring these industries.

So where does this leave us?  I don't know.  I have my doubts that the worst offenders will want to see how their actions have made things worse.  And yet, these are the same people who must be involved in the changes we need.  Somehow we must separate their past actions from their future actions, and allow them to move forward without feeling they should feel guilt about a past they couldn't control....