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Checking in!
Wow, I didn't realize I hadn't posted since November, until I popped in here to try to catch up with what other people have been up to. I knew it had been a while, but not quite how long.
Not that much has been going on outside my head that anyone but me (and sometimes![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
vatine) would be very interested in. He sent me a Dreamwidth invite a good while back, BTW, but setting something else up doesn't make much sense when I haven't even been keeping up around here! I've mostly just been plugging along, and fairly happy doing that, lately. With limited spoons available for writing (and making sense of what I'm reading), I've been concentrating on the blog where more political stuff goes to die. ;)
One of the few, erm, interesting things to have happened recently was having the new upstairs neighbor call the council about our messy patio, which was the occasion of great gnashing of teeth and straining of backs.
Recently, we got a two week deadline to get our walled patio totally cleaned. It had a bunch of DIY remnants I wanted gone before this (again with the EF/inertia!), and other stuff. It was really stressing me out anyway, having grown up with a hoarder.
Over the winter, we had a good excuse not to get the stuff hauled off, since a hedgehog decided to hibernate under the old carpet and floorboards. Thankfully, s/he woke up and moved on not long before the ultimatum.
We still haven't so much as exchanged greetings with the new upstairs neighbor, and I'm just inclined to avoid him now. He moved in, knowing there was a messy patio below his deck, then called the council on us. He even claimed there were rats, to get them to do something. There were none. It was offputting enough without imaginary rodents. Maybe he was mistaking the resident scuttling hedgehog for a rat, unlikely as it seems.
Oh yeah, and he passive-aggressively started chucking food wrappers down off his deck onto our patio. It wasn't subtle. At least he seems to have stopped this since it's clean.
Nice way to handle things, overall! I've been trying to bear in mind that he's probably working off totally different cultural assumptions on when calling in authorities other than the fire department is a reasonable plan--e.g., not just when someone is in imminent enough danger that you're willing to get treated like crap and harassed, if not arrested yourself, once they show up. He still strikes me as a jerk. I'm also reminding myself that it's (a) not worth the aggro, and (b) hardly going to improve the situation, even to shoot him nasty looks on the rare occasion I see the guy.
So, we got a two week deadline, before Environmental Health got called in.
Did I mention that Hoarder Stepdad kept ending up in court over the junk, with people from the city always creeping around with cameras and haranguing the other two people in the house about getting rid of the hoard? I still don't like to answer the door, even when the house and yard are clean, after that set of experiences. Talk about PTSD heaven, given the whole situation.
In the end, we did get it cleared, and I am still relieved to have full use of the patio again. If you're in London or Essex and need to get crap hauled away, I'd highly recommend rubbish-disposal.co.uk. If we'd had a car to haul old wood and carpet away in, we wouldn't have called them, but I was glad we did. They called Ingvar back within two hours, in the evening, and showed up the next morning to give us an estimate--and hauled off a couple of defunct electrical items then! They didn't charge much either. It saved an awful lot of hassle. I'm planning to get them to haul off unwanted furniture and the like when we get closer to moving.
After all that hassle, and a couple of weeks IIRC past the deadline, the guy from the council has not been in touch again. It's frustrating. I guess no news is good news, and all that, but it would still be nice to get an official message of some sort that we're in the clear!
The whole episode was a tad more excitement than I needed. Glad it seems to be over.
My spoon supply has been more limited of late, being in a holding pattern with regards to the move. And trying not to unduly stress myself over the scads of practical details, including getting this place ready for sale. Which involves cleaning it up, a lot--it sure would be nice if either one of us were any good at and/or liked keeping things tidy. I think both of us enjoy the results--I know I do!--but getting it that way is a different matter. O executive function, where art thou? *wry grin*
The "Petition for Alien Relative" bit is done and accepted; now we're getting some straggling documents together (really fun in cases like Swedish military records), for the main visa application round. It looks like my poor pet alien is in for a bunch of vaccinations, possibly including feline leukemia and rabies from the looks of the list.
Then there's the fun of getting the animals ready to go, with paperwork. Joys. In the case of the fish (I'm no more inclined to find new homes for them than I am for the cats or the dog!), finding out what paperwork is actually needed, for which agencies (Fish and Wildlife is now ruled out, at least), is proving fun. It's not going to be cheap, but I am sooo tempted to let a pet moving outfit handle a lot of this stuff.
Other than this, not much has been going on. Partly because I've been trying to use the "70% Rule", instead of pushing myself so hard. Ah, duyukta! I have been feeling much better because of it.
Or, as I just ran across by accident, Duyukdv’i idadvnehv egisdelisgo’i digadahndo’i! *g*
Not that much has been going on outside my head that anyone but me (and sometimes
vatine) would be very interested in. He sent me a Dreamwidth invite a good while back, BTW, but setting something else up doesn't make much sense when I haven't even been keeping up around here! I've mostly just been plugging along, and fairly happy doing that, lately. With limited spoons available for writing (and making sense of what I'm reading), I've been concentrating on the blog where more political stuff goes to die. ;)One of the few, erm, interesting things to have happened recently was having the new upstairs neighbor call the council about our messy patio, which was the occasion of great gnashing of teeth and straining of backs.
Recently, we got a two week deadline to get our walled patio totally cleaned. It had a bunch of DIY remnants I wanted gone before this (again with the EF/inertia!), and other stuff. It was really stressing me out anyway, having grown up with a hoarder.
Over the winter, we had a good excuse not to get the stuff hauled off, since a hedgehog decided to hibernate under the old carpet and floorboards. Thankfully, s/he woke up and moved on not long before the ultimatum.
We still haven't so much as exchanged greetings with the new upstairs neighbor, and I'm just inclined to avoid him now. He moved in, knowing there was a messy patio below his deck, then called the council on us. He even claimed there were rats, to get them to do something. There were none. It was offputting enough without imaginary rodents. Maybe he was mistaking the resident scuttling hedgehog for a rat, unlikely as it seems.
Oh yeah, and he passive-aggressively started chucking food wrappers down off his deck onto our patio. It wasn't subtle. At least he seems to have stopped this since it's clean.
Nice way to handle things, overall! I've been trying to bear in mind that he's probably working off totally different cultural assumptions on when calling in authorities other than the fire department is a reasonable plan--e.g., not just when someone is in imminent enough danger that you're willing to get treated like crap and harassed, if not arrested yourself, once they show up. He still strikes me as a jerk. I'm also reminding myself that it's (a) not worth the aggro, and (b) hardly going to improve the situation, even to shoot him nasty looks on the rare occasion I see the guy.
So, we got a two week deadline, before Environmental Health got called in.
Did I mention that Hoarder Stepdad kept ending up in court over the junk, with people from the city always creeping around with cameras and haranguing the other two people in the house about getting rid of the hoard? I still don't like to answer the door, even when the house and yard are clean, after that set of experiences. Talk about PTSD heaven, given the whole situation.
In the end, we did get it cleared, and I am still relieved to have full use of the patio again. If you're in London or Essex and need to get crap hauled away, I'd highly recommend rubbish-disposal.co.uk. If we'd had a car to haul old wood and carpet away in, we wouldn't have called them, but I was glad we did. They called Ingvar back within two hours, in the evening, and showed up the next morning to give us an estimate--and hauled off a couple of defunct electrical items then! They didn't charge much either. It saved an awful lot of hassle. I'm planning to get them to haul off unwanted furniture and the like when we get closer to moving.
After all that hassle, and a couple of weeks IIRC past the deadline, the guy from the council has not been in touch again. It's frustrating. I guess no news is good news, and all that, but it would still be nice to get an official message of some sort that we're in the clear!
The whole episode was a tad more excitement than I needed. Glad it seems to be over.
My spoon supply has been more limited of late, being in a holding pattern with regards to the move. And trying not to unduly stress myself over the scads of practical details, including getting this place ready for sale. Which involves cleaning it up, a lot--it sure would be nice if either one of us were any good at and/or liked keeping things tidy. I think both of us enjoy the results--I know I do!--but getting it that way is a different matter. O executive function, where art thou? *wry grin*
The "Petition for Alien Relative" bit is done and accepted; now we're getting some straggling documents together (really fun in cases like Swedish military records), for the main visa application round. It looks like my poor pet alien is in for a bunch of vaccinations, possibly including feline leukemia and rabies from the looks of the list.
Then there's the fun of getting the animals ready to go, with paperwork. Joys. In the case of the fish (I'm no more inclined to find new homes for them than I am for the cats or the dog!), finding out what paperwork is actually needed, for which agencies (Fish and Wildlife is now ruled out, at least), is proving fun. It's not going to be cheap, but I am sooo tempted to let a pet moving outfit handle a lot of this stuff.
Other than this, not much has been going on. Partly because I've been trying to use the "70% Rule", instead of pushing myself so hard. Ah, duyukta! I have been feeling much better because of it.
Or, as I just ran across by accident, Duyukdv’i idadvnehv egisdelisgo’i digadahndo’i! *g*