Jusby

I e-mailed Tony asking him what happened to the piano, and Anne Marie replied.

Cute, Justin. You have a talent for writing.

And probably for encouraging my husband. Since I’m the one who checks the email and tells him when he should look at something because he is too technologically caustic and unorganized to check his email on the computer my dad bought for us, he probably won’t be seeing your blog anytime soon!

It would only serve to remind him of the fact that I got rid of the piano, and the camper, and about 80% of what was in the camper (much of it things I owned and thought I donated up to ten years ago), while he was out of town at Horning’s. I am tired of living like a rat in armageddon. Towanda!!

Anyway, no offense to you. I found this very amusing. But if he reads stuff like that it puffs up his notion that his identity is centered around his idiosyncratic hoarding, among other things, and it should center around the fact that he wanted a family (and wants an even bigger one–fat chance) and wanted to be a partner in a marriage.

Even doormats need their day now and then.

Love, Anne Marie, ball and chain extraordinaire and hopeless bitch.

I responded:

Annie Marie,
thanks for the feedback.
I hope that Tony will be able to find a better balance when he encounters those opportunities to hoard. My next blog addresses some of those issues in myself and Trish and how we had a purging of junk this summer.
Did you see the part about how you crawled in the back of the truck and fell asleep across the two car seats?
LOL
Mind if I quote you or summarize the upshot? I love the part about ‘thought I donated up to ten years ago‘! LMAO
I also love how you don’t intend to let him see it. Realize that I may be impressed with how he salvaged an old barn but I don’t endorse deception.
It was a classic sit-com move. I can even see how his eyes must’ve temporarily gone off into the distance when he started to calculate his options.
I gotta come play poker with these guys some time!

She replied:

[in part] “When I wrote to you I had just had two cavities done and was still numb and loopy. I’m a little more balanced now myself. Thanks for not endorsing deception!! Annie”

Bracco told me some great stories during our work day and trip to Horning’s . Many of them ought to stay private, preserving my right not to incriminate either of us.

One, in particular, bears repeating though. Tony was also in the midst of a feng shui project: turning a crowded garage into a romper room with the help of his father-in-law. Nine months back Tony had stashed something there contrary to his wife’s wishes.

A neighbor had sold them a washing machine. Afterwards she asked Tony if he knew of anyone who wanted an upright piano. He said, “Well, yeah. Me.” Although it was old and needed work, Bracco knew it had value. He rolled it home and put it in the garage.

THEN he mentioned it to Anne Marie.

“Honey, do you remember that piano…?”

She replied, to the effect of, “NO! Don’t even think about it!” Oops. He didn’t specify how he hid it exactly except that, “It was so crowded in there she didn’t notice.” Well, yeah. Especially if you buried it in old chia pets and painting tarps.

Tony had to clear out and organize the garage to paint the walls. The biggest things he left in the middle. There’s the piano.

Then Anne Marie came home.

Maybe the piano will go to the hideout with the woodstove.

Sometimes it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission.

Bracco’s in charge of the recycling crew at Horning’s Hideout, and his area is full of salvaged cast-offs and dumpster scores.

They used to be set up in a tent in the sun and take showers pumped from a pond that left the crew only marginally cleaner. Except the time dead fish were caught in the pipe. Then the showers left them worse off than before.

Bracco had his eye on an old barn nearby and eventually worked up the nerve to propose an idea to the boss. I think it was the eau-de-poisson-mort that did it. After extensive cleaning they had created a niche, rigged it with electricity, and found sources of clean running water. At the very far end of the barn he forced open a door and discovered a toilet ‘that looked like something out of X-files’. It had several feet of rotting leaves and assorted debris.

He’d seen worse messes in Iraq, so he cleaned it with a vengeance in the name of “Life, Privacy, and the pursuit of flushiness”!

The crew filled their niche with discarded furniture and supplies. They’ve got two fridges, a stove, a microwave, a stereo, a computer, sinks, showers, couches, and pool table. The pool table is pretty beat up and far from level. One hole in particular has a stronger gravitational force than all the others. If you can get a ball near its vortex eventually it will be sucked in. It’s more like playing table-golf, I guess. You have to know the lay of the green.

Point being: sometimes asking permission has a great reward.