This will be a quickie.

I’ve got photos and jotted down rants and raves from my week as my volunteer camp nurse week for the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation’s Camp Oasis. But I literally can’t wade my way through Life fast enough at the moment to get to them.

A little history: Mr. Blitch and I moved to Bend, OR, early in our marriage. We were both potters/clay artists at that time, and both also held other jobs to feed and house ourselves. The job that took us from Portland to Bend was Blitch’s job with The Home Depot (Homey D’s, I like to call them). The first new friends we met in Central Oregon were via that job: the husband worked with my Mr. Blitch at the store, and his wife was a stay at home mom with 2 young sons.

I was invited to their home one day, and the gal was showing me around as she was gathering up kid stuff for a trip to the park. As we passed the spacious laundry room (which in and of itself was fancy and lovely), she joked about the pile of unfolded, clean laundry on the counter. She grabbed up some clean kid sized socks for her pack, and off we went.

In my Private~Voice~In~My~Head, I thought: wow, who the hell does a bunch of laundry and then doesn’t fold it and put it away? Luckily, I had basic manners and enough of an internal filter to keep this ridiculous thought to myself. 

At that time, I was a newly wed artist. I had friends from the clay art world who teased me for having the “cleanest clay studio in Portland.” I only allowed white clay bodies in my space, and I regularly vacuumed and mopped my studio floor.

My living space was also immaculate. Even my sock and underwear drawers contained  neatly folded, and (my husband insists, though I really can’t remember), color-coded items.

Fast forward 18 years. I’m a nurse. I have an 82 year old father and a teenage son playing significant parts in my daily life. I work an average of 40 to 45 hours per week, with 5 hours of commute time built into the work week.

And every, single, damn time I head down to my basement to search for a clean bath towel, or a shirt for work that isn’t stained and wrinkled… I curse myself for those long ago judgmental thoughts in that woman’s laundry room. 

Photo above is my bedroom. I’ve got clean clothes, dirty clothes, new clothes with tags still on that I shoved in those drawers and then forgot about. I’ve probably got a Christmas present or two shoved in there towards the bottom that I forgot to give someone. My daily goal on workdays is to make it to work on time: clean, appropriately dressed, and ready for whatever a day of Navigating cancer patients may bring.

And every weekend… Every. Single, Weekend… I vow that *this* will be the weekend I get it all sorted out.

Photo below is the back of my car…. most of the items are from my week at camp. Camp which ended on July 2nd. What’s today? Oh, July 27th? Whatever. I just dig in there when I need something. Like clean underwear. Because yes, I took about 20 pairs of clean underwear to camp. Why? Because I have lots of underwear. Because, often, I can’t find any, so I go buy more.

A girl with Crohn’s Disease cannot have too many pairs of underwear. 

The little table you see there? That is not from Camp. That’s a table I got at a yard sale for my dad.
Why? Because my father is The Opposite of a Hoarder. Is there a term for that? There must be.
When my dad moved from his home in California to his childhood home state of Oregon (so Shut The Fuck Up all you “California Go Home” posers), he got rid of nearly all his possessions.

Nearly. He did keep his Flowbee. But now he wants to get rid of that as well. He’s making me take it out of his nearly empty 2 bedroom apartment and bring it over to my house.

Another gem I did manage to dig out of the back of my car recently was one of my special camp shirts:

As you can see, it is wrinkled, and it needs laundering. Have no fear, it is now in the proper receptacle, to be re-discovered at a later date.

And with that, I say goodnight. I am going to crawl into my filthy bed, not giving two shits about the begrimed sheets covered in dog hair. And cat hair. And Lord knows what else.

I wish you all sweet dreams, and perfect Type 4 stools on the Bristol stool chart in the morning. And please #vote.

(Stool Chart photo cred: Cabot Health)