PARTIAL Inventory

As you can see from the quantity of today's posts (if anyone is reading this!), I finally have a few moments to get down some of my thoughts these past few days. If you're just tuning in, you may want to go to the first post and read up.

Today was Day 2 of cleaning out the house that Hyde built. OK, to be fair, he just added the final, and most insane layer, to an already insane situation. Our grandparents built and lived in the house for about 20 years, then our parents and brother for the next 25. Apparently no one ever thought that having a yard sale might be a good idea.

For example, our daddy had not one, not two, not three, but FOUR tackle boxes. In those boxes are at least 1,000 fishing lures, many still in boxes. He had at least 30 rods and reels. And there were boxes and boxes and boxes and boxes of ammunition. There were loose shotgun shells in his hunting vests, and boxes in his closet, in the living room, in the trunk of his car, and in the basement. I can't even hazard a guess as to the total number of bullets and shells in that house, but I can say this: If there were to be a fire, everyone living within a 5 mile radius would be at risk.

There were at least a thousand photographs dating back to the last part of the 19th century.

Our mother apparently saved every single piece of paper (bills; letters; lists-grocery, to do, phone numbers/addresses, reminders; notes; receipts; cards; tax returns; interesting anecdotes) she ever received or produced.

There were enough dishes to outfit about 20 homes.

But all of this amounts to a hill of beans compared to what our brother contributed.

First, the dining room table: Completely covered with mail (opened and un) dating back at least 5 years. Then boxes and boxes of stuff from his days as president of a computer association. Files and files crammed full of all his attempts to get jobs over the years. And, of course, all of his documents that linked together all of the important people, organizations, and stories that were part of his organized crime/mafia paranoid delusions. Oh, and his index cards.

Next, his exercise equipment: A bicycle, roller blades, treadmill, total gym, bowflex, rowing machine, 2 exercise bikes, and a ton (no pun intended) of free weights.

But for the piece de resistance: Electronic equipment, half of which I can't even name because I have no idea what it's called or what it was used for. There is way too much to list but a sampling for your reading pleasure...

About 10 cell phones, 10 phones, 7 hand-held tape recorders, 7 computers, a wide variety of surveillance devices, several stereos and soundsystems, 5 or 6 T.V.s, a drawer full of AC adapters (at least 20), recording and mixing equipment, a reel of telephone wire, and boxes and boxes of miscellaneous electronics.

Really, I could write and write and list and list and you would never really get the picture, for this was not just a house of stuff, but stuff obsessively collected and saved over years and years.

Did I mention that in the basement was a box for every single thing that he ever bought? Or that Hyde would use a bar of Ivory soap halfway, then set it aside and start a new one (total in bathroom-about 40)? That there were 10 bottles of full tile cleaner? 15 tubes of partially used hair dye?

Whatever he bought, he bought obsessively and in excess.

Sort of like the pizzas previously mentioned.