How am I spending my confinement?

Note: I am glad that I posted this article on April 26, 2020 to remind myself how I behaved then to the new emerging situation.

Since then, and in the last 2 months, I undertook to focus on “refurbishing” my home after decades of negligence, as my parents were seriously ill Painting all the house, ceiling, walls, doors, window.., repairing doors, windows… remodeling the previous “interior design“, adding my own “touch” of what makes me more comfortable and more inclined to think, work, “produce”…

Kind of trying to refresh whatever “passions” I might have bottled up since childhood and snatching my “rights” to have my own corner in the “space“

That would be since last week of February.

Our building is of 3 floors and a ground floor (now split in two for my married nephews). My parents, as most parents in Lebanon and the Near East, think of keeping all their children in one location in the future. Bad idea since it barely works to keep any sense of harmony among adults.

On January 31st, my mother passed away after one week in intensive care and my aunt also passed away 2 weeks later, in coma and in the ICU. 

Sort of most elderly over 90 have no longer any chance to survive any ICU, and that was before the Covid-19 pandemics was revealed.

We order online products from the nearest supermarket. Since I sold my car many years ago, and refrained from borrowing any car, my nephew used to ask me what he could buy me when he drives away. That lasted 2 weeks, and then everyone forgot about me.

The delivered bags are left outside the main building door until each one get out and alcohol spray the external bags and then the inner bags and eventually the inner-inner bags…

We ran out of potable water that we fill our 10 L gallons plastic containers from a running source in the town of Beit Chabab.

My brother-in-law insisted that I join him to help him fill 20 of these gallons.

He is a retired officer from the army, and I guess he receives detailed procedure on how to disinfect everything.

Consequently, Victor spays alcohol around the floor of the water source and I have to carry the filled gallon straight to the car trunk without letting them touch the ground…

A couple of youth came by and washed their faces after jogging, and the disinfection had to restart from scratch.

Before entering the car, I had to stretch my feet outside so that alcohol is sprayed on my shoes.

The funny part is that I had to spray the 4 tires, on the ground that kids play in the parking lot. Go figure.

My sister came from London on the last airplane before closing the airport and she stayed 2 weeks in total confinement on the rooftop.

After her confinement was over, my sister cleaned up her apartment for an entire week, for hours each day ,until she got backache, and then moved down to my apartment to totally clear up all the accumulated junk that my parents, her daughters and herself stored for over 50 years.

Actually, I had cleared up for an entire month loads of junks after mother had a hip surgery 2 years ago.

Although I had hired a helper to clear pathways among the junks on all balconies and in the dining room in order to be able “travel” around, I ended up with a hernia and had to submit to a surgery a few months later.

Yes, I cleared junks just to make pathways in order to move around in the house and the balconies.

I could do that because my brother-in-law (who is responsible for most of the junks and who refrain from throwing out any useless “object”), was oversea visiting one of his daughters.

The worst part is that he goes ramage in the bags on the curve and we end up with many bags in the garden, on the rooftop and on the stairs leading to the rooftop.

The funny part that highly exacerbate me is when he asks me about a junk part that he “needs” and I have to repeat: “Man, you denied me the joy of stepping out into my garden. Go dig deeper into your trash of junks”. An open air warehouse of junks.

You have no idea what people accumulate in their lifetime, objects that they never used and still believe they might get around to using them.

In the USA, they throw Yard Sales in summer time. We didn’t even got this idea to start with, even once in a lifetime.

Right now, we have 40 extra large bags of fine clothes that have barely been used once, and increasing by the days, with the decision to dispose of them later on, one way or another.

My sister and I reserved my parents sleeping room to “store” these bags.

These bags are deposited on one of the beds and waiting for us to figure out how to dispose of them. Nobody care to pick up clothes, retrieve them and distribute them for the time being, (but conditions will quickly change after the massive atomic explosion in the Port of Beirut).

Actually, my brother-in-law has rented a large warehouse to “sell clothes” after he retired and is still spending more money on this failing “business” than on his family, cars and raising chicken…

He turned out to be just one of those sick persons who hoard stuff and never let go off, Not even selling them. Actually, when a buyer shows up, he raises the price so high so that he doesn’t has to relinquish the object.

Yes, there is this old honda car of 1980 that has been parked for years and nobody is willing to drive it anymore. And yet, this person refuses to sell it and is still occasionally spending money on repairing it.

Our garden has turned into an open “warehouse” of total junks and debris and this person wouldn’t let us clear the garden to make any good use of it.

Besides the extra large bags of great clothes, we gathered 70 extra large bags of good clothes to be left on the curb for the municipality to take as waste. My sister considers to be shameful to give away these 70 bags.

Since the municipality will Not load in its Friday truck that quantity of bags, we have to deposit on the curve about 6 bags a week. Do the math for how long we need to dispose of these bags.

I spread this joke that my nephews need to take videos of the newly cleared and re-designed house.

The joke was that my comfort style will return the house to its original status, after all this revamping and I will clutter the house according to my style of “comfort zones”

My sister got furious and declared that she will not set foot again. The next day, my sister was back to “finish her job”

What of people who refuse to wear great fashionable clothes on the ground they look Not “A la Mode” and prefer to buy expensive new clothes that are way beneath the quality and beauty of the older-kinds of clothes?

In the meanwhile, my project is to re-edit and update my old articles, verging on the 9,500 posts, on my blog, and recollecting the wonderful trekking and adventures that I joined my nephews and nieces around Lebanon.

Yes, I created a sub-category “Travel/Adventure” for that task.

Note: The first generation relatives opened a net group to share their confinement conditions. A couple days later 3 people “left” and now barely 4 people continue to post “Bonjour/Good morning”. I prefer to post “Mar7aba/Saba7 el Khair” when I wake up in the morning.