The Piano Problem

I have an interesting life for a guy who tries hard to remain extra boring. I occasionally mess up and cause myself stress with a not-well-thought-out move, but for the most part I am thankful for the limited series of troubles that I face. Like most people, as I understand people at least, I spend quite a bit of my back of the mind processing power on chewing over my problems and working out how I am going to solve them. 

The thing I keep coming back to lately is bizarre. I keep mentally stumbling over my Mom's old Wurlitzer piano. Why in the world am I thinking about a piano as a problem, you ask? Reasonable question. Long explanation. 

It starts with my house, but not the one I live in. The other one that is unlived in across town. That house is just an opportunity wrapped in a complicated series of difficulties that I don't quite know how to solve. Where did all this start? Well, I guess it started when Mom died. 

Some good things happened as a result of all of the fall out of her passing. I moved in with my Dad. For reasons we gave the house a quick emptying and perfunctory cleaning. The road of us all living together has certainly been rocky, but here four years later things are improving. We have all more or less settled into functional living space. 

Teagan has an princess pink bedroom. I have a small office painted in lunar tide paint. Dad has a huge bedroom on the other end of the house where he can play mad scientist or whatever it is he does. My bedroom, living room, bathroom, and kitchen still need deep cleaning and paint, but we have made some progress. 

The problem begins with how we "cleaned up" the house in the wake of Mom's passing. None of us were ready to face her passing. Looking at her stuff was painful. The thought of it not being here was as well. We split the difference in the worst way possible. We packed the majority of her stuff up in boxes. I downsized my stuff. Dad downsized his. We bought a bunch of moving boxes. I mean a metric ton of them. They went to my house where they have sat gathering dust ever since.

Now, to get my place fixed up and livable so that it isn't a complete waste of space for anything other than dust bunny breeding those boxes all need to come out of there. Fine. I can conceptualize getting everything moved back out. I have a plan about sticking the boxes in my storage shed so I can prioritize home restoration ahead of sorting through stuff. It is an unpleasant series of tasks that mostly hinge on one problem. 

I do not have a truck or a vehicle that will tow a trailer. When we moved things there we had a pair of Ford Explorers that towed like champions as well as my Dad's truck. I stupidly sold my Explorer. Mom's Explorer jumped time and is sitting in the back yard out of commission. Dad's S10 is in pieces while he works on putting in a rebuilt engine and transmission. 

So my box problem is really a transportation problem. This is why I should keep and maintain my own pick up truck. They are incredibly practical though with the current artificial rise in the cost of fuel I do appreciate my little 4 cylinder hatchback. My secret evil hope is that the rising cost of fuel will cause the casual truck crowd to ditch serviceable trucks at affordable prices, but I don't know that I can wait on that to solve my box problem. 

I would consider renting a van or panel truck for a weekend and just knocking the box problem out in one shot. The catch to that is I am going to need to pick up lumber and other fix-it materials to get my place up to par. The truck problem starts to eclipse the box problem. I should have kept my Explorer. Hindsight is 20/20. I will have to address the truck/ trailer conundrum before I can move on to the boxes problem. 

The real fun comes into play with the difficulties after the boxes. Ignoring the house for a minute we come to the Piano Problem. I don't play. No one here does. My Mom carried this piano around everywhere she lived for years. It has some small sentimental value not so much to keep it as to see it end in a good home where it will be cared for, appreciated, and, hopefully, played. 

Most of all, the piano is bloody heavy. I did not want to move it again when we moved it to my place in town. I really would like the next time I move it to be moving it from my responsibility. Failing that, I suppose I figure out some way to fit it into my house. Then, I just need to start learning to play piano. Yeah. It is probably smarter to find it a more appropriate home. 

Solving truck, boxes, piano, and all of the associated restoration problems then I just need a way to finance all of this. I need the time and energy to do as much of the work as I possess the expertise for and I need proper recommendations for the experts for the rest. 

That done then I have a house problem. Do I rent it out? Do I sell while the market is still up? Do I do that other thing which involves navigating tricky emotional waters and doing some legal paperwork? Once that is sorted out there is plenty that needs done around here. Windows, Heat & Air Unit, and plenty of painting and flooring all need replaced. Sounds like loads of trips to home depot and a fair few expensive contractors to boot. 

At this point in my spiraling panic of problems to be handled I am mostly so far ahead of what I think can be completed that I just lose the threads of it all. Instead I circle back to that bloody heavy piano. It has become a sort of symbol in my head for this stack of work ahead of me. The piano is movable. It is solvable. It just requires heavy lifting. Yet getting to the point of facing the piano feels overwhelming. 

That is how I talk myself into procrastination as a form of self defense. It is much easier to say," Hey look, that is all too big to make progress on at the moment. Since you cannot tackle it all why don't you just wait until you have the energy and answers to get started." In the meantime other challenges present themselves and the list of things to be done become bigger and bigger. Vicious cycle. Now I am depressed about a piano. 

Isn't mental health fun?

This is why I have been carrying around replacement speakers for my Hyundai for three years in the trunk, but when you turn on my radio the obviously busted speakers from the previous owner still rattle. The work to do the replacement is not difficult, but I have mentally built up all sorts of reasonable objections to doing it. I have suffered through cruddy sound, and sound is a thing I put a high value on, rather than take a deep breath and work on the real problem. 

Here is the truth of it. If I don't get off my butt and do some of these things and put off the work for a day when all the variables are in my favor then the work is never getting done. Over a long enough timeline the problem will go unsolved until it won't be my problem anymore. I do not want that. Quite a lot of that landed on my shoulders over the past four years and it just stinks. I would get a lot of satisfaction unraveling all of this stuff. I admit that my natural patience works against me here. 

I will say that blogging about it a bit has helped start to focus and organize my thoughts. I still have too many options about how I can get this all done. I need to sit down with a pen and paper and get really focused on the fix. If I can manage to move past the excuses the actual work is probably a lot smaller than the mental gymnastics I have put into avoiding it. 

Best of all, I have found in the past that a sense of satisfactions does not come from a life bereft of problems. When I get to feeling myself and that the path my feet are on feels really right is often as I am knee deep in alligators with the shore still out of sight but having started to do a few things to find my way to safety. I don't know that there is any such thing as having everything totally sorted out in life. 

Thinking that way the piano doesn't feel like such a burden. It starts to feel like something I can use some creativity to overcome. Perhaps there is even some way that the piano becomes this enjoyable goal that I am working toward. I think of all that and I get a little bit of hope knowing that I will figure out how to navigate from here to there.

Right about then is when I remember that Mom also has an antique pump organ that is bigger than the piano. 

Blood and ashes!