Oh, yeah, so a little more D news. When he went to the psychiatrist last week, he mentioned to her that he was feeling a bit more depressed and that he was sleeping more than he had been. Which, I'm glad he mentioned it, because it's hard for me to keep track of. Like, I dunno if he's napping when I'm at work or out of the house, or when he's up during the night.
Her opinion was that part of his sleeping more and being more depressed has to do with not keeping himself busy enough, which obviously is true, though he has been both working out some and doing some drawing, which I support, both as positive uses of his time and as things he used to enjoy before he got sick. She encouraged him to find more productive things to do as well. Good for not being bored, and good for his self esteem, to feel like he's getting something accomplished. (She would like him to go to "program" which a.) ain't gonna happen anyway and b.) I personally don't see as likely to help with the self esteem.)
So when we left, we were talking and I had an idea. We have this room in our house which is sort of the size of a very large closet. Originally when we moved in, it was my office, but over the years it has devolved into "the cat box room" and a depository for junk. And in there, in many, many shoe boxes, I literally have bank statements and Verizon bills (was it even Verizon then? probably not) and receipts and so forth and so on from like 1995 on. (I'm the woman who only last year threw out her tax documents from the Reagan administration, if you remember.) I'd say, again, don't judge me, but I deserve to be judged. It's just part of the anxiety disorder that all my documents are important documents and I am afraid to throw them away lest the gov'mint or someone demand to see them. Well, yeah, I've decided that no one wants proof that I paid my utility bills in 1998 and, okay, the contents of that room need to go. So I said to D, "You want to do a big project for me?"
As of this morning, he is shredding. I told him I will pay him at the completion of all this shredding, though we have not yet negotiated a price. My dad saw him with the shredder and wastebasket and now he wants stuff shredded too. I think this ought to keep him busy for weeks if he does a little bit each day. And I will be pleased because it's a ridiculously tedious job I don't want to do myself if I can help it. Win-win. Plus, this is one of the things he used to do when he worked for us at the hospital when he was in high school and even after he got sick: boxing records to be sent out, filing, and shredding. He did really good with the kind of tasks other people would complain were boring due to the lack of social interaction. Ha.
I'm thinking $200 for the whole job. Does that sound kind of reasonable to you all?
xoxo
6 comments:
Re: $200, since you asked, how many total hours of work do you expect?
Re: your attachment to the documents, I imagine it took you a moment to gather up and make the decision to destroy them. Congratulations for doing it :).
A totally different response I have to the document attachment is an old joke from they dearly departed Mitch Hedberg:
"I bought a donut they gave me a reciept.. for the donut. I don't need a receipt for the donut, man. I'll just give you the money, and you give me the donut---end of transaction. We don't need to bring ink and paper into this. I just can't imagine a scenario where I would have to prove that I bought a donut... Some skeptical friend is like 'don't even act like you didn't get that donut'... 'I got the documentation right here.'"
You could ask him what he thinks would be reasonable. I think a lot of it should depend on the number of hours necessary to complete the job, coupled with the quality of the work completed.
Too bad the Globe is going out of business... Running a large paper route these days can be very low on personal interaction (especially if making all the customers happy by delivering before the sun comes up).
How neat is the boy? For awhile, when I was working my way through school, I cleaned buildings for a cleaning company. They wouldn't care if the work was done at 2am as long as things were being cleaned, and there was as little human interaction to it as you could stand.
If there are any small office buildings within walking distance, I bet you could find some opportunities. (Pay isn't bad considering the work, either, though nobody is ever going to get rich at it).
I don't really know how to estimate how long it will take him. I'm wildly guessing maybe 20 hours, but it could be fifteen or thirty.
How neat is the boy? Well, he's my kid if that tells you anything, hahaha. In other words, not very. OTOH, you know what we have in walking distance of my house? The evil WalMart. Mr D would do very well doing overnight stocking, IMO. And--see, here I fantasize my kid's future career like some people think their children just *have* to go to law school or ssomething--I also think that, were he to be up to going back to school in the future, he'd do well as an OR tech: you know, they set up the rooms with what equipment is going to be needed depending on what surgery is being done. Not too much interacting with the general public involved :-)
Sounds like it might be a budget. And yanno, you can never tell what possibilities there are out there.
I wish *this* house had a cat box room. When they are annoyed with the state of their litter boxes, our felines consider the whole house their cat box room.
"I bought a donut they gave me a reciept.. for the donut. I don't need a receipt for the donut, man. I'll just give you the money, and you give me the donut---end of transaction. We don't need to bring ink and paper into this.You don't need a receipt, but the guy who owns the donut store sure does. Or rather, he wants to make sure the transaction ends up in his cash register, not in his underpaid and badly treated employee's pocket.
Bruce Schneier's pointed this out. The reason for all those fast food places with the "If you don't get a receipt your meal is free" signs isn't for the benefit of your penny-ante record keeping. Instead it turns every customer into an unpaid "loss prevention" agent for the owner.
I have never figured out what that room is *supposed* to be. I think I may have mentioned, but I think this house was designed by an architecture school dropout on crack. If it were actually attached to a bedroom, I'd say maybe it was a dressing room, but it's not. It's also not attached to the kitchen, so it's not a pantry. And if it were *supposed* to be a tiny office, you'd think they'd have put a freakin phone jack in it, no? So, obviously, it's some kind of an extra large utility closet that no one ever put shelving in, or...it's a cat box room!
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