It's a Binary Question

 Well, last post I said I was done with the barn for awhile - I just couldn't face it any more.  That didn't last.  The next afternoon I wandered down to the barn just to see the results of my obsessive clearing out.  One major thing was left - the Wall of Nails.

It's a wall hung shelf, about 5 feet wide. 5 shelves. each one with 20-25 jars on it (I had already started cleaning the bottom shelf when I took this picture).  I knew those jars contained screws, nails, nuts, bolt, whatever.  And I'm still not capable of throwing anything away without looking at it first.  I had figured that since they weren't in my way, I could do it, sorting things out, by bits and pieces over the next few weeks.

Or I could do the whole thing in under two hours.  I had learned, as I picked up speed in the barn, that the decision making process on every item could be broken down into a few simple, yes-or-no questions.   Do I want this, or will I ever use it?  If the answer was yes, or even maybe - then it could go back on the shelf.  If the answer is no, then there are two more options:  a) it's something usable, so it goes in the donations stacks, or b) it's broken, or junk, or otherwise unusable, so it goes in the trash.

When I realized that every single thing could be categorized like that - stay or go?  If go, which stack?  things sped up.

It was the same way with the Wall of Nails.  Each of the 100+ jars contained something.  But there were only three categories.  1) it's something I will use (screws, hooks) - so keep.  2) It's something useful - maybe big nails - but I won't use it, so it goes in the donation stack.  3) it's just a random collection of oddments - nuts and screws of different sizes, various washers, nuts of all sizes, whatever.  Not worth the time to try to sort them out, so the jar gets opened and the contents dumped into a 5-gallon bucket.  4)  Whatever it, is covered in rust.  That also gets dumped.

That's it.  Given those parameters, it only took about a minute per jar to take it from the shelf, open it, view the contents, decide which of the three categories it was in, and then move on.   There were also two large steel drums left.  One was mostly filled with wood off cuts - and most of those when to the burn pit.  The other was filled with pretty much anything that he had picked up and didn't know where to put it.  So I grab and sort.  Wood?  Burn.  Metal? Set aside.  Trash - into a trash bag.

Basically, it's a binary thing.  Stay or Go?  If stay, what stack?  And that's how I got three decades of detritus cleaned out in 6 weeks (could have been faster if not for the limitations of lots of stuff and one woman doing it, who had to break down and cry every now and then).

And I was remembering all the times that I used that term of "it's a binary question."  Bob and I never fought, not in terms of being hurtful to each other.  But, of course, being human, we could annoy each other.  And sometimes what caused that was that our brains worked differently.  I'm a very linear person - I plod along from A to B to C.  Bob was a multi-access or cloud person, thinking in three dimensions.  Think of it in terms of going somewhere.  I am the sort that wants directions - go three miles this way, turn right at this street, go two blocks, turn left, etc.   Bob would visualize a map - which would give various ways of reaching the same destination.  Both forms of thinking have their uses; we complemented each other.

But at times it could also be annoying.  I would break things down, and he would consider the myriad possibilities.  But the latter can lead to decision paralysis - with too many options, nothing gets chosen (I did a lot of the decision making).  So many times if a decision had to be made - for example, something minor, like "Do you want hamburgers or stir-fry for dinner?"  I would be poised in the hallway, ready to go cook.  He would extemporize for awhile on the pros or cons of each, from nutritional value to how much washing up would have to be done.  When he finished, I would stand there and look at him until he said "What?"  Whereupon I would say "I heard a lot of words, but not an answer.  Still waiting."  And he would launch into it again until I would yell "It's a binary question!  A or B?  Yes or No?"  And in many cases, I would just go ahead and make the decision - whether it was dinner, or which new car to buy.  He just saw too many possibilities, while my mind was working through a flow chart.

Sometimes it seems strange.  Four years after he's gone, and I think I understand how his mind worked more now than I ever did.  Possibly because I think about him all of the time, and I've been intimately involved with what he left behind (even as I give it all a fond farewell).

It's hard to grasp that it's been four years, when it still hurts so much.  I was talking to my friend Judy once, who lost her husband a few years for I lost Bob, and I started a sentence with "do you ever feel like you're just" and she finished it with "spinning your wheels?"

Hard physical work, either the barn or the yard or the museum, helps to keep the demons at bay.  This week, four years ago, was when he was going through his second round of heavy-duty chemotherapy.  We both found it disconcerting when the nurses would wheel in a cart, upon which was a plastic bag sealed in another plastic bag.  Then they would don two paper gowns, a mask, a face shield, and two pairs of gloves before they would even touch the bag, opening the outer one and then hanging the inner one to pour into Bob's veins.  As they said, they had to deal with this stuff all day every day, so it was necessary to limit exposure, but still . . .

It's late - bedtime. I'm not sure what I'm doing tomorrow.  I've been obsessed with the barn for six weeks, but now that the Wall of Nails and the two barrels are finished, so am I (well, almost.  There's another trip or two to the dump to be done, and I have more metal trash (all those dumped jars) for Brian the scrap guy to come get).  Likely will be raining, so no yard work.  Decisions, decisions (and possibly not binary)