Saturday, August 26, 2017

The uncomfortable one

One of the things I noticed about Bob is that he never liked being "comfortable". Sure he liked being warm when it was cold out, and cool when it was hot out, and he had some favorite foods, but Bob seemed to seek out and possibly even relish being uncomfortable.

Here is why I think this:
When he moved to Seattle after his break up with Joyce, he at some point moved in to an apartment in the part of town he called "china town". This apartment was in a very inconvenient location, on a hill next to a very busy street that was difficult to get on to at rush hour. There were no good restaurants nearby, and no grocery stores nearby. The apartment had terrible parking in back, and parking in front was on a hill.

There was no way to get in to the apartment without going up or down stairs. His apartment did not have air conditioning, and it did not have a working heater. He never tried to get the heater fixed or figure out how to use it correctly. The apartments were all studios and when he moved in none of them had a private bathroom. He had to go down the hall to a shared bathroom to shower or do anything. When they had him move from one apartment to another so they could renovate his old apartment and add a bathroom he was not happy. He did not care that the new apartment had it's own bathroom, he was just upset that he had to move his hoard. His apartment was filled with books, trains, magazines, and fire truck stuff. The bed he slept on was 15+ years old when he got it, and held together with clothe hangers because the bed frame was slightly too big for the mattress and box springs. I slept in his bed for about 3 weeks and it was the most uncomfortable and noisy thing I have ever slept in. I hated it and when we took it to the dump I stuck around to watch it get crushed.
His apartment was packed with stuff, so bad you could barely move around in it. for some odd reason his bed was at an angle which meant that when you got up in the middle of the night you had about 6 inches to squeeze between the bad frame and a book case. I asked him why he never straightened the bed out and he said it wouldn't fit and you could not open the bathroom door.
huh... weird, it worked when I did it. He had only one chair in his apartment and it was a very uncomfortable straight back chair. Actually he had 2 chairs the other one was covered in boxes of fire truck pictures and for some reason several brand new cookie pans. When you visited him the only place to sit was on his bed. The truck he drove had no air conditioning and the seats could not be adjusted more than a couple of inches back. I now own the truck and it is very uncomfortable to drive, yet he loved his truck. His commute to work was 45 minutes one way and he always complained about it.

When we moved him to Phoenix I bought him a nice second hand office chair, which I thought was very comfortable. He used it for a while then complained about it and bought another second hand office chair, this one was made in the 60's was metal, heavy, and if you leaned back in it, it killed your back as  the back cushion was designed weird and it was just plain terrible. He loved it. We tried to keep him from filling his new apartment with crap but in short order he had filled it up to the point that no one could visit him as there was no place to sit except for the bed. I bought him a fan so that when I visited I wouldn't swelter in the oppressive heat he kept the apartment at, he complained that the fan took up too much space and had me take it back.

When we moved him to the HUD housing we once again tried to get him to have an apartment that was not filled with junk and that people could visit him, once again he filled it up and there was nowhere for visitors to sit.

When we moved him to memory care we spent a week decorating his apartment and making it comfortable, we put in a couch, and a recliner.







He was not impressed and wanted ALL of his books and ALL of his trains moved in to this apartment. Thankfully the management did not allow this and he had to live in a comfortable room for all of maybe 6 month before he got kicked out for becoming belligerent. At least when we visited him we could stay for a little bit with a place to sit and talk.

After that I had, had it. When he went to the next place all he got was one book case of books and a couch. When he was kicked out of there all he got was his Alf doll and a few magazines at the skilled nursing center. By that time he no longer remembered his stuff.

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