Decrepit Building

I just woke up from a horrible dream. Not a zombie, nightmare infested dream but one that could happen.

We were at an older house, one that had fallen into a lot of disrepair. It belonged to an old lady who I never saw the face of, but we could hear in the background freaking out about the fact she might have to leave. We decided to start cleaning in the kitchen, anything to get her place into a liveable condition. The kitchen was pretty darn bad, it looked like one of those “hoarder” type setups, full of garbage and other debris, along with a broken down feeling.

I started cleaning the walls and noticed they were a weird stucco type texture. As I dug into cleaning, I realized they were stucco because of dirt, grime, but especially because of bug eggs everywhere. As I cleaned, the eggs would hatch, mostly cockroaches, but other types of bugs. This isn’t very surprising, I do have a weird phobia with roaches and of course if this was a bad dream it would have that.

It was at this point I noticed the floor had holes in it. It was an old style wooden floored building. However, the hole was pretty big around, I would say almost a foot across. As I cleaned I noticed more and more insects crawling out. Over a couple minutes that I kept killing them, the insects were larger and larger as well. I eventually yelled back at the old lady that she has to come with us as I woke up trying to get her to move.

Now, that may seem like a weird dream. However, at the end I realized it was about my parents. My parents are having their health decline severely lately. They can’t clean as well, which we help with, due to inability to reach places. Their apartment isn’t like the one in the dream. Except two large issues.

The first issue is the floor by the second door into their living room. It is rotten through. You can feel the floor boards give under the carpet that no matter how often you clean, it begins to develop a mold (I assume its because the floor pushes through to under the apartment crawlspace). Supposedly they have talked with the landlords and the landlords are trying to figure out what to do about it. The problem being is my parents don’t want to move. They love the apartment and they are scared to. So it sounds like the landlord is trying to figure out if they can repair the floor while my parents stuff is there (I could repair it, but landlords are always funny, if my parents have even really talked with them).

The second issue is something I can handle, its just a bit of money up front. ALL of my parents furniture is used, ratty and pretty much destroyed (well not pretty much, it is). They haven’t had new furniture in decades, all of these are things that were at goodwill and they have had for 6+ years, or things my dad has been able to find and bring home. They have already agreed to let me buy them a used sofa/couple of padded chairs to replace them, I just haven’t been able to do that lately.

I think I am going to need to do that next weekend. The furniture is incredibly bad due to their health, but especially because of their dog and  just the fact it is old furniture. They were fortunate and got a new bed last year so that part is good, the bed is in good shape. I think I will contact the local “We Care” and see if they have any good used furniture for sale. I saw a few years ago they carried some nice stuff, and its for a nice charity. If not I will have to go to another place. I will also have to rent a U-Haul pickup, theirs is dying, to deliver the old stuff to the dump and the new stuff back to the apartment the same day.

Well, I am starting to calm down. I doubt I will sleep the rest of the day, but maybe I will play some video games or something.