Trash and Treasure

Here is a post that may not be globally engaging, but is curious and interesting enough for me to picket. There is this thing that people do, here at this bat village where I live, that I feel is fun enough (odd enough) to mention.

Bats? Oh. Yeah. Saw another bat, just 2 days ago, but this time it was outside the back sliding glass door where all my plants, which are dying from too much shade, are hanging out.

Anyway, my shade and golf-course-squirrel-tormented succulents are not meant to be the focus here. These folks who stick shit out for grabs are.

What I mean is, you go to throw something away in this bat village and then, in the dumpster area, there are things people just can’t imagine living with any more, but they don’t, not quite, think they are trash. So, they set them there, out and on display, and they offer them up, to other trash throw-er-away-ers, for the taking.

On this 11” cement lip, curb-type ledge, if you will, just opposite of the “total trash” and the “please recycle me” dumpsters, these “you gotta give me a home” baubles plead for attention. The bat village dwellers send these doodads and whatnots out on their own in trash alley in the hopes that someone will find their “I’m over it” crap worth while and take it for a personal “Ah! Gotta have that garbage” treasure.

This trash or treasure tender, a complained about and/or accepted (loved/hated) phenomena, has been going on in bat village since I’ve lived her for almost 7 months (and most defiantly before). The hate crowd says, “Come on! Just throw it away. What the hell?” The recycle crowd says, “Well… You know how people stick things out…? I found some stuff, and…” all the while they don’t want to admit they’ve pirated that rubbish right on back to their lair.

Me? F’, yeah! Sign me up. I just dug a coat out of the recycle bin that I don’t plan on wearing until I move, but it is bad ass. I also got a big pot, for one of my plants, which saved me at least $30.00 in terracotta transplanting costs. My neighbor Jean, she just told my how she found a Wayne Dyer book, “Pulling Your Own Strings,” that was set out on the trash “ledge” which prompted her to change her way of operating, and which, as she said, “Has been fun and informative.”

What does it all mean? I don’t know any more. At all. All I know is that I woke up with a text message from Jen saying, “Bleeding into my right breast. Took an ambulance to the hospital. Hypotensive. Tachycardia,” and, as I later learned, had she not have called 911 for an ambulance, she might have bled out and died last night.

I know. Tangent. Strong shift to the left. Trash; then one of my best friends in peril. I’m an ass, a jarring, disjunctive story teller. A bit crook neck. (Bare with me.)

We, and by “we” I mean Jen and me (and by “me” I mean by proxy of being a best friend worrying), waited until this evening to find out that she would not need a blood transfusion from losing so much blood from the blood clot that developed from her surgery and had bursted. (Sorry, the nature of Jen’s original surgery, which took place on my birthday this year, is not my specific detail to share.) Jen having another emergency surgery today to deal with the burst of the blood clot from the original surgery, that almost caused her too bleed out (if I am even getting the medical terms right), that, well, is my detail.

That is where my morning started, with a panic, because of a text message from Jen sent the night before, while I was asleep, at 11:43 pm. The more details I got, was the more I learned that I could have lost a best friend last night, a best friend who has, on most occasions, been more family than my own family to me.

What’s important? This is what we ask ourselves. This is what we should continually ask.

I can’t go see my best friend in the hospital because I don’t live in the same state. So what did I do? I had the conversation I needed to have with her, and then I got the follow up text message from her that I needed to get to know that she was going to be okay. “No transfusion needed. Yeah! H&H 22 and 7.5 now.”

Sorry. I didn’t know what that meant, “H&H 22 and 7.5 now,” either. But, as I Googled, H and H, sometimes written as "H&H", shorthand for hemoglobin and hematocrit, are two very common and important blood tests, but don’t ask me what the 7.5 is. Where medical stuff is concerned, I’m a doof and gum, dumb and a goof. I don’t know shit (and I am too emotionally exhausted to look it all up tonight). But, that Jen didn’t need blood, as much blood as she lost, and that Jen was going to be okay is all that I needed to know.

In the aftermath of my own shock of it all today, I did what I could. I only kinda not cried 4 times at work today. I spent the evening with my neighbor Jean and her daughter, figuring out how to overcome the boy crushes and best friend highs and blows that come from being 12 years old (Jean’s daughter got screwed by a best friend and a boy—oohf).

And, I got a dose of perspective today. Rather than working through another lunch, staying late, and worrying about the follow up review with Bull #2 tomorrow (bully bitch), I ate garlic bread. I focused on a beautiful strong and sensitive teenager’s problems, Jean’s daughter. I relished in the fact that I am going to get at least 20 more years with one of my best friends. I smiled at the treasures that the bat village neighbors put out. I thanked the bigger picture that people and things aren’t indispensable.

And I remembered, that no matter how hard it gets, and how much it can hurt like hell and take its toll, the crap is the cache. The trash is the treasure. Fortune is where you find it.

BTW, if you are curious, among today’s selections for the picking, on the bat village trash walk, were a 3’ x 4’ white framed mirror, a grocery bag full of bird houses (like 7-8 of ‘em), a 2’ x 3’ cork board, a selection of ceramic angels and pooties, and a stainless-steel metal shower caddie.

The shower caddie? Okay. That was my addition. Obviously I’m signed up to the cornucopia of free garage-sale-like trash gifties.

BTW, this is another post I do not apologize for. It’s late. I’ve been stressed all day.

Whatever shortcomings I have as a writer, or in the editing of my own posts (especially the late night posts), I don’t have as a friend loving another friend. I’m willing to be imperfect in my commas and my points. I’m not so willing to loose one of the best gifts of my life… one of my best friends who is my family. I don’t play cards, but I’m playing the ouch card now.

So, if I, in my odd way of being grateful in my personal time of stress, find a way to compare almost losing a friend to the recycled treasures presented by strangers in a bat village, I’m okay with that.

What if in a profound way it’s all connected? What if on a base tangible level, in a greater sharing way, even if the connection is lame as hell, it’s just about coping? What if I’m just coping? What if I’m just trying to work through my expression of appreciation, fear, connectivity, loss, gain, frustration, and elation…

What if I’m just…

So bring it, bat village recyclers. I’m in.

I’m getting dented. I’m having a hard time. What happened to Jen scared the !!!! out of me. But if you want to put things out for my consideration, and if by you doing that I am reminded what are the treasure in my life, even when I’m throwing the garbage out, I’M IN!

I’m in.