Garages are Dad-like, right? Hopefully not this one though; it's been falling down slowly for the last year or three, but it's been accelerated in its decline recently. I think the sewage leaks weren't helping its foundation, but I think the neighbors probably hit it a time or two with their bulldozer. I mean there's a giant dent in our metal fence that definitely came from their bulldozer so I don't think it's unlikely they hit the garage, too. If they didn't hit it, it's quite possible their digging really knocked its balance for a loop. A 6+ foot trench within a foot of you would knock you over, too.
So it's just a matter of time before the whole thing finishes its lean and crashes to its side in the yard. My dad took a lot of stuff out of there last summer but never threw it all out or put it away. I think he has trouble letting go of things, and there's never anywhere to put things away. The chairs in there used to be part of our dining room set and if they weren't broken when they went in, they definitely were when they came out. But probably they cost hundreds of dollars each because that's the kind of reckless spending my mom liked, and who plans that within a few years of buying a giant dining room set to give up on cleaning the house or to have a bathroom leak all over your dining room or to later have a stroke that will necessitate the removal of your dining room entirely.
Sometimes I wonder how we possibly lived that way, but it didn't seem so strange at the time. The roof leaked all over the second floor, why not a bathroom leaking into a no longer used room that my mom just filled with handouts for work or church? I certainly didn't want to clean anything so why would my parents? I think sometimes I did want to clean things but felt helpless about what was okay to throw away and what might be important papers (I feel the same way now but a bit better judge of what's junk mail). So many other things seemed more important I guess.
I do really wish my parents had been better at enforcing chores when we were young. We just wouldn't do them and maybe there'd be some yelling but no real consequences. My mom decided at some point that she wasn't going to do anything with the house and we could just live in our mess and cook our own meals. Maybe it was after she fell down the basement stairs going to do laundry and no one was home but the dog and she was there for a long time waiting for help. She just twisted her ankle so I don't know why she didn't get up etc but I don't have any actual recollection of the event, just that she'd never go in the basement again so Dad had to do laundry.
It's strange what you remember late at night when you're supposed to just be writing a brief blurb about falling down garages. I don't really have a good memory. I'd say I have always had a good forgetting that has failed me more the older I got. Not that I remember better now, but that I'm less quick to forgive than I was in the past which I attributed to my forgetful nature. I wonder if not having a sense of smell is part of my memory problem, no random smells to powerfully restore memories almost forgotten.
The important thing to note is that I don't bother holding anything against my parents. Sure some things would be nice if they were different, like why wouldn't they discuss things with us or why didn't they teach such and such or have different priorities about certain things. But what's done is done and what seems obvious now (like the roof will just leak worse and worse if you don't fix it now or you should spend money on this and not that or you should make us all go on diets because we'll just get fatter and that'll be worse than your childhood trauma with your own mother calling you fat), wasn't the priority then. No one expects to have a stroke at 47 and throw their future plans out the door and prove that whatever seemed important or necessary or unavoidable before really wasn't. No one expects a garage to decide it's had enough of staying upright and slowly start falling down the hill, even if looking back there were signs and symptoms all along.
The sunnier picture is the one I sent out on twitter. It's actually from a week or so ago. The greener picture is from today. Can you see any changes? The yellow you're seeing between the walls is the neighbor's brick house.
I'd really like to take more pictures of the garage, it's probably full of fascinating bits and pieces of broken wood and strange angles, but I've been scared to step inside since I first noticed a gap between the driveway and its floor. I definitely don't want to step in there now when there's an even bigger gap and the roof supports have obviously broken and may only be held up by the tarpaper/shingles of the roof and really it looks like a good push could help it finish its descent into entropy.
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