Lots of SWAG

So, what is everyone doing with your spare time? I hope most of you are working from home. With my free time, I, obviously, find myself blogging. Many of my friends think I should start back to school; get a second Master’s degree. I’ve thought about it, but then I remember how much damn work it is, and I know this premium on free time won’t last forever, I hope. So, I’ve swept that aside for a bit. It’s not out of the question, though.  

Besides blogging, I’m also working from home, doing more frequent Peloton bike and yoga workouts, writing a lot, trying to learn new ways to promote my blog to increase readership, and encouraging Jeff to clean the basement and garage. This has become a bit of part time job.

See, Jeff doesn’t like being told what to do. And to be fair, not too many do, including me. That being said, because of our Ride & Ski business, our basement is bursting at the seams with SWAG. For those of you not familiar with the term, SWAG is Stuff We All Get. You can be creative with the S; some say “it” with an Sh in front. Regardless of what people call SWAG; I have a metric ton of it! The problem we had this year, is our tour ended a few weeks early. We missed three events, and two were really big ones where we would normally have given away cases of shirts. Now, those are sitting in my basement along with cases of other sundry items.

See, Jeff is a bit of hoarder when it comes to his SWAG. He worries from year to year that he will not get enough shirts, caps, beanies, and other tchotchke from our sponsors to support our tour, so he holds back every week when he plans our giveaways for each event. We also have our own shirts made to promote our business, and we sell those to raise money for the children’s hospital we support. So, those always go first each week, and if we have a smaller crowd, we usually bring home a lot of gear. It piles up, and 19 years later, my basement is bursting. Mountain Dew hasn’t been one of our sponsors in more than 15 years and we still have some of their SWAG. And, yes, we have cleaned and organized the basement several times in the last 15 years, but he’s very protective of his SWAG, so he won’t let me throw “perfectly good things” away; even if they are 15 years old. Jeff’s a hoarder!

Because of this pandemic, Jeff is unemployed. Truly, he has no excuse to not clean the basement. He finds himself quite bored most days. He goes for a lot of walks, smokes at least one cigar a day, itches to go shopping (he loves to shop), and then asks me what I want for dinner around 3pm. I feel for him; he loves to work and he’s anxious to find a job. Being unemployed is wearing on him. That being said, I have a job for him; he can clean the basement. It would keep him busy and make me happy. A win, win!

He did spend a couple hours in the garage the other day. When we went for our walk that night, I said, “The garage looks great! Good start.”

He just smiled, “You know, a couple hours here; a couple hours there. I’ll get it done.”

He cleaned the garage on Monday; it’s now Friday, and so far this week he’s put in, “a couple hours.” I wonder when the new couple hours will come.

April 17, 2020April 17, 2020 by Judith P. Dionne 3 Comments