May
31
2009
Good morning, everyone, what little there is left of it. I had to have been a lot more tired than I thought! Plus, my daughter kept coming in and disturbing, the last time at 2AM, slamming the door, waking me up, only to tell me she’d stopped by to take her cat with her. 
I have so much to do, yet I hate that I have to do much of it. My daughter and her boyfriend set up my bed last week (my mattress had been sitting on a futon frame, while my frame sat against the wall and the box spring in the hallway). I had a new comforter and sham I’d been looking forward to using that I was finally able to put on. Then Friday, I got all my clean clothes sorted and had them spread out on the bed so I could put them away. Wouldn’t you know that my cat decided at THAT POINT to have an upset stomach and to literally spill her guts all over half of the bed??? OMG - like I didn’t have enough to wash already!! Now I have to wash my new comforter, sham and half of the formerly clean clothes. Washing involved going down two flights of stairs and back again to dry them. How I hate it!!! I LONG for a washer in my apartment (no, I have no hookups - I just long for one). I am not happy with my cat right now and she knows it. She’s staying away from me for the time being.
My landlord wants me to get my stuff out of his shed because he can’t get to his gazebo screens or his grill, which he wants to use. I don’t have anywhere to put it yet. I feel bad, but I’m kind of stuck until I have the money to do something about it. It won’t all fit in my apartment. I need my daughter to come home so we can at least help him get his things out of the shed if we can’t take them out yet.
Today’s the third week of the new farmer’s market down by the marina along the Delaware. I’ve been wanting to go, yet I never remember until well into it. It’s only open one day, on Sunday, from 10 - 2. Not very long at all. The farmer’s market a couple towns down is open all weekend all day. I guess they’re test driving the idea here in this very blue collar, non-farming community before they commit longer hours to it. Plus, I’m guessing, some of the vendors may already be at the other one I mentioned on the other days.
Well, I guess I’d better begin doing something around here. I have a nasty habit of putting things off and then they never ever get done. At least the cats have been fed. They’re all asleep nursing their full bellies. My turn!
More tomorrow.
May
30
2009
Time sure does fly as you get older, doesn’t it? It’s hard to believe that the year is almost half over already. It just doesn’t feel like that much time has gone by so quickly.
It started out as a beautiful day today, but in the hour and a half since I got up, the clouds have begun to gather for the rain that is expected sometime this afternoon.
Just like the clouds, the cats have gathered around me in expectation of their breakfast, finally lying down to nap while waiting for Mom to get done playing on the computer. Chloe is lying to my right, Shady at my feet and Tiki on the other half of the sectional couch. Chloe, as is her norm, MUST touch me - she has stretched her front feet out to be in contact with me while she is here.
Tom comes home from his trip to Arizona today. He’s been gone for 10 days. I’m looking forward to seeing him again. Debra is at her boyfriend’s for the weekend. She sold her phone yesterday (she changes phones at least once a year) and is currently using my old Rumor until the one she wants is released next Saturday. My son, who should have been in Texas now working, is in Ogden, UT, boohoo-ing about it. A long story, but he’s a lot like his mother, that boy. A true procrastinator who then loses out because of his own delays. I, too, have things I should have done over a week ago that I really need to get done today. Ugh.
Anyway, another day to mark off on the calendar. Another day older and another dollar short. Such is life - my life. I don’t know what I would do if it were any other way!!
May
29
2009
Five months ago today, I lost my mother to congestive heart failure brought on by end stage emphysema and a fall that broke some ribs only 19 days earlier on her 92nd birthday. It has been a very bumpy ride since then.
My cousin, who was Mom’s power of attorney and then her estate administrator gave me until the end of January to be out of her house. We buried her on January 3. Her funeral was very nice. It took place at the small church where she attended when she was able. Her parents and grandparents as well as my father’s grandparents and great-grandparents are buried there. Dad’s great-grandfather was a circuit minister there three times in the 1800s. The church was packed with people wanting to say goodbye to my mother. I wish the church was that full on Sundays!! We had a memorial vault in which Mom’s ashes went as well as some memorials to her life. We handed out flowers for people to lay on the grave. And, despite it being winter, the day was clear and not overly cold - it turned out to be a perfect day. A luncheon was held at the companion church because it had a community room the little country church didn’t have. So many were in attendance - except my cousin and his family. Despite the announcement at the funeral, he claimed he didn’t know about the luncheon. Nor did anyone else until that day (other than those who stepped in to help out). That was really the only dark spot on a bright, albeit, somber day.
A display of photos of Mom’s life were set up at the luncheon site so people could get an overview of Mom’s life from infancy to old age. It just really turned out to be a very nice day that I know Mom would have thoroughly enjoyed because of the people and the camaraderie on display.
I didn’t have much help or the ability to get everything out of the house that I had inherited. A friend loaned me the use of her two children and their friends so I could get the antiques and the organ out along with the bedroom set, but after that I was on my own. I ended up losing the washer, dryer, dishwasher and the wardrobe that Mom used for her clothes that I wasn’t able to get out before March. But, what didn’t fit in the apartment is now in a storage unit with more in my landlord’s shed (with him begging us to find a new location). In the meantime, I’m waiting for the cash settlement on the estate so that I can afford to enlarge the storage unit to fit all the other items.Some of the household goods I gave to my daughter and a few I gave to my son who lives 2300 miles away. My daughter now has a Wurlitzer organ, a dining room set, and my mother’s rocker recliner. I gave her half of Mom’s Tupperware (the woman had so much!!) I kept the kitchen table and chairs, Mom’s bedroom set, her cedar chest, the antique rocker recliner, the antique china cabinet, an antique table and all the contents of the kitchen cabinets and china cabinets. Lots of incidentals as well. This was after we had a quickly scheduled estate sale trying to sell off a lot of antique glassware and cookware. I wasn’t able to sell the antique upright piano or the 30s gas stove or the old farmstead cast iron porcelainized kitchen sink. Mom and Dad had consolidated her father’s estate items into our home after Benny passed in 1959. They still had them and still used them. Nothing went to waste in my family.
At any rate, I am back and I hope to be a regular again here. It’s been a long, surreal experience these past few months. Although I’m glad I was there, I hope to never go through it again.
