dswdiane

Note to future self, don't bother booking time off work in April if working on the house is the goal. It never seems to work out the way I want it to. (This time because of the weather.)

I did get one day that was merely damp and so the upper part of the yard is now graded and seeded.

And I discovered that at some point the rain and wind had pulled down two of the dead phone lines that cross my yard. They are now sagging from the poles and cross the yard at chest height. That means I have to deal with Bell again. Joy.

***

Lord Brock went back in for bloodwork and the numbers that concerned the vet show much improved. I never did get the urine sample because he flat-out refused to enter his litter box while it had the medical litter in it. It's basically tiny plastic beads so I can't entirely blame him, they would be slippery and uncomfortable.

So he goes back to the vet for a $60 hanging-out-until-he-pees session on top of the $30 I paid for the kit. This fucking cat. Maybe they'll reimburse me for the kit if I bring it back.

***

I think I've mentioned in here that my sister and I have been trying to gently persuade my dad's wife that it's time to move out of their house into a place with no stairs. It came up again this week because my dad climbed over the gate in front of the basement stairs and then couldn't get back up. (How he did this nobody can figure out, the man can barely walk.)

Sister found a link to a really nice condo for sale in their neighbourhood and it turns out it was in a building where they have friends. And they stayed there briefly while their bathroom was being renovated and their friends were on vacation. MIL was still hemming and hawing about it and apparently I said the magic words, "If you are worried about the work of packing and downsizing, I will come over and help." Next thing she called her realtor and two days later her offer was accepted.

So Friday Daughter and I went over and helped pack. Y'all, they have So Much stuff. There are two full-size book cases in the basement just for shoes, and that's not counting the two shoe-racks on the ground floor for the shoes they actually wear. A dresser AND a wardrobe AND two clothing racks for clothes, and that's just in the basement. There are three bedrooms on the top floor all will full closets and dressers.

Well, between the three of us we got 7 full contractor bags out of there just of stuff that has to go away. Today four more family members descended on the place to continue packing. The real estate agent wants to get the place on the market ASAP because apparently sales drop off when the weather gets good. So we've been strategizing ways to get as much stuff out of the house as possible as fast as possible, even if it means doing the actual purging at the other end. This is probably going to suck up all my free time for the next month at least.

The actual possession happens in August so fingers crossed she can keep my dad from going down the stairs bucket-first until we can get them moved.

***

Saturday Daughter and I took a taxidermy class. Not the best timing, given everything else that was going on, but I had already paid for it and I was looking forward it to it, so we went. I now have a stuffed rat in my living room. It was a lot of fun and I learned a lot about the practice - including what I will do differently the next time I try to do any taxidermy.

***

Back to work this morning and I was interrupted by a knock on the door. Three people on my porch asked me for permission to take a picture of the front of my house - one of the women had grown up here, the second had grown up across the street, and woman #1 had met her husband when he was boarding with woman #2's family. The couple had just celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary.

I invited them in so I could show them around the house and described what it looked like when I bought it 20+ years ago. They were super sweet and told me stories about what the area was like when they lived here 65 years ago.

Hilariously, she is a big Elvis fan. (Ex housemate loved Elvis and we still have a sticker on the door.) So we also talked about Graceland.

This is the second time somebody has knocked on my door because they grew up in my house. Advantage of having a house over 100 years old I guess.