Exceedingly Mundane

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Archive for April, 2013

Apr
19
Posted by Stace

Catching Up

Another block of time has passed since I was able to update the ole blog. Let’s see…

I spent all of last week getting ready for the garage sale for my dad. We had gone down and filled up a UHaul with the remainder of items from his house. It’s empty now. We had the garage sale last Saturday. We put out a few things we had here to donate, and actually made almost $100 for us, in addition to all the stuff we sold for my dad. What didn’t sell, we boxed up to donate. And we took 6 or 7 bags of books to the library to donate. I had gone through and cleaned out three bookshelves and put them out to try to sell. Only 5 or 6 books sold, 3 of them being my mom’s old “Bell’s Best” cookbooks. Oh well. I read almost exclusively on my digital readers (stand-alone Kindle or Kindle app on my iPad), so I felt like I should get rid of a lot of books.

Saturday was the garage sale, and then last Sunday, we went over to see my father-in-law. My dad went with us, and all of Tim’s family was there to celebrate Mitchell’s big day (a couple of days late!). We had steaks with all the trimmings, and cake with strawberries and whipped cream, and a great time visiting. We got to meet Brittany’s new boyfriend and even see Zack, so it was a good trip.

This week flew by. I started this post on Monday and attempted to work on it on Wednesday, but never got very far. I actually deleted it by mistake, so I had to start over!

Wednesday, Tim went to Zack’s district golf tournament, held at Tim’s home golf course, and drumroll please… Zack won! So he will get to go back to the state tournament to defend his 3A golf champion title again this year as a junior! Tim and Mitchell went to cheer him on, and Tim was so very proud of him! I imagine he’ll have a much bigger gallery at the state tournament in a couple of weeks 😀

I went Wednesday afternoon to visit with my dad, pick up a couple of things for him at Walmart, stop by the library to get a book for me (Six Years by Harlan Coben) and a couple of movies for us to watch (Argo and Snow White and the Huntsman for Tim, and IronMan 2 for both of us, as a refresher before we go see the new one in May). I also ran to Sam’s Club and made a big run on household stuff. Thursday, Gail came down and we all went over to Ridgeland Pointe for “Family Night”. Basically, we visited with my dad in his room for a bit, then went down to the dining room and had dinner with him. Tim came home starving and had to eat again! LOL! He said, he could never live there, they don’t feed you enough, hahaha! I noticed that both my dad and the nice resident, Ms Myrtis that we shared a table with, neither of them ate much at all. I guess by the time you hit your 80’s and 90’s, you don’t eat as much as we do now, LOL!

Today (Friday) was spent on the road. We picked up Dad this morning and went to Hattiesburg to meet with a realtor. Tim had talked to her several times and emailed a bunch, and told my dad that he was pretty satisfied with her. So we met her at the house, went over a ton of things, and signed a contract for her to sell the house. She is going to have to oversee a ton of work (cleaners, painters, people to replace fixtures, install new appliances, etc) and then put it on the market. She hopes to have it sold in 3-4 months, but we signed a 6 month contract. I hope it sells then! At least there’s a bright light at the end of the tunnel – we’ve moved my dad, got him new doctors, got him settled at his new “apartment”, gone to the house to get items for family members, sold furniture, and moved everything else out to sell. The house is empty now, and ready to be cleaned and gotten ready to sell. We’ve come a long way since February 15!

Tim has a busy weekend ahead – two tee times at the golf course, and a busy night of work this weekend. Me, I hope to catch up on some shows on the DVR, do laundry, read and maybe even watch a Harry Potter movie 🙂

P.S. I don’t often talk about current events here on my blog, but this has been a very news-worthy week. The bombings at the finish line of the Boston Marathon on Monday, then the huge explosion at the fertilizer plant in West, Texas. So much sadness and sorrow 🙁

Apr
08
Posted by Stace

Monday Monday

* I made progress today. I walked for the first time, by myself, without Beau. It was a sad walk, but I finally forced myself to get out and go. 3.3 miles, so at least I didn’t wimp out after the first mile 😀

* Had to make an emergency run up to the assisted living place to check on my dad this morning. More health issues, this time, thankfully nothing very serious. I guess being around so many more people than he was before (he lived alone and rarely saw anyone other than the checkers at Walmart), seems to be making him sicker.

* I’m currently decalcifying (is that how you spell that silly word?!) the coffee pot for Tim. I made myself some coffee once or twice in the last week (I use a different coffee maker that is stored in the garage, an el cheapo Mr Coffee from Walmart)… I imagine that will be the last coffee I make at home until fall and winter rolls around again. Tim, however, drinks it 365 days a year, so we have to clean his coffee maker fairly often.

* Getting warm, I guess spring is finally here. Supposed to be 80 degrees today.

* Current book I’m reading: on my Kindle, a cozy I downloaded from my library’s website called “A Slice of Murder” by Chris Cavender. So far, it’s a pretty good little cozy mystery 🙂

* Trying to work on a menu for the week, I think I’ll do stir fry tonight, get Tim to grill burgers tomorrow and do fish Wednesday or Thursday. Tim hasn’t opened up the grill in months. There might be small creatures nesting and living in there. He doesn’t grill much any more. He says he needs a new grill and he probably does. I bought myself a Cuisinart Griddler last fall, to use inside, with some of my Swagbucks winnings that I redeemed for Amazon gift cards. I’ve been using it a lot, but have yet to try to grill burgers on it.

* Also, obviously, trying to get back into the swing of blogging. I read through quite a few old posts yesterday, I was missing my Beau baby something fierce, and started reading and looking at pictures of him. It made me miss “the old days”, when I used to blog regularly. These days, with Facebook, Pinterest, GoodReads, my iPad and everything else, I rarely find time to blog. Trying, yet again, to work on that 🙂

* OK, time to finish cleaning up the house, work on unpacking some things for the garage sale of my dad’s stuff, and then time to cook supper!

Apr
07
Posted by Stace

Cleaning Out

Well, I have now experienced the phenomenon of cleaning out your parents house. We went to Hattiesburg yesterday for another trip, with another UHaul. This time, we cleaned out every last thing from my parents house. My sisters and I had done some cleaning out of my mom’s things about a year or so after she passed away (it will be 11 years this June, goodness gracious). And now since we’ve moved my dad into the assisted living place near our house, we have been working at whittling down the remainder of the contents of their house. We took everything to his new “apartment” as we call it, that we thought he wanted or needed. My sisters and their kids have gotten everything that they want out, we’ve sold some furniture and big items to some extended family, and now we’re down to the last set of items. I swore years ago I would never have another garage sale, but you know what they say about never saying never… LOL!

So, yesterday was another long day, about 14 hours in all, and this week will be a lot of prep work. Everything that I spent all day yesterday packing, has to be unpacked and setup and priced for the garage sale. Thankfully, we had most of the big pieces out, so there was very little furniture to haul. It’s just down to kitchen stuff, linens, old clothes, etc. I wonder what kind of prices to put on things these days. I don’t have garage or yard sales and don’t go to them, so I don’t have any idea what people sell these kinds of things for today.

Get this – we found 2 or 3 film cameras, and he was like, sell those. I softly told him, Daddy, today people have digital cameras and cell phones for taking photos! LOL!

Anyway, we have the house empty, so we can now move forward with trying to clean it up, getting it painted, cleaning or replacing carpets, listing with a realtor, etc. It’s such a big job. And in so many ways, it’s so hard. Even though this wasn’t the house I grew up in, my parents lived there for many years, my dad about 21 in all, 10 of those with my mom. All of their earthly belongings have been divvied up and sent to various family and friends, and the rest of it is sitting in my garage, waiting to be paraded out to strangers, to sell for little or nothing. There’s something so inherently sad in that, the end of things, the summation of a life.

Yes, I’m obviously a bit melancholy with this post, please forgive me. I still miss my Beau so much. Yesterday was one month since we lost him, and I still miss him so.

On to bigger and better things, but first, a lot of work to do with this garage sale!