Exceedingly Mundane

tidbits of random nothingness

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Archive for May, 2014

May
29
Posted by Stace

Nostalgia while packing…

I suppose it’s inevitable. You live in a house for over 20 years, you accumulate items, you make a house a home and make memories in it, and then, you decide to move. It’s natural that one gets nostalgic and one gets sappy and dare I say, one gets downright sad at times. Maybe it’s just hormones or so recently realizing how much I miss both my parents. Or some other maudlin thought pattern 😀

I am working on cleaning out magazines today. I realize how much things have changed since I first moved in this house. I used to get a ton of magazines. Back before anything was digital, I did silly things like subscribe to a newspaper that was thrown on my driveway daily, subscribe to magazines that showed up in my mailbox once a month, etc. My, how times have changed. I don’t subscribe to magazines any longer. I have dallied with online subscriptions, but I just find that I don’t read them often enough to justify it. So, once I page through the last ones (won’t be today, I have stacks of them, LOL!) and put them in the recycle bin, I will probably never see another magazine in my home.

Same thing with music cd’s (which I’ve packed) and movies, which have yet to be packed. We’ve done fairly good through the years with moving to new technology, yet I realize, I have lived through a time where there were just 3 local tv stations and no way to record tv or movies. Then, the advent of the VCR, and magically, I could record a tv show or movie to watch later. What a spectacular idea that seemed at the time. I think I have mostly purged the house in recent years of old VCR tapes that contained things I had recorded from TV. We’ve moved on to DVD’s and Blu-Rays (buying movies which we watch from time to time). I’ve packed up a boatload of music CD’s, realizing (much like the magazines), I probably won’t ever buy them again and may not even use them again. I do everything digital, with iTunes or Amazon and various and sundry electronic devices.

I remember a rotary phone and calling someone before you left the house to drive to see them, to let them know you were coming.

I remember my mom being so excited to get a humungous box for her kitchen called a microwave.

I think I’m getting old. And I think it’s starting to hit me how much work it’s going to be to pack up my adult life in boxes 😀

P.S. I’m also thinking right about now that maybe it was a good thing we never had children… not only more stuff to pack, but more memories and harder to come to grips with moving them out of a house they grew up in.

May
27
Posted by Stace

Memorial Day weekend

We had a quiet, uneventful (but sort of busy!) Memorial Day weekend. I spent a lot of it thinking about my Dad, whom I really miss. I went and got him last year and he spent the day with us, and loved the ribs that Tim fixed for him 🙂

Let’s see, Tim got off a bit early Friday afternoon and went to play golf with a buddy from work. He had worked the Sunday night before, so left a little early. I tried to make good use of the time and started doing some cleaning, purging, packing. I got some books together for the library and packed my first box. Tim got back earlier than normal, so I offered to take him out on date night, to his choice. He loves Dickie’s BBQ, even though I do not. I can’t make healthy choices in a place that mostly has meat and carbs. They do have salads, but I have yet to try one, as I never see one on anyone’s plate! I was good though, and only ate half of mine and brought the rest home. He always says the allure of Dickie’s is the free ice cream, and we both had that, so maybe I wasn’t so good after all 😀

Saturday, he had a really early tee time, 6:20 AM, so he was up in the 5 AM hour and out the door. I tried and tried to go back to sleep, but couldn’t. So I got up and went walking, logged 4.45 miles. I did some chores around the house and more cleaning, tossing, purging. I went down and visited with one of our neighbors for a couple of hours. That has been one of the hardest things, telling our wonderful neighbors we are moving and leaving here. We will sorely miss them, I’ve lived next to them for over 20 years and they are not only neighbors, but friends.

Tim brought us home Chick-Fil-A for lunch, then after a bit of a rest, he got busy painting the doors. He had stripped the front and back doors of paint and primer a couple of weeks ago. He went to Home Depot and had intended to order new doors, but ended up just getting new glass inserts. He installed those when he first stripped them. So, now he just put on a fresh coat of paint, and they look really good. Saturday night, we relaxed and watched Thor (recorded from TV on the DVR). I do love me some Marvel movies. We also caught up on Agents of Shield tv shows on Saturday and Monday nights.

Sunday was busy with church (we had a patriotic program by Denver and the Mile High Orchestra, which I really enjoyed). We went to brunch afterwards. Tim got a second breakfast, pancakes and eggs and I opted for lunch. I got the trio, with lemon chicken orzo soup, fruit and a side salad. We stopped by Kroger after that, to pick up all the stuff for me to make the stuff for Memorial Day. Tim went and played golf late on Sunday, but had a good time. He got back a bit before dark, which worked out perfectly. One of our wonderful neighbors had brought us over some crawfish. I wanted to sit out on the deck and eat crawfish one last time, so we did. Good memories 🙂

Monday, we got up early to start food preparations. Tim smoked a couple slabs of ribs, and also grilled hot dogs and corn for me. I made potato salad, crunchy slaw, and baked beans. Suzanne and Elizabeth came over to eat with us and stayed for a while to visit. We started watching XMen:First Class on our blu-ray, but Suzanne left before it was over. Elizabeth stayed and finished it. We were glad to see both of them. We spent time Monday evening catching up on stuff on the DVR. It had gotten really full the last couple of months, so we are slowly whittling our way through shows and movies.

Tuesday means back to the regular routine, except that Tuesday after a holiday always feels like a Monday. I have all of my Monday chores to do, plus watering too. This will be my last summer of hauling hoses and sprinklers around our yard – the new house will have an in-ground irrigation system installed, hooray!

May
27
Posted by Stace

End of May, Oh My!

Well, it’s been months and so much has happened, I don’t even know where to start. I should have been blogging through this time, but of course, I did not. I really should have been private blogging, to capture some of my thoughts and private things that have happened, but alas, I didn’t take the time.

Let’s see, not long after my last post, my dad fell, and Tim and I went after midnight to the assisted living place where he was living, to take him to the hospital. He refused to ride in the ambulance that they wanted to call for him, as was their policy. When we got him into the ER, they had a hard time getting his oxygen level to register. As it turns out, his oxygen was very low and his carbon dioxide very high. We later learned a lot about respiratory failure. Dad was in congestive heart failure and respiratory failure. He was at the hospital a few days, then we moved him (via ambulance, he would have been so upset had he realized it) to a hospice facility near our house. He was only there less than 48 hours. A week after we took him to the hospital, on a Wednesday, I was sitting with him, I had tried to feed him some lunch, and he was having trouble breathing. I told him to just rest, and I sat right at his left arm, and read my Bible and just prayed and prayed. Daddy took his last breath and we’ve missed him ever since. The funeral was that weekend, and we were glad that my nephew David was able to get back from his trip in Southeast Asia (Thailand and other spots) in time for the burial. We then started the work of handling his estate (I had his power of attorney in life and the executor of his will and estate after death), and we cleaned out his apartment at the assisted living place. I still have boxes and bags of stuff piled up in my dining room.

My sister Suzanne then proceeded to have a period of about 6 weeks of turmoil, then an extreme tragedy. Gail, Don, Tim and I flew to South Florida to help her, and then flew back a week later for a funeral. After a few days of staying with her son and his family, she drove here and stayed with Tim and I for 5 weeks. She is now moving back here and is having a lot of issues and complications. We’re just hoping and praying that things get better for her and that she starts feeling better soon.

So, it sounds like 2014 has been a tough year, and so far… it has. However, we do have some really happy news. After living here for 21 years (Tim and I together for a little over 18), we are going to finally move! We just signed a contract to build a new house a little bit north of where we live now, close to the golf course where Tim plays golf most days of the week. We’re really excited about the house! It will be early fall before it’s ready, which seems at times so far away, and then at other times, I realize it will probably go by in the blink of an eye. I’ve already started a tiny bit of purging, cleaning and packing. I packed up some books, donated several bags of books to the local library, and packed up our old music cd’s. There’s so much more to do, but most of it can’t be done until it’s a bit closer to moving time. In the mean time, I’m trying to enjoy this house, and the yard and my flowers and my deck as much as possible. As happy and excited as we are, our word of the day is always “bittersweet”. It’s hard to leave our neighbors and the only house we’ve ever lived in. All of our family has spent so much time here, including my parents who are both now gone. Sad, but happy too, thus, bittersweet.

I’d like to get back to everyday blogging. About food, books I’m reading, tv shows and movies we watch, things like that. That’s why I named my blog “Exceedingly Mundane” all those years ago, because I thrive on the daily mundane stuff. Maybe so much time won’t go by next time, we shall see!