Getting Ready To Move

My closing is on Friday, so for the next few weeks, every spare moment is going to be spent shifting houses.

I promise I will post pictures of the house on Friday.

I figure it may take the full 3 weeks to get everything out.

Wish me luck.

Happy Music

This is today's smile worthy tune. I think Mika has trumped Erasure in my happy music category.

Things You Find While Dejunking

I cleaned out one of the strange cabinets in our house yesterday

~ I found a precious Valentine's Day card from my Dad to Mom. He was always about the silly, when mom would have loved flowers, but his silly sentiment always was what he meant. Lots of tears shed there.

~ Cookbooks from the 1960s were a hoot, and as a result of looking at a bunch of Better Homes and Gardens books, I want a soup tureen!

~ My mother has 3 copies of Beverly Lewis' Amish Heritage cookbook and about 4 copies of one made by the ladies at the Monessen Food Pantry.

~ Found a book about the Gnostic Gospels that I'm going to have to read to mom now.

~ Found a beautiful Christmas ornament with one of the Presque Isle Lighthouses on it. Now I can't wait for Christmas!

~ My mother had an odd obsession with Ideals poetry magazines.

The Stupidest Ad Ever

Gateway Hospice has a billboard campaign that really really pisses me off.

It says "Embracing Life" and shows two smiling old people.

Pardon me if I want to beat the living crap out of the person who came up with this ad.

If you are on hospice, your life is ending, and for the most part,  you can't embrace it. You can only hang on to it for every second that you can.

My father was very lucky that in his year on hospice that he had time to enjoy what time he had left. Most do not. Most are cancer patients in great pain.

"Embracing life" my buttocks!

Everyone that knows me, knows I have very mixed feelings about hospice care. I think we were very lucky that my dad had great nurses and aids from Amedysis, that really liked him and were kind, and to them, I still give my heartfelt thanks, because dad could be very pig headed, especially in his last months when his illnesses gave him dementia. (He could be pig headed even before his illness, but that's why we loved him)

If I had to do it over again, I'm not sure I would have let my mother agree to it. I would have fought her tooth and nail not to.

But back to the ad.

I know that you don't want to reflect sadness and death in an ad, but I just think showing smiling seniors with one of their adult family members/child/etc is just  stupid.

Books Books and More Books

In the last few weeks I've taken bags upon bags of books to be donated to our library and to the lending library at our YMCA.

You would think that it would make a dent in our house but it doesn't.

We have a small library going on here.

Lots of novels and lots of cookbooks.

Oh and did I mention the library had their book sale this week.

erm...

On a counter productive move, I found about 10 cookbooks. Some are from women's groups and others were those awesome Taste Of Home annuals that usually cost about 30 bucks.

So I've got a lot of great new cookbooks to make yummy stuff from.

Yay, but I still have a house that looks like a war zone

Boo!

This move is not going to be easy at all.

Things Seldom Go As Planned

Allow me to tell you how my weekend went

~ Missed a call from my loan officer on Friday. I need to get my boss to fill out yet another employment verification form. This is a long story, but at the beginning of the year I was being paid by the father's company and now I'm being paid by the son's. Oye to the vey.

~ My brother in law had a seizure yesterday. We had a feeling one was coming on, but we didn't know when it would happen. Don't know what brought this on, but it through the whole day out of whack.

~ I only got to the YMCA once.

~ I'm still trying to sort through books, which is making my house look like several tornadoes whipped through it.

One word, ARGH

I'm A Weekend Blogger

This is getting ridiculous. I've got to start blogging when I get up in the morning.

I'm still working on dejunking our house, which is none to easy. I think we are going to have to get a huge garbage hopper when we move so we can just toss the junk and let it get hauled away.

I was telling my mother, there are two jackets from my college days that my father wore. I bought one for him and then there was mine, that I gave to him when his started to fall apart.

I can't part with them. Just like some of his novelty t-shirts. I can't get rid of them. It would be like throwing my father away. They may be miscellaneous articles of clothing, but they were things that he loved.

That's the hard part about this move.

~sigh~

Now to shift gears..

WTF is up with the new Rob Thomas song?

Trust You is fun enough song, but like She's So Mean, he is so much better than this. I wish he wasn't trying to follow the corporate music path.




If you don't believe me, listen to Ever The Same...this is the man at his brilliant best.

The things you find

My parents dresser drawers are more like junk drawers in the last few years, some of them longer than that. We moved a lot of their clothes downstairs when their health started failing.

So I was going through them to  see what we could keep and what we needed to give away or through away or donate.

In one drawer I found my dad's diploma from grade school and then his junior high diploma. My dad left school to join the coast guard during WWII.

I also found that letter that President Truman sent to all the men who fought in the war.

That war affected my father, in ways you didn't know until his health issues started giving him dementia. I'm pretty sure he had PTSD when he returned home.

Every time I hear about Okinawa, Japan, I cringe.

I found some of his papers from his time working at Corning Glass here in Charleroi (Pyrex), PA. He took such pride in his work there.

I love finding this parts of my father that were kept hidden, but in other ways they have brought me lots of tears in the past few days, because I want to talk to him about them. I want to hug him and tell him I love him.

I also found some of my mom's old yearbooks and one had a particularly poignant poem

So in the spirit of Bilbo's Poetry Sunday

Away


I cannot say, and I will not say
That he is dead- . He is just away!

With a cheery smile, and a wave of the hand
He has wandered into an unknown land,

And left us dreaming how very fair
It needs must be, since he lingers there.

And you- O you, who the wildest yearn
For the old-time step and the glad return- ,

Think of him faring on, as dear
In the love of There as the love of Here;

And loyal still, as he gave the blows
Of his warrior-strength to his country's foes- .

Mild and gentle, as he was brave- ,
When the sweetest love of his life he gave v To simple things- : Where the violets grew Blue as the eyes they were likened to, v The touches of his hands have strayed As reverently as his lips have prayed:

When the little brown thrush that harshly chirred
Was dear to him as the mocking-bird;

And he pitied as much as a man in pain
A writhing honey-bee wet with rain- .

Think of him still as the same, I say: He is not dead- he is just away!

James Whitcomb Riley

Accomplishments

The dejunking continues

For the weekend, I have

1. 2 bags of garbage

2. At least 2 bags of stuff for Goodwill

3. Four bags of books to donate for the library's book sale

The house looks like a tornado hit it.

I absolutely give up. There is no winning. I just hope I can dejunk enough so that when we move things will be easier

Hump Day Hotties

A little Aiden Turner..I can't wait until PBS airs Poldark next month!

Now some Matt Smith sweetness

And my favorite guy from Coupling

Overwhelmed

Things are totally crazy right now, with so much to do regarding the home purchase. I have to say, I'm terribly frightened.

This is a huge deal

I'm scared and excited all at the same time.

The bank asked if I might be able to close on the loan early.

ARGH!

Not that I'll be able to, because the owners of the property live in Maryland, and they still have to get their belongings out of the house.

There's so many things I have questions about, and I don't have any idea who to ask.

Its all so very crazy.

I'm trying to go through my books and such so I can scale down when I move, but I'm a hoarder when it comes to books and CDs. (Funny, I don't even own a cd player anymore though)

I just hope that sometime in the next few months that things will settle down and that I won't be stressed out so much. There's very little that I enjoy anymore and that makes me sad and I feel like I have no friends except for the cats.

~sigh~

Preparing to Move...I Hate It

Things that suck about mortgages and moving

1. Waiting for the appraisal and just about everything else.

2. Home inspection...I think I just don't want to know. Anyone know any good fix-it people

3. Trying to downsize life sucks. Seriously my house is a library and I know all the books can't come with me. How in the hell do I decide the old "Should I stay or should I go" conundrum?

4. The total guilt that is consuming me about leaving the house I've lived in since I came home from the hospital in 1974.

5. Will my dad understand? I know he's gone, but this was his home since 1967. He freaking died here!! This house was his home.

6. All my previous pets with about 4 exceptions are buried in the back yard.

I am so depressed right now, I don't know where to begin. I feel like nothing is going right and I have no help from anyone.

Nerves I Has Em

The closing date on the house is June 27, so I should have a shiny house for my birthday this year.

I'm scared to death.

I've lived in my current residence since I was brought home from the hospital in 1974 and my parents moved in in 1967.

There's a lot of memories in these walls.

So, there's a lot of guilt involved in this move. Irrational guilt.

I just have so much going on in my tiny little brain.

I hope to get back to blogging on a regular basis someday soon.

I just don't know when that will be.

Maybe when I have pictures of my pretty new house.

Updates

A few things that have been going on.

1. My offer was accepted on the house!! I'm waiting on the lawyer and bank now.

2. I've become addicted to the show Ancient Aliens on the History Channel.

3. My sleep patterns suck.

4. I'm so stressed, I'm having a hard time reading, and I hate not being able to read.

5. Life without Jon Stewart on The Daily Show is going to be very painful.

Where Have I Been?

If you aren't on Facebook with me, you might wonder where I've been hiding?

Well last Saturday morning, mom got rushed to the hospital with a bout of congestive heart failure and a touch of pneumonia.

I also made an offer on a house.

So, in short, I've been a bundle of nerves for the last few days and nothing can calm me down. I still haven't heard anything back about the house, so needless to say, I'm on pins and needles, because, this is the house. THE HOUSE people. The house of my dreams. (And honest, I don't dream very big)

Mom is home now too, but not 100%. We all feel the hospital saw her name and decided to toss her out, lest she become a serial hospital patient like my dad was. Either way, no one, including my mom was very happy with that decision.

Let's keep our fingers crossed that her health returns a bit to her, because I don't know how much more I can take.

Oh and it is also 5 months now that dad's been gone.

What A Week

This has been a shitty week.

Why?

My nephews' grandmother (his father's mom) passed away last Saturday. That made this an extra sad Easter. Not to mention it caused huge issues with who would be with my mom when they went to the funeral.

That wasn't a pretty discussion, as I could not take a day off for someone not related to me in any way.

Mom was supposed to have an appointment at the heart doctor yesterday. Fifteen minutes before I was to leave work that the doctor was stuck at the hospital and was cancelling.

Oye to the vey!

I am going to look at a house on Sunday. The person selling just wants to sell and not deal with realtors. I'm kind of nervous about this, but I know that the house is well taken care of and it is in a good part of my sad little town.

All I want to do is relax and read tomorrow to make up for this lousy week.

The House Hunt Continues

My boss's son, aka my other boss' said that his grandmother knew someone selling their house. It's on the opposite side of town one block higher up on the hill.

I drove by on my way home and if its the house I think it is,it really is a lovely brick home. Hopefully my agent and I will be able to look at it sometime this week.

I'm totally scared at the thought of having my own house with a mortgage that I'll be paying until I'm 71 years old!!

That's absolutely terrifying.

I also know that if I do this, and I have to do this, I'll never go on another vacation.

I'm done.

I'll have a house, cats, books and nothing else.

Its very worrisome.

I always wanted more in my life, but I guess, that's never going to happen. So I'm going to take what I can get, whatever that may be.

RIP Cynthia Lennon

Cyn was my favorite Beatle wife. Its hard to believe that she's gone.

My heart breaks for Julian, even though I don't know him or his mother.

The loss of a parent is a tough thing

Sick Of Sadness

How can I get some happy going on?

For a holiday week, it really started off bad.

Plumie died...Thursday would have been my dad's 89th birthday...we still haven't found a house.

I'm super stressed and I feel powerless.

The only thing that's keeping me sane are books. I'm reading...not as much as usual. I've only read about 30 books this year, but what I have read I've really enjoyed.

It doesn't help matters, that I really have no one to talk to outside of my family. Hospice really doesn't care to help the grieving outside of the patient's spouse. My nephew and I are left alone with our grief.

I don't know that I'll ever get over losing my dad.

Yes, he had been sick for a very long time, but he always rallied. He was a fighter and then some. To lose his kitty now, that's the final blow.

I think she decided she didn't want to be without him.

I'm sure my dad was on the other side of the rainbow bridge waiting for her yesterday, along with all the other animals we've lost over the years. I'm sure he played with her and finally she curled up on the lap she loved the most and slept peacefully again.

Now if only I could feel better.

RIP Sugarplum

I don't have the words right now.

My little girl, who we jokingly called Lady Sugarplum von Buttonhead crossed the rainbow bridge this morning.

She was only 9 years old.

I think she died of a broken heart. She was never the same after my dad died. He was her man.

I want to celebrate her life here today.