Catching up a bit

From the text file I was keeping for a while:

7 MARCH

What a hoot. I logged into blogger.com today to discover I'm running a spam blog. Some actual human will have to verify that I'm just a wordy bint before they release it.

I've been making some progress with clearing things out, and also with going back over the things I've saved out and tossing some of them back in. Someone wrote to me and said that he and his siblings had to do the same thing, and they discovered there were three piles: childhood memories, Mom & Dad memories, and junk. That's not quite true here; if John had more time, and I lived nearer, I think we could clean up on eBay from all the retro stuff. But he doesn't want to spend the time, and I can't spend the time, so it will all go into the garage sale.

I'm also having to make allowances for age and infirmity. I don't have the stamina or the attention span I used to have. I can't get down on my hands and knees nor up on a stepladder. And sometimes I just don't want to do this any more. I've taken to having a nap around 5:00 and only waking up when John calls between 7:00 and 8:00 to ask where I want to eat dinner. Today I'll go back out in the lovely sunshine and run some errands. I need boxes and a Los Angeles Times for packing material. John accidentally bought queen-size sheets for the full-size guest bed, but I have a queen-size at home that doesn't have a plain sheet set (I use flannel ones mostly). I figured I'd swap him for one the right size. And since I can't do a download on borrowed wideband, I figured I'd buy a new version of Sims 2 that's actuall for Intel Macs. Mine is the PowerPC version, and there's a free upgrade but when I try to download it, I get a projected time of 10 hours, I don't think that's true but since we're stealing the wideband link, I'd rather not take the chance on making someone irate. I'll just buy a new disk.

Yesterday I took a cruise around to our old house in West Covina. We moved to Whittier from there in 1964. I'm amazed at how neat and tidy it is for a blue-collar neighborhood, and how incredibly wide the streets are. Of course, the only eyesore on the entire block is our old place. Scabby lawn, mattress leaning up against the side of the house... maybe they're moving, but the mess didn't have that temporary look about it. Anyway, I drove by twice and then told TomTom to take me back home, and he did, by way of every single fricking side street in the valley. I don't know why he didn't think Interstate 10 was good enough. But it was kind of fun to wander around these neighborhoods anyway, and notice that the worse the neighborhood, the fewer the Starbucks.

MARCH 8

Today I have been cleaning out the "emergency supplies" that Mom had in two trashcans down on the lower level of the back yard. Probably one of the most disgusting jobs I've had to do. The one that only had candle stubs in it was fine, but the one with all the supplies was half full of disgusting brown liquid. Every single thing inside it was rotted or rusted out, except the aluminum foil she wrapped some fabric in (bandages?) and two drinking cups that looked pristine even after being fished out of the murk. Leslye helped me and thereby qualifies for hazard duty. The smell was incredible. There are things drying out on the back wall between the levels so that we can recycle what's left of them after the rust flakes fall off.

I also cleaned out some more of the kitchen cupboards and pulled more things from the garage into the stack of "my things" to box up and mail off to various people. Some of the kitchen things are so retro that I'm keeping them just because I know they're worth more than the pennies John will get for them. He doesn't want to make the effort to get them valued so someone is going to get a hell of a deal on a lot of it.