In a literal sense, not having Mari here has allowed me to keep bedroom and bathroom doors open, which has taken some re-training. I don't believe in cats in bedrooms (at least, not mine) and Mari enjoys romping around with the toilet paper if she gets into the bathrooms. However, due to Ziggy's litter box situation, I need to remember that my downstairs bathroom door has to stay stay open. Except when someone is using the toilet of course! ;) The kids come tomorrow morning, and everything is as ready as it can be. I've decided that there is no way to be 100% prepared. As my late husband used to tell me, "Go with the flow." I will try! Hopefully, I won't "drown."
Don't worry, I still have two more bathrooms: one with a shower and bathtub and one with a combined shower/tub. Ryan will stay on New York work hours (6-2 on the West Coast) so his schedule will be much different from mine. We will all adapt, right? (perhaps not easily, but eventually)
Mari's pit room has been transformed into Grandson's by vacuuming 1,000 times, taking a bunch of junk stuff into the garage, and organizing the rest. The door always remained open to this room, but now will be closed a lot of the time. If I had taken a "before" photo of the mess, you would be lost in admiration. No wonder I'm exhausted though.
John was kind enough to put Ziggy's cat scratching post together for me yesterday. He's a very nice person, but driving me a little crazy right now for several reasons: he talks about how his daughters are perfect, he's cheap, he likes to watch too much YouTube, and he allows himself to be bamboozled by his financial advisor. The latest is that Glenn is pushing him to set up an irrevocable trust to avoid Washington state estate taxes. It will cost a lot of money! My question to him: Why not just gift $15,000 a year to your kids to keep your estate under the 2.1 million? That's what I intend to start doing. I don't like Glenn at all or his crappy advice.
Old Copper is coming along nicely. I'm a huge fan of coral colored flowers, as many of you already know. The weather has been lovely, thus my doors and windows have been open. The smell of fresh air is intoxicating. Due to the 70 degree sunshine, I even enjoyed mowing the lawn today and doing some weeding!
Every year my mom insists that I send a picture of this single peony to my friend Becky, whose late father loved this flower. Every year I tell my mom that Becky already knows! Today I realized that she really wants to communicate to Becky that someone is remembering and thinking about her father, Mike. My mom also has been sharing wonderful and touching memories of my dad, like why she fell in love with such a quiet man. He was kind and good-looking. She thought he would make an excellent father. (he did) She is missing his commentary on some of their more eccentric neighbors. It's hard to believe that Dad has been gone for only two months. It feels like forever. It is forever.
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