Changes

Life has changed drastically for Sister One and our dear mother.

Mom's live-in caretaker informed her that she was moving out, so new arrangements needed to be made for Mom.  She could still live alone, but she really isn't crazy about the idea.

I wasn't crazy about the idea of trying to manage two households since she is housebound.

I guess I could have given her keys to a car .... since her cataract surgery she can see much better.  But trust me when I say that everyone is much safer with her off the road!

So, instead, we decided to move the 412 boxes of books, papers, magazines, and junk out of our north wing and move in her measly 305 boxes.

Somewhere in this equation, we've ended up with a preponderance of boxes in our kitchen ... and our living room ... and our computer room ... and, well, you get the picture.  The 412 boxes need to have a place to go.  We ordered another dumpster and have filled it twice, but we still have a lot of items for which to find a permanent home.

I've discovered that Mom can't pack anything without giving me the history of every item going into the box.  I had to cross the space-time continuum and hook up with my fifteen year old self so that I could totally tune her out and get all of her (#$&@! crystal packed.  

But, all in all, I would say that we are all coping very well.  Mom has now been with us for two weeks and we haven't gotten on each other's nerves yet!  That has to be a record.

In the meantime my main computer blew the motherboard.  That holds all of my photo editing software and photos ---- hence the lack of photos in this post.  Hopefully I'll get something figured out in the next couple of days because I plan to chronicle the 40 day count down to Sister Two's big 4-0 birthday. 

On Sunday we delivered 40 gifts to her.  She will open one each day until the big day.  My friend Feagler received 40 gifts before her 40th and it was great fun.  We looked forward to hearing what the package of the day was ----- hers were mostly gag gifts.  Sister Two has some gag gifts, but there's some good stuff in there too.  We've been collecting things for the past 3 to 4 years in anticipation of this momentous occasion.  Of course, last week I looked at the blog and saw on the countdown that there were only 47 days until her birthday and about died.  So on Saturday, we made our final selections and then spent many, many hours wrapping the gifts.

I'd forgotten how much I detest wrapping gifts.  If Sister Two ever had any doubt about how much I love her, five hours of wrapping should tell her something!

So watch the site ..... she opens the first one on Wednesday and it's a doozy!