Still Moving

I have about a half dozen or so Jeep loads of stuff still to move into the new apartment. And I have plans to go through EVERYTHING and organize and pare down while I'm in this apartment. I have got to get my act together.

On a higher note, I have won a set of hand made fabric coasters from Madcap. I will take those as another indicator that I am to entertain more at this apartment. Ok, that means that I need to actually entertain, which I haven't done in years. The birthday women's get together was postponed from my birthday to 'sometime in January' since everyone suddenly looked at their to-do list and realized that even doing away with the evening here there wasn't enough time to get everything done. Especially me. So, when I was asked if it would hurt my feelings to put it off awhile, I said, basically 'hell, no, let's do it'. Now I have some kind of deadline to at least have things shuffled around so I can have 6 of us here to drink wine.

The weather has cooperated with my move. Chilly, but with my hot flashes I still sweat while toting things into and out of the Jeep. My back limits me to 3 loads a day before I'm laying on the floor waiting for it to unwind more than I'm moving gear around. Cindy has offered herself, her truck, and her strong husband to make another load for me, so I'm leaving the heavier stuff that I could get if I had to for that last load. I'm still not used to the smaller Jeep. That is the one thing I hate about it after having Toyota trucks for 20 years, I can't get used to no hauling space.

Low key Christmas, other than I was awoken by Mom on Christmas Day to tell me that Dad has been put on comfort care. He's been taken to the hospital a few times in the past month from complications of his inability to swallow, and now also has MARS, a bad type of staph infection. Comfort care means only pain pills if necessary, and no more hospital. It even means that if he doesn't want to eat, no one will force him. Mom says that the implications of that haven't hit him yet. Basically, since he doesn't want a feeding tube there isn't anything else they can do.

Happy Birthday To Me

Sigh. That's the word that sprang to mind when I sat here to start typing. Just... sigh.

Everything's fine, I'm moving in, working, and running late.

Movin' On Up

I get the keys to a new apartment in 4 days. Yes, I decided to move, and found an apartment quickly. Almost all the units on Post are deployed. A lot of the families went 'home' while one parent was to be gone for a year. The apartment complexes are scrambling to fill empty apartments. Which makes the rent increase here even more of a puzzle. At any rate, a really, really nice apartment complex is giving $200/mo discounts for 8 months (which coincides with the returning soldiers, funny that), so I am moving into a huge, 2 bedroom 2 bath with a gas log fireplace apartment. Between what things are included in that rent that aren't here, and the difference in utilities between a middle floor apartment and a poorly insulated trailer, the cost difference is small. Why the larger apartment. Well... because I can? I'll have room to pull everything out and sort and reorganize and get rid of and make decisions on what I want to do. And a deadline to do it in. I won't be able to afford the apartment when the rent goes back up.

A fact of this rental life is that moving house (a UK term I like that sums up the ordeal nicely) while renting happens much more easily than when owning. I live 10 months here, 8 months there, move again. Not a big deal, and a smaller deal as I keep less and less stuff. Packing has started, but most of my stuff was never unpacked. It lives in the large 45 gal wheeled plastic storage containers meant to pack away Christmas decorations and trees and such. I have 5 out here with me, and 4 are still packed. I'll pull the one empty one out of my small storage building in my current yard, and the loose backpacking equipment will go there. That will mostly pack up one of the 2 small bedrooms. I may go see if WalMart has more of them now that it's that time of year again. Probably not on sale now like they were in January of last year. 2 more of them and all of my loose stuff would be nicely contained. Ah, well, I may need to go find some boxes.

I passed my Security+ test. I am now fully legal in my job. A lot of stress is off from that now. There is uncertainty about the larger contractor jobs at the hangar. Their contract is iffy right now. Our contract comes up for renewal next year. I'm thinking that 8 months from now I'll know a bit more about my longer term plans and options. Having the Security+ can only help when I go out to find another job. Getting my finances settled down a bit and then hopefully selling the house in that same time frame will set me up to be making some decisions about where I want to be. In the mean time, I just need to keep simplifying my life, getting more solid professionally and on paper, and also enjoy my time in this apartment and in the Pacific North West.

Dedicated to Nancye

Enjoy the Pickup Truck. :)

Up Against the Wall

Perusing my blog list this evening I found that Lloyd Kahn has posted a YouTube video of Jerry Jeff Walker singing a new song. I may need to find where I can buy the new music. However, it tapped into a dormant side of my history, and I found myself on YouTube listening to older Jerry Jeff music. So, after a few minutes I'm drinking a glass of cheap wine and wailing along with Up Against the Wall Redneck Mother. '...he's drinking in a honky-tonk, just kicking hippie's asses and raisin' hell'. And if you don't understand why I love that song, you ain't a redneck hippie who has (at least a few made it) fond memories of the 70's and 80's and Jerry Jeff and Willie and Waylon. JJW looks a bit pudgy, bald and happy in the new video.

Other blogs are about mundane things like killing a calf for meat, and feasting with friends and cute kids pictures. It occurred to me that I'm past all that. I want to drink cheap wine and sing to Jerry Jeff while playing computer geek. I'm making backups to put into my new lock box at the bank. If I lose my computers, I won't lose the information that way. I live in a cheap trailer, and have few responsibilities. I don't grow my own food, or raise animals for food (the cats wouldn't come anywhere near paying their way for that...). I'll be one of the first to go down come the revolution. Fine. It's been a good run, mostly. I'm ready to have fun.

The new JJW music is about living in Belize, and slowing down. Think Jimmie Buffett with a chaser of hard liquor. Good Stuff.

Sunday Night Cooking

Tonight I remembered that I signed up to bring sweet potatoes to the pitch-in tomorrow at work. So, quick trip to WalMart, then a second to get 2 more cans of sweet potatoes since one didn't look like nearly enough. I got some apples, and a couple of oranges. I put the cans of sweet potatoes in 'light syrup', brown sugar, a bit of cardamon, and 1.5 cut up apples into the slow cooker. I'll decide tomorrow if I want to use some orange juice, too, but most likely I won't now. The walnuts didn't make it home with me, and I'll decide if I have time to run back to WalMart on the way to work to get some more. I'm thinking when she switched from her bags to the ones I brought in and forgot to give her at first that the bag of chopped walnuts didn't make the switch. Oh, well...

Not much got done this weekend. Nothing new there.

Another Saturday Morning

Would that be Cat Stevens' song now that we are all no longer 20? Anyway, on to what I'm reading. And, uh, morning is barely true, as I slept in till 11am.

On SimpleLiving.net, I'm reminded of the Organized Home challenge. I am doing that anyway, which goes along with wanting to move. Kitchen is pretty much organized, if you don't count the large plastic cubes of kitchen stuff that are in the living room under tablecloths and disguised as end tables.

On another blog (by a guy...) he mentioned his hula girl beaded curtains. I'm thinking that some of those might be an answer to covering the living room windows and still letting the cats see out. On my side I'd still have the IKEA white curtains pulled back in the traditional manner, but the middle would show off the beaded curtains. From the outside, I guess they'd see the beaded ones mostly. Pondering...

In the IKEA catalog is my new dining room table. It is a Norden gateleg table. Pictures here: http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/20104718AS

I just accidentally deleted a few paragraphs about other blogs. The auto save was too fast and saved after I deleted it...

One was about a blog where a woman who home sews is making slippers for her family. Interesting family in that it is nice to see the workings of a home-schools, attempting to be self-sufficient as possible largish family (4 kids): http://omelay.wordpress.com/

Another was a blog that I follow about a guy who has a really nice motor home who camp hosts a lot around the western part of the US. His past two entries about about driving over the Hoover Dam, with information about the new Dam by-pass highway being built so that all the NAFTA traffic doesn't drive over the Dam itself with it's security concerns, and an brief intro on Kartchner Caverns State Park in AZ. He is a former news photojournalist from Portland, OR, so his posts are always more professional than most folks I follow: http://www.lightcurve.com/

As for what's going on around here, Dad is back in the nursing home. It takes up to an hour to feed him a meal, and Mom doesn't know how long either she or the nursing home folks can handle doing that. He himself gets frustrated with it all, and doesn't always understand what's going on or why he has to swallow twice. I slept, as I said, and so apartment hunting is on hold for today. I have been working on the afghan I started last winter, so there is progress in using up my yarn stash. Using up what I have put back for 'some other time' is my main decluttering mode right now. I'm continuing to study for my Security+ exam, and feel good about knowing about 80% of the material. That is Thing One to get done this weekend, and I have a target date of taking the test the Monday after Thanksgiving weekend.

Slacking

I'm slacking tonight, a bit late with a post after raising an alarm last night. I apologize. Dad is ok. He doesn't have pneumonia, which is what I guess they were worried about. He aspirates when he eats. It's getting worse. He doesn't want a feeding tube. So, this is how it is now. Feed him small bites and make sure he swallows twice. He goes back to the nursing home tomorrow. I talked to him when I called Mom today as she hadn't yet called me. Cell phones make this possible, for me to call and catch Mom is his room there. He asked a vague question that didn't fit, making Mom think he didn't know who he was talking to. I had called him Daddy, as I have a lot even as an adult, so he would have a clue, and he said he knew who he was talking to. I think he is just slipping deeper into his shadowy dream world, and this world's details don't matter so much to him.

Not much else going on. Tomorrow is Friday, so I will soon have the weekend to do more to write about.

Weeknight limbo

There just isn't enough happening in my life to post every day. So, do I try to get a more interesting life, or just post every few days...?

Good news: last night the cats (or one of them, not sure as I didn't see it happen) killed a mouse. It was right in front of the door, so it had to happen while I was in another part of the trailer and I didn't hear anything out of the ordinary. Great going for a couple of declawed cats.

No so good news: Mom called about 6 (8pm her time) to say that Dad was still having trouble eating and swallowing, and it was getting worse. She called back a couple of hours later to say the nursing home called her and took my Dad to emergency to have his lungs checked. Mom can't drive at night, so she won't get to the hospital till tomorrow morning. Wish I was back there. I feel badly that my Dad is alone in the emergency room. I think Mom is right about not driving the 20 or 30 miles alone at night. I just wish I was there so I could go over.

My friend at work and I share our stories of our parents' decline. I'm guessing we will both lose them before the end of the year. We neither one can get back right now, although she is going back next week until the end. I shouldn't, but I may check flights for the Thanksgiving weekend.

I'm Here - still

Not much to post. It's a work night so not a lot goes on. Mom called and said my Dad isn't doing well. He has a fever and has trouble eating. I wish I knew what the 'right' thing to do was. I have no time off left to head back unless it's an 'emergency' and I've already done the run back to say my good-bye's. A woman at work is going through the same thing with her Mom in New York who is roughly the same age, maybe even a year or so older than Dad, except her Mom has cancer and is now in the hospital on Morphine. At what point do you go back to have those last moments when they actually know who you are and know you are there. Doctors estimate for her it could be hours, could be months. With Dad it's even more open since he doesn't have any major issues, he's just shutting down. Why am I out here when I should be back there, and was there until last January. sigh.

House is cleaned up, and I'm clearing off more flat surfaces. I'll start looking around for an apartment this weekend. I don't know if I'll find a better place, but I need to look so I know what my options are. My goal is to have very little actual packing to do, having everything compartmentalized already, when I do pick up and move. Whether it's across town or across country.