Will I get to post tonight…….??
YEA!!! It looks like I can! If you’ve worried that I had fallen off the edge of the Earth sometime during the past few weeks, worry not. Movable Type, at least my little portion of it, has been very quirky lately, and there are times when it will let me type a title, and then it locks me out of the body of the “Create Entry” form. I haven’t figured out what’s going on. It’s possible that I am here today thanks to T’s efforts. She hosts my blog, and may have figured out what’s going on. To be on the safe side, I’ll thank both the gods and T for their help!
Let’s see… In the past couple of weeks…
The youth group brought my Mother’s things upstairs, and two days later they brought up the boxes of business data from 1986 through 2002.
My siblings came to have a family meeting, and looked through Mother’s things. We shared what was of value or sentiment. My youngest sister helped me put the books out on my sewing table, three lines of books six feet long. The kids brought more books, and we lined them up on the floor the width of the room. My oldest sister came on Wednesday, and we chose books to save, and boxed or bagged the rest for the library and Goodwill. We had TWO CAR LOADS of books to donate! Mother was a prodigious reader!
I asked the Salvation Army to collect about a third of the things, and the rest Dear Husband and Second Son have helped to take down to the garbage.
I’ve spent the better part of the week and all of yesterday afternoon and evening going through the boxes of papers. I went through our personal papers and my Mother’s papers, while DH worked on the business. I finished what was left of the business papers this weekend. I pulled most of the paper clips, even after I discovered that they could be shredded. We’ll never have to buy paper clips, dividers, or binders again! I think I have 40 or 41 boxes for the shredder, lined up along the back of the fireplace.
This past week, like most of you, we’ve had heat in the high nineties. It seemed rather warm as i worked on the boxes, and finally I checked the vents. No cool air on the north side of the house. It turns out the motor had crashed, and then something blew in the unit, putting holes in the copper tubing. Since the unit is 22 years old, we decided to put the money into a new air conditioner. The earliest they can get here will be Tuesday, the day Scraps on a Mission meets here. With the air conditioning from the south side of the house and all the fans running, it should be cool enough for the ladies to work on quilts.
I have a lap quilt pinned and ready to quilt. I was so busy this weekend I didn’t get to it. It will be the first time I have quilted using my new sewing machine, so I’m looking forward to having the chance to work on it Tuesday.
Dear Husband went to Lake Michigan this weekend to sail. We had major storms last night. He decided that it would be wiser to come home, rather than to try to sail with all that lightening, but he had to wait for a lull in the storm to row himself to shore. So, he was home by 1:00 or so, and I had some help with the boxes.
And that’s about it for now. We’re all well, and busy and hope that you are, too!

Although I’m sure my husband wishes we’d finished, too!
My youngest sis, Frankie, came to visit yesterday evening. We went to dinner and discussed our plan of attack for Sunday. This morning we got up and emptied the books from my mother’s bookshelves. They are all sitting on the table I use in my studio, organized into subjects with three lines of books running from end to end. Frankie also set out pictures in all forms, and photo albums.
We went through a number of cabinets holding china, crystal, and pottery, culling out things from my grandparents, and things that my mother had painted when she lived in the Ozarks. I found my aunt’s bone handle sterling silver knives and added them to the growing collection of serving pieces and kitchen items.
Frankie watered outside, while I watered inside. I went out to sweep the walk. As we worked, the first of the kids arrived to help move Mother’s belongings from the basement to the first floor.
Ultimately we had one very tall (and handsome) newly-graduated-from-high-school boy, two VERY STRONG (and pretty) high school girls, and two young adults come to work for us. The five of them managed to bring everything I had tagged and more upstairs in less than an hour and a half. Everything was (and is) horribly dusty. I made them all promise that they would never admit that have seen my basement.
My aunt’s paintings and mirror, a picture of our very homely Uncle Charlie, linens, clothing, more books, tax info going back 30 years, decorations, old fashioned cameras, slide viewers, bears, candles and candle holders, everything that my mother has collected, and that we have been storing from previous generations was brought upstairs.
My siblings flew through about half of this stuff before we ran out of time for the night. This really isn’t my brother’s thing, but he picked up my two older sisters and brought them up here, so he couldn’t slip away. He’d get ensconced in the living room with Dear Husband and I’d call him back for a job. He’s going to go through a collection of pictures and see what of them can be translated into more modern video forms. We also found his baby book, his senior high school play book, and the yearbook from his stay at Great Lakes when he joined the Navy. There were memories to share with him.
My-Sister-The-Nurse is going to return on Wednesday to help me go through the books. Those that are left will go to the library that afternoon. My second sister will return to box up what’s left of the clothing, and take that off my hands. Tomorrow morning, if we can fly through things, we will look through twelve plastic storage boxes of quilt and craft things for Frankie’s girls.
There’s a HUGE amount left. Part of it will go into the garbage pickup. Part of it will go to a charity willing to come to the house to collect it, and part of it will be shredded by a commercial shredder. I won’t be able to complete all that this week, but I can minimize it throughout the week.
And then, the youth group will return to bring up the boxes from the business so that we can have the shredder clear them out for us. My house is going to be in an uproar for a couple of weeks, at the very least, but my goal is to have all the table space back by the time Scraps on a Mission meets at the end of the month. I’m sure it can be done.
Wish me luck! *G*

Today, on the radio, there was a discussion of stem cell research and it’s possible effect on our life expectancy. The scientist who was being interviewed claimed that there are people in their 40s and 50s right now who will live to be 150 years old!
What interested me was that they weren’t talking about extending life as we are presently, but that the treatment would return the person to the physical status of a healthy thirty year old. He claimed that you would look and feel like a thirty year old at 150 years!
It brought to mind the stories by Robert Heinlein, and his character, Lazarus Long. Science fiction is slowly becoming science fact.
My mother said that she didn’t care to live to be 100. I’m sure I must have said something like “How can you say that!? Think of all the wonderful things left to do!” But, by 90 years, she had lost most of her friends, and all the family from her generation and older. I wonder if she would have opted for regeneration, or to be allowed to follow those she loved.
The doctor said that they would be able to reverse the trend toward Alzheimer’s, but once someone developed the disease, they would not be able to return the memories that had been lost.
Can you imagine almost doubling your life expectancy? Would you rush to do it, thinking of all the grand children and great grands and so on that you would get to know? Would you study another language? How would you support yourself? Would you have three or four different careers, or would you choose to be an expert in one subject? Think of 130 years of trying to decide what meals to fix! Would you have the same husband or significant other for the entire time, or would you marry every 45 years or so?
I really like the idea of having a 30 year old body again. I’d like to be free of the knees and feet that hurt, and the achy back after gardening and so on. But……I don’t yet know how I feel about the trade offs.
What would you want to do?

Sunday, my siblings are coming to my home for a family meeting, and to sort through Mother’s things that we have been storing since her death.
Mother lived with us for close to 20 years. When she passed away, she was living in an assisted living facility, and we took care of most of what had filled her rooms there within three weeks of her death.
I have coasted through a lot of the past year, knowing that I needed to attend to these things. I’ve been working on the steps necessary to close her trust, and my goal is to get this done by the end of the summer. I knew that I needed to go through everything in the basement to determine what should be passed on to my siblings, or to charity, but I dragged my feet about it.
I was making quilts for charity with the Scraps on a Mission ladies, and mentioned that I needed some healthy teenaged kids to carry things upstairs for me. Poof! Ask and ye shall receive! One of them talked to the youth pastor and he emailed me that very day!
So, this Sunday at noon, the kids will come to be our “slave labor.” They will help us, and we will make a contribution to their Mission Fund. Seems like a perfect swap to me.
I intend to spend time during the rest of the week marking what needs to be brought up, to make things go smoother. I can get some stuff boxed up, and move junk out of the way. The kids are even going to bring up binders and boxes of company information that need to go to the shredder.
Then, at 5:00, my sibs will be here to look through things, and anything we no longer wish to keep will go to one of the charities.
All these years, I’ve been talking about the dreaded basement, and I am finally going to get a start on it!
Thanks, Mom!!!!

I’m happy, and I’m not happy!
I get to lead the exercise class on Wednesday! YEA! It’s always fun to lead the class, and this time my exercise guru is going to be a part of the class. I expect the morning to be fun, so this is the part that I’m happy about.
What irritates me is the new rule the park district has about subs needing to work at least once every two months or they will be dumped from the employment rolls. What this means is that unless I work, I have to go through all the paperwork to be rehired each time our exercise guru might need a sub. Needless to say, all this paperwork can’t be accomplished on short notice.
What’s really upsetting me about this is that to avoid having to go through all the paperwork, I end up taking work away from this incredible woman who really should be leading the class.
I hope that the bean counters will be overrun with people having to re-register. It should be obvious that it’s cheaper to carry the occasional sub on the rolls than it is to have to continually re-do their paperwork. I’m not sure what benefits they expect to see from this policy. The only positive thing I can think of is that the woman I sub for will have a chance to see me at work.
I’m signed up to sub again at the end of July, and then I won’t have to sub again for two months. I’m glad the class seems to be comfortable with me leading them, but what a shame this policy takes away a really superb leader!