Down the Home Stretch

After a few phone calls to various auction houses, charities, and apartment managements, plus confabbing with various siblings, I have determined that we will be able to vacate Mom's apartment by the weekend. Hoo. Ray. If we pay November's rent (and a prorated fee for the first few days of December) we can have all Mom's things moved, let them take the cleaning charges out of the security deposit and be able to pay off the funeral and other final expenses with the proceeds of the sale. There'll be a little left to parcel out to various credit card companies (who should have known better than send Mom that many charge cards, she had 5 from Chase alone) and that'll be that. I will be so relieved to have that settled. Then I can turn to at home and shovel out paths through my living room and basement, and then get started de-crap-ifying my house so if Sputnik drops on Durwood and me when we're out eating our way around Sam's (or engaging in some other old person weekend pursuit) our beloved children won't have to deal with our mess. But I'm not getting rid of any tools or sewing stuff or yarn or writing stuff. Maybe not watercolors either (that counts as writing stuff since I took it up as novel research). Certainly all of Durwood's Penzeys bottles are safe (he inherited Mom's collection of at least one jar of every single herb and spice that Penzeys sells or ever has sold, it's kind of frightening). I am considering renting a small flamethrower, reducing all crap to ash and then using the leaf blower to swoosh it outside, but I suspect the arson investigators would object, and how would I keep the things I want to keep safe? I'll have to think about it. Maybe if I wet everything down... but then I'd have to dry things out and books don't take well to being dunked, the paints would all melt away, and the tools... well, maybe carrying things to the dump is the way to go after all. These are photos of the apartment before the sale resumed on Sunday morning. It was too crazy to take photos of Saturday morning.



No writing last night, I was just too beat.
--Barbara