Moving, hail recovery, and chaos

 This moving and hail recovery business never stops. It comes in drips and dribbles, forcing me to deal with things like insurance. Tonight the man who cleans my Oriental rugs brought them back, and we asked him to take the big Uncle Bob weaving with him. It was mounted on a board, apparently very thoroughly, and he and Jordan spent maybe 30 minutes taking out tacks, etc. He made joked all the while, and Jordan laughed appropriately—I couldn’t hear him. But we finally got it off the board and, since he told me he can do anything when I asked if my rugs came out all right, he cheerfully took it off. My brother is going to see about hanging it in his house—Cindy thinks maybe over the guest bed. Tomorrow I have to figure out how to send the bill to the insurance.

Books are still a major problem. A friend came tonight and took my set of Time/Life Old West books (missing one volume—I have no idea who I loaned it to), plus some other books for his son who reads voraciously about the American West. Jordan is holding a closed book sale on May 18 for Lily B. moms and has the coffee table piled high with books I can discard. She wants to “stage” the house before then—this is of course a sort of foreign concept to me, and I’m not sure how she’ll stage all this chaos. But I have great faith in what she can accomplish.

The guest room is a mess except that it has the double bunk beds in it. Jordan and Jacob slept there last night, so she could take Sophie out in the night for me. Problem with that is Sophie barks at me, so I got to do all the honors and clean the kitchen while waiting for Sophie to do her business—actually I don’t think she needs to go out; she just gets bored. Jordan said she heard me and lay in bed thinking, “I should get up and do this.” But she didn’t. When I woke up Jordan, Jacob and Christian were all here, so I thought I’d just stay in bed until they cleared out, because Christian was going to walk Jacob to school. At eight, I heard this, “Juju! Juju! I need to leave.” His parents had gone. I jumped out of bed, hugged him, and sent him off, watching out the window as best I could until he got to the crossing guard. I was in no shape to stand on the porch and watch him as I usually do.

Foot is better tonight though hugely swollen, but arms and shoulders are really sore from pushing myself up from the floor. I said tonight I feel like I’m always whining about something.

Tomorrow will be a better day. A friend is coming to spend the night and Mother’s Day with us, and Jacob will have a buddy spend the night. I’m glad Linda will be here to help with two little boys.

The best I can say is that life is never dull around here! Sleep tight, my friends.