Happy Spring

Spring has finally arrived! The tulips and daffodils are up and I have pansies blooming from last year along with my yellow primrose. I cleaned out my flower bed and it’s ready for some spring planting. It will still be a few weeks before I get to it, but it’s coming. 

I also took a couple evenings this week and cleaned out my garage. It feels soooooo good to have that done. I had so much junk in there. I still have things to throw away and boxes to break down but my garbage can was filled. So over the next week or 2 I’ll get rid of the rest of the small things that should have been thrown away years ago. I did not even remember that I own 2 dutch ovens. I must have taken one from my mom’s house about 10 years ago when we cleaned it out when they moved, but I don’t have any idea where the second one came from. It’s still in its original box. Ha ha it’s not like I use them. You can cook with them in the oven though so maybe I’ll try some of that next fall/winter. 

We have one last weekend at my mom’s house. Saturday night it will be empty and clean and ready to sell. We’ve met with the realtor and she will have it listed shortly. We’re a long way from closing out the estate, but selling the house and car will be big steps. Sometimes I feel like I’m still in shock and can’t believe she’s gone. It’s a weird feeling. 

Reading Blues

When this year started, I had some high hopes for reading some of the bigger books on my shelf and was looking forward to where the mood would take me. Well, the mood has taken me to re-reading old favorites instead of new stuff. With everything else that’s going on, I’m just not in the mood to start new books. I only read 3 new to me books in March and one of them was a novella with only 87 pages. 

Ha ha ha I had put only 24 books in my Goodreads reading challenge because I didn’t want any pressure from numbers and it looks like that’s a good thing. I had a great January so I’m still at 15 books read, which is still one book a week on average and still better than what a lot of people read in a year. Plus, the fact is that I am reading and sometimes I’m reading a lot. It’s just not full books or new books.

I am a little antsy about it though because my brain knows this really isn’t normal, even though I know it won’t last. I just can’t settle on what book to read. Hmmm maybe I’ll just watch some k-dramas instead.

Easter

I had a nice Easter weekend. On Saturday, a lot of my family went with me to see Clue at the Hale Center Theater. It was fun and the play was really good. Because I had an extra ticket that was my mom's, my brother came with his whole family. 

We had Easter dinner at my sister's house. She cooked the ham I got from my company at Christmas. That's usually mom's job but my sister did a great job. It was really good. Guess that's her job from now on. :)  We are still trying to figure out how much food we all need to bring. I'm realizing that it was a big job for mom to do dinner for the whole family. We also got the kids to play spoons. They never had before. We actually had to Google just to make sure we remembered how to play it. We had fun. 

I am still really feeling mom's death when we do family dinner. We have a big empty spot where she should be.  

Sale

Well, we had the estate sale at my mom’s house today. It was a really long day. I can’t say we had a great turnout, but we had people there. Ha ha ha probably half of them were related to us. And then another bunch were mom’s neighbors. 

We posted it on FB marketplace and had a bunch of people ask questions but my sister wasn’t interested in answering all of them and it looks like most weren’t willing to drive out and see for themselves. Plus, the rules in the neighborhood said no garage sales and we got away with it because it was mostly indoors and we didn’t stick signs out all over the road. I think if we could have had a sign out, it would have got the casual people in. In hindsight, we probably should have posted a sign and then just taken it down if someone complained. Oh well. 

We really did get rid of a lot of things. The only really large items left are a dresser and the washer/dryer. Plus a few small things like side tables. What we didn’t get rid of is glassware (and we did get rid of some of it, but there was a lot) and a lot of the holiday decorations. She had so many decorations. So many. My sisters are still posting a few things for free on FB in case anybody is willing to take them. I just don’t care and am kind of done with it, at least for today for sure. 

So now we empty and clean it up a bit. LOL I’m not thinking about that for a few days, at least. 

Sorting and More Sorting

I’ve now spent a chunk of the day for the last 3 Saturdays cleaning out and sorting my mom’s house. Most of the family has been chipping in and helping. She had so much stuff in that house. It’s hard to believe that we already cleaned out when they moved and downsized. We’ve thrown out so much food storage that was either opened and we couldn’t figure out what it was, or it was expired. We thought we were almost done until today when we opened a few cupboards we hadn’t been in. She had so much home canned foods. We divided up a lot of it but just could not take it all. I have no idea where I’m going to put everything I brought home. But I will be enjoying some home canned food this year for sure. And planning meals around some of it to get it used up before it goes bad. 

She would kill us for the mess her house is in right now, but there’s no getting around it. We had to get stuff out of places to see what it is. We are planning right now to have an estate sale in 2 more weekends. Hopefully, the weather is nice. We are “selling” most of the stuff for free, if only somebody will take it. So I’ve got 2 more weekends of being over there and then we’ve decided to take a break over Easter weekend and then General Conference weekend. After that, we will be making runs to the thrift store and dump. We do hope to have it up for sale sometime in April though. 

I’ve got my own goal to start getting my crap in order as well. I bought a book I can write in to help me get it organized but I’m going to get it done this year for sure. My own house is kind of filled as it is. Ha ha ha… 

One Week Back

So I went back to work this week and it was nice to be on a schedule. Helps things feel a little more normal, even though there’s a big, gaping hole in my life. It was good to work. Still not sure how I’m really feeling. I think I’m finally starting to actually miss her. Not that I wasn’t before, but I didn’t see or talk to her every day so it’s normal to go for a few days without talking to her. Then it hits me again. And our family chat is silent now. I miss all her silly comments. 

We had a call with an estate lawyer today and I have an appointment set up to go into his office next week.  So the ball is rolling on that one. Tomorrow we will do some more cleaning out of the house. This is life now and how most of my weekends will be for a little bit until the house is empty. 

Cleaning out the House

Well, the funeral service for my mom was nice. I think she would have been happy with it. The chapel was full with friends and family. Myers Mortuary really has the process down and they ran everything so smoothly. It was so nice to be taken care of so well. It was not a large crowd at the luncheon but plenty of family there and it was nice to just talk to a lot of them. We really need to try and meet again somewhere other than funerals. 

I expected to be numb on Friday but was actually antsy and wanted to do something. So I did the project I had been thinking about to turn my spare bedroom/office into just an office. My sister and nephew helped get the bed out of there (it went to my sister’s house) and then I took one of mom’s chairs. I’ve got one more small table type of thing ordered, which is going to be a plant stand of sorts. And I started cleaning out the closet and bins that were stored under the bed. I’ve still got some sorting to do, but it feels good to have started. 

Today we all met at mom’s house to start cleaning out the food and food storage. We cleaned out so much from the old house before they moved here, but I cannot believe what she was storing. We threw a lot of stuff away. It was open and some of the grains we didn’t even know what they were. I have a bunch of her home canned food now. I’m trying to be intentional in the stuff I take from her home. I don’t need more stuff just because it’s nice or was hers. Ha ha I talked myself out of some bread pans and when I got home,  I found they were the same as what I have. So I need to be careful and remember I’m trying to clean out my house as well. We still have a really long way to go, but it was nice to all be there working together as a family. 

So I have a lot of pasta and fruit and vegetables to eat up now. I’ve eaten out too much these last 2 weeks so I think it will be nice to start cooking again. I think I can eat pretty healthy with all the food I now have (including what I had before) and just shopping for a few fresh things when I need them. For sure, I will be meal planning around what I have in the pantry.