Mr Handy Pants

That is my new nickname: Mr. Handy Pants. I took apart the vacuum cleaner, cleaned it and put it back together again. My mom's aide was vacuuming and the vacuum started to smoke, which neither of us thought was a good thing. So, I decided to de-hair it. As you may or may not know, I have pretty, long hair. I could have said pretty long, but it is pretty. Sometimes. Long hair is anathema to vacuum cleaners. It took about twenty minutes to take the thing apart, clean it of hair and put it back together again. Yay!

And it is done - the first stage of "operation redistribution" has been accomplished. The living room is now only cluttered with things that were here before I filled it with stuff from NC. Yay! Next steps, the dining room and front hall - not necessarily in that order. Then, cleaning up the two rooms on the second floor that got piled with stuff. The one room, the red room/linen closet room, will be easy. It is filled with empty stuff - boxes and plastic totes. Break some of those down - toss the rest in the attic. The other room, the orange room at the head of the stairs isn't too hard either. Just have to schlepp the boxes into the attic and find them all places to hang out for the nonce. I bought some labels at Staples (almost rhymed) which I found with the help of lovely Margaret. I plan to slap something on the boxes to indicate when they were touched and a clue to their contents. My one minor concern is that once the boxes get up there, that they will languish and fade from memory. What I really need to do is go through the other 100 boxes and containers that are already in the attic from the move and sort/redstribute their contents. But that is low on the list. The front porch gets done before the attic gets attempted.

At Staples, they advertised for a part time position in the tech support area. I was tempted - but I don't know that I can manage 20 hours. I might apply anyway, just for the experience of applying.

Oh, for people thinking of visiting, my friend Grace will be here the weekend of June 7-10. This does not preclude other people visiting, it just means that there will be one fewer bed available for sleepy heads that weekend.

Trying to figure out the wording to ask my brother not to bring his family with him when he comes to visit at the end of the month. I asked on the Memory People Facebook page if I was crazy to ask that of him and they all agreed that I was not. Though they did suggest to try a tactful approach at first. What, did they think I would be untactful? Probably... And hey, it won't be the end of the world if he chooses to bring them anyway. He, like most of the people in our family, likes to have his own way whenever possible.

Trying to think of other exciting things that happened yesterday, though the first two are pretty hard to top. I did go out for errands, saw the nice Staples worker (see above), bought broccoli at Tops for the coupon to Pedula's where I bought sherry and scotch (mom likes a little scotch in her soda water once every couple of weeks) and got a few empty boxes. I also spoke with a Pedula who did an excellent job of pretending to remember my family. We have been going to that liquor store for, well, a long time. My father used to frequent the place and he died in 1967...

It is early in the morning on Tuesday. Mom got dressed yesterday, all by herself without help or prompting (god, I am so lucky she is still so self capable) even though it wasn't until today that we were going to the eye place. And she really wants to go out to dinner - so we will probably go to Friendly's tonight. I am sort of dreading it, but we will survive it. And it is good to see her interested in going out!