I have been trying to help my parents downsize for the past two days, along with my sister. We have filled multiple trash cans and several carloads to goodwill, and you wouldn't even know we have put a dent in it. We haven't even touched the garage or the storage shed. Or tried to get them to part with hard stuff. Like, "please can I throw this expired food away even though you I Sisti it's still good" and "no taking your random old books to the used bookstore to get $7 or something would not be a good use of our time, let's donate them to goodwill and if you want I will hand you $20". We were throwing away bank statements and retuned chcks from more than 40 years ago for fucks sake. And that's not touching my dads stamp collection. Or the large boxes of photos and memorabilia and slides and and and and

13 is so much worse than 12, too.

Yep. And certainly it's not helped by the fact that I need to be up at 5am again tomorrow.

shrift, I hope you're not still working!

Uh. I took a moment to stop at the library and quickly shove some dinner in my face, but...

Blessings upon you, shrift

meara, my grandparents/mother's house was the same way. Including the 40 year old cancelled checks. Nightmare.

All right. I've sent the "some shit went down" update, so now I'm going to find something relaxing to do for the 20 minutes I have before I should start going to bed.

I had pre-check both ways, and when I asked what I had to take out of bag, the agent said "Nothing."

TSA Pre-Check doesn't require taking anything out of bags or off your feet. It's like being treated like an actual human being or something.

Oh this month. This month has been very stressful so far, and I've been having the nightly anxiety dreams to prove it. The unspecified ~ma is still needed for ND's cashflow issues with his company, and I need finish-my-thesis-and-shorter-verson-for-educaton-magazine-by-Sunday ~ma.

Oh, meara. Argh.

I'm going to recommend these people that I used twice for my folks: Caring Transitions, they're a national franchise chain that specialize in helping seniors downsize. They'll move them, help sort their stuff, and sell or donate the excess. They were absolutely brilliant when dealing with my folks.

Happy birthday, Sox!

Good luck on the interview, Scrappy!

I just mixed up a huge double-batch of pie dough for this pie, which I am making for the division summer BBQ on Thursday. I've made it twice before, so I think it'll come out, but it's always a bit stressful rolling out a crust into something that large...

Happy belated-birthday, Sox!

Much, much ~ma to all who need it.

As some of you may remember, my mother is currently with her sister in AZ. Their father died when my mother was two years old (my aunt was a bit older). Apparently my aunt has a diary my grandfather wrote. After telling us a bit about it, my mom said that "it's nice to suddenly have a father, not just pictures". I now have a bit of allergies about it.

Mmm, pie.

Thanks for the rec Suela—right now we are still in he "try to work with us" phase. My mom keeps talking about how she's going to move and downsize but actually making that a reality keeps being postponed for the future. She's now saying maybe this fall she'll go look at places near my sister (who moved to South Carolina). But I don't know what that would mean for actually MOVING....

What a wonderful thing to have, Shir. (Kind of the opposite of 40 yeara of returned checks.)