GetSheila

I love a challenge! (not so true these days, it turns out)

Let the Week-of-Fixing-Up-Mom's-House begin!

So far, I've...uh, purchased paint. I started washing the walls but, you know what? IT'S HARD. Well, maybe not "hard" but they're so big and the sponge is so tiny and they haven't been washed in a decade and...hey, I know!...I'll call my house cleaner Ofelia!

She graciously agreed to come today and wash the walls while I do other Very Important Things, like pack up all the leftover garage sale items for donation I planned to do weeks ago but didn't because, um, I was feeling overwhelmed.

Actually, I am feeling MUCH better now that the Big Ass Garage Sale is over, whereby we got rid of a buttload of stuff, most at 25 cents a piece. Did I mention we made $500? At 25 cents a piece, I think "buttload" is completely appropriate.

Now begins painting the living room, hallway and master bedroom, replacing the carpet in those room and replacing the linoleum in the kitchen and dining room. I'm not doing the flooring myself, btw, because I am not BRAIN DAMAGED.

I'm just a little sad we couldn't do all this fixing up while mom was living there so she could enjoy it. But there was way too much stuff to move back then and no open space in which to move it. (See above regarding "buttload.")

But, onward! Get the house ready for the new tenant! Donate the leftover garage sale items and feel all self-righteous and do-gooder! Organize all the stuff that is now at my house that mom Just Couldn't Part With!

I don't think "vacation" is the right word for this week I am taking away from the office.

As if the 1%ers didn’t have a bad name already

Dear Cheryl in Bend, Oregon:

I’m so glad my sister Karen was able to help you obtain your new dog from California, a sweet blue Queensland heeler.

After paying $200 to the breeder/trainer in California, I can see how the idea of paying another $600 to have the dog transported up to you in Bend would have been rather daunting. So lucky Karen was heading back to Idaho from Central California so you could save some money!

I must admit, I worked Karen rather hard down here. Our 84 year old mother has been ill so I moved her in with me and Karen and I spent a week and a half clearing out her house. Three dumpsters, many truck loads back and forth to my house, and a giant pile o’ garage sales items later, we had it done. Then came the washing of the kitchen items we were keeping, laundering of mom’s stored clothing, and organizing my garage and house so everything would have a place. Whew!

Karen had a lot to take back with her after clearing out mom’s house, so we strategically packed her car to the gills. Even so, she had to leave some things behind to make room for your dog but the gas money from you would help defray some of the cost of the trip so it was a sacrifice she was willing to make.

Imagine her surprise when the “gas money” you gave her was a mere $10. TEN DOLLARS. For transporting a dog, in the back seat of her car, over 500 miles from Modesto, CA to Bend, OR at a total of over 9 hours.

She saved you $600 in transport fees – or the alternative of having to spend your personal time and money to drive down to California and return home with the dog – and all you thought it was worth was $10? 500 miles at the IRS standard mileage rate of $0.51 equals $255. AND you were disgruntled you had to drive 15 extra miles to meet her at your mutual friend’s house rather than CostCo because, after all, she had only just driven ten and a half hours with two dogs and a car full of childhood memories so what would another 15 miles have been (plus another 15 to get back to the friend’s house?)

You live in Bend, OR so you are financially well off. Poor people don’t live in Bend. Neither do they spend $200 for a dog nor contemplate spending $600 to transport it. Your ungracious behavior in this matter and disrespectful treatment of your fellow human being is appalling. Shame on you!

At the very least, please immediately send Karen a check for $190 which, combined with the $10 “gas money” you gave her, amounts to the same fee you paid for the dog. That would be fair and right and still save you $400 in transport fees.

If you choose not to do so, please explain how you came up with a figure of $10 as equitable compensation for the service Karen provided for you. She was too nice – and too tired – to argue with you. Also kind of hard to do so from the shower since you showed up while she was washing the travel away and couldn’t be bothered to wait for her to get out to introduce yourself and properly thank her.

Do the right thing. Or prove the unwashed 99% masses right. Your choice.

Regards,

Sheila Livingston

 

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Annual Mom Cleaning: Computer

AND THEN THERE WAS MOM’S COMPUTER

I thought it was time to get mom a new computer. It was super slow, her printer magically uninstalled itself, all kinds of weird things were happening yet she had no viruses or trojans.

Ugh!

I followed my nephew Daniel’s advice and uninstalled the security software and a couple of add-on spy searches/cleaners and replaced them all with Microsoft Security Essentials. It’s free. FREE.

It still found no viruses or trojans but, lo and behold, her computer runs much faster now. All that other crap must have been slowing it down. It’s is 5+ years old – a virtual grandpa in computer years – but mom is familiar with Windows XP and, at 83, a change to Windows 7 would throw her into a tizzy.

Old people don’t like change.

Besides, we’re already forcing her kicking and screaming to have cataract and glaucoma surgery next month as well as see a specialist about possibly having knee surgery so she isn’t in so much pain. Let’s not push her over the edge, shall we?

The best part is I cleaned up and rearranged her desk, gave her my 26” flat panel TV as a bigger and better monitor, got her a webcam, and set her up on Skype.

Grandma 21st Century.

She no longer has to scroll back and forth to read a page even with the screen resolution set for to 800 x 600 pixels, the lowest you can go, making the print the largest.

Old people can’t see very well.

I’ll post a picture of the new setup as soon as I get my hands on it. I took it on mom’s camera so who knows if she’s uploaded it to her computer yet because it’s hard for old people to remember how to take that tiny card-thingy out of the camera and which slot to put it in on the computer and whether it goes up or down.

I’d better stop now. Old people bitch-slap younger people who make fun of them for being old.

 

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Annual Mom Cleaning: Fresno Interlude

We took two day-trips to Fresno: one to move our sis Kate’s furniture off the carpet in preparation for carpet cleaning and another to put it all back.

Have you used Magic Sliders or Ez Moves furniture gliders? THEY ARE AWESOME. You put them under the heaviest, most awkward piece of furniture and it slides along with hardly any effort at all.

Giant bookcase stuffed with books? Piece of cake.

L-shaped computer desk? No problem, as long as you remember to put the sliders under not only all four points of the two ends but also the part that touches the floor at the L-joint. I learned that lesson several years ago but, not to worry, a little wood glue and some extra screws and braces and IT’S PERFECTLY FINE. No one’s going to look under there anyway.

We were done so quickly moving furniture the first day, Kate decided to go through her closet and bag up a bunch of stuff for donation.

Boy howdy, did she go to town, and this is only bags, shoes, and belts with a few tops. She came up with about a dozen more bags of clothing on the return trip.

After he gastric bypass surgery, she just keeps getting skinnier and skinnier. Woot!

When she first texted that she wanted to clean out and organize her walk-in closet, I wrote back, “Sounds exciting!” She thought I was being sarcastic, but I was not. LOVE THAT ORGANIZING.

 

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Annual Mom Cleaning: Garage

SHOVELED OUT THE GARAGE

Yes, “shovel” is a metaphor, except I really did use a shovel at one point. I should have taken before-and-after pictures but I left my camera in Fresno and was too focused on getting all that crap out of there to think straight. Here’s what we did:

1. Removed a buttload of (mostly empty) cardboard boxes, many of which we cut up for recycling but a fair amount were water damaged and literally disintegrating so we threw them in the garbage. (Yes mom, we THREW THEM IN THE GARBAGE. Let the wailing and gnashing of teeth commence.)
2. Took a shovel to what was left of the disintegrating boxes that were now stuck to the floor along with several years accumulation of dirt. Where the dirt came from I’m not quite sure. It may have simply been the biodegraded remains of the boxes and whatever was formerly in them.
3. Shop-vac’d up the loosened dirt, a forest of spider webs, and I’m pretty sure several black widows. (That reminds me: I need to empty the shop vac before the widows find their way out through the hose and set up shop in my garage. BRB.)
   (**************)
   I’m back. I got a little carried away at mom’s and vacuumed all the gunk out from behind and underneath the dryer, too. Have you looked under your dryer lately? Be afraid.
4. Karen took everything out of the built-in cabinets, culled, then replaced what was left in an orderly fashion. You know what was left? Mostly old glassware – Remember when you’d get a free glass every time you gassed up your car? Yes, youngsters, that really used to happen. Sometimes it was a free doll, each representing a different country – but also old Coffee-Mate canisters, the jumbo kind. She won’t let us throw them away because they are perfect for the homemade Chex Mix she gives away every Christmas. We counted: she has 30 canisters. People: if she gives you Chex Mix this year, DO NOT RETURN THE EMPTY CANISTER.
5. Mom said Karen could have any canning jars she found since mom no longer cans. At last count, she was up to 2 unopened boxes of smaller jars and 8 grocery bags of loose jars of various sizes.
6. Moved the old end tables back inside that match the coffee table we used to put pillows on when we were kids and run and slide across like an indoor slip-and-slide. One end table went back in the living room and the other to the guest bedroom as a side table. They are the hollow kind with doors so she can shove stuff inside them and out of sight. Though I suspect she will also pile stuff on top of them, hoarder-style. ::sigh::
7. Lastly, we moved all the stuff that had been piled up in front of the built-in work area on one side of the garage to the newly vacant and clean area on the other side. Now you can walk around both sides of the car without tripping over anything. It’s a miracle!

Do I know how to vacation, or what?

 

 

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Annual Mom Cleaning: Pruned

This was all Karen. I was merely the dragger of branches over to the other side of the house where we later chopped them into smaller pieces so they would fit in the green bin. Or not, leaving a giant pile to be stuffed in future bins each week until the pile is gone. Fun!

The best part was when the nice lady across the street came over to offer us her saw on a long pole so we could reach the high branches and brought her two little white puff ball dogs along with her. Poodles? Lhasa Apsos? They chased Jessie all over the place just trying to catch up to her to say hi but she was having none of that. She is twice as big as both of them combined but kept running to hide behind Karen.

In addition to pruning a few trees in mom’s yard, Karen went to town on the two large trees in the parking strip because the branches hung down so low they would brush the tops of cars that parked there and the street sweeper would bypass the area completely.

Would someone please explain to me how the City can require trees to be planted in the parking strip, only allow certain varieties, plant them themselves, but then require the homeowner to do all the maintenance from watering to pest control to pruning?

I read the Atwater Muni Code regarding trees but found no exception for little old ladies who have neither the physical capability to perform the maintenance themselves nor the funds to pay someone else to do it for them. Bummer-drag.

 

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Annual Mom Cleaning: Garden

Mom loves gardens and growing things but can’t do as much physical gardening as she used to.

My uncle A.C. built three taller raised beds to replace the shorter ones Karen built many years ago that were finally falling apart, but the pathways in between had gone to hell in the few short months since the new ones were built.

“But the poppies are so pretty,” mom said.

“Yes they are, but one bed is already full of them and do you really need the rest that have flowed over the edges and made so many babies they clog the walkway completely?” the mean old daughter Sheila said.

1. Removed poppies and spider plants from all walkways.
2. Removed additional spider plants that had popped up EVERYWHERE ELSE since last summer’s excavation. (I originally made a typo and wrote that as “pooped up” and thought about leaving it because, really, it’s like the spider plants get up and walk around during the night, pooping out baby spider plants all over the place.)
3. Mom potted up a half dozen of the spider plants for my friend Micky, thereby keeping her busy and distracted whilst we dug up and threw plants on the compost pile willy nilly.
4. Dug up the cement pavers and re-laid them in a new path that goes all around the garden. We had to borrow from the inner walkways to complete the outer one but at least she can walk all around the exterior now without getting muddy. (Note to self: get more pavers for mom.)

**********************

I wrote this a few days ago and proof-read it Sunday evening after a full day of working in my own backyard. I can say with confidence that while gardening gives one a sense of accomplishment, I do not really enjoy it. More specifically, my body does not like it.

I’m going to shower now, do a little relaxing yoga, then put on a full body cast.

 

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Annual Mom Cleaning: Patio

Cleaning a patio sounds rather easy but let me describe my mom’s patio for you:

• Studs every 18 inches;
• West wall comprised of the house’s fireplace brick exterior and sliding glass door;
• Wood siding encloses the bottom half on the remaining 3 sides;
• Screen encloses the top half;
• Clear plastic covers the screen sections topped with white lattice to hold it in place and keep the wind from ripping it down;
• Doors in the north and south walls;
• Two levels of shelves run the length of the north and east walls to hold plants and bins full ‘o stuff;
• A makeshift kitty apartment complex takes up the fireplace exterior portion of the west wall, consisting of a bi-level kitty condo atop an old door held up by two bi-level kitty condos atop another old door held up by cement blocks. Myrtle the Turtle for kitties.
• The roof leaks;
• Various garden tools and free-standing plant stands full of plants occupy the remaining floor space in addition to cat food and water bowls and the occasional stray cat toy.
• Oh, and a giant bin holding cat food bags balances on the step that leads into the house, propped up by a block of wood at the overhang.

(I suddenly feel very ghetto.)

We decided to treat it like an archaeological dig:

1. Excavate. Removed a bazillion bins full of stuff like plant pots, peat moss, garden insecticides, etc., but first we had to remove:
   • All the loose stuff mom had stacked on top of the bins. We tell her and tell her she already has plenty of those styrofoam meat trays to use as plant pot water catchers inside the bin marked “drip trays” but if she can’t see it (and bin labels don’t count, apparently,) in her mind she doesn’t have any.
   • The bi-level cat apartment complex made out of garden bricks, old doors, and various carpeted cat condos with kitty beds and old throw rugs tossed about for comfort.
   • The plants – OH THE PLANTS! My uncle installed a couple levels of built-in shelving on two walls so she would have a place to put all her plant starts and boy howdy does she have plants. Mostly spider plants. Did you know each one of those shoots a spider plant sends out with a miniature spider plant on the end of it is a new plant looking for a place to establish itself? Mom cannot bear to clip it off. She must start a new plant. Spider plants are the bunnies of the plant world: before you know it, you are overrun with offspring.
2. Expose the bones. Removed the dirty and cat-peed-on plastic laid over the shelving (under the plants) to keep the wood from getting wet and rotting.
3. Wash the bones. Hosed out the patio, from roof to floor.
4. Remove the mummy’s outer layer. The patio used to be screen from top to bottom but several years ago my uncle installed wood siding on the bottom half. Every couple of years I put up clear plastic on the top screened half and top it with white lattice for stabilization. It makes the patio sort of a greenhouse in the winter for the plants and a comfy shelter for the stray cats. (Don’t get me started on mom’s backyard feeding of the feral cats.) So we took down the lattice to store for the summer and ripped down the decrepit, disintegrating plastic that come apart in bits. It was a plastic snow storm for awhile there.
5. Clean the bones again. Hosed out the patio again, from roof to floor. More dirt came down! Guess it needed a soaking period.
6. Dissect the remains. Hosed down all the bins and things we previously removed from the patio, tossing a buttload of stuff that was either broken or otherwise damaged or of which she already had plenty. (Like all those excess styrofoam meat trays.)
7. Assemble the skeleton. Put the newly cleaned stuff back in the patio in a nice organized fashion.
8. Display the exhibit. Brought mom out and opened every bin so she could see what she has, in a futile attempt to prevent her from continuing to accumulate things she doesn’t really need. I believe she said, “Yes, mother” a few times the same way I say, “Yes, okay” to my boss Ed when he wants me to do something his way and I know full well I am going to continue to do it my way. He usually ends up agreeing later my way is better but not always, at which point we both raise our voices and much gesticulating occurs. Then we calm down and it’s like nothing ever happened. Just like when I go back to mom’s later and she has completely ignored my organization system and continued to collect things of which she already has plenty.

Sadly, the patio looked depressingly the same when we were done. But at least we know it’s clean and the past year’s accumulation of unneeded leftover food containers have been swept away so she can start on this year’s batch with lots of open space in which to stack it.

Love you mom, even when our polar opposite organizational styles meet head on in a spectacular collision of “BUT WHY?” and “BECAUSE!” and we make each other crazy.

 

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Annual Mom Cleaning: Overview

My sister Karen’s annual visit from Idaho is over. WAAAAAAAAA!

She comes down for a week or two each year and we do chores at mom’s house. There were time constraints this year due to Karen getting sick at the beginning of her vacation, her decision to drive rather than fly because she can no longer go anywhere without her new dog Jessie (who is adorable, btw,) and our sister Kate going along for the road trip, which meant they had to start the drive back earlier than expected so she could catch a specific flight home.

We felt a bit like slackers but, now that I have reviewed everything we did, I am quite happy with what we accomplished:

1. Cleaned the patio;
2. Tidied up the garden;
3. Pruned trees;
4. Shoveled out the garage;
5. Fresno interlude to help Kate with some chores;
6. De-louse mom’s computer.

Karen and I still feel a bit like slackers for not getting to the part where we wanted to re-roof the patio and tear down the decrepit storage shed but sometimes I think we share Delusions of Super Woman Syndrome.

I’ll log a separate post for each of the above scintillating adventures.

 

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Stepford Sister Strikes Again

I spent the day at my mom's with my sister Karen emptying out the patio, removing the lattice and shredded plastic used to keep it warm in winter (gotta keep those stray cats happy,) hosing everything down inside and out, then putting it all back together again.

It looked depressingly the same when we were done, only with less spiders.

Not satisfied we had “done enough,” we then cleared the garden paths of rampant poppies and spider plants and dug up and re-laid the pavers so you can actually walk AROUND the entire garden. What a novel idea!

We then adjourned to my house where we showered:

• Karen with Jesse, baby shampoo, and screams every time Jesse did the shake all over thing and flung water everywhere;
• Me, alone.

Being the ultimate hostess, I made a light dinner of salad and flatbread pizza. It doesn’t matter the pizza came from a box in the freezer and the salad from a bag. I did add onions and raisins and sunflower seeds to the salad. That’s something.

I’ll vacuum in pumps and pearls next week for Suzie Homemaker penance.

As the last remaining people on earth who had never seen Hellboy, we then did so and are now obsessed with obtaining the sequel. Hope it’s good. Though how can it possibly be bad with a giant, buff red guy with a deep and sexy voice? So he has horns, big deal. So did my ex-husband.

When the movie finished around 7:30, we were going to take a well deserved soak in the hot tub only to discover it had started to rain. Drat. What to do? While I contemplated finding something else to watch on TV or, well, anything that would keep me parked on my ass, Karen pulled some pita dough out of my fridge that she whipped up in about ten seconds the other day and baked up a batch of pitas. Every single one puffed up beautifully in the oven. She would want me to tell you that because apparently it doesn't always happen.

I don't think Karen lives in Idaho. I think she lives in Stepford Valley with her Stepford dog and Mr. Stepford.

And a bunch of Stepford chickens.

 

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