Here it is Monday morning, about 8:45 a.m. I have set myself a schedule to have my blogs posts up by 7:30 a.m., so I missed it. Sometimes I write my posts ahead and schedule them to post at that time on Monday or Friday. Last night, however, I got busy doing other things and, well, here it is late Monday morning and no blog post.
I’m not quite ready with a couple of different posts, one a book review, another part 2 of a prior post. So I’ll just say I’m staying busy. Writing and marketing of my books are taking a lot of time. I’ve been trying to write 1,500 words a day on The Teachings, and, except for weekend, I’ve been successful at that. I’ve also been involved with an on-line “school” for doing Amazon ads. I blew off a lot of the classes since this is the third time I’ve taken the school, but I’m looking at some of them, including this morning. I won’t do a lot with it this time, but I’ll do some new ads on a different book.
Well, while I was typing my rheumatologist’s office called. My appointment last week was cancelled for the doc’s convenience and couldn’t schedule me until April, which was okay with me. They called now to say they had two different times today, one this morning, one this afternoon. I was about to take the afternoon one when I checked my calendar and saw I have out pest control service scheduled for today. I totally forgot about that. So, I’ll have to spend time getting ready for that.
My listings at FB Marketplace are continuing to generate interest. I had people come by to look at books several times this week, including yesterday. That doesn’t mean our clutter is greatly reduced, but it is some. In the storeroom I have cleared off one full shelf unit and almost a second. These we will give to our daughter next time we go there (possibly in February) to replace some sagging plastic ones. The small amount of de-cluttering feels really, really good. The work ahead is massive, but progress feels good.
So here I am with a post for today. It’s breakfast time. I made two stock trades, which is all I’ll do today. Small trades: low risk, not much money involved, which are the type I like. It’s time for breakfast, then to finish that class I interrupted, then get on with my writing for the day, then get ready for the bug man. All in a day’s work.
That sounds too flippant, to call last week a “whacky” week. It was an awful week as far as our nation goes. For me in my personal life, “whacky” is an apt description.
Not that anything went wrong, at least not terribly wrong. The worst that happened to me was a dead battery. I drove to a haircut appointment on Friday, the first haircut I had since May. I took the Green Monster, our old minivan. It’s been a little hard to start and I thought it might be that the battery was old. But it started and I drove it the 3/4 miles to the beauty shop. Got my haircut, came out, and it wouldn’t start. So I walked home and let it sit overnight.
I considered having my neighbor drive me up there and jump start me then drive it to the Dodge dealership 4 miles north, but on Saturday? I decided instead to call AAA. They now have a battery service. I requested that, and they came so fast I barely had time to walk up there to meet them. Fifteen minutes and some money later and I was up and running. That battery was six or seven years old, so I was on borrowed time with it. And, that service didn’t cost a whole lot more than going to Wal-Mart, buying a battery, and putting it in myself.
During the week I actually got back to significant work on my novel, The Teachings. Over Tuesday through Friday I added over 5,000 words to it. I haven’t had that kind of writing production in a long time. I left it on Friday with the next scene clearly in my mind, hoping to add another two to three thousand words over the weekend. But instead I added…nothing. Other tasks consumed my time.
On Saturday, in addition to taking care of the van, I did maintenance around the house. The shower door handle needed attention, and was easily fixed. I tried to glue down some old wallpaper that is coming loose but it wouldn’t stick, even with gorilla glue. A window handle needed put back in place, and I was able to find screws that reasonably matched and got that done. While at it I went around the house and checked the other window handles, tightening a few. I also did some more straightening/arranging of my miscellaneous hardware, and identified some more I can sell.
We continue with decluttering, going through old Christmas cards and letters received over a 28 year period. Few are worth saving. Why we saved them I don’t know. But that is slowly being cleared out. I keep getting some inquiries about items I have listed for sale on FB Marketplace. Sold some books on Thursday, but a freak snowstorm that day kept two other scheduled buyers away or I might have sold more.
My reading was progressing well early in the week. I read ten or more pages a day in C.S. Lewis’s letters, with great enjoyment. But I read less over the weekend, my concentration waning. Our evening reading is in a Philip Yancey book, and we make good progress in that. We lost reading time two days as I had evening Zoom meetings on church-related tasks.
One of those tasks is our church’s 100th anniversary committee. I was asked if I would write a book to be distributed as part of the celebration, which is in October. That may seem like a lot of time, but it’s not. Thursday evening I went up to the church to retrieve the archives. Saturday I went through about 5 to 10% of them. It’s going to be a huge task. I have a timeline already started, though with much more needed. I probably need to spend some time every day on this, and will do some today.
My weight and blood sugars were a little whacky last week. My eating was fairly good and I lost some weight and had good blood sugars, but the blood sugars didn’t track as well to my eating and exercise as I thought they would; not sure why.
I could go on. Prepared on Saturday for and taught adult Life Group yesterday. Did a little genealogy research. And, as you would expect, made a few Facebook posts or comments on Wednesday, now estranged from a family member over it. This too shall pass. I will post about that, maybe in my next post of possibly not until next week. While I’m hoping the madness (yes, I consider it madness) has stopped, I’m hearing things that concern me that it hasn’t. More on that later.
So, here it is another week, the 2nd of 2021. Normal tasks are before me. God is on the throne. I will continue to serve Him, regardless of what of what swirls around me.
On Friday this will all expand. Additional tables will be set up and moved out into the driveway and yard. I hope much of it goes.
For the next two weeks (at least), my life is going to be too full to keep up a regular blog schedule. I normally post on Monday and Friday. For a little while, however, I will likely do just once a week, probably on Monday.
What’s going on, you wonder? Since July my wife and I have been in the process of downsizing our possessions (not yet our house). We came to the realization that we have too much stuff, accumulated over 46 years of marriage and retrieved from the houses of three parents upon their deaths—or their own downsizing. We had to get rid of it.
This is a cute horse. Pinch its ear and it whinnies and moves it’s head and tail. But they grandkids don’t use it when they come. It fetched $25 on FB Marketplace, and some young child probably loves it now.
I started with my mother-in-law’s papers in July. Some I was able to discard, such as old health records and old financial records after shredding, but much my wife has to see before we can do that. She’s been in the process of that since my sorting gave her enough to look at. Things are being put into recycling. Cards and letters will all have to go, a very few saved for sentimental value.
Of course, I interrupted that work to transcribe the letter from our Kuwait years. They are now in the cloud and backed up. Someday, when life calms down, I’ll put them in book form for children and grandchildren. They aren’t great literature. No, simply a record of our time there. Someday I’ll do the same with the Saudi years.
Tools from Dad’s house. I’ve been surprised at how well tools are selling. Sure takes a lot of messaging, however, to get the sale made.
Slowly, slowly, we have been getting Esther’s things out of her room or our large basement storage room and making them ready for sale. Shelf decorations, boxed crystal, books, and clothes are all being gone through. It’s a slow process. I can only do so much and Lynda’s health and strength doesn’t allow her to work longer. She’s actually doing very well with it. I’d make the decisions on many things, but I know she has to be the one to do it.
Getting rid of Esther’s stuff, stuff that we don’t want or need and our children don’t want or need led me to look at our own stuff. While waiting on my wife’s strength to come back, I realized I had lots of stuff to get rid of that had come to us from Dad’s house back in 1997-98, stuff I never used. I wrote about this process before. All I’ll say now is last Saturday I found another tray of tools that can be sold.
But, it seems, no one wants this old, French postcard. Alas. Not sure where or how we will get rid of the postcards. We took hundreds of them from the house we owned in NC that had been left by the previous owner.
For all of this we are using Facebook Marketplace as our primary sales venue. For now, the only sales venue. I like the success we are having, but it is a slow process. Gent a new item listed and approved and almost immediately you will get “Is this item still available?” You tell them yes in a return message, and…never hear from them again. For one set of tools this resulted in five different people showing interest, even to the point of making appointments to come see and probably buy them. To the garage I went at the appointed time and…nothing. They didn’t show. Didn’t message that they wouldn’t show. Next day I get a message saying oh sorry but I just couldn’t come. Meanwhile I’ve told two other people that the tools are spoken for. Trying to be fair with buyers is turning into a lengthy and frustrating process.
This is a hard one. This tea and coffee brewer was a wedding gift for Lynda’s grandmother back in 1924. Hard to part with it, but we have decorations in abundance. Alas, so far almost no views of it on FB Marketplace.
Slow, frustrating, even maddening. But things are selling. First was a rocking horse that the grandkids have all outgrown. Then it was a 3-gallon aquarium I found on a shelf in the basement that neither of us knew when we got it or if we even used it. Then came the tools. Then came an old kerosene heater we haven’t used since about 1995. Clothes are listed but no one is looking at clothes ads. We have a few decorations listed but it’s too early to know if we will get any interest in them. I found a bunch of unused postcards that apparently belonged to my dad and listed those in several lots, but that doesn’t seem to be the type of things people are going to FB Marketplace to buy.
Meanwhile, we are setting up for a garage sale that will be this Friday and Saturday. I hate garage sales and said I would never do another. But here we are. The neighbors were doing one so we said we would do one too to try to generate more interest. At our last sale I think we did a little less than $200 worth. I’m hoping for a lot more this time around, but am prepared to be disappointed. The work involved is way too much for the reward.
But, the true downsizing/de-cluttering test comes when the sale is over and you have lots of leftover stuff to deal with. A friend has said, “Don’t bring it back in the house. Take it straight to Goodwill.” I’m prepared to do that but I’m not sure the wife is. That didn’t happen after our sale and we ended up with tables in the garage for years. I’m hoping and praying that doesn’t happen this time. If an item is marked as “we don’t need this anymore”, that should apply whether you could get money for it or not. Right?
A few of the bigger, more valuable items, the kind of things that potential buyers for are unlikely to be yard sale shoppers, sure, those can be kept for selling. But most things I think not.
So many books to read, so little time left in this world to read them.
The house I grew up in had a lot of books in it. The secretary in the dining room, the bookcase with the glass doors in the hallway, and on shelves of books in the basement—some tied with twine, some in boxes, some in a row, and some under drop-cloths. I didn’t know what these books were. Once I took the drop-cloth off some and saw they were encyclopedias, published in 1900.
After Mom died and we three children grew up and moved out, Dad became an acquirer of books. He was retired by then, and he and his friend boyhood friend, Bob Tetrault, would get together once a month, have lunch, then go to flea markets. I don’t know what Bob bought (if anything), but Dad bought books. He bought paperbacks, hardbacks, on a variety of subjects. Seemingly mindless that he already had more than a thousand of Mom’s books, he bought more—and read them.
When Dad died 32 years after Mom did, and we cleaned out the house, I took the books. I sorted them into three categories: those it seemed Dad acquired, which were published mainly 1970 and later; those older than that that Mom had acquired, mainly hardbacks from the 1930s and 1940s; and then much older books, all hardbacks. These, I learned, had belonged to David Sexton, Mom’s grand-uncle, the man who took my grandmother in as a single mother and gave her a home. These are mainly from the late 1800s, though I found some that went back as early as 1829. I think my brother sold off a few older ones before I took the bulk of them away, but that’s another story.
Now we come down to 2020 and our new effort to reduce our possessions, looking toward that day sometime in the future when we’ll downsize and likely move away. As I reported in a prior post, I’m identifying things to part with and selling them on Facebook Marketplace—with some success. Dad’s tools, taking up space in boxes on shelves in the garage, are gone, at least many of them are. I still have a few. Toys that the grandchildren have outgrown are slowly going. We’ll give a number of them away to a needy family, sell others. Clothes that are surplus or that no longer fit (mostly due to weight loss) are being identified, sorted, and priced in anticipation of a yard sale a week from now. I’ve reported earlier about reduction in papers (cards, notes, letters), something that is on-going and not related to selling.
That brings us down to the books. What to do about them? Uncle Dave’s books are obviously keepers. Not many people have a set of Thomas Babbington Macaulay’s writings published in 1856, and another set from 1905. Not many have Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, Longfellow, Tennyson, and Kipling from the 1800s. My interest in Thomas Carlyle began because of his books Uncle Dave left behind. The many books that Dad collected we can obviously get rid of. A few would be worth keeping and reading. We’ll sort through them, see what’s good, and keep them. That would be maybe 1 or 2 of 100.
The books that came from Lynda’s dad and mom are more contemporary. The subjects vary from World War 2 to Christian living. I suspect most of those will go. They are not as numerous as the books my parents had, and are not keepsakes. The books we accumulated on our own are a little tougher. If we read them they can go. If we haven’t read them, are we likely to read them? If yes, we keep; if no, out they go. I suspect this will be 50-50. That will get rid of another thousand or more.
This one I will NOT be selling. My heirs can figure out what to do with it. I’ve not yet read “Little Women”, but when I do it may be from this copy.
What about Mom’s books? This is the hardest part of the decision. Over the years, at yard sales and when we briefly sold books on line from 2000-2003, I’ve sold a few of them. Now, however, I’m looking at selling maybe 700 of them if I can find buyers. At the end of that, I might find a good place to donate them, or sell them to a used book store or dealer for 25¢ on the dollar. This is hard, harder than selling Dad’s tools. Harder than selling anything I acquired over the years. Mom bought these books and, I believe, read all of them. It’s a piece of her I have clung to, hoping to read them myself and experience them as she did. Alas, if I could read two a month it would take me 42 years to go through them all. Will I live to be 110 and read these books to the exclusion of all others? Give up all my other interests just to read these books? I don’t think so.
Signed when she was 9 years old, Mom continued that practice all her life.
As buyers come by and take a few of Mom’s books, I look at the half-title page, where she always signed it and put the date she bought it. I look at that and come close to crying. Another piece of Mom gone.
But what else is there to do? My children don’t want these books. My grandchildren, I’m sure, won’t want them either. As Emerson said, each generation must write their own books. Very few people in our family are still alive who knew Mom, with a few more who knew about her. Someday these will all be gone. Should I leave that task to someone who comes after me, letting them make a hard decision?
No, I’ll make that hard decision. It won’t happen in a day, but over months, perhaps years. Slowly these books will go. I’ve pulled a few out to read, and will get through them.
I hope there will be some relics of us left when we have settled that question of souteraines.
This book will take me several years to get through at the slow rate I’m reading it. I wonder if I’ll ever get to Vol. 2.
As my wife and are in the process of de-cluttering, we find a lot of things I can only describe as footprints: printed matter, souvenirs, old things we used to use but don’t any more. We are weeding through these. So far I’ve listed a number of things on Facebook Marketplace and some have sold. Not many, but some. And the amounts earned thereby are starting to add up.
I’m determined not to leave the mess for our children that our parents did for us. Two houses to clean out, plus all my mother-in-law’s stuff stuffed into our basement storeroom when she left her house for an apartment and more coming with each of her next moves. And this is after having multiple estate sales and yard sales in the past.
This drill set hung in the basement above Dad’s workbench. I could have sold it for more if it was all there, but the drill itself is missing as well as other parts.
My brother and I divided the tools and hardware from Dad’s basement. I took my share and stuffed them in our garage at our last house and faithfully moved them to our current, larger house and found space for them in the garage. A few—very few—I used. Most sat in cardboard boxes and tool boxes for the last 23 years, as they had at Dad’s for three or four decades before that. Some of those are gone. Some others will be picked up in 42 minutes [I write this on Sunday afternoon.]
When this process is over, a process that will take several years, I don’t know what we’ll have left. At some point we will have to consider our own stuff and decide what to do with it. But for now it’s enough to be dealing with our parent’s stuff. Our son is visiting us now. Before he came I told him to not expect much progress. I said what we had done so far was like cutting a millimeter off a 2-lbs. chunk of cheddar cheese. But progress is progress, even if it’s by millimeters instead of yards.
All of which is making me think of footprints, the footprints we leave in this world. Of course, as a genealogist, I’m thrilled when I find a footprint of an ancestor. It helps me to know a little about their life. The fact that so-and-so took someone to court in 1675 and won matters. Yet, I’m kind of glad I’m not looking at five pages of ancient court documents and trying to decide: “Do I keep this or not?” Footprints are good; a trampled wheat field is not. Hopefully the footprints that now adorn our house will, at such time as we leave this world, be just enough to be pleasing to our heirs, not overwhelming as we are now.
This box of odd clamps, files, and other tools came from Dad’s house in the box you see. I never used any of them.
The quote that starts this post I found in a letter C.S. Lewis wrote to his good friend Arthur Greaves on 10 November 1941. I’m slowly reading through Lewis’ letters. Volume 1 is 1024 pages of 10 point font. I assume Volumes 2 (which I also have) and 3 (which I do not have) are about the same. By “relics” I believe Lewis means the same as “footprints”. He hoped that he would make an impact on the world and that those who came after him would know who he was.
The word “souterrains” was a new one on me. Wikipedia defines it thusly:
Souterrain is a name given by archaeologists to a type of underground structure associated mainly with the European Atlantic Iron Age. These structures appear to have been brought northwards from Gaul during the late Iron Age. Regional names include earth houses, fogous and Pictish houses.
So it’s an archeological relic—a footprint of people long gone, something that tells us a little about how they lived. Lewis is saying that, just as these souterrains survived for a couple of millennia, so would his influence survive. He wrote that as a 16-year-old school boy.
At the moment, I think the biggest legacy I could leave my kids is to not leave a mess behind for them to have to deal with. Oh, there will be a few things. We don’t leave earth with absolutely nothing in our possession just prior. But I know it will be better than the three messes we received.
The old kept better time, but it died. I’m sad to see this old friend go.
When I was in Saudi Arabia, I grew especially close to the Philipino men who worked for me. For some reason they liked me and I liked them. I learned a little Tagalog—not a lot, just enough for greetings and partings, maybe a bit more. But that seemed enough. When the time came for our family to leave Saudi, the company held a going-away party for us. The company sponsored a gift that the employees chipped in on—everyone except the Philipinos. They got together and bought me a nice wall clock.
Our shipment was already packed. We were flying to Vienna to start four weeks in Europe on our way home. We were to leave December 2, 1983. While four weeks was our plan, we were prepared to cut it short if, after three years of mild Arabian winters, we found the Austrian winter a bit too much. With a lot of luggage already, we stuff that clock in, carried it to Europe, thence to Rhode Island, thence to Kansas City, thence on the bus to Meade Kansas (where we picked up our cars), thence drove it on to Asheboro North Carolina, our next stop on the path of life.
Hopefully this is now gracing the wall of someone’s shop, now that it’s no longer gathering dust in my garage.
I’ll shorten the rest of this. That clock hung in our home in North Carolina, went into storage when we lived in Kuwait, then hung in our apartment in NC on our return then in two houses in NW Arkansas. It survived being dropped, being knocked off the wall when I errantly threw one of the dog’s toys. It always kept good time. Every two years or so it would die, and I’d have to change the batteries. Then it would start chiming again, every hour and half hour from 6 am to 10:30 pm.
I have no idea what these clamps were for. Hopefully their new owner can figure them out.
In our present house it’s been my companion in The Dungeon. It helped me to keep on schedule with my work. If I said I would work an hour on something, I’d wait for a chime and know when I should end. The chimes were just loud enough that you could hear it upstairs in the living room (if the TV was off or not too loud).
Then, we came back from our brief trip to Mexico last Christmastime and it wasn’t going. I got new batteries for it and…nothing. Didn’t start. I tried other new batteries to make sure I hadn’t picked up used batteries by mistake and…nothing. The clock had died. For 37 years it’s been a good and loyal friend, but it died. It’s been sitting on the table since January. A newer clock that doesn’t keep time very well is in its place. But I’ve had a hard time getting rid of my old friend. I was told I could replace the works inside the shell, but, that somehow doesn’t seem right. No, by the end of the day today this clock will be in the recycling pile in our garage.
Other things are going too as the wife and I contemplate down-sizing sometime in the coming years. Our children want us to do that sooner rather than later, but the amount of stuff we have suggests this will not be a quick or easy process. In July Lynda identified a rocking horse that our grandkids have outgrown. We could keep it around until great-grandkids come along, but that could be a long time and a new residence from now. So I listed it on Facebook Marketplace and it sold a month later.
I climbed this ladder a lot. Got a bee sting on it in NC, and it sunk into the ground, fell forward, and put my face on the sidewalk, also in NC. Not sorry to see it go.
Encouraged by that, I scoured the storeroom shelves and found a small aquarium we haven’t used since we moved to this house. That fetched $20 on the Marketplace. Three large plants brought $15, and I lost a few friends that had kept me company in the sunroom the last few years.
I’m not sure what type of plants these were. They were big, and my wife said they took a lot of care. I balked at first when she wanted to sell them, as they’ve been companions in the sunroom. But then I thought, I don’t want to dampen her notion of getting rid of stuff. So off they went, hopefully to a good home.
I decided to tackle the garage. In it I found lots of stuff that I had taken from Dad’s house after his death, when my brother and I divided up the tools and hardware. Boxes and boxes of the stuff have cluttered two different garages now for 23 years. Why didn’t I get rid of it long before now? I guess I thought I might use it some day. I listed for sale a wall “panel” for an old drill set that is now just a nice shop decoration. That sold in just a couple of days. Then there was a box of old clamps (probably used in woodworking). They sold in a day.
Then there’s that old wooden ladder that’s been just hanging on the wall since I got an aluminum one. That’s now waiting, hoping for a buyer. I next looked at a bottom shelf that had some boxes. I pulled them off and found them all to be empties. They are now flattened and waiting for the next trip to recycling, probably on Wednesday.
So, these old friends are slowly starting to make their way out of the house. Some, like the clock and the plants, were good friends. Others, like the tools and boxes, were just taking up space. I told my son that, when he comes to visit us soon, he’ll look at the house and say, “I thought you were getting rid of stuff!” I told him it’s a first step, like cutting one millimeter off a two pound block of cheddar cheese. It’s barely noticeable, but it’s less than was there before.
Hopefully we’ll continue this process and have motivation and strength enough to do a few more millimeters. Maybe in a year it will be noticeable. Meanwhile, it’s hard to say goodbye to some of these friends.
My plans for today’s blog was a book review. But it would be an intense book review, and I don’t know that I have the strength of mine for it at the moment. So I’ll write about weariness.
Published in 2011, I really need to do something with this, update it for later publications and correct some formatting errors.
After having written about the Kuwait years letters in a recent post, I did a little more searching in the storeroom and found a few more items and transcribed them. The collection is now up to 143 items, the computer file running to 152 pages and 89,000 words, maybe 300 of which are commentary I’ve begun to add. I think I’m done with it. I hope I’m done with it. The Saudi years will be some time from now, after I get the Kuwait years into published form.
The last two days have been full, though in some ways I wonder exactly what I accomplished. In the evenings I worked on saving e-mails to Word documents for my letters file. I also collated five notebooks of printed correspondence, a task that’s not quite complete. Wednesday morning I worked outside for an hour. I intended to yesterday, but rain quashed that notion.
Then I’ll get to correct this one in the same way.
I attended a writing group meeting via Facebook live stream and Zoom conference on Wednesday. On Thursday I attended a writing workshop on improving books for getting noticed on Amazon. Much to consider.
A writing task I’ve been planning to do was to correct and republish my original Documenting America book, updating the works by this author section all versions, and correct the running heads and locations for page numbers for the print version. I then will republish it, then do some Amazon ads for it. I originally published this in 2011, and I don’t think I ever updated it.
And, this one will also need some updating.
Alas, I found my computer files in a mess. I had files here, files there, folders inside of folders, duplicates and triplicates. I couldn’t tell for sure which was my latest file. So, while listening to the webinar yesterday, I multi-tasked by creating a good file structure and move files into it from their scattered locations. I found that work mentally exhausting, and I was good for nothing after doing that. Except I did figure out which was the latest print book file and began working on it.
That came after Thursday normal stock trading work, a Wal-Mart grocery and meds run, and getting a roast started for supper, adding the veggies after the webinar. Then it was off to the sunroom and reading in a David Morrell novel. Then to the living room and more work on e-mails. I eventually dished up supper, and store-bought pie for dessert, and went back to e-mails.
Then, I was exhausted. We had The Curse of Oak Island re-runs on, which are easy to tune out and do other things. Then it was read aloud in an Agatha Christie mystery. Now, Friday morning, I’m doing trading, and work on the book revision. Soon we’ll head on a 45 mile drive for some medical tests for Lynda.
And I’m weary. Weary in well-doing. Weary in from doing too much. Getting my book corrected and re-published has to be my top priority. I hope, when we get back from the distant lab, to get back to the print book. I could finish that today and get on to the e-book. I’m hoping some energy will return.
Here it is Saturday afternoon. Yesterday was my regular blogging day. I like to post by 7:30 a.m. Obviously I’m not even close. It seems that life is conspiring against me, with task after task that must be done pushing out the tasks that I’d like to do.
The biggest thing coming up, aside from important medical appointments, is the distribution of the physical effects of my mother-in-law’s estate. Just two weeks ago we finished distribution of her remaining financial assets. There weren’t many left, but we had waited to make sure another bill didn’t come in.
The physical estate consists of odds and ends of furniture, linens, books, photos, letters and cards, knickknacks, and decorations. Some of these were hers from her first marriage, some where her second husband’s, and some they acquired together. Her second husband has two daughters by his prior marriage, my wife’s step-sisters who we used to see regularly and had good relationships with. We told them we were finally ready for the physical distribution. So they are going to drive here next Saturday, spend the afternoon going through things, and drive home again—thus minimizing coronavirus exposure.
Getting ready for it has started. Last weekend I did some organizing and took an approximate inventory of the more major items. We also got a letter out about it by e-mail and Messenger to the step-sisters and Lynda’s brother. He lives farther away and won’t be making a trip here. He gave us his desires on the phone.
Meanwhile, Thursday I had a full day of work for my former company, consisting of a final inspection, site visits, luncheon, and former meeting. Some reports were due, and some edits to City drainage standards. That work spilled over to Friday morning. As I worked on that the fact that I had a blog to write escaped me. I was going to do a book review. I’ve finished three books I haven’t yet reviewed but want to. I wasn’t sure which one to do next, so I had some thinking to do before I could write the review. I suppose that will be Monday’s post.
Meanwhile, I continue transcribing letters from our Kuwait years into a Word file. With six to go, I’m up to 77,700 words and 138 pages. When formatted for a book that will be well over 250 pages, especially if illustrated with photos as I would like to do. I will finish those around Tuesday. I say “finish” because I don’t know for certain that I’ve gathered all letters from those years. We have a large gap in correspondence with Lynda’s dad, and a three month period in 1989 with no letters at all. Her dad may not have kept all our letters (accounting for that gap; or they could be in another notebook or box), and the time gap includes some travels during which we wouldn’t have sent letters. Still, I will hunt some to see if I missed any before I declare the transcribing “done”. Lynda said, “This didn’t have to be done now, you know.” Yes, I know. But if not now, when? Will live be any less crazy, less hectic, less busy once the pandemic ends and rioting in our urban areas subsides? I think not.
This week, as of this morning in fact, I’m caught up on yardwork. That’s not to say I don’t have more to do, but both front and back yards are back to a maintainable point with normal effort. Next week I’ll clear away some logs left from other clearing, and begin carrying posts across the street to the fort. But I feel good about the yardwork.
Friday I go to the hospital for an echo-cardiogram (my third), a stress test (my first), and something else cardio related. The will be a whole day gone. Meanwhile, my weight is down (5 lbs. this month), my blood sugar readings are in a good range even after the doc reduced my insulin dose from 25 to 10 units. I’ve been reducing it gradually and will finally hit 10 units tonight. So health is good.
Get the estate distribution behind us, get this transcribing behind us, get these tests behind me, see a reduction in workload for my former company, and then and only then will I be able to concentrate on my novel-in-progress. I read a little for research in it now and then, but not much new writing, and I won’t have any this week. Get these major items behind us, and hope no more come up.
Oh, yeah, our new roof is in and looks good. But the gutter covers they shipped were the wrong size and the worker installed them anyway while I was gone Thursday. They look like you know what. Some of our gutter is damaged. I got on a ladder, took photos, texted them to the superintendent, and said, “Are you proud of this work?” He said he sent them to corporate and will take care of it. My evaluation of the company depends on them making good on that promise.
So far I’ve transcribed 2/3 of the letters in this box, and they run to 31 typed pages (the box is not full). Edit: The letters originally in this box are all transcribed. Many more are added and I’m just starting on those.
When I made my blog post on Friday, I had intended on the post for Monday to be the next in my series on racism, moving on from how to combat racist acts to how to end racism. But that’s not happening due to a change in plans.
You see, on Friday, while working in the storeroom, moving a smallish box of books, I caught my leg on a trunk on the floor and took a tumble forward. I dropped the box of books as I was going down to free up my hands to brace against the fall. I did this on another box of books that was on the floor in front of me.
A fall is never good, but I was glad this was a minor one. It’s the first one in the house, my several others having been outside. I tried to scoot a stick out of the road while walking and went down. I slipped on leaves in the woods and went down. I slipped on a slick driveway and went down. I slipped on an icy driveway at that neighbors and went down hard. That was in February 2018, and I haven’t fully healed from that. Otherwise, the falls outside didn’t do much damage. An hour or so after those others I was back about my tasks. I figured the one in the basement would be the same.
This plastic bin has more incoming letters than outgoing. Most are not from our overseas years. We will have a hard decision of what to do with them.
Alas, I soon after went upstairs to fix lunch and thought to myself, “Why is my knee hurting so much?” Then I remembered: I fell fifteen minutes ago. Ah, well, no big deal. I took an Aleve, ate lunch, then went to the sunroom to read. While there, my knee kept hurting. I looked down at it to check for swelling and saw that my leg was bleeding, down near the ankle. Obviously that came from raking across the trunk as I went down. Naturally it was my leg with the bad knee that I caught on the trunk.
I cleaned and bandaged the wound with a gauze pad and went back to my afternoon activities. Slowly my knee got worse, the pain being in unusual parts of the knee. And my leg started hurting below the knee all the way down from the ankle. Not the abrasion, which I could barely feel, but the shin and calf. It felt muscular, not skeletal. I was certain it wasn’t a break. Muscles and tendons or ligaments had suffered trauma. Just sitting in my reading chair in the living room was painful—as was lying on the floor on my stomach. Another Aleve didn’t do anything.
Slowly it got worse as evening wore on, the main pain being in the lower leg, not the knee. I went to bed a little early but couldn’t sleep. I used a topical muscle rub that may have helped some. But an hour and a half of tossing and turning caused me to move to my reading chair, then out to the sunroom. Eventually I was tired enough to sleep through the pain. But that was at least an hour after I took a hydrocodone pill.
Ah, this one had the Saudi and Kuwaiti year letters besides the 25 or so I started with. I see hours of enjoyable transcribing ahead.
Obviously my normal heavy yardwork on Saturday was out. I took it easy, reading, and transcribing letters. Same for Sunday, with some on-line church and Life Group thrown in. Came Saturday evening and I thought the leg felt better. Come the night and the pain was as bad as Friday night. I finally went to The Dungeon and laid back in the recliner. Finding a comfortable position was still hard, but I think I slept a little better than on Friday.
What does that have to do with my intended blog post? With my leg in more or less constant pain, I didn’t think I would be able to concentrate on the important topic of ending racism. So you have this fluff piece instead. The letter transcription was an enjoyable diversion. I completed the 28 letters I found a few weeks ago in an unexpected place in my mother-in-law’s things, all letters to her from our Kuwait years, all but a couple from Lynda to her mom. While I shouldn’t have, I decided to drag out the larger bin that has letters from Saudi and Kuwait. Actually, I had to pull three different bins/boxes off the shelf to find the rest of the letters from the Kuwait years. I will consolidate all of them into a single box, properly label it with large, black lettering, and put it where I’ll never have to hunt for it again.
Letter transcribing doesn’t get the weeds pulled, or cut posts for the completion of the fort I’m building with the grandkids, or trim the bushes in the front yard. It doesn’t burn off the pounds I so definitely need to lose. It doesn’t get my novel-in-progress back to where I actually see progress. It provides great satisfaction for me, however. And it stirs the memory, as I read through things I experienced and documented but now don’t actively remember.
As of Sunday evening the text file of letters was up to 49 pages and just under 30,000 words. So far fewer than half the Kuwait letters are transcribed, and the Saudi letters are untouched. This will be a long project, most likely multi-year. What will be produced in the end is not yet clear. But at least I see hours and hours of what I would call oddball satisfaction for the transcriptionist.
We are in the dog days of summer, 2/3 of the way through July. It’s been in the 90s here for the last two weeks, and the 15 day forecast currently shows nothing but 90s. During this time I am busier than ever. Hence, I’m a little late with this blog post. What’s keeping me busy? Consider this.
In late June we had the tree guys here to cut back the trees away from the house before we get the new roof. To save a little, and because I try to keep the lots on either side of me neat, I had them just drop the branches to the ground and I would do the cleanup. I’m doing that now, an hour a day first thing in the morning, before the heat ramps up. Very tiring, but it’s a task that shows immediate results. I’m also finding lots of branches long and straight enough to cut to length for the final posts to finish the fort (more on that in another post).
Stock trading is busiest on Mondays and Fridays. Today I planned out and entered two trades, both of which filled. Now, fully invested, I get to sit back a little and see what the market does.
I’m in the midst of an on-line class/program to learn about advertising on Amazon. It includes six one-hour videos, five one-hour live sessions, a two-hour long webinar, and lots of homework. I’m finding it challenging, though I am learning something. I have three ads up, of three different types. They are for my book Doctor Luke’s Assistant. I’m behind watching the videos and creating ads, but I feel good about where I am. The program runs through next Monday so I have a lot of time to catch up.
Our de-cluttering/downsizing effort continues. When I look at the mess in the living room, with piles of greeting cards and letters sent to my mother-in-law over the years (and some sent to us), and in the dining room at the boxes of new greeting cards and note cards covering almost all the dining room table, I despair of ever completing it. The storage room is cleaner and better organized—and a little emptier. But if we can’t find a way to get rid of those brought upstairs, if they just get re-boxed and taken to the basement again, we are barely any better.
My hourly work for my former company happens to have ramped up in the last two to three weeks. The income is good, but the time it takes isn’t. I could refuse any or all assignments, but this work may go away almost entirely around October, so I hate to turn the work down right now.
Lynda and I have increased our reading time together. In the evening we will read perhaps 20 pages aloud from some book, then two chapters from the Bible. It’s enjoyable time. I plan on choosing some of these books with de-cluttering in mind, books we can read and discard/sell/donate afterwards.
I’ve had some things to do for Life Group at church, trying to lead the class into making decisions about meeting times and whether we will begin to meet in person soon, and if so, when and how. This doesn’t take a lot of time, but it’s another stick on the camel’s back.
You can see I haven’t had much time to think about this blog, or about writing. Is this a temporary period of busier than usual busyness? I hope so. Once I get past this brush clearing, get the contractor set up with the new roof and get it done, and once we can get a little breathing space on the de-cluttering, once the ad class is over and I have five to ten ads running, maybe I’ll be able to devote more time to my book and my blog. Hopefully I’ll be able to devote enough time this week to make my Friday post as the net one in my racism series.
Oh, yes, as of yesterday, blackberry picking season is over. That frees up three to four hours a week.
