Sunday

Early in the morning, I feed the animals...





... then feed us.




We're in a hurry: a truck is waiting for us at the house of a friend of a friend (Ed's truck is out of service for the rest of the winter season). We'll be using it to move my mom's stuff into storage so that she wont be obligated to pay another month's rent come February 1st.

It's a large truck, with a cab that has a back seat. We stuff it to the max and in piling one thing onto another, we're able to move all the stuff that I deemed worthy of taking in one trip.





I had been fretting about this for a while, but in the end it was doable. With Ed's hand truck, we were able to transport even the heaviest pieces of furniture first to the elevator, then to the truck and finally to the storage shed. (It would have been so much easier if we had had full use of an elevator, but the building manager did not make it available for us and so we had to make do with a lot of threatening beeping and buzzing!)

Afterwards, we return to the apartment and arrange all the stuff for donation (meaning things I deemed not worthy of a move to assisted living) neatly. We cart out endless loads of what my mom may have called "collectable items," but I call trash. (There's lots of plastic unfortunately.) One last look at her old apartment and I turn the key on that chapter of her life. (Or so I think then.)

We have one last lug: of an old dresser that we had bought for her when she moved here. She doesn't want it, preferring a more conventional one off of Amazon, so Ed and I are taking it back to the farmhouse. It's so solid that no kid can turn it over under any circumstance ever. (As opposed to my old dresser, now in use by a UW math student... remember that story?) And this is actually the hardest part of our day: lugging that monster up our narrow farmhouse steps. For me, the steps just kept growing in size and toward the end I swear I had to hoist the damn thing up ten feet into the air (or so it seemed). But we manage and now everything is where it should be. For now. Once my mom's new residence is secured for her, we'll put on our moving caps again!

Late in the afternoon, as we collapse on the couch at home, Ed asks me -- so why would you feel anxious about the move? You do it and then it's done. Why fret?

Why does anyone fret or worry about the unknown? Why not just accept each day as it unfolds, take on each challenge, walk through it, move on to the next?

I suppose because we are not all like Ed, who moves at his pace without ever contemplating that the world may come crashing down around him. And if it did come crashing down, he's sit there under the rubble and remove one board after another until he could get himself up to move on to the next task. With a solid pause and a nap on the couch in between.


In the evening, I take note of two things. First, I call my mom and find out that she changed her mind about relinquishing a couple of chairs. She wants them back. It means another trip back to her apartment. They may not fit into my car. Sigh...

The second thing is light and lovely: the young family is here for dinner. The five photos below say it all.


























Later, much later, Ed and I watch episode 6 of the mini-series we'd been occasionally plugging into -- the Band of Brothers. It's a World War II drama -- a good one to watch on days when you're feeling whiny about the drippiness of any particular January day. Your peanut issues seem even more peanutty. I mean, really really peanutty.

The farmhouse is warm, the dinner was so good, the candle burns slowly, the night is quiet, the popcorn is near perfect. How lucky can you get!