Sliding

My husband and I have been sliding.  Not on ice, but that’s also possible up here on “the mountain”, where we still have snow on the ground.  No, our sliding is sorting, scanning and naming hundreds of slides my Dad took between 1957 and the mid-eighties.  We have a huge bag full of rejects.  I hate to throw any of them away, but I decided not to scan those that are landscapes, sunrises, sunsets or are of people who aren’t relatives.  There were lots of those.  There were 50 slides marked “PeeWees”.  I couldn’t identify a single person in them.  Out they went. 

My Mom and her sister, Carol

Mom and Dad

But there are also hundreds, 600 plus so far, that we’ve scanned.  It has been a real journey down memory lane looking at this memoir on film, showing what my Dad felt was important to chronicle.  He took pictures of his dogs, all trained to hunt, and of the fish he caught, big salmon and good-sized Rainbow trout.  He took pictures of the flowers he planted, red, yellow and pink rhododendrons and pink dogwood.   There were uncountable images of beautiful sunsets and sunrises, of the rivers he fished and mountains he hiked.  But his most photographed subject was Mom.  We see her in beautiful pink, red and sapphire blue dresses, dressed for special occasions.  She stands in pastel pants and sun hats in front of the Capitol Building in D.C., in front of the Lincoln Memorial, standing with Mount Rushmore in the distance.  She is seen next to rivers, next to campfires, in Disneyland, in Hawaii, on the golf course.  She emerges from a lake in a brilliantly red swimming suit.  She stands with her cousin “Abe” in numerous shots, always wearing a jaunty hat.  She poses in her “daffodil” hat and orange and yellow print dress on Easter.  She sings, with her hair piled on her head, in The Puget Soundsters.  She is caught sleeping on the couch and sunning on a lawn chair.  Dad obviously loved and wanted to capture the image of his wife.  

Chris dressed up for a dance

My memories spark when I see the pictures of me and my brother, Dan, as young kids and teenagers.  We were sitting in front of the Christmas Tree cozy and warm, and then around a campfire, watching our shoes and socks dry, hypnotized by the flames, our eyes watering from the smoke.  There are pictures of us in fancy Easter outfits, graduation gowns, dressed formally for proms.  As the years passed I appeared with my two daughters, pictures of Dan with a huge beard, my little brother Stanley growing up, from baby in a walker to gawky teenager to a young man heading off to the Army.  My first and second husbands appear, as do many pictures of my third child, Christopher, as a baby.  All my kids are babies again, in pictures I forgot were taken.  I have long hair for a long time, then short hair.  I look tired or energetic, happy or moody—moments in time, mere seconds in a history.

I’ve also gotten to see my Aunts and Uncles and my Grandmas and Grandpas again.  All of them are gone now and Mom and Dad, too. It’s wonderful to see my parents again in their forties and fifties when they were traveling and camping and had tons of energy for fishing and swimming.  My grandparents were old already in these pictures, but I can feel the sweet affection I had for them when I look at their worn faces in these photos. 

My Grandma and Grandpa Ammons

I’m so glad for all these pictures my Dad took.  Mom took photos, too, but she printed hers and they are in the albums that I’ve pored over for years.  The ones from Dad were hidden away for decades.  He’d show them to us, via the slide projector and the screen, the canisters jamming sometimes and Dad narrating in detail. Then they’d be put back in a box in the closet.  I unearthed them when I cleaned Mom’s house out after she died.  They are a treasure, one that will be my most prized gift of the Christmas of 2012.

Changes

It’s inevitable that things change year by year.  In 2011 the big change was my mother dying.  2012 hasn’t been that dramatic, but nevertheless, there have been changes.  We are older and our bodies are beginning to show that.  Michael decided to eat less sugar and to try to exercise more and I was diagnosed gluten intolerant.  I have always loved to bake, but baking is now a whole new game of alternate flours and xanthan gum and avoiding eggs. I had been putting it off but after Thanksgiving I embarked on baking my first batch of gluten-free cookies.  I turned the radio to 106.9, All Christmas Music All The Time Starting the Day After Thanksgiving, setting the cookie baking mood.  

I got out all my baking tools, put the parchment paper on the cookie sheets, gathered the unfamiliar ingredients, the brown rice flour and the garbonzo bean flour, the familiar sugar, baking soda and baking powder, the chocolate chips and walnuts. I had been warned that GF baking is “different”. I followed the recipe from the gluten-free recipe book, the normal steps of creaming the sugar and oil (I'll use butter next time), then adding the dry ingredients and milk. I tasted the batter. It was grainy.  I hoped the graininess would retreat to the background when the chips and nuts were added.  I dropped the batter from a teaspoon onto the cookie sheet and put the first pan in the oven.  The time suggested for baking was 17 minutes.  When the timer went off the cookies were still pale.  I added 2 more minutes.  Still no browning.  2 more minutes and then 2 minutes more.  After adding 10 minutes to the baking time, 2 minutes at a time, I finally got a slightly browned cookie.  On the next batch I jacked up the heat and got browned cookies in a shorter amount of time and made a note on the recipe to use butter next time and to start with a higher heat.  

I think it's going to be like America's Test Kitchen around here for awhile, until I get the hang of this kind of baking.  In the meantime, the music was nice and the cookies aren't bad--I like them (Michael doesn't)--I'm used to gluten-free eating after several months of it and everything tastes less sweet and less flaky and let's face it, less good.  Who knew gluten was so important in mouth-watering concoctions?  I'll keep at it  until I have something I would be willing to serve to gluten-eating-people, something that feels and tastes less like cattle feed. Wish me luck!

A Voyage to Remember

In Tracy Arm

Where do I begin?  How about with the first day?  We started to see other CK alumni on the ferry out of Bremerton.  We saw Tracy and Marie Junell and got a fleeting glimpse of Ed and Judy (I think).  We saw Tracy again in the check-in line at Pier 91 and again in line at the buffet when we all got on the ship, the Star Princess.  I spotted Trude and Elaine Gillman in the long, long buffet line, too, and then later Jack and Karen Archer not paying attention during the lifeboat drill.  The first thing I did after unpacking was to call Larry McConnell to find out which bar we were meeting at on Deck 7 at 6:00.  It was called Crooners.  I called everybody on the list.  My plan was to discuss how we wanted to organize the rest of the cruise.

The best laid plans—we didn’t really get to that.  We were more interested in ordering drinks, learning everybody’s names and getting some history.  Ask Wayne Swenson how I am at ordering drinks.  I had to look some up on Michael’s iTouch in order to figure out what to drink.  I decided on a Tom Collins.  Sounds pretty sophisticated and ‘60s, no? It was delicious!

Larry McConnell

Everybody came to the party:  Tracy and Marie Junell; Trude and Elaine Gillman; Larry McConnell; Stevie Kemp and her daughter, Sherrie-Ann; Jack and Karen Archer; Ed and Judy Lively; Marty McLaren and me and my husband, Michael.  We had the waiter running and we were a noisy bunch, laughing and yelling back and forth. This was a new adventure.  Many of us had been on cruises before, but none of us had been on a cruise with alumni from our high schools.  What a trip back and forward in time. 

We did decide to troop off to dinner together and ended up at two tables far from each other.  I think they were having as much fun at their table as we were having at ours. We talked non-stop, barely noticing what we were eating—kind of like we do at our alumni lunches.  Ignoring the food on a cruise ship is extraordinary, because the meals are exquisite.  Since most of us are all at least 68, we petered out at around 9:00 and found our way back to our cabins, with promises to meet for lunch on Monday.

That’s how it went for the rest of the cruise.  We met at what we dubbed Larry’s Bar between 5 and 6 every evening and discussed the day and what we were doing for dinner.  We were a family of 16.  “What did you do today, Christine?”  “We went into Ketchikan and over to the Creek and watched the seals catching the poor salmon that were trying to spawn.”  “Are you going to the show tonight, Jack?”  “Want to eat at the Capri dining room?”   “We saw some whales today!” “What are you going to do in Juneau?” “Who wants to help me finish this bottle of wine?”

Some nights one or another of us was missing from the party at Larry’s Bar and sometimes a couple or two would opt out of the dining room and decide to go to the buffet.  One night we all sat together having our evening cocktail, worrying about whether Marty was going to make it back from her solo ride on the White Pass train before the ship departed Skagway.  (She made it back just in time.) Another night we managed to get two tables of eight right next to each other and one night we got a huge table for twelve.  The waiters earned a tip that night.  We were the last ones to leave the dining room.  At each dinner together it was the same.  Talk, eat, laugh, talk, eat, laugh, eat, talk.  And there was never an awkward pause in conversation as there sometimes is when you are sitting with strangers at a cruise ship dinner.  Even though we were together off and on for a week, there never seemed to be enough time to chat. Marty and I had to make a date for some time together and Jack kept saying, “Christine, you and Michael haven’t eaten with Karen and me yet.”  I wonder if some alumni thought they’d get tired of their old school friends if they went on a cruise with them.  I can’t imagine that.

Michael and Marty discuss politics

We all saw different things, we all did different things.  Some went into town, some didn’t.  Some went on excursions, some just walked around in Ketchikan, Juneau and Skagway.  And then we’d come together and tell each other what we’d seen and done.  Remember The Big Chill movie?  It was like that except there was no kitchen.  It was the dinner table where we teased each other and found out more about each other, made toasts and compared notes.  I think Ralph might have thought we would stay on the boat and talk 24/7, but we did it differently, coming together for our evening cocktail and making plans for dinner.  It became a pleasant habit and a great regular addition to each day.  (We made a decision toward the end.  If we do a cruise again with many alumni, we will choose fixed dining so we can have a huge table for all of us and not have to worry about reservations.)

Judy and Ed Lively and Michael in the Atrium of Star Princess

Here are some things I’m not going to forget:

            Jack’s big grin and wine bottles and Karen’s huge, colorful drinks. (no, she’s not a lush but I’m not so sure about Jack!)

            Marty looking very relaxed.

            Larry talking about his grandkids with love splashed all over his face.

            Ed’s formal attire—black pants and jacket, an orange t-shirt, and orange breast pocket handkerchief and orange Converse tennis shoes. Go Cougars!

            Trude Junior “Gil” Gillman in a suit, looking good!

            Elaine Gillman’s pretty fingernails.

            Trude saying, after an excursion in Ketchikan, “I didn’t see anything I couldn’t have seen at Chico Creek”.

            Tracy’s hilarious stories about being in Mr. Huey’s office all the time.

            Jack, Karen, Ed and Judy dancing.

           

Of course, I won’t forget the seals in Ketchikan Creek corralling spawning Coho salmon or the beautiful green mountains and aqua water of Tracy Arm or the fact we could walk up so close to Mendenhall Glacier.  I won’t forget that on this fourth time my husband and I have cruised to Alaska our weather Karma finally ran out.  It rained.  I’ll always remember how quirky Skagway is, even if it does have too many “gold stores”.  I won’t forget the porcupine up a tree in Juneau or the young boy who said, “We’ve seen lots of bears.  It’s much rarer to see a porcupine.”  I won’t forget our Alaskan driver on the Blue Bus in Juneau who had such an odd accent I could barely understand him. I’ll always be thankful to our steward, Rakesh (East Indian), who was so attentive to us and made us clever towel animals when he turned down our beds at night.

Love Birds by Rakesh

What I’ll always remember about this cruise, unlike all the others we’ve taken, or will take, is the people we were with, the dear old friends and new ones, like Sherrie-Ann, Judy Lively, Elaine Gillman and Marie Junell.  Thank you, Ralph.  We toasted you and thought of you every day, wishing you were there.  And we talked about the future and another cruise, or trek, mountain lodge or ocean cabin—some other place to gather for a week—and you with us next time. 

Gluten-Almost Free

Yeah, it's been a long time. And my "readers" are probably not even checking anymore. I wouldn't be checking regularly if I was them. Oh bother, same old post as last time. I've been pretty busy though because I have just been diagnosed as Gluten Intolerant. First reaction? Anger!!!! Grrrrr!!! Can't bake anymore--have to start reading those doggone impossible- to-read-because-my- eyes-blur ingredients on the backs of boxes and jars. Have to buy SPECIAL food. Dang, dang and double-dang. But then, as always when presented with a problem, I threw a book at it. I went to the lovely, local Barnes and Noble and found Gluten-Free Recipes for Dummies and, more importantly, a recipe book for Gluten and Egg Free Baking (did I mention I also tested positive for egg intolerance?). The recipe book is called Flying Apron's Gluten-Free & Vegan Baking Book and is written by a woman who owns a bakery in Seattle--www.flyingapron.com .  I'm not going to become a Vegan but they don't eat eggs (among other things I find very delicious) so this will work for me.

Okay....so....I've been reading and researching and buying expensive gluten-free things.  My husband is flinching at the grocery costs (we have a grocery budget and he keeps track of it).  I flinch, too, when I buy a loaf of gluten-free bread and it costs nearly $5!!  But I love bread and it's one of the things I just can't live without.  I'm learning, though, that there are things I will have to live without.  I won't be able to eat Ralph's donuts anymore--maybe one, but not one everyday like I was doing when he brought me a bag full at one of our 50th alumni reunion planning meetings.  And his potato salad is incredible partly because he puts so many eggs in it--another dish I will have to avoid.  Then there are all those things I love to made--cookies, bars, muffins--that I'll have to re-invent.  Sounds like I'm not going to be any fun anymore, doesn't it?  That's part of why I don't much like this diagnosis.  I should not drink regular beer anymore, either....and that hurts.  I have found gluten-free beers, but they aren't Gary's Irish Death or Silver City Brewery's Panther Lake Porter, my two favorites.  Even a pretty light beer like Corona is now off my list.  Did I mention I turned the air blue with cursing when I got the word about the gluten?

The thing is, I have suffered from intestinal stuff for almost my entire life, and now I have arthritis that is progressing fast and I have to take anti-depressants for my moodiness.  And from December to April 2011-12 I had three bad colds.  So instead of going to a regular doctor who would have had nothing but pills in their arsenal of remedies, I went to a naturopath.  I happened to know Jane already--she's in my writing group--and I trust her.  She is the one who had me tested and she is the one who had to tell me about my intolerances.  She was afraid I might say, "Screw it!" and never come back to see her again, but I did go back and she gave me all kinds of ideas and resources.  I'm getting used to the idea, sort of.  It's only been a couple of weeks since the tests came back.  I found out right before we went to Gary Parker's Iron Horse Brewery in Ellensburg ( www.ironhorsebrewery.com ) for a tour of his tiny brewing building.  He gave us a taste of every beer he had on tap.  They were delicious, cold, refreshing and I knew with each gulp that they might be some of the last tastes of real beer I'd have in a long time, if ever again.  That made them doubly wonderful and I felt wicked and intoxicated.  We had a great 24 hours with Gary, and I ate all kinds of things I wasn't supposed to--it was a wheat binge--flour tortillas, bread and waffles.

The upside to all this "intolerance" is that without wheat gluten (which includes barley and rye) I feel more energetic, my stomach isn't rebelling, I'm less moody.  My fingers are still aching--we'll have to give it more time to see if the new diet helps that condition.

That's one of the reasons I haven't been blogging--the others are that it's summer (yahoo!!) and I can work in my garden, I'm taking an online writing class for several weeks and it's intensive writing, and my writing group demands something new every two weeks.  Reasons, reasons.  If only I could be satisfied with a one paragraph blog post....I'll work on that.  I hope this post satisfies some of my readers, if they're still out there.  If you have any gluten-free, egg-free advice, let me know.

One Year

Dear Mom,

It’s been an entire year since that May 22 that you died.  I’ve gotten pretty much past the vision of you gasping for air when I got back to your house after taking a two-hour break that morning.  It was not a sight I ever wanted to see, and it stayed in my head for a long time.  Now, 12 months later, it isn’t the paramount picture I have of your last few hours.  What I remember now is sitting on the bed by your side, stroking your head, while your granddaughter, Carolyn, laid on the other side of you, curled around your head and your great-grandson Alex laid next to you.  Stanley was at the foot of the bed.  He seemed to need a little more distance.  We talked to you and waited for your last breath to come.  We knew you were leaving us very soon.  As you took that last breathe Stanley and I said, nearly at the same instant, “Poor little Mama.”  Carolyn and I began to cry and I took your rings off your finger—I didn’t want them to be there when the people came to take you away.  I put them on my finger and they stayed there for days.  Alex put the picture he’d drawn of a rose on your chest.  He did it so sweetly, with so much sensitivity.  He really cared about you, even though he’d not known you very well.  I guess he knew that you saw the artist in him that very few others had seen yet.

Your skin turned the most gorgeous ivory just after you died.  You looked like a beautiful angelic marble statue.  I will never forget how you looked at that moment and I hope it will one day replace the gasping-for-air picture that floats in every now and then.  Strangely, Carolyn and I had the same impulse—to go through your jewelry to find a token, something to hold of yours in the days to come.  Alex wanted a large pin, Carolyn looked for a pendant she remembered you wearing.  I only remember the act of looking, not what I took.  All of the practical things that had to be done came after that.  We had to call Hospice and Michael.  Eventually the funeral home people showed up—one guy who looked like a plumber with another guy who looked like a ghoul!  We went into the kitchen when they took you out of the house, turning our backs, not looking.  There was paperwork to do, pills to destroy, decisions to make.  I remember very little of that.  I was relieved and devastated at the same time.  I had known you were dying for several months, I suppose you knew it too, though you kept promising me you were going to get better.

I’ve dreamed about you many times in the year since you left.  In the dreams you are younger, not sick.  Dad is there, too.  You are together and healthy.  I love those dreams—they are like a visit from both of you.  You would be happy to know that Stanley finally ended up in a nice apartment.  It took a long time—he didn’t move until April—but he is at Bremerton Garden Apartments with a view of the Manette and Warren Ave bridges—where Aunt Carol lived for awhile, way back in the sixties or seventies.  He is happy there and says his kitty is, too.  I am reading your diaries.  I know that you left them for me to read and I am thankful you did.  I am learning so much about you that I didn’t know and they keep me connected to you in a wonderful way.  I just wish I had the earlier ones from the 50s and 60s.  What happened to them?  Did you get rid of them?  Did they burn in the fire in 2002?  I’m in the seventies with you right now.  Your diaries are like novels to me, real page-turners, more fascinating than I ever thought they’d be.  It will take me a long time to read through them, but that’s okay—you’ll be with me longer that way.

We sold your house, Mom.  I don’t think you’d be very happy to see what they’ve done to it so far, but they have great plans, so in the end it will be okay.  The mother of the lady across the street bought it.  She wants to “bring it back to its origins, the Twenties”, she told me.  But in preparation for that they’ve cut down the lilacs, the magnolia, the pink dogwood, even the huge camellia bush.  I think they left the wisteria bush, but they also got rid of all that awful ivy and cut down one of the big fir trees that was threatening the house.  The yard looks huge now, bigger than I ever knew it was.  I’m going to have to let go of it pretty soon, but I keep going by there to see what else they’re going to do and if I approve.  The year of getting the house ready to sell caused me to have a possessiveness about it that’s hard to get over now.

I think that’s all I wanted to tell you.  It’s Memorial Day weekend and I’ll take some flowers to your and Dad’s crypt up on Cemetery Hill, like I’ve done every year since Dad died.  I should go more often, but you guys aren’t really there.  It’s only your ashes.  Stanley has some of your ashes in a heart I got for him and I kept some, too.  You are with us every day. I hope you approve of how things are going.  We miss you.

                                    Love, Chris

Dig, dig, dig

Zuzu

My youngest granddaughter, Zuzu, 4 years old, has been visiting her Other Grandparents, Marg and Dennis, in Kingston for Spring Vacation.  She and her sisiter, Alison, 6, generally come to visit me several times while they are here.  This trip, though, Zuzu  has decided not to come to see me.  This is what she told her Cousin Claire (Claire is 19 or 20).

“Why don’t you want to go see your Grandma Christine, Zuzu?”

“I don’t want to dig.  Dig, dig, dig--that’s all we do when we go see Gramma Chrit-stine.  When I was three I liked to dig, but now that I’m four, I don’t like to dig.”

Luckily, her sister, Ali, came to see me twice and we had a wonderful time.  Ali prefers spending time with me alone anyway.  Not having to share me with her sister is a big treat for her.  We bake cookies, play the piano, play Animal Vet, “walk the paths” (our long cobblestone pathways), clean up “The Camp” where the girls play in the summer, take the long walk to get the newspaper out of the mail box.  This time she wanted to help wash dishes. I asked Ali if Zuzu likes to do dishes and she said, “Zuzu doesn’t like to clean”.  She doesn’t like to dig either!

I'm Out of It!

A Toast to Michael

The long business of cleaning out my Mom’s house and getting it ready to put on the market started last June.  The first several months of that time my husband, Michael said he’d help with the heavy jobs.  He’d carry the big sacks of junk out of the house, down the stairs from the second story or up the stairs from the basement.  He’d help put the heavy pieces into the dumpster and he’d help carry the furniture out of the house.  “But”, he said, “after all that’s done with, I’m out of it.”  That meant, to him, and to me, that he wouldn’t help anymore, that he’d leave the rest to me. 

When he first used that phrase I felt angry with him, because even after the house was cleared of messes and furniture, there was still going to be a lot that needed to be done.  If I couldn’t count on him for help, I was really going to be on my own with this big, falling-down house and the specter of that made my head spin.

As time moved on though, I found that “I’m out of it” meant “until the next time I want to add my advice or my muscle to what you’re doing.”  Michael is a guy who thinks there is really only one way to do things—his way.  So when he’d see me putting something off, like getting the old freezer and refrigerator out of the basement, he found a coupon in his electric bill for removal of unused appliances. I was able to get PSE to come, remove the appliances and even send me a VISA gift card for $20 each.  When our realtor mentioned that banks want “health letters” to verify there is a working septic system before they will grant real estate loans, Michael called a septic company to come out to find the system.  I was in Wisconsin at the time.  Did I mention he doesn’t like to wait around—no procrastinating for him.  When I got home he had shovels ready for us to go out and dig the septic up.  He arranged for a landscaper, too, who came out and took all the blackberries out of the backyard and unearthed old hoses, rotted pieces of wood, a laundry room sink and other things that had gotten back there somehow.  What was left was a pile of take-to-the dump stuff, which we did together.  The most recent “I’m out of it” moment came when one of the realtors locked the basement door for which we had no key.   Michael made several suggestions as to how to handle the problem, one of them being that he would try to break into the basement with some of his tools.  He tried, it didn’t work and we called a locksmith, who solved the problem.

If I had a dollar for every time my husband has said, “I’m out of it!”  I’d have quite a little bundle by now.  And each time he’s jumped right back in, sometimes being grumpy about it, but always helping.  When he says, “I’m out of it” now, I slide a look at him and smile because it’s a sure case of the boy who cried wolf.  I just don’t believe it anymore.

I have taken him to lunch many times over the past months in gratitude for his helping me with a big job at Mom’s house.  We’ve dragged ourselves, dirty and sweaty into the Taqueria El Huarache in Silverdale and loosened our sore muscles with Negro Modelo and beans, rice and salsa.  There doesn’t seem any way to thank him enough for all he’s done, but one day I have a feeling he’ll say, “Remember all those times I told you I was out of it, but I helped you anyway?  I have a way you can repay me.”  Until that day, this public appreciation will have to do.  Thank you, dear husband, for all you’ve done to help me through this hard time.  Because of you, I can still walk upright and my knees still work and I have not had a nervous breakdown.  You’ll get your hugs and kisses in private.   

House for Sale

Momentous, incredible, long-awaited, never thought I'd make it day yesterday.  Mom's house is up for sale.  Finally.  It's been 8 months since Mom died.  I think I spent more time in her house since then that I had spent visiting her since I left home when I was 18!  I waited until after the holidays to get a cleaning company to come in to do the final deep cleaning and rug removal (couldn't leave that horrible 1960's era gold shag carpeting in there!) and I had to call them back twice to get the house cleaned to my satisfaction--not as thorough as I wanted them to be--banister not cleaned, couple of floors not swept or mopped, back porch not swept--lots of things like that.  What we needed was one of those Russian or Ukranian girls that Michael's Aunt Eleni hires in Greece.  Anyway, after I went back and cleaned up after them, we had the locks changed (they didn't work) and the roof cleaned (big clumps of moss on it), a landscaper came to get rid of the blackberry bushes (sorry, no more blackberry pies for awhile, but they'll come back) and then the pre-inspection.  Met a very nice guy inspector.  Collects all kinds of stuff from the 50s and he wanted the Borax dispenser above the laundry tub and the manual pencil sharper in the basement and a couple of old newspapers.  I wish I'd met him before I cleaned the house out.  I knew there were many people out there looking for old stuff, but didn't know any personally.  We had Puget Sound Energy come to pick up the old refrigerator and upright freezer in the basement and take them away, too.  I spent a couple of hours cleaning up where they'd been sitting for 40 years, ripping ugly green wallpaper off the basement wall and sweeping, sweeping, sweeping.

The garage is still full of my brother's furniture and "stuff".  That's a loose thread.  He still doesn't have anywhere to go, but he hasn't put any effort into finding a place either.  Now he sees the handwriting on the wall, I hope.  He's spending his money on cigarettes and pot--on the 18th of this month he told me he was out of money and food stamps.  He's not handling his money any better than he ever has.  I don't think I need to point out what lies ahead for him.

So the trigger has been pulled.  The house is listed by Doug Hallock of Windemere Realty and Gerry Kearney of Dream Realty and you can see the listing here:
http://www.windermerekingston.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=detail&startrow=1&cfid=9563785&cftoken=21232495

If you know anyone interested in a fixer upper, this is it.  The lock guy was interested in the shop and the big basement for more shop, so I'm hoping that will be a feature that gets some interest.  As for me, I have to let go now.  Just as I was leaving yesterday some people showed up to see the house.  I instantly felt a protective feeling come over me.  I wanted to be sure they had a real estate person with them and weren't just people who wanted to "get in".  I knew I had to get out of there and LET IT GO. It's been my baby for so many months, my responsibility, being the one to get it ready.  And now, like buying a daughter a lovely prom dress, overseeing a fancy hairdo, helping to pick out the shoes, inspecting the boy friend, I have to let her go and hope she has a good time.  And hope she has a buyer who will take good care of her and appreciate her history.