ishte, posts by tag: busy - LiveJournal

So today my daughter and I went over to my brother's house to start clearing things out.  Since there is no intention of either my daughter or me contesting any decision Mom makes as executor, it's moving pretty quickly and we're already at the point of being able to donate, gift, sell, or otherwise dispose of his things.  So the house was listed last week. It had a cash offer almost the instant it went on the market last week, so it's time.

There has already been some discussion about what things we might want once things are settled.  My daughter wanted his dining room set since she didn't have one of her own yet.  His is nice and suits her tastes.  Mom suggested she might want his new cookware set, and I suggested adding his iron skillet since she only has one, and I have lots. lol.  So today was the day my daughter's friends could come over with a trailer to pick up the suite, and a few other things that she'd asked if she could have.  For me, I have to arrange for someone with a trailer hitch to pick up his flatbed trailer, and I haven't been as on top of things as she was. Whoops. Too busy working retail for the holidays, so I'll have to get on that soon.  Soon.  In the mean time, I asked permission to take a pair of his jeans so I could make something out of them.  I ended up getting two because I picked up one pair and they are lined in PLAID FLANNEL!! so yeah... I got one of those and one of the regular ones.  Otherwise, I spent most of my time there packing up his clothes, so other than the actual bedroom suite which mom hasn't decided if she wants it for herself, just wants his mattress, or wants to sell or leave to the new owner, the room is empty of all his things.  Initially, mom thought my cousin might want his pants, but they are 36 not 39 and they will not fit Perry who is a 40 waist now. I'm going to ask her if I can donate them to a men's shelter along with his three pairs of hunting boots, his sneakers, a pair of  and a pair of casual oxfords.  He has one pair of dress slacks and a nice dress shirt in the back of his closet and a pair of dress shoes I want to donate to Clothes that Work instead.  But I hope I can find a men's shelter locally that is mostly veteran focussed. 

My daughter has his printer now.  I also adopted his monitor (bigger) and have it up here now.  SO MUCH BETTER (his only computer was his work computer which went back to his workplace).  I asked Mom if she wanted his big TV and she laughed. Apparently he'd tried to get her to take his old one when he bought the new one. She didn't want it, so I brought it home with me, and brought the old one up to my room. I brought the one from my room up here, but now it isn't working.  I'm really surprised how small it seems now.  It used to seem so big.  Anyway, I got his TV set up in my living room and it really is nice. It's 5g and way bigger than mine and way smarter too. I had to have a Roku on mine to watch half the channels. I can see that there will be a learning curve though.  I wanted his snow blower, but dang... it's WAY too big for our tiny needs. What we need is more like an electric snow shovel. lol. Otherwise, I brought home a couple of his lamps to use up here, and there is one more that matches that I'll get once it's closer to the closing date.  I didn't want to leave the front room without a light until really close, and we'll still have to go over and finish emptying out his kitchen anyway.  I packed up his bathroom, left one of his fresh bars of soap and all the bathroom cleaning supplies.  We don't need them.  He had like 5 things of speedstick. He must have known that Colgate was going to discontinue it and bought up extra!

I didn't take everything I packed up with me though. Most of it is just packed up pending deciding what to do with it, to save time later.  Three 18 gallon totes and that's all his regular clothes undies and socks and extra bedding and socks and hunting clothes and all his jackets.  50% of the clothing I packed up were his reinforced hunting pants and his various jackets for hunting at different times of the year. I put his shoes in one of his travel cases.  Those I particularly want to donate to a shelter, because they are good quality and well cared for, so they should last someone quite a while.  I'd rather donate them directly rather than just taking them  to Goodwill or something like that.  I hope mom agrees.

It's weird, you know? Going through my  brother's house and taking care of his clothes and stuff.  Bringing his TV home with me to my house.  It's just a weird feeling packing up his house for him, and realizing that it's not really his house anymore, and in a couple more weeks it will literally be someone else's house. I didn't expect it to sell so fast, and I was surprised that it was ok to have it listed so soon to be honest.

In the meantime. Yule is here, and Santa is coming on Christmas. I hope you all are enjoying your Yultide celebrations, and are ready for Santa in a couple of days.  I'm ready. Up until today I was 100% finished with wrapping, but I found a couple of things that had to get purchased for a couple of people. So they need to get wrapped and I have a few dog toys to wrap for Blooper from Santa.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my ramble. That's my report for today. 

Whew. Holy cow. This has been such a busy month.  First working in Retail during the holidays. That's busy enough, but then there is also the stuff to DO with the holidays. Decorating, shopping, wrapping presents, shopping more lol (Yeah... I did that.  I wrapped 90% of my presents and then went online and bought some more lol!), Making new festive holiday masks for work.  AND because my old Nutcracker festive holiday vest is not only wearing out and fraying now, it's too tight! I lost almost 10 pounds since October.  Why oh WHY are my BOOBS popping the top button... WHY BOOBS? WHY!?

So in addition to all that, because my vest won't last another year, I have also been learning how to make a vest so I can make myself a NEW festive holiday vest. I learned today how to sew a dart. What's a dart for you ask? It's to make room for my... BOOBS. Yes. I traced the pattern off my existing vest, and learned how to modify a pattern to add a dart. So I made it an inch or so bigger at the sides and added the dart to the new pattern.  I bought some clearance Xmas fabric to use for making mock-ups (aka prototypes that won't waste the fabric purchased specifically for the final product) which, if I've done this right the first time, will actually result in a festive holiday vest in and of itself since it is also festive. lol.  I sewed two darts and have two to go which I did not do today because I was too lazy (too busy actually) to take the time to change the thread for the lining fabric.  I might do that tomorrow and then maybe baste the thing together to test the fit.  I've left enough seam allowance to actually tweak it a little. Mistake? I forgot and sewed the darts with a real seam instead of basting, so if it's wrong, I'm spending a couple of hours picking those two seams instead of a couple of minutes.bleh.

On top of that, there's all the stuff to do with settling my brother's estate.  Meetings two weeks in a row on my day off, both of which ate into a large part of my only weekday off, and a lot of other things not getting checked off my list for that day, including not getting to go the the chiropractor when I REALLY needed to, and I'm hoping I can go on Wednesday this week, but I don't know if his office will be open or not.  I also wasn't able to call my gut doctor, and I need to ask about my medication - i.e. it costs 3 times as much over the counter as it does with a prescription... so if he wants me to continue taking it, I need him to write a scrip... and if he doesn't, he needs to tell me how the hell to stop taking it, because I tried to follow the urgent care doctors instructions and ended up in a very uncomfortable situation within a couple of days reducing the dose. I did not like that, and could not function by the fourth day. I had to start taking it again. Not happy about that. Also, I'd like to pay his bill, but the bill provides a website that I can't log into to pay it, because I wasn't provided with a special code or something that I'm supposed to have to create my account? Uh... Ok...

So anyway. Busy.  I didn't work on CTT at all the last three days. Too busy.  I just want to sit down and write it now, but guess what. It's bedtime! lol... It's also thrown me off a bit that my day off changed because of Pink Sunday. So I was off today and working tomorrow... I might try to beg myself off an hour or two early if it's not too busy.  I just might. I hardly EVER EVER ask for anything or leave early unless I'm deathly ill or something. I don't ask for favors hardly ever, but I might ask for one. I have stuff to do. lol.

Happy Holidays Everyone!