Getting busy at home

Sometimes things happen fast, and you just have to deal with it.

My father-in-law died just before Christmas, and since then his sons and daughters have been working on all the stuff at the house. (Like I did last summer at my mom's house.) They had been planning a family meeting to discuss the estate, etc., and invited us to come over, since they had arranged for a financial counselor to come over and talk with us. We told them we regretfully must miss it, due to my work and winter weather. It's about 175 miles away.

But after all the teams I cover exited at the first (district) level of basketball playoffs, the trip suddenly seemed much more possible. The last team was eliminated Wednesday night. I talked it over with my wife on Thursday, and on Saturday we drove to Ladysmith.

She wasn't sure until Saturday whether she would go. First of all, I knew I couldn't stick around--I had to be back at work Monday, the day the financial consultant was coming over. Then, the weather forecast was talking about freezing rain on Sunday--so I didn't want to drive back Sunday. In the end, we left at 3 p.m. Saturday. I drove her to one of her sisters, and within a half hour I was driving back east. Got back home at about 11:30 p.m.

On Sunday and Monday, I "batched it" at home, taking care of myself and the two kitties. Things went OK. Rather quiet. I did some reading and went through a few things--stuff to clean up and throw out--while keeping the kitties fed and loved up. Sunday afternoon was spent on the couch, the new cat on my lap, sleeping and purring, as I watched a recording of a hockey game (Devils vs. Canadiens) from the night before.

My wife was driven back home Monday by a sister. She was accompanied by boxes and boxes of cargo. Lots of stuff from my father-in-law's place. From the freezer, from the fridge, from the closets, from the kitchen. Boxes and boxes.

The most immediate problem was several large bags of frozen stuff--meat, beef cuts and the like. We don't have a freezer of our own, except for the little one on top of the refrigerator. So what could we do? We couldn't take it inside. Where could we put it?

There was no choice but to leave all the frozen stuff on the back porch overnight, under a tarp. Under normal circumstances that wouldn't be a viable option, either. But this time it was. The temperature was right around 0 F when she got home, and it dropped down to about -15F (-26C) overnight. Who needs a freezer? My wife called one of her friends, who said we can take the frozen stuff there today--she has lots of empty space in her freezer.

After that, my wife has to do a triage of the other things that came home with her. Some of it will be delivered to St. Vinnie's. Some, to the bible training center out of town, which always needs household products. Some will basically be thrown out.

I'm doing some of the same kind of work inside. On Sunday, when not watching hockey or playing with the kitty, I was working on a corner of the living room, moving out various cassette tapes and CDs. The tapes are being junked. The CDs will be boxed; some will be kept, some will wind up at St. Vinnie's, too. The ancient stereo equipment I got from my brother after he died was scrapped--it hasn't been used for years. The big cabinet on which everything sat may wind up at St. Vinnie's, too.

We are clearing space for a big table that will hold my recorder and VCR, some DVDs and a new TV we plan to buy fairly soon.

Upstairs, I also was working in the computer room. I have a color inkjet printer and a black-and-white laser printer. The color printer came when I bought the new computer a year or so back. Recently, while thinking about printers, I realized I could have both of them hooked up to the computer--something I wanted to do, since it's cheaper to print routine stuff with the laser printer.

That has now happened--the HP Laserjet is the default printer, and if my wife wants to print something in color, it's easy to switch output to the Dell inkjet.

But first I had to clear space (on the floor in front of the printer stand) for the laser printer, and that meant clearing out CDs and stuff and junk. Brochures from possible future family cars. Office supply catalogs. Magazines. Dust bunnies (they have been propagating prodigeously). Pens. Cables, such as the one that recharges my cell phone and the one that links my camera to the computer.

It's still a mess, and I didn't get done, but it's a lot better than before. More work needs to be done there. At least I'll have a lot more time at home for a while, with basketball out of the way.

My wife was tired after she got home. We went out for a pizza after her sister left. (She had to hustle back home, too.) The rest of the evening was quiet, talking about this and that--mainly, how I fared by myself for two days.

I fared fairly well. I had been thinking about making some clam chowder for supper on Sunday--my wife told me what to use--but I opted instead to hit the drive-through at a fast food place. The kitties got fed on schedule.

It was a little lonely for both/all of us. But last night was a lot better. We just sat together, and that was nice. Then we slept together. That was nice, too. Back to our "menage a quatre."