unhitched...
...from the U-Haul trailer containing all the things that didn't fit into Mom's new apartment. That was...wow, that was Sept. 11 that we moved Mom, and the 13th when I made the ~200-mile drive back home.
On the 11th we moved Mom to the nicer low-rent housing in town. It's a good spot: the tenants seem satisfied with their situation, the maintenance staff are friendly, someone leaves boxes of free produce in the first floor commons area.... She's less than a block from the library. And her old landlord was becoming unreasonable and unreliable.
On the 12th, Mom and I went wig-shopping - the wig is stunningly realistic, but pricey enough to be special-occasion headgear. Then we went to the first session of her second round of chemo. This week, a scan, then next week the discussion of results with her doc.
This particular chemo generally has fewer side effects, and aside from some hair loss and temporary fatigue she's her usual acting-twenty-years-younger self. We made sure to get the sewing cabinet set up in front of the window so she could get back to sewing: with all the sorting and packing for the downsized apartment, she didn't sew for a month, and it was beginning to wear on her.
Mom seems able to recognize everyone she's ever met, no matter how much time has passed. In small-town Iowa, this means she has a basis for conversation with everyone in a 30-mile radius. The woman at the wig shop was from the same home town, and she knew 2 people at the chemo place, and 2 different people when she returned the next week, and a sizeable chunk of the tenants at the new place.
The drive home on the 13th was uneventful. The 5x8 trailer held a 7' oak china hutch (the dozen or so panes of glass had been removed and placed carefully in the back of the Santa Fe), a quilting frame and table, three sets of shelves, a coffee table, the usual assortment of boxes, and a bunch of stuff I'm forgetting. Niece's boyfriend was a huge help getting things loaded/moved; I think he's a keeper. Friends arrived to help me unpack in record time, then I returned the trailer, and bought fancy pizza to celebrate.
Since then...I've set up the china hutch, and filled it with pottery, alcohol, and the set of dishes I bought from Mom. And I've cleaned the sunroom (a big task) so it can be a temporary warren for the new/returned cat (she was with my friend for a few years). And I've cleaned the part of the basement where the plumber needs to be - I need a new drinking water filtration system and a new "iron curtain" (and a new softener, but that can wait); I should replace the anode in the water heater too.
Work is still unreasonable; I just found out the vendor's customization code works off a basic Java hashtable, and therefore the pieces of code are randomly ordered (i.e., the same input could provide a different result part of the time). Seriously? Team-wide frustration (over many things, not just the vendor code) has manifested itself as yelling, crying, and sometimes just walking out for the day. But there is hope in some areas: our sub-team has a new boss (she's actually my old boss pre-project); she's actually trying to make things better and might even be sort of succeeding here and there. And we've been allowed some new headcount. And the managers are so concerned about more people quitting that they're allowing us to work from home one day a week. 'bout time they noticed that we don't need to be encased in drab furry walls in order to get work done.
U-Haul factoid: they do not rent trailers to older-model Ford Explorers. Something about tire brands and excessive accidents.
On the 11th we moved Mom to the nicer low-rent housing in town. It's a good spot: the tenants seem satisfied with their situation, the maintenance staff are friendly, someone leaves boxes of free produce in the first floor commons area.... She's less than a block from the library. And her old landlord was becoming unreasonable and unreliable.
On the 12th, Mom and I went wig-shopping - the wig is stunningly realistic, but pricey enough to be special-occasion headgear. Then we went to the first session of her second round of chemo. This week, a scan, then next week the discussion of results with her doc.
This particular chemo generally has fewer side effects, and aside from some hair loss and temporary fatigue she's her usual acting-twenty-years-younger self. We made sure to get the sewing cabinet set up in front of the window so she could get back to sewing: with all the sorting and packing for the downsized apartment, she didn't sew for a month, and it was beginning to wear on her.
Mom seems able to recognize everyone she's ever met, no matter how much time has passed. In small-town Iowa, this means she has a basis for conversation with everyone in a 30-mile radius. The woman at the wig shop was from the same home town, and she knew 2 people at the chemo place, and 2 different people when she returned the next week, and a sizeable chunk of the tenants at the new place.
The drive home on the 13th was uneventful. The 5x8 trailer held a 7' oak china hutch (the dozen or so panes of glass had been removed and placed carefully in the back of the Santa Fe), a quilting frame and table, three sets of shelves, a coffee table, the usual assortment of boxes, and a bunch of stuff I'm forgetting. Niece's boyfriend was a huge help getting things loaded/moved; I think he's a keeper. Friends arrived to help me unpack in record time, then I returned the trailer, and bought fancy pizza to celebrate.
Since then...I've set up the china hutch, and filled it with pottery, alcohol, and the set of dishes I bought from Mom. And I've cleaned the sunroom (a big task) so it can be a temporary warren for the new/returned cat (she was with my friend for a few years). And I've cleaned the part of the basement where the plumber needs to be - I need a new drinking water filtration system and a new "iron curtain" (and a new softener, but that can wait); I should replace the anode in the water heater too.
Work is still unreasonable; I just found out the vendor's customization code works off a basic Java hashtable, and therefore the pieces of code are randomly ordered (i.e., the same input could provide a different result part of the time). Seriously? Team-wide frustration (over many things, not just the vendor code) has manifested itself as yelling, crying, and sometimes just walking out for the day. But there is hope in some areas: our sub-team has a new boss (she's actually my old boss pre-project); she's actually trying to make things better and might even be sort of succeeding here and there. And we've been allowed some new headcount. And the managers are so concerned about more people quitting that they're allowing us to work from home one day a week. 'bout time they noticed that we don't need to be encased in drab furry walls in order to get work done.
U-Haul factoid: they do not rent trailers to older-model Ford Explorers. Something about tire brands and excessive accidents.