Jumbled II

Jumble by Craig Thompson
print for sale at art

This is a followup on last Thursday's post Jumble where I spilled a stew of my mind and emotions about a series of events that threatened to throw the following week or so into chaos--which would be the week just passed and maybe a half a week more. Well there have been good resolutions to almost all of the issues and I'm feeling fairly confident about the rest.

The cold I was fighting has resolved itself as colds will do. It just could have picked a more convenient time to arrive. But do they ever? The only thing left is that easy fatigue that is always the aftermath of viruses for me. Plus I seem to have lost most of the ground I had gained by that month of hard work on my new mini-tramp between mid October and November 13 when the first cold of the season took me by storm. I discovered this today during those times I had to stand on the bed and found my leg muscles trembling and my balance barely under control.

Why was I standing on the bed? More on that later.

The second issue that resolved itself simply by the passage of time was the series of family events from Friday evening through Monday evening as Ed's family celebrated Christmas early to accommodate his brother's family who traveled dowm from Toutle, Washington. I cheated a lot on that one though. I only attended the two events that were held away from home--eating out at a Chinese restaurant Saturday evening and the Christmas celebration at Ed's younger brother's house Sunday.

I also spent a couple hours in their motel room with my Mom and sister and nephew Saturday night. My sister called just after we got home from the restaurant to say they were in town a day early and could I maybe be ready to go north with them by Sunday after our Xmas dinner? I knew that was impossible but I said I would make the effort to be ready by Monday morning. But Ed nixed that plan in the wee hours of Sunday morning when he caught me still awake and learning of my plan to stay up and work at packing until time to go to the dinner he chided me for lack of wisdom--for thinking of foregoing sleep while sick, for asking my Mom to wait another night to get home to familiar surroundings. I let him talk me out of it and lay down at 5am. He then told my sister when she called at nine-thirty that I would not be able to be ready and they should just head north and try to beat the snow storm heading south from Washington over the pass.

Ed's wisdom was confirmed when he brought the phone to me, waking me so I could talk to my sister. I had almost no voice and it didn't return to normal for three or more hours. I also ended up falling asleep after the dinner at Ed's brother's house, missing most of the afternoon visiting.

Monday I managed to get a major decluttering done in our room and a separate sorting project of the boxes of electronics paraphanalia for the two laptops, the cell phones, battery recharger and batteries, the two cameras and two cd players. This served the purposes of preparing for the room rearranging planned for Wednesday and for the packing for my trip to Longview which must start Thursday. While I was at it I collected items I knew I would be taking with me into shoe boxes and bags that I could keep track of during the room project. I don't dare start packing the actual bags for the trip as there is no where to keep them except on the bed in the day and the livingroom couch at night.

I intended to continue that sorting and corraling of items on Tuesday as well but I got sideswiped by the news of Dewey's death at 3am just as I was wrapping up my work session to lay down and ended up spending the next nine hours grieving hard while writing a comment at her blog which I then morphed into a post and then read her blog backwards to the last post I'd read November 6. And then started visiting other of Dewey's faithful reader's, reading their blogs backward to the day they learned--most of them on the day her husband posted the announcement two weeks before I found it and a week after her passing.

I finally slept for a couple hours Tuesday afternoon. Woke only because I was called for dinner. Then I crashed hard at 10pm. But I woke up at 2:30 AM this morning and could not get back to sleep. I was still upset about the loss of Dewey but now I was also anticipating with dread the room project slated to start no later than 8 AM. Since I was still awake when Ed got up at 6, we got started at 7. We finished at 7PM.

As I related in my Jumble post last Thursday, the room rearrangement was necessary to make room for the gigormas TV Ed's brother gave us. It is too big to fit in the slot made for the TV and so must go on top. Which meant that everything on top--stacked to the ceiling--must be moved off. I could not see how we could find room for that volume of stuff elsewhere in the room. I had planned hard last winter before the BIG room makeover the first week of January to design the system we used and it had been working well for us for nearly a year. I was completely demoralized by the concept of a redo. Especially in the face of all the chaos of family events, a cold, packing for a trip and the mess I'd made in here during NaNo after coming down with the first cold mid November.

Well the project is done and I think successfully. At least I am liking a lot of the new features of the room. I won't know how things will work out functionally until after I get back next February. I was going to describe the results here and some of the snags we hit today but this has gone on too long already. I've been awake over twenty hours and they were not laid back hours. I also need to get up early to start laundry and packing while my MIL is at work and the machines available.

My brother's wife is driving down from Portland sometime in the next few days to pick me up and take me up to my Mom's in Longview WA where I am to help in the care of my Mom during her post hip surgery and mild stroke recovery. Longview is a forty minute drive across the Columbia River from Portland. It is about a five hour drive from here. As long as the snow doesn't make a mess of the Sexton Pass about twenty minutes north of here.

So I'm going to continue this Jumble story later. I'll try to get pictures of the result tomorrow. I didn't take before or durring pics this time as I forgot to keep my camera accessible. You can find a picture of the before and links to more in last week's Jumble post. Suffice it to say that at one time today the full surface of the bed was piled to the level of my ribcage with the lighter weight stuff--books, boxes, office supplies, HABA, electronic paraphanalia, and more plus all the pillows and blankets. And Merlin. The TVs had been swapped by 10Am. It took us until 7 to put the room back together.

In fact this Jumble series might go on thru the story of the packing and the trip and the arrival and settling in at Mom's. I've discussed here before on the occasions of visits to my parent's home how hard it is for me to spend more than a few hours at a time in that house. My Mom is a hoarder of the highest order. As am I. But dwelling in the midst of someone else's jumble is several orders of magnitude worse than living with one's own. Because you don't dare move anything without direct permission or they would never find what you moved. This is amplified when one is visually impaired as me and my Mom are.

To add to the jumble there, my sister and her son have been living in that house since she came up to help with the care of my Dad during his battle with cancer in 2004-2005. She and her son are ADHD. She homeschools him. They have slowly mixed their jumbles in with Mom's and Dad's jumbles throughout the two story house of fourteen some rooms plus garage. There is nary a surface large enough to set down a dinner plate without clearing it off first.

I'm going to be bringing my own jumble with me. Including my own surface-- my current desk which is one of those TV trays advertised on infomercials. they have legs adjustable in height and a tray that can be level or slant to act as an easel. the legs will slide under the couch, chair or bed you sit at. It also folds flat and the legs telescope so when collapsed it is little larger than the tray.

I'm also bringing my mini-tramp which I'll probably keep outside so I'll have a good excuse to get out of the jumble for a time at least once a day. I simply must have it. I was making such good progress last fall and I would continue to loose ground if I wait until February to get back to it. The mini-tramp is the only safe exercise I've found for myself. At least in our current price range. I think I get more benefit from it than I would a treadmill anyway. With my vision impairment I can't walk fast enough in public areas to get much benefit. I can't reach an aerobic pace.

And of course there will be books....

Clothes? Who knows.