Doing Sensible Things

I decided I better get a post out soon or people would wonder what happened to me. I have been busy, but I am also going to admit I haven't been in a blogging mood. Let's see --- I will do my best to keep things upbeat because I have more blessings than ills but the ills have kept me busy:)

I did a bit of unexpected decluttering projects. It kind of hit me in two waves... The first was one was that I just simply opened my cookbook closet  which also contains the medicine cabinet and paper goods products for the kitchen and thought to myself, "This is ridiculous." I had to go through it in small incremental doses because for the past two weeks I feel as if I have been here, there, ---everywhere but my own home.

This and a candle in the living room are the first signs I am moving to the fall season.

I got it done and a good bit left that closet including 15 cookbooks with 6 more being seriously evaluated. I have a problem with cookbooks...that home ec major coming in to play there. That closet is way more pleasing to the eye now. I am pretty sure those other 6 will leave it soon.

I then tackled another closet where I keep small appliances and baking goods and made a huge dent in it as well. I tackled under my bathroom sink and really made a difference there. I got rid of some hair gadgets that I will never use ...you get the idea.

All of these were literally done when I would be home for an hour before I had to go somewhere else. Little snippets of time led to quite a pile for Goodwill. 

At some point in all this decluttering story... Mom had spent the night over here in the last month when she was having a very bad day and it just hit me that I really needed to think about the possibility of Lindsay's old room being needed for her one day. I had Lindsay come over one day. I told her she didn't have to do anything but just point to things and tell me if it was really a keeper or could it go. We made a huge mess on the floor with books and stuff that were easily pulled off shelves or drawers. She left me with a list of things to then see about as I had time. I think we pulled almost 40 books off the shelves. IT took me another couple of days to get it all righted and out of there. I think I have a better grasp of it all now. Her closet is almost all empty on the bottom. I can easily box up the rest of what I would want in that room and place downstairs in a closet if I ever have to move Mom in here. 

I know Mom wants to stay at home as long as possible and I want that too. I would rather hire help as long as I can before I made a move. I also know she would rather not EVER come here, but with the assisted living places going into lockdowns that would not be something I would consider unless it were a last resort.

Now for Mom...she is doing better. We have an esophagus stretch scheduled for next week. She has had a pulled muscle that required a doctor visit. I suppose that was probably from all the pulling up she had to do when she got really down. Now, if you saw her today you would not think she had been as sick as she was a few weeks ago. That is what she does...Down down down and then bounces back.

Her best friend passed away and we attended the funeral on Monday. We moved to Brewton in August of 1971 and they met soon after. They were besties for a long time. They did everything together and Mrs. Carolyn was so sad when Mama moved here. They kept in close contact. She was 92 so older than Mom and had gotten some cancer a couple of years ago. 

Enough of Mom ...It is just that time of life when I will be busy and that is that.

I have done yard work when it is not raining, stitched at night when I am not too tired. (Stitching post next week...maybe) I have held that precious baby Palmer. He is growing and changing so much. Lindsay is not much better. We can't see the specialist in Pensacola until January 3rd. IT is hard for her, but she is a strong girl and is doing a great job with the kiddos and she will persevere.

They were with the other grandparents in a condo for the first football game.

I will leave you with a quote from C. S. Lewis that I heard in a message a week or so ago. I loved it and with all my goings on I have really leaned into the last part which I will bold for you...

C. S. Lewis "Living in the Atomic Age" (1948)

Replace "atomic age" with your choice of word from the news.

In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. "How are we to live in an atomic age?" I am temped to reply: "Why, as you would have lived is in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents."

In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways.... It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such changes and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.

This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things - praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts - not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies, but they need not dominate our minds.

*****

I have been really trying to do that. It was good to watch college football again on Saturday. 

My little pumpkins. 

I will try to get my blogging mojo back.

Sandy