It was a pretty productive day.

I touched base with art consultant who is coordinating an exhibit of my mom's work at a local spa in town. Maybe something will sell. Now I have to wrap up in bubble wrap the 20 or so more that she wants (she initially took about 6 to show the spa owner first), and then meet her at the spa two Sundays from now so she can install it next day.

The problem is that i have a friend at work who said she wants to buy something but is waiting for me to email her pix of pieces that would look good in her RI beach house. Some of these will be going in the show unless she commits to buying something before my mid-September dropoff, so I have to get off my butt and take their pix so I can email her with them.

I had a morning appt. to get a tour of the 2nd nursing home whose waiting list I want to put my mother on so she has somewhere to go in 3 years when the money runs out.

A very dreary task that needs to be done but i wasn't at all looking forward to doing it. The place was nice enough but the rooms were like any other nursing home. Depressing. They did have a nice, large courtyard completely surrounded by their buildings, and it was all landscaped with walking path, etc. And they're ready to begin a big renovation. But the woman giving me the tour was really annoying, I guess because she had a very artificial sounding way of talking to me, like she was trying hard to be overly pleasant and comforting when it was just sounding so insincere to me and then she'd say a lot of things with great emphasis that meant nothing at all. I find that I tend to react fairly quickly to people I meet for the first time and I either dislike them or I like them. Well there are a lot i guess that I could be neutral on, but I definitely am aware when there's someone I really warm up to quickly, like a local weaver who came here recently to buy yarn, or this woman at the nursing home, whom I have to say I didn't care for due to her attitude. Just be real.

I guess I'll end up doing all the paperwork to get on the wait list, although they only have 30 beds in their memory care section. I didn't really ask many questions, which I should have, but i was just feeling depressed when i tried to imagine my mother living there where everyone's in a wheelchair. When I compare this place to Masonicare, the first place i applied to, i really see no difference inside though Masonicare, like this place, had a nice outdoor space. At Masonicare, it's a nice pond with a fountain and a walking path around it, though in truth the vast majority of residents there never walk anywheres near that pond.

Both places say they have daily activities, pet therapy dogs, etc. In truth, I'm sort of hoping this will all be unnecessary. It's just so hard to contemplate.

After i was through at the nursing home, since it's in the same town where my dad is now living, i gave him a call and headed over there around mid-day. We sat around shooting the breeze on his little outdoor deck and I caught him up on my mini vacation trip, and he was also interested to hear about how I'm getting to know my 2nd cousin a little. Then we went to lunch at a diner in my hometown and after that he followed me to my house so i could give him a small night table that he thought he could use in his new place. So I spent a good part of my day with dad, more time than I felt i had, but really, since he's moved up here i haven't really seen that much of him becus all my time's been consumed by my mother's needs. So I figured I should make the time for dad.

After that I felt very tired and took a quasi nap, then got up around 4 and did some much needed weeding of my side-of-driveway perennial bed. I watered a bit becus everything is parched and then spread some mulch as well. I really need to continue with this kind of yardwork on the north and back side of the house as yardwork has been pretty much nonexistent during all this humid weather we've had. This weekend I intend to take advantage of the good weather and catch up on the yardwork in between photographing and packing up my mother's artwork.

My town has a really big parade, as it always does on Labor Day, but most years I don't go.

I didn't get a chance to get to Costco as I'd wanted to, but I did go to Trader Joe's yesterday so at least there's something to eat here. I also have a few small home improvement projects: 1) Sand, prime and repaint a piece of trim that for some reason always peels paint quickly on the large side window of my garage. It's like one of the few things that isn't covered by vinyl siding.

The other project is using stinky rubber cement (it's either that or nails) to secure a new vinyl stair tread to my basement stairs. My handyman did this a while back but as is often the case, there's always something not quite right about his work, and in this case, at least one stair tread is not firmly glued down. No use paying him to come back and finish something he should have done correctly to begin with, so I think this is something I can handle. I've been putting off doing it cus i hate having using toxic chemicals like this glue. If I use roofing nails, which handyman suggested, it'll mean a trip to hardware store so i might as well use the cement since i've still got a half can left.

Also trying to use up the largish pile of black mulch sitting in my driveway. Its purpose is to deter weeds from growing, but before i put it down i have to pull existing weeds up, and that's what takes so long. But mulch doesn't do m uch good when it's sitting in the driveway, and it needs to be gone before the first snow falls!

I was doing really well with yarn sales on this one particular yarn facebook destash site, but suddenly things have gotten very quiet and no one is responding to my posts! Have I gotten greedy with slightly higher asking prices? Or is it cus back to school time makes mom too busy? Plenty of other posts on there. Hmm, i don't know. But i continue to reach out to local people and then they offer to email their knitting group or weavers group or spinning group in the next newsletter or whatever, and then eventually i get another person here who buys some stuff.

I was very happy that the last woman here on Thursday, while she didn't spend a huge amount ($79), did buy up mostly very small wads of yarn that I wasn't sure anyone would want, and she also bought several small bags of what I would describe as balls of fabric strips, whose purpose was something of a mystery to me. The woman who bought them was very excited to work with them as fiber in her rugs. My mother didn't make rugs so I'm not sure what their original purpose was, but no matter. A few less things around here to deal with, although you can hardly tell by looking.