I'm continuing to "negotiate" with my friend how we will spend 3 days having fun. I'm not especially interested in sharing dog-sitting responsibilities. Hopefully we can not only get thru this with our friendship intact but actually enjoy ourselves as well.

It's 7:30 a.m. and we're having a thunderstorm. Strange. This was to be the day I do some gardening, and I'm so glad I started doing some of it yesterday, because today will obviously be a washout.

Yesterday's doings:
I weeded my very overgrown and neglected veggie garden, which only has 3 tomato plants and 3 squash plants which have yet to bear a single fruit. I get a lot of flowers on the squashes, but all male and no female that need to be pollinated.

I bought another bag of chopped hay in a bag and spread that over the area where I weeded to keep the weeds down and allow me to walk in there.

I also mostly weeded a perennial bed on the slope in front of my house. I got to a low-growing shrub, I forget what it's called, and as I weeded close to and under it, I jostled the shrub and several insects flew out. I couldn't quite see what they were but worried that they could be ground hornets, so I avoided the area. Then I started thinking about it again and figured it could be any number of insects, not necessarily the stinging kind, so I returned to weeding...cautiously...in the area. Out flew more insects again and this time, I saw that they were indeed hornets/wasps. So I was unable to finish weeding that area. Hmph.

I picked more wineberries and froze some earlier in the week. I would have liked to freeze more today, as I have more than I can eat, but it's way too humid now for them to dry after rinsing.

I did a bit of grocery shopping. I went to the hardware store to get another key made for my mother's condo becus a visiting realtor dropped the key outside in between a concrete stoop and side of condo and could not retrieve it. I have to drop the key off today after seeing my mother.

I also stopped at the healthy pet food place.

Also went to hospital first thing for skin cancer screening and was relieved to learn I don't have skin cancer on my face. There was a little spot, not a mole exactly but a raised surface that wasn't there before and didn't look right. She said it actually was quite common and I could have it frozen off if I wanted. Which I may do so.

I also shipped out $200 worth of yarns to the woman I told you about, stopping at the PO and paying $13 for shipping, which the woman kindly paid for. It should arrive there Monday and hopefully her check, which I already deposited, won't bounce. I think it will be okay.

Also deposited close to $500 in mom's checking account.

I finished reading 50 Shades of Gray. I'd seen the used book at the library in city where I work, in their weekly book sale, and decided to spend the $3 to see what all the fuss was about. It annoyed me that the woman at the desk made discouraging remarks about the book, and I knew enough about it to know she disapproved of the sexual content. I ignored her comments and was tempted to say something about censoring book purchases of patrons, but decided not to.

I can see why this book got so much attention as the plot totally revolves around the sex life of the main character and "Grey." I saw at the same book sale that they also had the 2 sequels to this book but wasn't sure I needed to read about yet more cataclysmic orgasms. I think I got the gist of it.

Today's doings:
Today I'm scheduled to view a "lifestyle suite" at the assisted living place; afterwards I'll see my mother. There's a wait list for the lifestyle suites and they often go to married couples. If you're not part of a couple, you have to make sure the 2 people sharing the suite are compatible and that both families want it. A lot of hurdles there but I have to at least look into it as a way of saving money ($750/mth).

Also need to stop at Wal-Mart, do the paperwork for Masonicare wait list, mail the physician's portion of the application to my mother's PCP and make some sort of lunch for work tomorrow.

It's Friday.

So with the yarn sales to 2 different people this week, I will be able to deposit about $475 in my mother's account tomorrow.

I discovered that the supposedly well meaning advice I got as to pricing from 2 different weavers was way, way low. Yes, I told them I wanted to get rid of it fairly quickly, but they also knew I wanted to put the money toward my mother's care. They said well then price the cone yarns at $1 or $2 each for the small ones, maybe $3 each for the big ones, or sell a whole bag of them for $30.

No wonder the 5 or so women who have come here to buy have bought so much at a time. Because they were getting an unbelievable deal!

One weaver I sold to suggested I try selling at a Facebook site where people sell yarns. I checked out the prices there and was astonished to find cone yarns like i was selling for $3 going for $30 online!

One problem is I don't know what materials they all are, or where they were purchased, but I want to start out posting something on the site this weekend that has labels and see how it goes. I do have a Paypal account so that would eliminate a lot of delays and nervousness about whether someone would pay or if a check was good. I can just sell a little each week and not drive myself nuts with it. I think I have a small fortune in yarns here and I don't want to give anymore away at ridiculous prices.

I'm really a little annoyed at the advice I was given. I'm sure it was well-intentioned, but I had no inkling of the true value of these cone yarns.

In other news, Patient Saver is GOING ON VACATION. Not til early September and only for 2 nights because Waldo shouldn't go any longer than that without his twice daily meds. He would not take meds from any other human than me, and I don't want to separate the cats the entire time I'm away, although that would make it easier to put the meds in his food and then know he would eventually eat it.

I'm going with my platonic friend Ron and I booked us separate rooms in the same motel in Rockport, Mass. It's oceanfront and is $205 a night. For him it will be a little bit more because he won't leave his dog alone so the dog is extra.

I got my neighbors to agree to feed the cats each of the 3 days I'm gone. I could leave an entirely dry food diet out for them but it could attract bugs and also Luther gets constipated when he eats too much and then skoots his butt on the floor, which is majorly gross. I can't reasonably ask the neighbors to come twice a day, though, so I will have them leave canned food, to be supplemented by dry food to nosh on. Or maybe I would skip the dry entirely and have her leave 2.5 cans out each day, which is what they normally consume.

Anyway, I am SO psyched to get away. It will do me wonders. I just hope I can get along with my friend without any major issues. Already I am annoyed with him because he insists on bringing the dog with him and just after I confirmed with him I'd made the reservations, he made a comment about his maybe wanting to have me dog sit the dog for a bit if he wants to go do something. NO, I DONT want to dog sit your dog on my short and precious vacation. It's his decision to bring it and already I know I'll have to put up with the dog standing on my lap (butt in my face) the whole ride up and back, becus this dog has never been trained or crated and only has eyes for my friend. It was never properly socialized and mostly ignores other people. If I'm with my friend and his dog and my friend leaves for some reason, the dog gets all anxious and totally oblivious to everything but my friend and the direction he's disappeared in.

I may decide to sit in the back seat just so i don't have to deal with the dog standing on my lap. I like animals, but this one, as I said, was not properly socialized in my opinion.

Here's more art for Kiki and others who may enjoy seeing some of these... These are just representative samples.

My mother's passions were weaving and painting (although she also did photography). She found a way to combine these two loves by creating what she called "woven paintings." She would paint on canvas first, then cut up the painted canvas into horizontal or vertical strips which she then wove back together on the loom. Galaxy and Origami in Flight below are good examples of this technique.

If you see anything you like, let me know and I can give you a little more info on it, like the dimensions, title if not shown here (not all are labeled) and medium, price. I apologize in advance for my poor photography skills.


2 matted waterfalls


Woven tapestry (behind plastic)


Bedlam at Sea, there are all sorts of sea creatures embedded in the netting




Galaxy (behind plastic)


Leaving the Weaving


Mountains, River, 2 Sails & Sun (matted)


Origami in Flight


Posies in Tall Vase


Regatta


Sacred Door


Sails & Gulls


Smooth Sailing on the Lake


The Model

A woman stopped by after work tonight with her husband (drove 40 minutes to get here in rush hour traffic) and bought $263 worth of yarn!

I'm gratified that people are buying it. I seem to have a very high ratio of # of people told I have yarn for sale and # of people who buy something. But finding weavers and knitters is the more challenging part of this equation.

I've been in touch with a number of weavers' and knitters' guilds.

Most of the money will go into my mother's checking account, but I know she also needs some spending money, so I'll give her a small amount, like $20. She's been on a kick lately of wanting to buy an iron (NO) or a small fridge (NO) so I don't want to give her enough to do that.

I will go over there this weekend with an iron and iron all the clothes in her closet in one shot so she stops asking about it. I also really want to see a lifestyle suite.

Sorry, I know I talk about all this stuff incessantly. I've been on this site for years now; years ago I would do the same when I thought of nothing else but dating and finding Mr. Right; later, when I was laid off, all I ever talked about was finding a job and doing freelance work and finding ways to save money.

Here are some pix of the yarns I'm selling, which, like mom's art, are so nice to look at.













Tomorrow I work at home again. Yippee.

After paying 2 months worth of bills from assisted living in the neighborhood of $5300 each, I got the shock of my life when I got this month's bill for over $8,000.

They seemed to have caught up with the fact that I wasn't being charged their $400 a mth medication management fee, and so they socked it to me this month with $1200 worth of their stupid, outrageous fee. Keep in mind my mother takes ONE medication, which they hand to her twice a day. For this I will pay $400 a month.

I had noticed I wasn't getting billed for this in the 1st month but chose not to say anything.

Oh well. So instead of the bonanza $5300 a month cost, it's really $5750. That's $5300 for "rent," $400 for med management and $50 for the phone, plus any miscellaneous activity fees.

Do you know how much stress bills like this are causing me? A great deal. My sister is wholly uninvolved. They only give you 2 weeks to pay the bill, so I have to always make sure I've made a transfer from her brokerage account to her checking account a week ahead of time to ensure the money's in the account.

After talking with 2 good male friends, I've come to a decision, one that won't be easy to implement but which is essential to my own well-being.

Instead of driving myself nuts over every dollar spent, for my own sanity I'm trying to reach a state of acceptance, and what will be, will be. No doubt in a few years' time the state will take over my mother's care. I just don't know what kind of mental shape my mother will be in at that time; right now, she would be extraordinarily upset and very likely view me as having utterly betrayed her by putting her into a nursing home. (Never mind she put her mother in a nursing home years back.)

Aside from her mental difficulties, my mother does not appear to need to be in that kind of setting. For 81, she's in very good shape, walks well and dresses quite well and is most of the time a peach to deal with, at least for short visits. At the same time, I know there is no way I could live with her.

My friends have urged me to fully reimburse myself for out of pocket expenses for mom because if my mother's alive in a few more years, a nursing home is inevitable, so there's no need to spend my own money, is their reasoning. I understand it, but it IS hard when it's your mother and you'd like to shield her from the cold, institutional setting that most nursing homes are.

There are only 3 real ways to generate big money savings that would affect how long my mother could stay where she is instead of go to a nursing home. Unfortunately, I had to rule out one of them today.

1. VA Benefits: I was able to dig thru legal papers of my mother's 3 divorces and determine that she was married less than 10 years to husbands #2 and 3. My dad, husband #1, said he believed they were married for 12 years, which would make my mother eligible for substantial VA benefits if she were still married to him. The divorce makes her ineligible.

2. A roommate: I could save $750 a month in the rent if my mother shared a "lifestyle suite" with another resident. The 2 obviously would need to get along. My mother hasn't really connected with anyone there, but lately she has been on this thing where she keeps saying she wants a small fridge. Never mind that they serve 3 meals a day in the dining hall. I wouldn't get it for her except that I might be able to use the lure of a fridge and small kitchenette (sink, fridge and cabinets, no stove) to get her to share some living space with someone. I don't know if she'd go for it; she really likes her privacy. But i believe with the suites they have their own bedrooms but share a bath if I'm not mistaken. I am trying to see a suite to see if i could picture my mother living there, and if so, to show it to my mother. This could be a long shot but it's one of the very few things that could really save some money.

3. The only other option would be for me to suspend my plans, decades in the making, to retire in 4 years, at age 60, and continue working solely to pay for the assisted living which currently costs $69,000 a year. I'm not sure what I net now making $81,200, but it's less than $69,000, and I need at least $25,000 a year to pay my own current expenses. And assisted living will raise their rates 5% or so next year, they told me, plus when she deteriorates due to the disease, they will start billing me more for her care as well. Still, working a year or two (i thinkt hat's all i could stand) beyond age 60 could inject sizable and much needed money infusions into my mother's account.

Doing something like this, against the advice of well-meaning friends, would require long, hard thought. I wouldn't be jeopardizing my own retirement, becus by that time I should be pretty close to my own savings goal and I don't intend to withdraw from savings, only divert current earnings toward her bills.

I'd be interested in hearing your opinions on whether I should do something like that.


Here is a painting of a waterfall my mother did that is going on exhibit (and sale) at a local spa. Think restful and relaxing. Actually, my mother, a longtime weaver AND painter, did many things like this called "woven paintings," where she was able to blend her two passions into one by first painting on canvas, then cutting the canvas into horizontal or vertical strips, then weaving them back together again on the loom. The result was a unique three-dimensional effect like you see here.

I've pretty much wrapped up dialogue with another yarn buyer. I'm excited that she's buying over $200 worth of my mother's yarn! It's all boxed and ready to go; I just will wait to get the check in the mail and ideally delay a day or two in shipping it to make sure the check doesn't bounce.

I have been selling the yarn piecemeal; most weavers I find are very interested in it and so I've done fairly well considering I've only had a few people buying.

On Thursday, my next work at home day on my lunch break I will be zipping over to local nursing home for a quick tour and then to do the paperwork to get on their wait list, which is over a year long.

Although mom still has money to pay for assisted living, it will be spent down fast, and when we get to about $30,000 left is when I will need to start seriously considering calls from the by then 2 or 3 nursing homes whose wait lists I'm on. They will contact you periodically when a bed opens up. You can take it or pass (you don't lose your place on the list), but since it's totally random when beds become available (when people die) you have to make sure you don't wait til all money is gone. Ideally, you go to the nursing with your $20,000 or $30,000 left, you pay a few months for the nursing home out of pocket and then when you get down to $1,600, Medicaid starts picking up the tab. Nursing homes, becus they have skilled nursing, are even MORE expensive than assisted living, which really boggled my mind when I learned that.

I just can't see my mother in a nursing home and shudder to think about it. But who knows with the Alzheimer's how she'll be like in 3 years?

This will be my first full week of Tuesdays/Thursdays at home. I realized with delight just now that with this new schedule I will only have to go into work for 1 day at a time, then I will work at home. At times in the past, the work week just drags on so long, but the work at home days will really change that, as I can get so much stuff done that usually is all bunched up to do on my weekends. I really hope this extra time in my life will make me more sane, less anxious.

Several good friends have told me I'm worrying too much about taking care of my mother. All the what ifs, and what i still feel is worst case scenario, what if we run out of money in 3 years and i have to put her in a nursing home.

It's been pointed out to me that, assuming she's still alive in 3 years (she's only 81 now but she does have AZ), that a nursing home will be inevitable, so all the angst and stress I feel saving a few dollars here or there, or not reimbursing myself for the hundreds out of pocket spent on her each month, is really all for naught. Because once her assets are spent down to $1600, the state will take care of all her needs. So my friends both said go ahead and reimburse yourself for legitimate mom expenses.

Intellectually, I know this to be true, though of course when it's your mother, you can't stand the thought of moving her from the oh-so-comfortable Maplewood with its locally grown food and private room and bath to a shared room with institutional gray walls and absolutely no privacy.

But I need to stop imagining what will happen 3 years from now and just Let. It. Be. Otherwise, I'll just worry myself sick.

So I'm trying to do just that, even while I plan to pursue 2 cost-saving options for my mother: VA benefits if I can document she was married to my father, a vet, for 10 years (I have to call the county courthouse in NJ) and a possible roommate situation in a so-called "lifestyle suite" at Maplewood where i believe you still have a private bedroom but the bath is shared.

In the meantime, I was absolutely SHELLSHOCKED to get a monthly bill Friday from Maplewood for $8,000, not the $5300 I'm used to paying. I have to call them tomorrow; I DO hope this was a mistake.

Looking at the big picture, these could be the best days my mother has left. I don't know how quickly she will deteriorate, but she seems to be in much better shape than many other residents at her place. She still dresses with care, always thinking to put on a colorful scarf (AC on at her place) or chunky beaded jewelery to throw a look together, and she always looks casually elegant.

I have been taking her on occasional little trips now that the condo is mostly emptied out and the place is listed. She enjoyed the trip to a local garden nursery, especially petting the cat lounging on the counter. She also enjoyed the ice cream cone at Friendly's, our trip to Target and the trip up to a local gallery where she is very friendly with the owner. There is a Japanese garden I took her to years ago, I think, that I would like to visit again, but it's better to go on a weekday. Anything related to music, art or animals is a sure hit with her.

Otherwise, progress in selling her art, yarns and weaver accessories is excruciatingly slow, becus I'm basically inviting select interested weavers/knitters over to the house, one at a time, when I find them.

My big plan to have several weavers stop by here on their way home from a regional weavers conference in Mass. was a big bust; nobody responded to the flyer they put up for me there.

Today a knitter from the office stopped by and wound up buying $165 worth of yarns, a warping board and an old weaving book. I was delighted she was in a such a spendy mood. And she gave me a few inches of square space back in my living room. So I believe she was the 3rd yarn buyer here.


My office friend bought this jute, with the basket, for just $40. I love the colors.







She even also expressed interest in buying one of my mother's smaller pieces. I wasn't sure about the price but then told her $50. She didn't have that much more cash anyway so she couldn't buy it, so I sure hope her desire to buy it doesn't fade away once she gets home. In hindsight, so as not to lose the sale, I should have urged her to take it home and pay me for it at the office. DARN.

There's another potential weaver/buyer in CT, but a good 2 hours away, but her son's wedding next month comes first. She may be able to stop by on the way home. Another woman from the same weaving group is also interested, but is going to the Cape for all of August. (Green envy)

I've been talking to my friend about a quickie 2 night getaway, maybe to Rockport, Mass. We wanted to go in August, as I already planned a week off then, but most places are already booked. We started talking about this way too late. However, there are plenty of rooms at this one oceanfront motel in early September, so I may push back my vacation yet again.

I called my vet and he said it would be okay if Waldo had to go without his meds for 2 days...but not any longer. I can probably get my neighbor to come feed them, but she won't be able to administer the meds.

The wineberries have finally ripened. I only picked a quarter cup 2 nights ago but I plan to go out in a little while. It's just so blasted hot out there. It's 82 inside my house despite all the shade and curtain closing and fans going. My AC is in the attic, where it's probably over 100, and it's just so heavy I don't relish dragging it down.

The good news is that the cats will only have to tough it out alone tomorrow. I will be working from home Tuesday and can monitor things here and then the weather will moderate after that. In fact, I saw no days with temps over 82 through the rest of August. Of course, all that can change.

Someone's looking at the condo today. I've had a fair amount of traffic but not a single offer yet. It was listed mid-June and I lowered the price by $5K 10 days ago. A lot of people are probably on vacation.

After my office friend left here with her yarns, my handyman Bill came by and cut and then attached the new vinyl stair treads I got for my basement stairs (last winter) using contact cement. Unfortunately, I could see after he left that the edges of it where the treads meet the risers were curling up. He had put a bunch of bricks on the stair treads to weigh them down, but I went outside and brought in 8 or 10 more. He may have to come back and use nails so nothing's sticking up. This is annoying. The manufacturer had recommended NOT using nails becus over time they will tear into the stair treads.

The contact cement was very stinky so I had a big fan running down there and blocked off the cat door so the cats wouldn't go down there. It did seem to dry quickly though so now they can down to their litter boxes.

I made granola in the big oven; probably not the best day given the heat, but i was completely out of it. Also picked up about $40 worth of groceries, mostly fresh produce and almond milk, from Big Y.

Those are probably all the chores I will get done for the remainder of this exceptionally uncomfortable Sunday. I MAY just have to get the AC down here so I can sleep tonight.

Did you ever imagine that you could get your boss to let you work at home so that you'd have more time to take care of non-work-related stuff in your life during the workday?

That's essentially what I've done. But honestly, I have been stressing for such a long time now, trying to manage a f/t job and deal with the seemingly never-ending series of little "issues" that need to be dealt with as they relate to my mother's care at the assisted living place. Mostly in the form of phone calls, but these very senior level people there....I've counted 5...never return my calls.

I kept feeling like something had to give, and soon. And yet my job is incredibly important to me. I'm in good shape now, financially, but I can't retire yet. I need a few more good years.

I'm shelling out $5300 a month in "rent" and I do expect premium service. I can't figure out if they're extremely understaffed over there or if they would rather avoid my calls then have a quasi-unpleasant conversation. Although I have not been rude or out of line in the least. But I do expect accountability and answers.

Anyway, back to my job. I was going to wait to make another strong push for working at home until after our floor moves to another floor next month, but that really has nothing to do with my situation, and yesterday things came to a head with certain mother-related things so I somewhat impulsively decided to act. First I was only going to ask for one day a week, but then I figured I'd ask for two since my boss would probably feel better if she could win some sort of concession from me, eg, getting me to agree to 1 day a week instead of 2. Two would be ideal, but I'd be very happy with just the 1. I'm so tired of running into stairwells or empty offices just to have a personal phone call.

My boss agreed to the 2 days off without a fight after I sent her a rather detailed note with an Outlook meeting invite to talk about it. I was telling her about how I am still so pressed for time, even after getting my mother situated at the assisted living place and even after getting her condo on the market.

When she had read my note asking to work at home 2 days a week, it appeared she thought I was asking to cut back my hours from 40 to just the 2 days at home, so it may have possibly been a relief to her to hear me say that wasn't the case.

I work for a very enlightened company, one that very recently has been ENCOURAGING its 10,000 employees to work at home. After a downsizing in my location last year, they're smooshing all of us remaining employees onto 1 floor, to save money, so they are again emphasizing work at home arrangements. My boss always resisted my suggestions, direct or indirect, to work at home. She just likes to have me there, she feels a greater sense of control, she's a little old-fashioned, I really am not sure.

Now I think she didn't try to fight it given the urgent and impassioned appeal I made, which comes direct from the heart. Usually I don't share a lot of my personal issues at the office becus I am somewhat reserved, but it has been worth my while to analyze her personality type, and hers is very different from mine, so I adjusted my approach to talk about the work at home stuff. Meaning that, like a lot of women, her primary personality characteristics are emotion-based. Her heart dictates her decision-making, or at least makes a strong contribution. I, on the other hand, am highly logical/analytical and don't usually let my personal feelings get in the way. But I did share a lot of highly personal information with her to make sure she knew this was for real, it wasn't just a story or something.

Also, I think one reason she caved is because she knows she'd have no leg to stand on if I wound up leaving the company and then she'd have to tell her boss why I left. That would look very bad becus as I said, this company is very open-minded about work at home stuff.

I was also able to set up my work phone today so that when I work at home, any calls going to my work phone will automatically get routed to my home phone, so I won't miss any calls.

So I have Tuesdays and Thursdays at home. In addition to the all-important having extra time to deal with my mother's affairs, working from home will also offer these benefits:

1. So much less stress becus I'll be able to get mom-related things done more promptly, without having things drag on from one week to the next, simply becus I can't find time during the workday to make some phone calls.

2. I'll spend one-third less on gas and wear and tear on my car

3. I can more easily attend monthly alzheimer's support group meetings, which i hadn't done before becus there's very little time for me to get home first, feed the cats, and i'm often too tired to head out. If I'm working at home all day, it's much more likely I'll be able to attend the meetings.

4. My cats will love having me around more. They get so bored alone all day.

5. I can sleep a little later if I need to, and I have insomnia a lot, so I could sleep in a full extra hour if I wanted.

6. I don't have to dress up for work.

7. I'll have better home security simply becus I'm around more during the week. This is always something I worry about, somewhat, becus if someone really wanted to break in here, they could.

8. I can potentially save money by there being less likelihood of eating in the office cafe as I'll only have to make carry-in lunches 3x a week.

9. I can more easily keep my house cool in summer, which I routinely do by closing drapes and opening windows throughout the day. It does make a difference. Don't have to close up all the windows when rain is forecast either.

10. I can more easily schedule heating oil deliveries or home repairs becus I'll be home more.

11. Less usage on my cell phone minutes.

The only downsides I see are that I'll use up somewhat more heating oil in winter since I'll be home and wont' want it too chilly, and I also won't be able to shop the farmer's market on Thursdays in the city where I work, though there's a farmer's market here in town on Tuesdays which has organic stuff, so even better.

It's all about work/life balance. Such a simply concept, and yet so many people don't get it. It makes sticking with this job for a few more years so much more doable. I got a call from a recruiter when i got home from work and I quickly deleted the message. I have zero interest in other job prospects. The one I have is becoming pretty near perfect.

So my mother's condo has been on the market for about 7 weeks now.

There has been some traffic and a lot of lookers are saying they don't like the set-up with the finished basement, which requires use of a staircase for access to it that is shared (just the staircase) with one other, adjacent property owner. So whenever you leave that lower level room, you'd always have to lock up.

People have also commented that they prefer wood or laminate floors to the wall to wall I just put down, but I mean, at this price point, beggars can't be choosers. The condo was listed at $158K with me chipping in $3K toward the buyer's closing costs. It's hard for me to believe that a 2 bedrm, 1.5 bath condo in Fairfield County, Connecticut could be had for so little money. This is a pretty expensive area to live in.

Unfortunately, I agreed yesterday at my realtor's recommendation to lower my asking price by $5,000. Because another unit in the complex was just listed for barely $2,000 more and it has a new kitchen, hardwood floors and a garage instead of the finished lower level. Most people seem to prefer the garage. (Clearing snow off a car all winter gets old fast.)

So my realtor said we should do whatever we can to set my unit apart from that one, price-wise, and to try to get mine sold first, cus otherwise, the sale of the other one would be used as a comparable against mine, and it might make mine look overpriced and force me to drop my price further.

I'm not happy about dropping my price by $5K, but the place needs to be sold, and the stress from having it hanging over my head is not something I want to have over the winter. My carrying costs are about $500 a month. That includes property taxes (discounted becus my mother was eligible as a low income senior but she would have to reapply next year and I'm guessing she would be ineligible becus she was no longer residing at this address), electric (which is $40 a month cus nothing but stove and hot water heater are running, tho this would rise even with minimal heat in the winter) and HOA fees, which are $363 a month.

I really wouldn't care so much about the price if, say, my mother had passed and the money from condo sale was just my and my sister's inheritance. But in this case, my mother's assisted living is running $69,000 a year (and will rise when her condition significantly deteriorates). I won't get much for the condo at this rate, given the already 1 price reduction, realtor's commission (which drops to 5% if they don't sell it in I think we said 2 months) and oh, i just learned of the $1200 or so conveyance fee, which state of CT collects from sellers, just becus it can.

So the net proceeds from condo sale would barely pay for 2 years at her assisted living place.

This weekend there is a weavers conference in Northampton, Mass, and I was able to get the woman I've been dealing with who manages the website for the CT weavers group to post a flyer I created at the conference inviting weavers to stop by my home to buy some cheap yarn on their way home from the conference. Northampton is a few hours away from here but this is a regional conference.

I learned about this conference very last minute from another weaver who stopped by here and so I don't think the webmaster would have received the flyer I mailed until yesterday. (Yeah, she could have just printed it out herself from an emailed copy from me, but she didn't suggest that and since she was doing me a favor, I didn't ask.) So hopefully she will look at her mail and post it today so I get some weavers calling me. I said "By appt only" so I don't have people popping in at all hours. I am hoping I will get at least a few tomorrow afternoon.

The liquidator for the art said he wanted to meet to discuss a few marketing ideas he had, but he failed to follow up after I told him I was working from home yesterday. I'm not sure I can count on him for anything, so at the same time I've been talking to another gallery person who was very interested in showing my mother's art.

On top of all this, my mother still leaves me phone messages saying she misses me terribly and she hasn't seen me in ages, even though I've seen her every weekend for the past year. As usual, stretched too thin, and the issues with selling this condo are also a worry hanging over my head.

I have to accept the fact that I can only do so much and that the condo will sell at what the condo will sell for. It would be better to sell it now at a lower price than refuse to negotiate or lower it further and then be stuck with it, and its monthly carrying costs, through this coming winter and into next spring.

I have to accept the fact that if my mother is still alive when she runs out of money at assisted living in about 4 years tops, I will have to put her in a nursing home. I have to accept that I cannot make everyone's lives perfect, even for those I love. I have to not allow guilt to goad me into stressing and worrying more about all the what ifs.

Yes, I got my usual paycheck today from my employer, for which I am ever grateful.

But it was also a "payday" success because I was able to sell my mother's 2nd and larger loom to the couple from PA. She's been a weaver for many years and so she knew right away how to dismantle this thing:



She said she'd been looking for this particular loom for a long time and that they were no longer making it. So she got it, with 2 extra reeds, some shuttles AND 2 bags of yarns for just $200. Then she spent another $120 on more yarns and a shuttle. So I was quite happy to get rid of a FEW of the piles around here and make some money which I immediately deposited at her bank before they closed.

However, there is still plenty of fiber around here:





While she and her husband were dismantling it, a carpet guy came over to measure and price the 2nd staircase, but their price of over $600 is way too high, if I compare that to the $400 or so that Empire would have done it at (or $500, after they jacked up the price). I won't deal with Empire again but I won't pay $600, either. I may just wind up giving a $400 credit to the condo buyers.

After they left, I filled up my car with more stuff from the lower level. I was so pooped, not sure why, I didn't make that many trips up and down the stairs. Maybe just the heat.

Now that the condo is listed, there is a somewhat lesser sense of urgency to move, so the stuff I am moving I am a bit more reluctant to toss or donate like so MUCH other stuff, since I theoretically have some spare time to try to sell the stuff.

So I took some pix of a stained glass floor lamp I'm keeping in the condo for now, for staging, but I'm asking $60 for it on Facebook Tag Sales. There's a full size wood artist's easel I might like to try selling too.

While at the condo, I took some photos to replace a few crappy ones my realtor took. I mean, she posted one photo purportedly of the front of the condo which mostly showed a lot of cracked asphalt and a bunch of ugly mailboxes. I retook it to get a whole lot of summer flowers now in bloom in the foreground, with the condos at an angle behind the flowers, the American flag in there too. So much better, what was she thinking.

I am still feeling so pooped. Possibly dehydrated.

I'm looking at my schedule for tomorrow and see that mainly, I can do yardwork, before it gets too hot, and then pay a visit to my mother.

There is another woman who responded to my handweavers guild ad who was interested in a pair of hand carders and a niddy noddy. Yes, there really is such a weaver's tool that goes by that name. It's like a whole other language. Anyway, I invited her to pay me a visit this weekend, since I have Monday off too. Perhaps I could entice her to buy yarn.

A knitter acquaintance from work also expressed a mild desire to visit this weekend after she saw my photos of the yarns on the hand weavers guild website. So please, please come. The sooner I sell these yarns, the sooner I can make some order in my house.

I am sipping a smoothie I made of green melon, plain yogurt, agave nectar, lime juice and mint. Pretty refreshing.

I had hoped to break the $700,000 barrier for my investment assets on the 1st of July as i was up to $699,000 but that was not meant to be. Stock market's been a little jumpy lately with the Greek default issues so I lost $12,000.

My next 4 days off are jam-packed with things to do.

This morning I saw 2 female turkeys and 6 poults (baby turkeys) in my yard, Very sweet. It's been a while since I saw poults around here, and they were so small, I'm guessing they weren't born more than a week or so ago.

The adults were on guard. When I remember how my sister had problems when hawks swooped down from the sky to grab one of her free-ranging chickens, I can see that the poults might be fair game as well, as they were quite a bit smaller than a hen.

I watched the first show of a series called Catastrophe on Amazon Prime. It was recommended somewhere. About a British woman and an American man who have a fling of a few days when he's in Britain on business, then he goes home and she learns she's pregnant, so they rather impulsively decide to get married.

After the intensity of about 3 weeks when I was feverishly trying to empty out my mother's condo, and the subsequent abandonment of my vegan diet for the convenience of fast food (mostly Boston Market), I have been able to get back on the vegan wagon.

I'm looking forward to a 4-day holiday weekend (Friday through Monday).

I will be kept busy.

Friday, especially. Friday is the day the weaver from PA is coming with her husband to disassemble and buy my mother's large loom. Later, another carpet guy is coming over to measure the 2nd staircase and bring some carpet samples; hopefully, their prices will be reasonable enough, or not over $400, to do the stairs, but who knows.

I'll fill my car again with stuff from the lower level, get a pair of movie tickets as a thank you to the very kind neighbors who have visited her several times and helped me out in other ways, and do some other things.

I hope to get some real yard work done, have a friend over for a beer and to admire my new entry stairs, catch a movie with another friend and take my mother out somewhere. If I can get my handyman to install the new vinyl treads on my basement stairs (long deferred), I'd be a happy woman.

At some point (no rush now) I will want to borrow my dad's pick-up, hopefully for the last time, so I can load some largish matted art pieces from my mother's basement studio, along with 5 folding tables. Come to think of it, if I borrowed my dad's truck this weekend, I could really use 1 or 2 of those tables in my dining room so that I could at least get the trash bags filled with yarns up off the floor and better displayed for eventual sale. I may just make time to do that, I think, this weekend.

My 3rd and final ad just posted tonight on the weavers' guild website with the yarn prices and photos. Crossing my fingers I get some takers because I have such a vast quantity it would be a shame to not make any money at all on it.

Not much interest in my mother's sewing table, machine and all the drawers filled with supplies. I guess people just don't sew these days. The original price was $200. My grandfather made that table 50 years ago and it is in perfect condition and very well made. I dropped the price twice and had one woman who, when i had it priced at $80, asked if she could have it for $60. I told her I already lowered the price twice and now she says she wants it at $80, but after talking to my friend at work, she encouraged me to just keep it and look into having my handyman/carpenter make a piece of wood perfectly fit in the hole where the sewing machine goes and use it as another desk/storage. It's a pretty little cabinet and I may hold onto it and do that as I feel I'm being robbed to let it go at $80. Some things are more important than money, and $80 would keep my mother in assisted living for exactly 10.8 hours longer.

Tomorrow I will talk to the realtor to catch up with where we stand. There haven't been that many showings yet although they did one condo open house for realtors and the regular open house for realtors showing is tomorrow. After that she'll do a public open house on July 5, this Sunday.

I finally finished watching the entire series of The Sopranos, from start to finish. I had seen part of it years back but missed most of the middle and the finale. Hated the finale...so indefinite. Amazing how much analysis I found online about that final episode, people likening it to The Last Supper and finding all sorts of clues pointing to not only Tony's death, but the death of Carmella and AJ. Meadow supposedly survived.

You've all seen the commercials with the catchy little jingle, I'm sure. Buy 2 rooms, get a 2nd one free.

Well, I'm not going to talk about that promo, but I will tell you I think their sales tactics are pretty sleazy.

I had them carpet my mother's condo. The sales guy took the measurements, and amid everything going on, I overlooked a second staircase that leads to a finished basement.

The new carpeting looks great, although I wasn't thrilled about a few things that happened. Like, without asking me if it was okay, the carpet guys were throwing large rolled up pieces of the old carpet out my mother's 2nd floor window onto the sidewalk below. Umm, someone lives in the unit below and you could knock someone to the ground that way. Not to mention there were assorted flower pots on the stairs.

They also didn't bother to vacuum the unit after removing the old carpeting. They just started right in installing the padding.

The next surprise was when the carpet guy, whose English I couldn't understand, let it be known to me that he couldn't cut the carpet inside the condo becus there wasn't enough room. And that he couldn't cut outside becus it was raining. So they up and left.

They returned the next day and true to his word, he lay brand new carpeting on the filthy dirty parking lot asphalt and cut it there, then rolled it up and brought it inside the condo.

They did agree to give me a $100 credit for the inconvenience of having them come back the 2nd day. Luckily I had taken vacation time, but what if I hadn't??

The day after that is when i realized I should have carpeted the 2nd staircase going down to the lower level. Empire came back to measure and told me the price would be $381 plus a $60 "add-on" fee.

The current carpeting is disgusting and needs to go. One thing that had caused me to delay in this was the realtor's comment that i should probably check first with the management company to make sure the space wasn't considered public space, since the staircase is also used by the adjacent condo owner for access to their own finished basement.

The next day I was in touch with Empire and asked him to remind me what that add-on fee was. (I knew what it was.) He told me $65, but that I had to commit to doing the job that day.

In the meantime, management told me go ahead and carpet it but try asking the next door owner to split the cost. I left a note in his mailbox saying I'd pay for the whole thing but could he provide access/open his doors when the installers were there so they could install properly. Never heard back and told Empire the same.

About 5 days later, I decided to forge ahead without the neighbor's assistance and called Empire back.

He said it could no longer be considered an "add-on" and that the minimum cost was usually $750 but he could "probably" get it down to $500.

I never talked to him again.

So the condo listed a week ago today, and yesterday we had our first lookers. Their realtor said it showed well for the price.

Today was the realtor "condo caravan" for the city where the condo is located. One realtor said they may have a client who would be interested in it.

I believe next week the condo goes on the regular realtor open house tour.

After that, I'll press for a public open house.

I have not heard from the estate liquidator guy who came with his wife, the fine art expert, to peruse my mother's art. I have a feeling this is a dead end; I don't think they really know what they're doing, nor do they have any specific art dealer contacts.

Tomorrow a longtime weaver is coming over to look at the yarn supply and help me value them. That will enable me to post them for sale on various websites. There are so many different kinds, made of different materials (acrylic, cotton, wool, silk, chenille, etc) that I really need an expert's eye.

After she leaves I will embark on a busy day of things to do which include stopping at the condo and possibly recaulking the bath tub, continuing to clean out the lower level and visiting mom. Also getting a pair of movie tickets as a thank you to the neighbors who have visited my mom several times and helped me in various ways.

Sunday will be a rainy day so will plan to try to tidy up around here instead of working in the garden as I'd hoped. I can also get busy posting the yarn for sale ads. One of these ads will go on the CT Hand Weavers Guild site; I bartered for this ad and the prior two. If people lived close enough to me, they could come to my house or meet me halfway; otherwise, I've have to deal with shipping.

I can't go back to Empire Today for the carpeting of the 2nd staircase, which I'd overlooked when I had the rest of the place done. When I first asked him if we could do it after the rest of the place had been done, he mentioned a $60 fee; the next day when I asked how much was that fee (I knew what he said but wanted to test to see how honest he was), he said $65. A week later, after I'd mulled it over, I said I wanted to proceed but now he said the lowest price was usually $750 but he could "probably get it down to $500." This after the price started at $381 + the $60. So screw them.

Having worked all week my progress on other mom-related things was slow.

The slider doors were installed; I am trying to get a full refund of the $175 estimate instead of half that amount, which is what they usually do. Of course, I'm trying to get the full refund after I already paid for the job, so I don't have much leverage. I can post about it on Angie's LIst though.

I finally figured out that if I manually type in the code for photos instead of simply copying and pasting, the photos will appear in my post.

Here, then, are some before and after pictures of my front entry.

The Before:
I dug up this old picture of the staircase. Note how dark and narrow the stairs are. Not exactly inviting, is it? I think this old staircase really dated the house, which would otherwise appear to be a much newer home, thanks to the vinyl siding I put on in 2012.


My goal was to widen the stairs from 3 feet to 4.5 feet, make them less steep and rebuild the retaining walls which had large cracks in them and ugly concrete. Overall, I wanted to make the first impression of my home more welcoming and inviting.

This is what it looked like at the end of day 1 reconstruction:


The After:
Here's the finished look, standing in the driveway:

Notice how I immediately put some potted plants on the steps.

This view shows how they extended the stone facade about a foot and a half back (on left) to where the stone wall meets the garage. Prior to this, there was a funny looking strip of cement wall showing to left of stone wall.


At the top of the stairs, I had them create an 8-foot circle of pavers. It's a nice design element, I think.

If there was one teeny thing I was a little disappointed in, it's the somewhat washed out color of the pavers. I had seen photos online of a more multi-colored set of pavers, which I liked a lot. These do show some gray and reds, but I wanted something a bit more noticeable.

This is another view of the landing at top, looking down the stairs. You can see where I already began replanting the sedums I'd dug up to make way for the widened staircase. I mulched it last night.


Overall, I'm very happy with the finished product. The firm I hired, found through Angie's List, was a father and son team. Their crew was Macedonians + 1 Croatian, where I guess they got their stonework skills. The 4 workmen were all over 50, interestingly, and worked very hard.

After 5 weeks of very hard work and 6 lbs. lighter, my mother's condo was listed yesterday.

I raised the price by $3,000 but am offering $3,000 toward closing costs. The net result is the same except that while buyers can finance whatever amount of money they need (in keeping with income, of course), they often seem to have trouble coming up with upfront costs like deposit and closing costs. So this could help motivate some buyers, and this is a starter condo community.

The main living area looks great, with just a few key pieces of furniture (bed, couch, coffee table, loom) for staging purposes. The new carpeting makes a world of difference.

This Tuesday a new slider door unit will be installed in finished basement, which is the one part that is still being cleaned out and looks rather a mess. Once the slider doors are in, I'll also get new carpeting for the 2nd staircase, which I overlooked when i got the carpeting for the main living area.

Another wierd thing about that staircase. It's shared with one adjacent neighbor, whose unit is the same as my mother's, with the shared staircase leading down to their finished basement and my mother's.

So to replace the carpeting on those stairs, "technically," i would need that neighbor to open up their 2 doors (at top and bottom) so installers can secure the carpeting under the door (not just squeeze it under). When the carpet sales guy was there with me, he thought the neighbor's unit was my mother's unit and accidentally opened the neighbor's door to their finished basement. It was locked but he just pushed it open. I tried it later myself and it did the same thing.

I had put a note in neighbor's mailbox saying i was willing to pay the $400 for new stair carpeting but could he find a way to open up the doors for installer or possibly have a neighbor do it if he was working.

I never heard back from the neighbor, and another neighbor said he hadn't been around lately. So I'm tempted to just push open the door like I did before and have installer quickly do his thing, then close the door. Don't know if the door at top of stairs would also open, but if it didn't, I would just ask installer to give me the tacks and strip or whatever he uses to secure it and I would keep it in case neighbor asked.

I mean, I need to sell my mother's place and it seems stupid to allow a filthy dirty carpeting remain in place just becus a neighbor doesn't respond to me. If I had to, I would just have installer install and squeeze it under the door and give him the tacks to secure himself later. Who could object to that?

Yesterday I dropped another load of wood frame supplies to the local middle school as a donation. I was next going to haul over all the glass panes that went with those frames, but the art teacher said they couldn't take it cus glass breaks and kids are always bumping into things.

I will have to make some other phone calls on the glass then.

In my "spare" time, usually in the evening, I've been shredding my mother's old bills from circa 2002.

The buyer from PA who is buying my mother's 2nd loom, the big one, also wants to get the "beater" for $45. I have listed an assortment of weaving supplies on a CT weaver's guild website. So that's great, and she's coming July 3 to pick up.

On the yarn front, the place in Tennessee I found online that buys yarns was only interested in lighter weight or "novelty" yarns. Which I have, but then she told me they only pay $1 a pound and she would pay shipping. You can imagine how much yarn it would take to get to a pound. I might as well give it away at that price. I think I'll do better to advertise it piecemeal locally, and let people periodically come to the house and pick what they want.

Now that the condo is listed, I can take a breather and try to catch up on my own stuff. Thank god i have someone mowing my lawn for me this year. I went to Costco yesterday using my mother's membership card. I also began replanting the sedums and daffodil bulbs I'd dug up to make way for the masons to widen my staircase (see earlier post).

Today I'd like to weed and then finish mulching my veggie garden before it becomes engulfed in weeds. And I'm folding laundry right now.

A friend may come down for lunch and a visit tomorrow. Was going to see Dad for father's day, but he informed me he'll be down on the Jersey shore, taking care of his own house sale business.

I will probably go back to the condo today to keep emptying out that lower room because once I go back to my regular work schedule Monday, progress on that room will be limited to weekends only, and I don't want many visitors to see that mess, even if it is an "artistic" mess.

I finally figured out that if I manually type in the code for photos instead of simply copying and pasting, the photos will appear in my post.

Here, then, are some before and after pictures of my front entry.

The Before:
I dug up this old picture of the staircase. Note how dark and narrow the stairs are. Not exactly inviting, is it? I think this old staircase really dated the house, which would otherwise appear to be a much newer home, thanks to the vinyl siding I put on in 2012.


My goal was to widen the stairs from 3 feet to 4.5 feet, make them less steep and rebuild the retaining walls which had large cracks in them and ugly concrete. Overall, I wanted to make the first impression of my home more welcoming and inviting.

This is what it looked like at the end of day 1 reconstruction:


The After:
Here's the finished look, standing in the driveway:

Notice how I immediately put some potted plants on the steps.

This view shows how they extended the stone facade about a foot and a half back (on left) to where the stone wall meets the garage. Prior to this, there was a funny looking strip of cement wall showing to left of stone wall.


At the top of the stairs, I had them create an 8-foot circle of pavers. It's a nice design element, I think.

If there was one teeny thing I was a little disappointed in, it's the somewhat washed out color of the pavers. I had seen photos online of a more multi-colored set of pavers, which I liked a lot. These do show some gray and reds, but I wanted something a bit more noticeable.

This is another view of the landing at top, looking down the stairs. You can see where I already began replanting the sedums I'd dug up to make way for the widened staircase. I mulched it last night.


Overall, I'm very happy with the finished product. The firm I hired, found through Angie's List, was a father and son team. Their crew was Macedonians + 1 Croatian, where I guess they got their stonework skills. The 4 workmen were all over 50, interestingly, and worked very hard.

Done: The carpeting is in. I have to say they finished product looks great. He did a good job measuring and cutting, as far as I can tell. So while I actually took photos from the unit of them outside cutting the carpeting on the filthy dirty parking lot, I probably won't bother pursuing the matter. Now if I can only get rid of that awful chemical smell.

Nearly done: My new entry way is looking GREAT. The stairs are done, as is the extension of stonework to the foundation of my house. The stairs are super wide now (4.5 ft) with beautiful stone walls on either side and seem like they're more in scale with the dimensions of the house. Instead of a narrow, dark and somewhat cavernous steep staircase, the new staircase seems more fitting for a front entry way, and more welcoming.

All they have left to do is the paver circle landing at the top; he had also said he would repair loose mortar joints in the landing directly in front of the front door, and I will remind him of that.

It was quite a bit of money, but I'm so happy with the results. Now I'll never want to leave here! I'd like to share photos here, but so far I've been unable to post them.

Scheduled: The replacement of slider doors in finished basement. The guy had come over last Friday to take measurements and told me to call on Monday for the price. Well, I called on Monday, still not ready; called on Tuesday, still not ready. Finally, on Wednesday, they told me the guy who took the measurements left the company, which I guess accounted for some of the delay.

Because I was able to get contractor #2 to install the door I picked out at Lowes, I was able to save $1250 compared to contractor #1, who said they only installed certain brands. The labor both were charging was about the same, $1100 vs $1,000. So yes, it was a cheapie set of doors at Lowes, at $300 (!), but it actually got 4 star reviews, and since the place will be sold, I don't really care about how it holds up over the long term and I didn't get it with Argon gas inside.

The wanted to install this Tuesday, which would be great except that I'll be back at work at that point and it won't look good if I return after a week away from work and announce I need to take off Tuesday. So on Tuesday at 8 a.m. I'll meet the contractor at the condo to open the place up. I will give them the 2 keys needed to lock up and they will return the keys to my mother's neighbor, a few doors down. I will get them from him next time I go over there.

So much in the way of logistics, not to mention making sure Lowes knows someone other than me is picking up the door, giving them the guy's name, etc.

Yesterday I was back at the condo. I cleaned the floor and counter of the half bath. As before, I was down on my hands and knees (with a gardening cushion, what a lifesaver) scrubbing the black stuff off the joints between the tiles) but it seemed to go much faster than scrubbing the linoleum floor in the kitchen.

Onto the master bath. I also scrubbed this floor, washed down the counter and the mirror and the bath tub. The tiles in the shower surround, however, look terrible. There is some mildew/mold that just wouldn't come off, but I notice some of the tiles really need regrouting; there are some holes are gaps where there is no grout at all.

So I think I'll try my hand at regrouting. I think it's fairly easy. After cleaning anything loose, press the grout into the grooves with a spatula-type object, than use a washcloth or rag to clean any grout off the tiles. Any other tips on this, fellow do-it-yourselfers? Also, anyone know how to make an old, dull bath tub (ceramic) shine?

I have to also leave the disclosure form for the realtor today, at the condo. It's a form required for any CT real estate transactions where you disclose any known major defects. Because I'm not the resident there, my realtor's attorney advised that I might want to just check "Unknown" for every item on the list down the line. My realtor had told me earlier that buyers may be suspicious if they see "Unknown" checked, but I think if it's explained that a daughter is selling a parent's home they might understand.

Yesterday I also donated a car full of frames, matts and photo frames of my mother's to the local middle school here. A custodian there helped me load everything into a cart, an art teacher stopped by to see what the goodies were, and they were both very appreciative. I had original plans to donate to the local Montessori school and had already set that up with a woman there who said call before you come. But when I called and asked if someone could help me unload my car, she seemed annoyed and changed her mind, saying it wasn't a good time for me to donate, they had art camp going on, that no one could help me, and when I asked how far a distance I would need to carry stuff, she changed her mind entirely, saying she didn't want the stuff. I thought she was really unpleasant.

I also went to the dump yesterday and got rid of a pile of stuff. I also dropped off a few extra parts to the small loom I sold to the realtor who bought them, at her office.

In between all this I managed to shred some health insurance paperwork and other items with my mother's Social Security number onf them, going back to 2002.

At day's end, when i was reading my emails, I found a brief note from my sister informing me that my mother was back in the hospital with pneumonia.

I had called and left a message for a nurse at the assisted living place 2 days prior after my mother's neighbor told me he'd visited her and during his visit she began having trouble breathing, wasn't sure if it was an anxiety attack or allergies. So I called the nurse, she never called back and next thing I know, 2 days later, she has pneumonia.

I spoke to her on the phone last night, and the nurse at hospital, who said she's doing much better and is on antibiotics but it sounds like she'll be there several days longer.

My day started at 7:30 a.m. with a phone call from Empire Today, telling me the carpet guys would be at the condo between 9 and 11 a.m.

It was 2 very young guys whose English was not so good. I told the lead guy I'd be working in the kitchen while they did their work. Before I knew it, they were throwing cut up sections of carpet out the window to the sidewalk below.

I had to tell them to STOP since someone lives in the unit below and what if they walked out and got hit in the head? Or they hit the planters/pots on his steps?

They worked very fast, and before I knew it, they had installed new padding in most of the condo. Without bothering to vaccuum, which was spelled out somewhere in something I read, about how Empire works. I mean, I could feel the grit on the floor with my hands. I may not be living there, but the idea of putting brand new carpeting down on dirt just turns me off.

I told them to vacuum and not take shortcuts.

Next thing I knew, he was on the phone with his boss and was telling him there wasn't enough space inside the condo to cut the carpet rolls and so he had to do it outside, and he couldn't because it was raining. So they left.

I have never heard of such a thing. The need to cut carpeting outside. I mean, the parking lot is filthy dirty. It's very upsetting to me. I spoke to his manager, and then his manager's manager; they gave me a$100 credit due to the inconvenience of having them come back again tomorrow, but frankly, I'm still feeling nervous about the way this will all turn out.

The other issue, apparently, was that the carpeting came in 2 big rolls and the lead guy told his boss it was too heavy for them to carry it up the stairs. Well, they knew there were stairs since they will be carpeting them, too, so why didn't they send 3 people then?

Unfortunately, to add to my carpet issues, there is a 2nd staircase leading down to the finished bonus room that I overlooked when I had the sales guy here initially to measure. I had called Empire last Friday to see if I could add this staircase on and the sales guy said he'd come over today, which he did. Price: $381, but if I don't have it done tomorrow, when the installers return, there'd be an extra $60 charge cus it's a small job.

That would be fine except that this staircase is a shared staircase also used by the owners of the adjacent unit which they use to get to their own finished basement room. The carpet on the stairs is filthy dirty and I'm sure they'd love to see it replaced, except i need them to open the 2 doors so installers can install it correctly. They work during the day but i left them a note in their mailbox tonight asking if they could make themselves available to permit access. I doubt they'd be able to but perhaps if they know the friendly other neighbor, Barry, who is retired, he could open the door for us? Only problem, I forgot to say in my note that I must have it done tomorrow if I'm to avoid the extra fee. I have a feeling that won't happen. I guess for now I'll let it go; this is all just too much for me to handle right now.

After the unexpected carpet job left undone (they just removed the old and put padding down partially until I complained about the no vaccuuming), they left around noon. I had already agreed to meet the salesguy at the condo for the estimate for the 2nd staircase, and he finally showed up around 2. In the meantime, I finished cleaning the rest of the kitchen floor. Looks SO much better, but I think I'd better wax it now before dirt gets into all those little pits again. I also cleaned the fridge, inside and out, and use a little toothbrush to get in the crevices along the seam of the countertops and backsplash. Tedious work, but looks better.

I hope to clean and polish the wood cabinets tomorrow and the countertops and then I'm done with the kitchen. Next stop: Bathrooms.

Once the sales guy left, though, I wanted to salvage the rest of my day and get some other stuff done.

I ran over to the AAA office to renew my driver's license, something that would be difficult to once I'm back to work. I regret not being able to get a "verified" license but I didn't have time to grab my birth certificate when I headed out the door.

After that I drove 30 minutes in the other direction to return my mother's pool key to condo management. They had said I could mail it to them, but since there's a $200 fee for "lost" keys, I didn't want to chance losing it in the mail, so I dropped it off in person and got a receipt.

After that I came home and finally had time to make a simple lunch around 3:30 p.m.

Immediately after that, I checked my email and happily found an email from someone who lives in PA but who very much wants to buy my mother's large loom, for $200. She's a longtime weaver and is comfortable dismantling it, and her husband will be with her to help. We agreed on a date 2 weeks from now and I should have the day off as it's the Friday before July 4.

I'm sure she's excited becus the price is very low, and I know my mother paid over $3,000 for it35 years ago. However, I went with the advice given to me my the retired doctor who said the larger tapestry looms are hard to sell becus they're not portable and not many weavers are doing tapestries these days. (The smaller portable loom of my mother's, on the other hand, sold for $700.)

I'm happy to be able to dispose of it so quickly. I had considered the possibility of not being able to sell it at all and having to get it out of the condo quickly if the condo sells.

I also needed to address 3 emails from this doctor who volunteers with the CT hand weavers guild, thru which both of these looms were sold. She will also post another ad for me with all the miscellaneous weaving supplies and yarns, so we've been trading lots of emails. I've needed her help to identify most of these parts since they are all very specialized, and we've both been checking weaving websites for ideas on pricing, generally pricing my used stuff for half what they go for new. And I haven't had to pay anything for the ads as this same woman was here last weekend to pick out a bag of yarns as payment.

Now my day is winding down and I am wiped out, as usual. I was very frustrated about the unexpected aborted carpet install and do hope they get it done tomorrow. There will be thunderstorms around 1 p.m., so she they should be able to cut the carpet outside before then. I hope to god they don't drag in dirt with it.

I plan to take photos of the guy when he cuts it outside and quite possibly using them in a complaint to the company. I shouldn't have to be worrying now about a dirty brand new carpet and i also didn't like him throwing carpeting out the window like some construction job site nor did i appreciate him skipping the vaccuuming, which he can only do partially now since the padding is down. With all these issues, it is doubly frustrating having a language barrier.

Yesterday I arrived at my mother's condo at about 10 a.m. I knew I had 3 hours to do some deep cleaning there, before I went to visit my mother at assisted living.

I thought perhaps I could finish up the kitchen in that time, and I had it in my head that I would start with the floor. Well, I spent 2.5 hours SCRUBBING it with a brush and just using hot water and dish detergent. It is covered with pit marks which trap dirt, giving the overall appearance of lots of black dirt spots.

So in 2.5 hours of constant scrubbing, no breaks, I managed to clean HALF of the kitchen floor. It really took a lot of elbow grease to get the dirt off, but oh, does it look like new now! I can't imagine that a professional cleaning crew would spend as much time on that floor as I did, or if they did, I guess I'd be paying more than I expected.

If anyone has any nifty tips for cleaning kitchen counters or wood cabinets, please let me know. I was going to try full strength vinegar on the laminate counters and try to somehow clean the cabinets first before using a wood polish on them. There's a stainless steel sink and chrome fixtures too. And the fridge to do.

Today the carpet guys are coming between 9 and 11 so I will be there at 9 and will continue working on the floor while they work. Hopefully, I won't be in their way.

After working on the floor yesterday, I went to get my mother. I took her to Shakespeare's Garden a lovely garden nursery where they have lots of interesting planters in unexpected objects. Most of all she enjoyed the laid back cat lying on the counter of the gift shop.

After that I took her to a photography exhibit at local library, and then we went to a veggie juice bar where she had a mango/coconut drink and I had beets and pomegranate.

She still talks about going back home, which makes me feel guilty as hell, because I'm making lots of decisions disposing of her stuff which are irreversible.

I feel like I've taken away everything that was precious and meaningful to her, but simply put, she couldn't take all her belongings with her to assisted living.

Holding onto her stuff indefinitely is really problematic, as my house right now is filled with it and I have narrow little passages to get from one room to the other. I could rent a bin somewhere, but then how long would I keep it? And I don't need any more bills!

What's most important are her relationships with friends and family, and I am doing my best to see her regularly, take her out on little day trips and encourage the staff to keep her engaged. It's a lot of responsibility for one person and once again I must point out my sister's lack of involvement is something I just can't forgive. I suppose we are all flawed human beings, in one way or another.

I sent an email to staff at assisted living with a link to a local place that lets groups visit their llama and goat farm. My mother would like that. I would take her myself, but it appears they're only open to groups, and they did mention senior citizen groups on their site.

I've been working hard these past 4 weeks, cleaning out my mother's condo and getting ready to sell it. At the same time, I'm managing her bills, her finances and trying to ensure she's as comfortable as can be.

When I first moved her in there, I was visiting nearly every day, or every other day; gradually, this lessened to just the weekends because, quite frankly, I need all the time I can get to accomplish the above. I'm also still working f/t.

Part of what's driving me to work so hard is fear and guilt. Two unhealthy emotions.

Fear that if I don't get it on the market very soon it has less chance of being sold to families with kids who want to be settled in before back-to-school time. Fear that if it doesn't sell by Labor Day, I'll be stuck paying taxes, common charges and electric all winter and then some, draining my mother's resources. Fear that my mother will still be around when the money runs out, in about 4.5 years from now. Fear that I'll have to put her in a nursing home and she'll be miserable and unhappy.

To be brutally honest, I would rather my mother passed before that happened. People have told me that as the Alzheimer's progresses, she'll be less aware of her surroundings anyway, but I don't know.

And then there's the guilt.

Yes, my mother can hardly finish a single sentence due to memory loss. But she can still express her thoughts pretty well, and what she is saying to me with some regularity is that she doesn't like it where she is. I had a sit-down with some staff there last week and said my mother needed to be more engaged and stimulated, so now, she says, they are trying to get her to "talk about my art" in group settings. But my mother doesn't really want to talk about it, particularly (although she loves compliments and praise of her work), but she wants to create, and that's not something you do in a group setting. (Altho another time, she acknowledged NOT having created any art lately, because, she said, "I don't always feel like it." I wonder if the Alzheimer's is affecting her artistic abilities.)

Everything at this place is done in a group, because of course it's more efficient that way and they probably don't have the resources to do things individually with people.

My mother says she doesn't have any friends there, that they're all "a little crazy" and they all look like they're in their 90s and use walkers and it's all depressing to her. My mother has no physical infirmities and is very spry for her age of 81.

She complains about her lack of privacy. People who come in to clean her room just walk right in, sometimes when she's half-dressed, and they don't knock. This pisses me off. What's worse, my mother told me the cleaning person was "reorganizing her dresser drawers" and even my mother knew they shouldn't be doing that. Maybe the person was nosy and wanted to see what she had, so they pretended to be "organizing" when they need no organizing.

I have already emailed one of the directors over there about this.

My guilt comes from knowing I have plucked my mother from her home and dropped her in this facility, believing it was the right thing to do, but I have exchanged one set of concerns with another set, and there is a void here that needs to be filled.

Living alone, my mother was overwhelmed with the tasks of everyday living, I think. Even though I was managing most of the bills, she still fought very hard to stay on top of her finances and kept asking me for an accounting, and then the questions never stopped because no matter how much I explained, she didn't understand. Issues started popping up when fairly typical repairs or maintenance need to be done around her condo, and I needed to step in more and more to schedule repairs. But even then, when the plumber (or whoever) showed up, she was totally stymied becus it became clear she didn't understand what the plumber was saying. I didn't know if he would recognize her mental challenges and try to rip her off and I could only do so much from a distance, from my workplace where I can't make private phone calls, etc.

In hindsight, I'm pretty sure my mother was also forgetting to take her meds, and that's why she was having the heart palpitations, which the medication was supposed to prevent. I read some warnings on her med that says you have to be weaned off it gradually.

I worried constantly about her still driving her car. Really, really didn't like it.

These are just some of the kinds of things that were happening when my mother lived alone. Whenever I saw or talked to her, she seemed stressed, anxious, lonely, depressed and unhappy. She was always talking about her need to deal with her "paperwork," which, without the bills (which I was paying) really meant the wads of sticky notes she left all around for herself, to capture fleeting thoughts she would soon forget. There were so many sticky notes, she began trying to organize them into little piles, but when I looked at the piles, I saw that none of the sticky notes in any individual pile had any relation to one another, and so if she was ever looking for one of those notes (which she wouldn't becus she wouldn't remember it) she would never find it.

In a way, the paperwork that stressed her so much was her own creation that came from her desire to retain control her life as much as possible at a time when control was becoming harder and harder to hold onto.

So with one fell swoop I moved her to the assisted living place, where she arrived with no paperwork and she is no longer responsible for plumbing repairs, cooking, planning or scheduling much of anything.

Now, she said, it sometimes seems like all she does is go eat a meal and before you know it, it's time for lunch already.

There are all sorts of activities planned, and from what I'm told, she takes part in nearly everything, but my mother has told me after trying these things out, some are "boring," like the hours long shopping trips to local stores where "no one ever buys anything." Or the "corny" cowboy songs some guy was singing to them. Everything's done as a group activity.

The only things my mother said she really likes is whenever a dog is brought to visit (pet therapy), because she is an animal lover, and the exercise classes where they sit around in a circle and have to try to keep several balloons up in the air by batting at them.

My mother likes to go outside but is not allowed to go unless accompanied by a family member (that would be me, my sister has not gone to see her since she was admitted) or a staff person. My mother complained that a staff person was bringing someone else outside and had my mother join them too, but then for some reason they had to bring the other person back in and so they required my mother to return inside the building as well.

I feel bad for my mother becus, Alzheimer's or not, I would react the same way in many of these situations. She talks about returning to live at her condo and driving her car. If she ever learned that her condo is nearly cleaned out, that I have donated many of her belongings to GoodWill, Montessori and Make a Home and that I am about to sell her condo, she would feel utterly betrayed by the person she is closest to. This is what kills me and makes me feel like an awful person who has put their parent in an assisted living facility as much for her own convenience as for her mother's well-being.

It is true, having my mother at the assisted living place gives me a measure of peace of mind that she is being taken care of. But it is an institutional setting very different from my mother living independently. I just couldn't keep up with managing my mother's life from afar, although I live just 20 minutes away. For a short time before I moved my mother, I had set up having a home health aide visit her twice a week for just a few hours at a time. My mother had resisted that for a very long time until I finally just did it. That seemed to work ok although it wasn't without its own challenges. I wanted the aide to take her grocery shopping and to doc appointments so my mother wouldn't have as much of a need to drive herself, but my mother treated her visits as something she needed to "fit in," in between grocery shopping (which she did nearly every day) or visits to the doctor!

I was considering increasing the aide's hours, against my mother's wishes, when my mother's fateful 2 911 calls on Mother's Day and a few days later precipitated a whole chain of events leading to the hospital's refusal to release her to her home where they knew she lived alone.

Although legally they probably couldn't have forced me to place my mom, I didn't fight it because I knew they were right. They said she needed round the clock supervision. Even if she lived with me, I'd have to hire someone to be here. And I have thought about that many times, having her live with me, but I know it would be an untenable situation, even without her having mild Alzheimer's. She's always had the ability to drive me crazy in a very short amount of time. I have often thought of my mother as a high maintenance kind of person who constantly needs tending to. It's just the way she is. She was an only child and in some ways spoiled. So she will point things out to me and then I have to run and "fix" it.

I know what my capabilities and limitations are, and I know that moving my mother in here would be a disaster. Then I would have to move her somewhere else again and it would be another disruption in my mother's life.

As mentioned earlier, I had a sit-down meeting with 3 staff people at the assisted living place. They are making an effort and want us both to be happy, and they are trying, but it is a work in progress and they likely are not accustomed to having a resident artist who is used to lots of solo time and the freedom to do her own thing. Not everyone in this world is an extrovert, and so "talking" about her art is not at all the same thing as actually "creating" her own art.

They have a beautiful arts and crafts room filled with supplies at this place, but my mother has shown no interest in using it because, she has told them, "I have my own arts supplies at home."

My sister's disinclination to help out with things is getting in the way of my doing what's best for my mom. Or rather, I am aware of this and am trying to make sure that doesn't happen. I am still very angry at my sister. When I kept telling her i needed her support and help, she demanded, What do you want me to do? I encouraged her to come by the condo, if only to pick out things she wanted. She started working in my mother's upper studio, and i told her if you can concentrate on this one room, that would be a big help; I'll work on cleaning out the other rooms. Well, my sister did take all the paints, brushes and other art supplies, which I believe she will try to sell. (I told her to keep some for my mom at her new place.)

But i also emphasized that she should try to get everything up all the floor because the new carpeting would be installed by such and such date. Well, my sister came maybe 3 times and she did not finish cleaning out the studio. She pretty much came and went at her convenience and never told me when she was coming. I have been over there every day after work this past week. So yes, I'm very angry at her. Every day I came home from work around 6, fed the cats and made sure Waldo got his meds, changed my clothes and then headed out the door again for the 20-minute drive to mom's. And I wound up cleaning out that studio, along with all the other rooms, myself.

My biggest urge is to not bother interacting with her anymore, to finish up the whole process myself because she's largely useless. Yet I wanted to make sure my sister set aside some of those paints and brushes for my mother before she sold it all. It doesn't make sense to spend precious money on new supplies. So i had to swallow my urge to have nothing to do with my sister in order to send an email asking her again to set these things aside and putting them someplace where I could pick them up.

When I first told my sister I was looking to put my mother into assisted living, the first thing she said is "I think you're jumping the gun." I know those words came from someone who has little to do with my mother, and so has no basis to make that kind of statement, but those words continue to haunt me during periods of self-doubt. Did I do the right thing? Did I jump the gun? Perhaps I could have had my mother live 6 months or a year longer where she was if I'd increased the visits by the home health aide.

There is one other possible option I want to explore. If I can't have my mother live with me, and assuming that most other assisted living places will be similar in price and activities, there is one place I learned of (which has gotten both rave and bad reviews) which is local and which is not dedicated to memory care, like where my mother lives now, but they do appear to have small apartments. I'm not sure my mother would be eligible for such an apartment due to the Alzheimer's, but if she was, it would much more like her old condo where she had several rooms, not just one with a bath, and she would be able to interact with other residents who did not have memory loss issues. These are the 2 key issues for my mom, I think.

I don't know much more about this place than what I saw on their website. I have exchanged phone messages with the director there. No idea how the cost would compare with the $5300/mth I'm paying now, and of course there's the question of when and how quickly the Alzheimer's caused her to deteriorate, would she be able to age in place? I believe this facility has the apartments and a nursing home on site, but no real in-between. Would they force me to move her out of the apartment at some point when she progressed? At the place she's at now, it's all dedicated to memory care people and they have 3 floors segregated by how bad the mental impairment is, so as a patient progresses, they can easily be moved to another level with appropriate care.

Tomorrow is the carpet installation; i have to be on site for that but plan to make some important phone calls, this being one of them, while I'm there.

Yesterday morning right before I left to meet my carpenter at the condo, a woman on Facebook said she wanted to buy some shelves and said she could meet me there at 9. I figured, perfect. I didn't have to bother my friend who lives 40 minutes away to have him drive over to provide "security" when meeting to sell something to someone you met online, since my carpenter would be there. Well, the woman never showed up, so me and carpenter moved out the last 4 bookshelves and loaded them in his truck for GoodWill. We demolished a small, damaged particleboard desk. Once again he said he didn't expect any payment from me, but I gave him what I had in my wallet, which was $29. He's been a greater help to me than my own sister.

I try to make it worth his while even though he's given me a break on payments. This time, he asked to take an old stool and I offered him 2 compact cube-type tables, which he liked. (He lives in a tiny cabin about 500 sf so he can't take big stuff.) Last time I gave him an old (not flat screen) TV, a boombox, VCR, and a very good Sony stereo receiver and CD player. I had no use for it and he's done a lot for me. The CD player wasn't working, though it could be fixable, I don't know.

On today's agenda: Head over to condo this a.m. and concentrate on cleaning the kitchen and baths. Continue emptying lower level studio but since I'm going to visit my mother afterwards, I can only fill up the trunk, not the back seat, so my mother doesn't see it.

I may take her to a beautiful Japanese garden about a 1/2 hour away, or maybe just a more local garden nursery that's interesting to explore. I can give her my camera to take some pix if she likes. That's the plan for today. I hope I'm not too tired to take her out because she really needs it.

Work on the front entry redo is going gangbusters.

Here's what it looked like yesterday, at the end of Day 1:



Has anyone else noticed that it "appears" the problem with uploading jpgs has been fixed on this site, but for some reason, images still don't appear, although the code now does.

The Great Cleanout trudges on (of mom's condo).

Main Living Area: It's in pretty good shape. This a.m. my carpenter and I will meet there at 9 a.m. to haul out 4 bookshelves and a small desk. Of my mother's 7 bookshelves, I sold 3 of them for $20 each on Facebook Tag Sale (so much better than Craig's List or Patch). They are particleboard, so the Make a Home Foundation people who picked up the other furniture didn't want them.

I will call Good Will this a.m. and see if they accept particleboard shelves. If so, it will save me money I would otherwise have to spend to leave it at our transfer station/dump.

I would like to keep one of these shelves myself, so we can load up carpenter's truck, hopefully drop off the 3 shelves and small desk at goodwill and then drop off the 1 shelf at my place.

The additional challenge there is that my masons have started work redoing my front entry and it will be difficult to get up the driveway. We will have to carry the shelves up from my basement.

Yesterday, while I was waiting for one of my shelving buyers to show up, I began cleaning out the finished basement. My mother used it as a 2nd studio and it is packed with artist supplies, matted work and so on. I found 2 whole boxes filled with nothing but wood dowels that look like they came off furniture. Several cigar boxes packed with staples. Things she collected over the years.

One thing she has even more of is frames: photo frames still unwrapped in original packaging, frames for art, etc. I've been in touch with the local Montessori school and they will take the frames and miscellaneous supplies as a donation, but I still have to pack up my car with it and bring it there, next week.

My mother also kept half used or leaky tubes of paints, which I'm pretty sure qualify as hazardous wastes. So I will save those couple of small boxes in my garage until the next household hazardous waste drop off day occurs. Unfortunately,my town just had theirs so i may have to wait another year.

The glass replacement on the slider doors in lower level has now morphed into replacement of the entire sliding door unit, becus i discovered the lock was busted on it. I had a guy over there yesterday to measure for an estimate. I will likely go with this guy over the first place I called becus the first place I called told me they only work with certain brands of doors, and these were not especially cheap. I found I could get some slider doors at Lowes/Home Depot for as little as $300, and they got very good reviews to boot. The place I had measuring yesterday will install whatever you want, so i gave him the info about the Reliabilt 300 Series.

I amt thinking of calling Empire Carpet back to see if I could add on replacement carpeting to the lower staircase to the finished basement, which I sort of overlooked when I had the main living area priced for carpeting. I counted and measured the stairs. Probably a few hundred more but it would look so much better to potential buyers.

My mother cataloged all her life's work with slides. I mean, it's a small cabinet filled with nothing but slides. My house is bursting at the seams with her stuff. IMO, slides are obsolete; if someone were interested in her work, I could simply take photos and email jpgs. Do you agree? I would like to dump her slides; it will be hard to do, as it obviously took so much time to do, but I don't think they are needed. I have so many other records of her work in other forms.

This afternoon a woman from the CT Handweavers Guild is coming down to my place to see my mother's yarn supplies. It'll be about an hour's drive for her. She agreed to let me barter for the cost of the $30 ad I want to place on her group's website for my mother's larger loom and all the yarn supplies. She will pick out some yarns. She usually gets supplies at 60% of wholesale price; I assured her I would make it worth her while to drive down here.

I also contacted a place in TN whose website I found who buys yarns from people. However, the woman said shipping costs could outweigh the benefit. She will have the owner call me next week.

Ideally, I'd like to find another place just like that one that is closer to where I live so that shipping is not an issue. Selling these yarns individually isn't really a viable option, not when you have over 20 large trash bags and baskets sitting in your dining room filled with yarns.

In the living room and family room, meanwhile, I have all my mother's art propped up on the floor and against the walls. Next week an art/estate liquidator is coming with his arts expert to see if they might want to buy my mother's art as a lot. I suspect the price they may offer, if they even do make an offer, will be a real lowball offer. Not sure how this will go.

So there you have it. Still cleaning out the condo, trying to sell the big loom, yarn supplies and art. I have next week off; condo scheduled to go on MLS on Friday, come hell or high water. New carpeting in on MOnday, slider door replacement will follow.

Did I tell you I lost 5 lbs from all the work?

It's hard to believe it hasn't even been a month since I moved my mother into an assisted living community. (It will be a month this Friday.)

Here's what I've done (in between working full-time):

1. Nearly single handedly emptied out my mother's condo. My sister came 2 or 3 times and then seemed to have lost interest. I had my handyman/carpenter come twice with his truck to move furniture. My friend Ron came once but didn't really help, to be honest.

I can't tell you how many trips I made with either a car full or my dad's pick-up full of donations for Good Will. My own home is upside down with my mother's artwork all over, not to mention her clothes and things too valuable to donate.

Can't tell you how much I simply trashed, dragging stuff to the dumpster at the condo.

I mean, I can't even begin to tell you how exhausting just this part of the process has been. I am DOG TIRED. And I lost 5 lbs, after not being able to shed a single pound since I passed age 50. Amazing, but that's what a double flight of interior stairs will do to you. That's a big part of what's made this so tiring, the stairs.

Most of the rooms are mostly emptied out except for what will remain for staging purposes, except for the 2 studio rooms.

2. Sold my mother's 96 Subaru for $750.

3. Terminated the cable TV and returned their stupid little box, cancelled the phone and Internet service, cancelled a few credit cards.

4. Interviewed 3 realtors and then picked one. With the help of a friend of mine who used to run a brokerage, we established the list price and a strategy to sell it quickly (hopefully). I negotiated a 5% commission with my agent and then will pay an additional 1% bonus commission to any agent who gets the condo under contract in 2 months time. If I still have this condo by back-to-school time, I'll have lost my window of opportunity and will likely have it thru the winter til next spring, and I'll be paying the taxes and common charges every month, which I REALLY don't want to get stuck doing. So it needs to sell quickly.

I already wrote the listing description (i used to do a lot of that as a freelance real estate writer) and the agent is using it.

My agent's agency will get a sneak preview of the condo later this week so they have an opportunity to make more money on it before it goes on MLS the following week.

5. I met with a carpet place and it's scheduled to get new wall to wall carpet this Wednesday. What's there is shot, looks terrible and makes the whole place look dirty.

6. The only other improvement I'm planning on doing is replacing the fogged up glass in the sliding glass doors in finished walk-out basement. I'm meeting the glass company guy there tomorrow for an estimate, but expect it will be $300 or $400.

7. Also tomorrow Make a Home Foundation is coming with 2 guys and a truck to take all my furniture donations, which includes dozens of book shelves, cabinets, desks, file cabinets etc. I HOPE they will take it all and not turn their nose up at anything.

8. In between all this, lots of visits with my mother to try to make her feel comfortable. Today, for instance, I spent a few hours in the a.m. scrambling to clean out the upper studio as my sister failed to clean out this one room as I'd asked her to. My concern is they won't be able to do replace the wall to wall carpeting in there if there's too much stuff to move. Then I drove over to my mother's to take her to a matinee and when i got home around 5:30 p.m., I sank into a lounge chair, exhausted.

Still to do: Find an attorney to represent me at closing.

Find buyers for both looms; I may have to donate the larger one to a nonprofit group in Hartford area that teaches blind people a skill (weaving). The smaller one should sell...I have a possible buyer coming tomorrow to look at it.

Next week an estate liquidator guy and his art expert are coming to my home to look at my mother's art and ideally buy it all as one lot to sell to dealers or whatever.

Later down the road I will want to sell my mother's 2 diamond rings, and 2 antique Koran holders my mother bought in Morocco that I believe are worth something.

There's also a large Moroccan rug that could be worth something.

I may also hire a cleaning company to deep clean just the kitchen and 2 bathrooms.

I need to find a place to donate a zillion photo frames, picture frames and mats and miscellaneous art supplies. I'll throw in yarn supplies to whoever buys the looms. May call a Montessori school about the frames tomorrow.

Have been in touch with mom's accountant; concerns about taxes. There's just so much to think about. My only consolation is that for most people, this kind of thing happens when their loved one passes, so then they have to do all this stuff while they're still in mourning. At least for me, my mom's still alive so it's not quite as emotional, though it is still difficult and I do feel very guilty at times becus i feel I'm dismantling her life and leaving her with very little.

From the surface, if you spoke to her, the only thing amiss would be that she can't remember anything, and even has trouble finishing a sentence. Otherwise, she's not overweight, she walks quite well and looks pretty well put together.

One week after starting to clean out the condo, here's what's been accomplished:

I made another two trips over to my mother's today, heading over in the morning. Discovered one entire large cabinet filled with fabrics, scraps and what-not; all of that I threw in trash bags and put in the dumpster at condo. I loaded the car up with a pile of stuff for Good Will, dropped that off, then returned to mom's condo to load up again, then returned to my town and stopped at the library to unload a trunk full of CDs, vinyl records and still more books. Went home and unloaded the rest of the stuff at my house. After 5 p.m., I returned to mom's condo again and loaded up. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Here's where we stand:

Kitchen: While there's still stuff all over the counters, most of the cabinets have now been emptied, and 2 full sets of stoneware dishes, glassware, pots and pans, et, etc have been packed up; there are 4 or so boxes ready for my next trip to GoodWill. Fridge was also emptied. The art on the wall is down.

Dining Room/Living Room: All the books on the 4 narrow and tall bookshelves have been emptied and hauled to library. Two other large cabinets and a large cedar chest have also been emptied. Most of the small stuff has been packed and taken away. What remains are a bunch of small and large pieces of furniture and a dozen or so larger framed art pieces that won't fit in my car. I emailed Habitat for Humanity tonight with pix of the furniture and will await a callback for pickup.

Small linen closet: Partially emptied; I'm using mom's many towels between the framed art pieces so nothing gets scratched. When this is all done, I can donate the towels to the local animal shelter.

Bedroom/office: My mother's office is in her bedroom, and this room is a real mess. The only work done here is the 2 dressers were moved with my handyman to her new place, and some clothing in the closet as well as some books in a smaller bookcase. STill a ton of work here that includes a large metal desk, a small desk, 2 4-drawer metal filing cabinets and her closet. This room will really slow me down. I know it will take time to sort thru the papers, and that's why my initial thought was to take it all home so i could do it at my leisure.

Studio: My mother's studio/loom room is also filled with art supplies and piles and piles of yarns. My sister volunteered to sort through this and thinks she may be able to sell it all in bulk to one or two people, but we had a testy moment because I asked her to give me the proceeds from such a sale because my mother's going to need every penny to keep going at the assisted living place. My sister looked like she was about to say umm, if i'm going to the trouble of disposing of it, i'd like to be reimbursed for it. I actually didn't let her say that. (I should have, but yes, I've known her all my life and she rarely does something without motivation, so I read her mind.) I told her I've already spent hundreds, like buying my mother her new twin bed, and don't plan to reimburse myself for it. That's when my sister said I don't have to play the martyr.

So I don't know where we stand, and it really irks me to think my sister would just pocket the money from the sale. But I'm already in over my head and need the help.

However, my mother's 2 looms, 1 large and 1 small, are worth some real money and I won't let her profit from those. I was researching the brand names and the larger one retails for several thousand dollars new.

The Lower Level: This is more art space and is filled with mostly unframed pieces. My sister also volunteered to work in there.

I know it seems like we (mostly me) got a lot done in 9 days (dare I say 4 weekend days since I worked Monday thru Friday and did not go down there then?), but once i go back to work the progress will slow. I do have 2 extra days off this week and a week off in mid-June, at which time I expect to be interviewing realtors, but I'm also considering using more of my vacation time in June to help ensure this place is on the market by July.

The car: My friend R. said he would help me out by selling my mother's car for me. But then he said he wanted a cut; he first suggested one-third, which seemed like a bit much, but he agreed to one-quarter. So if the car was sold for $1,000, I'd get $750. This money, too, will go back in my mother's account. Of course then I would need to drive the 40 minutes down to his place to drop it off, and I wound up having to post it on Craig's List becus he didn't know how to do it. And I knew his prep school reunion is coming up next weekend so likely no test drives then. It wasn't the ideal situation, but it would relieve me of having to go on test drives with strangers. Especially the kind of strangers who would be interested in a $1,000 car.

But then my sister said her boyfriend would be interested in buying the car for $750. So I'd get the same thing I'd get if my friend R. was selling it, for a lot less hassle as the boyfriend lives much closer and I wouldn't have to wait for a sale. It's possible the car is worth maybe $1200, but honestly, when you put it in reverse it doesn't sound good and sister's boyfriend is planning on replacing the transmission on it.

So hopefully the sale will take place tomorrow. Told my friend R. of all this and thought he'd be relieved, as he kept telling me he was doing me a favor (but wanted some compensation for it) and he actually sounded annoyed. Yet this is the same person who asked me if he could have a particular piece of my mother's art, not for him, but for a friend of his he thought would like it. I let him have it becus I've known R. for 30 years, but it irked me that he assumes it's ok to get something from me for free, yet he finds it necessary to build in profit to sell my car. He also said well gee, you're making $80K a year and I'm working p/t at a gas station making $15 an hour. Well, yes, that's true, but he also chose to give away most of his life savings, several hundred thousand dollars, to his niece. That was his choice. Grr.

I've been to visit my mom at her new assisted living address frequently since moving her there 8 days ago. Aside from a mid-week hump where she became very upset after accidentally locking herself out of her room, she seems to be adjusting pretty well, although there are periodic, sometimes perfectly lucid remarks like, "I'm still trying to decide what I want to do, but this isn't it." She seems somewhataccepting of her current residence, if not always happy with it.

She continues to enjoy the food there, is getting to know other residents and does not seem to recollect her prior life in any great detail. She also was amazed the other day when i told her she'd only been there a week becus she said it felt like 5 months to her.

Another time she got agitated becus she started reading the discharge instructions from her time at the hospital. A nurse or someone had written "for daughter" on the outside envelope, but my mother read through everything and where it said "Likely dementia" (they apparently didn't know she was diagnosed a year ago) my mother underlined it and put 3 question marks after it.

While i was there visiting i mentioned all this to someone who worked there, and she suggested I remove the paperwork because, she said, their mind gets on a kind of "loop" and keeps coming back to the same thing. So I took it all away from her desk and she didn't notice it was gone because once again, her short-term memory is pretty shot.

She is still having trouble using the phone I set up for her; she seems to have trouble processing the simple instruction to dial "9" before the number. It's written down for her, but she still has trouble with it, although she has called me several times.

So much more I could tell you about how she's doing, but my subject here was meant to be about the next step.

I talked to one realtor, who agreed with my friend Ron that rather than wait til next spring to put my mom's condo on the market with various improvements, like painting and the carpeting, that I should get it on the market asap, because there are generally 2 kinds of buyers there: entry level buyers who are generally young people not unwilling to put in some sweat equity and do things themselves so they can have exactly what they want, and also there is some investor activity there, the realtor said, since prices are so low there.

So for an investor,then, putting in new carpeting or new anything would not make sense. They want to buy it cheaply and then flip it a few months later after making their own upgrades.

I want to sell it quickly so I can stop the drain of money for property taxes, condo common charges and electricity every month while I'm paying an arm and a leg at the assisted living place ($5850 a month). I had hoped to get $150K for it but there are several vacant units in the vicinity (the complex itself has over 200 units) and at least one foreclosure, which is now priced at $137K.

I really feel it's imperative to sell it asap, even if I get less than $150K.

So I've been over there cleaning out every day, starting with the day after my mother moved. Mostly by myself, but one day I did have my handyman with me, and his truck, another day my friend Ron came, and yesterday my sister finally came and helped.But she informed he she won't be going over there today or tomorrow because she want's to get her garden in.

It's a huge task becus my mother didn't throw anything out in the 15 years she's lived there.

I have a ton of her artwork already in my dining room, living room and family room. She has well over 300 pieces, and I will deal with disposing of much of that at some later point, when i can investigate possibly selling it as a "lot" like they do at auctions. There are a few other items that would be worth my while to research and sell separately, like the room-sized loom and her 2nd smaller loom. I can possibly advertise to some local weaving group here in CT becus I couldn't ship it. She also a ton of yarns and weaving supplies.

But aside from all that, after my sister and i have largely picked out things we wanted, there is a ton of stuff that has gone or is going to charity. I filled 4 large trash bags with just used VCR tapes and gave toGood Will, which conveniently is about 2 miles down the road. There's also one at my landfill.

I also learned that Habitat for Humanity picks up wood furniture (not upholstered stuff as they have plenty) and I was instructed to take pix of each item I want to donate; then they call to schedule a pick-up time with you. So I'll be taking the pix today of at least a dozen mostly small-sized book shelves, cabinets, chests and trunks which hopefully they'll want so I don't have to pay my handyman to move it.

I will still likely have to pay handyman to move other stuff. Like, she has 2 four drawer high metal file cabinets and it would be too heavy to get down a double flight of stairs, so will have to carry down 8 drawers individually, bring to my house so i have time to sort thru before tossing away most, and then getting him to help me move the file cabinets a 2nd time to dump. Unless Habitat would take the file cabinets after I unloaded them.

I will keep a few select items in the condo for now, for staging purposes, including my mother's bed and headboard, the above-mentioned loom, her leather couch and some of her art on the walls and art supplies.

I haven't even begun to sort through her finished, mainly one-room basement which functioned as a studio and has more art stored.

Please pray for me that I can do all this. Aiming, at least in my head, to get on market in July; that gives me 5 weeks but I'm not sure it's realistic because I still have to go to work! I am taking off 2 days after Memorial Day and 1 week in mid-June, but even then....

It's been a rough couple of days. I think it fair to say this was one of the most difficult periods of my life.

Well, it's been rough all week in fact, starting with Mother's Day last Sunday. We were supposed to go out for lunch but my mother was having heart palpitations and called 911. She got the heart palpitations because apparently she wasn't taking her meds. She had always told me she was, and I believed her.

I took her home Monday afternoon. On Tuesday, she called 911 again, this time for...wait for it...constipation.

This time, the hospital kept her for Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. My mother was climbing the walls.

They wouldn't release her to go back home, where she lives alone, because she appeared confused and disoriented and they said it wasn't a safe environment. (Well I would too if I sat around a hospital for 4 days.) But I also agreed with them. They said she needed round the clock care, and again, I agreed, though I have been trying very hard to keep my mother in her home for as long as possible.

But the truth is, I was worrying all the time about her. Worrying about her cracking up her car. Worrying about how so many different people in so many different scenarios could take advantage of her, financially. Worried about her getting depressed and lonely and always anxious because she was trying to hard to keep it together with her million different sticky notes on which she tried to capture and retain her thoughts, but they were a jumble of thoughts.

So I knew, and I guess in a way the trip to the emergency room was an opportunity for me to get her into an assisted living place more easily than going from home, because I could use the doctor's orders as an excuse.

With a sister who is useless and unhelpful, it was all pretty much up to me as to where to put her. I had researched just 2 different places. Masonicare was quite a bit cheaper (about $500 less a month) but it did seem more like a typical nursing home with dated, old-fashioned looking furniture and darkish hallways and not really a whole lot of activity going on. It seemed more about "maintenance" than stimulation.

On the plus side, besides the lower costs, the available room there had a view of a lovely pond with fountain and a walking path around it which I know my mother would enjoy. I was nearly ready to commit to that place, but the guy really did not seem eager to help me get in, at least, not in the way the people at Maplewoods wanted to help me.

Maplewoods was just built this year and it looks like a resort, just gorgeous. All the spaces are light, bright and airy, and each of the 3 memory care floors has its own sun room, large lounge areas with a large flat screen TV and fireplace, books, etc and their own dining room that looks like a classy restaurant, with an open kitchen where you can watch the chefs prepare the food. Each floor also has 2 computer stations where you can use it free.

My mother's studio has a good sized room with small closet and attached bath but no kitchenette. It does, however, have a great view of a pond with fountain and a lovely kidney shaped pool at the upscale condos across the way that was also very recently built.

If after some observation as to her default mental level, it's possible they could move her to a higher functioning floor where she'd have a "kitchenette" in her studio: basically a sink, small fridge and cabinets, but no stove.

My day started at 4 today due to anxiety of my own. At 1 i was at Maplewoods to review and sign the legal paperwork and hand over lots of money. I felt very much the way I felt when purchasing my home; the stress comes from making legal commitments about so much money!

After that, I met my handyman who had agreed to follow me in his truck to my mother's condo to load my mother's 2 dressers, a small but very nice table and chair. I had already made at least 3 trips on my own prior to this earlier in the week, loading up my car with stuff I planned to take to set up in my mother's new room and trying to empty out the fridge so it wouldn't smell and I could pull the plug.
Mostly I took her art because I knew that would be comforting to see on the walls, but of course I also grabbed clothing, shoes, some of her jewelery, toiletries, etc.

The Maplewood people said the kindest thing would be to tell my mother a white lie, that the doctor said it wasn't safe for her to live alone (true) and that her stay there was "temporary (not true).

My mother saw right through it and was angry and talking about people telling lies, etc. Very, very upset, with them and me. I was so emotionally drained by it all that I just dissolved into tears, and then she asked why I was crying and I said it was becus i didn't like to see her so upset. This distracted her from the reason why she was upset and about a half hour later, she calmed down and I walked her down the hall to her room, which was now pretty well stocked with her stuff. We knew she would be startled to see all her stuff there. I smiled inwardly because her very first comment was, I did a good job hanging the art. Then I said I was starving and did she want to check out the "restaurant" and we had a very nice dinner there together with no other residents around. By the time I walked back to her room with her, she was pretty calm and peaceful, we hugged a few times and I left and said I'd be back tomorrow.

I am so grateful and appreciative for the support my friends have shown me. My handyman saw what I was going through and said he didn't want to charge me anything and said he would take $20, but I gave him $35; he should have really gotten $75 for his 3 hours with me.

And my friend Ron told me he'd come up tomorrow and drive me over to my mother's old condo so I can drive her old Subaru home and more easily sell it. I'll be lucky to get $1,000; it's a '96 Legacy wagon. And we can stuff his SUV with more stuff for my mom or just more art I want to take, and then we'll visit my mother on the way back. She will be so happy to see him; she knows him from when we were dating in my 20s, so he's like an old family friend. His mother died of Alzheimer's so he knows what that's about.

Billy the handyman has agreed tentatively to make another trip to my mother's next week with me to load up stuff in his truck, whether to take to the dump like the queen bed or to just take the good stuff, like the art; most of the furniture is old and junky and not worth keeping but I will at least look into having a professional tag sale company price and try to sell it for a little extra cash.

I also ordered a new twin mattress, frame and headboard that will be delivered to maplewoods on Wednesday; right now she has a bed on loan from them.

After I clear EVERYTHING out of there, and that will be a while, I plan to have all the walls painted first. Then I'll have them rip out all the disgusting old carpeting and new neutral carpeting put in its place. If this doesn't exceed $10,000, I'd like to also replace 2 rickety old ceiling fans as well as the equally old 3 faucets in kitchen and baths. That is all I will do to update and then I will plan to put on market next spring.

I feel a little under the gun to do this quickly because the money from the sale of the condo, probably around $150,000, will be used to pay for my mother's very steep rent at the assisted living place ($5800 a month). Yes, you read that right. Comes out to $69,600 a year. If she deteriorates further and the level of care intensifies, the cost will rise even further, and i can also count on a 4 or 5% increase every year, she said.

Interestingly, they said the average age upon admittance was 86 (much older than I thought) although there are some people in their 60s there. (Sad.) And the average stay there is just 2 years. My mother is 80, so who knows how long she'll last, but the woman also said she didn't think my mother would run out as I feared; she said that in her 15 years in the business, she'd only had about 15 families who had to leave with their parent because they ran out of money. Usually, the resident died of Alzheimer-related illness or other causes. This actually makes me feel better becus I don't want to have to transfer my mother to a nursing home.

The monthly "rent" includes three meals a day plus snacks anytime, and the chef there is excellent. It really is restaurant quality food.

My mother was doing a little drawing in the hospital and I would like to find some sketch pad at her place to bring over, with some pencils. I wasn't sure my mother was capable of still creating art but at least she was drawing, and enjoying it.

By moving her there, she should have 4.5 to 5 good years before the money runs out. If she is still alive at 85, then I will have to put her in a nursing home under Title 19. I hope that doesn't happen. This place is probably the nicest place she's ever lived in and I believe that by removing her from an environment where she was feeling so anxious for so long over "paperwork" she just couldn't let go of, her more simplified life right now will allow her to just relax, let go and enjoy life.

I am exhausted, but in much better spirits than the past 3 days, when I kept second guessing myself and waffling between these 2 facilities. My friend from work assured me that both facilities were the right decision and I did the right thing. And Ron also said, after I told the long story of what I did this week, that I got a lot done in just a few days. I really did, but in the midst of it I felt nearly incapable of reaching a decision, because it came down to do I want to extend my mother's stay in assisted living 6 months longer at Masonicare, due to lower cost, or do I want to go for the place with the better quality of life and stimulating activities so she can make the most of it now while she still can and deal with what happens after that when it comes. Because I am so frugal, I was leaning first toward Masonicare, but when I thought about whether my mother would be happier at Maplewoods, that's what won out.

Now that I'm back in a salaried f/t position, roughly 98% of my income comes from my job, and given how much time it takes out of my day, I don't have a lot of time left over for side jobs if i want to hustle for a little extra cash.

Which is something I wouldn't mind doing as it seems my expenses have been crazy lately, and I seriously question whether I'll be able to save $11,000 this year in after-tax savings (see my sidebar goals).

I'm already committed to the masonry work on my front entry, but it's quite a chunk of change, $9800. I'm also having a lawn care service take care of mowing my lawn here for the first time; that should come to close to $1,000 by early fall. (They came yesterday for the first time and I was amazed at how quickly 2 guys could mow my front and back...1.5 acres. It took them about 10 minutes, and then another 10 minutes for trimming. Seriously, it would take me 3 hours and sooo much effort to achieve the same thing.

Besides the lawn care and the masonry job, I had big vet bills for Waldo (about $500 so far) which aren't over yet. I've also begun changing their diet plan so it's only 50% cheap canned cat food (aka Friskies and Fancy Feast) and 50% "the good stuff." Currently their preferred brands are Nature's Variety Rabbit and Weruva Steak Frites, but these premium brands are 250% more expensive. A can of Friskies goes for .52 at WalMart but the better brands can go for $2.50 or more for a single can.

So aside from my f/t job, I have retained just a single freelance client who started out with me a few years ago having me edit his emails. (I think he's ADD.) These days I've also been editing copy for his new poker website. But this is very small change and infrequent work.

I also very occasionally get some income from class action lawsuits. There's a website/newsletter you can sign up to get and it consolidates all the current lawsuits. Just the other day I got a check in the mail for $15 for the Truvia lawsuit. If you qualify and have purchased the product, all you usually have to do is fill out a claim form.

I also still participate in 3 online forums, for credit cards and AARP, answering simple surveys or commenting on something or other, so I can get $30 a month in Amazon gift cards. Of course, this is not really income in that I have to spend these rewards on Amazon merchandise.

Realistically, I just can't free up any time to, say, sell more perennials on Craig's List or something. The best course of action is to continue to tone down my spending again, which I admit got a little too much with all the stuff I've bought with discretionary money. Dishes from Williams-Sonoma, a silly Choo dynasty dog from One Kings Lane, gemstone jewelry from HSN, clothes from Macy's and Kohl's, a large canvas image of a horse in snow, a stock pot. These are the many ways I have largely wasted my money. Not that most of these don't give me pleasure, but many were ridiculously priced. (In fairness, the choo dynasty ceramic dog ended up being free because it was part of a pair of dogs and one of them arrived broken when delivered, so they issued me a credit and let me keep the one. The dishes from Williams-Sonoma were purchased using some of my $250 in gift cards I earned as wellness incentives from Cigna for getting my physical and so on.)

Today being Mother's Day, I'm taking my mother out to lunch and then maybe we'll stop at Whole Foods. I redeemed some of my wellness incentives from Cigna for a $35 gift card for Red Lobster, so that's where we're going. Before and after the lunch, I hope to get some more yard work done.

I had a yard of black mulch delivered and dumped in my driveway, so I began yesterday spreading it around my many perennial beds. I should have gotten 2 yards, but oh well. Yes, I can order it again but there's a hefty delivery charge which should have encouraged me to get more in a single delivery. There is SO much work to do in my yard, even without the lawn mowing. I have less time for it now, and less energy. And maybe less interest, too.

Lately I'd been thinking that maybe I could "age in place" here without having to move to a condo. This house has everything I need except that it's got somewhat more space than I need (more heating costs, more cleaning, etc.) and definitely way too much land to maintain). But if I'm honest, I'll admit it's still a better strategy to sell and move. It's just the thought of everything that would have to be done to prepare for a sale is so draining to think about. I AM getting a few things done, like the front walkway, but it's very slow-going. I should get out my punch list again and try to get some more things targeted for doing.

So here it is May, and I have yet to do ANYTHING from my goals list #2. Well, I did go to one Alzheimer's meeting but that's it.

This week there is a historical club meeting AND a genealogy club meeting and I really want to GO.

Waldo seems to be doing pretty well on his twice a day pill routine. Thank God for pill pockets. If I remember days of yore when I had to coat a pill in slippery butter and then get it down my cat's throat, well, it wasn't easy for me OR the cat. Pill pockets make what could be a real hassle to a treat for kitty. There is the next vet visit for another blood draw next weekend. That will really tell whether the meds are working, working too much and/or whether there is any underlying kidney disease, which i guess is somewhat common from what I've read about an overactive thyroid "masking" underlying kidney disease. Well, one day at a time.

Waldo was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism. I started him on meds and he seems to be doing well, but I have to bring him back in 2 weeks for another check of his blood to make sure we don't over-correct the thyroid, because that can cause problems in itself.

I had been sure he had kidney disease because the symptoms for both are so similar: drinking a lot of water, peeing a lot, losing weight, lethargy.

On top of that, the vet also told me he had an injury to his back foot. I knew he had arthritis in his back legs and was having trouble jumping up or down as a result. But she said he injured his knee and it can only be corrected by surgery, which I won't put him through at his senior age of 14.

The bill for the complete exam, bloodwork and meds came to......$500.

Mainly because this is a 24-hour, 7 day a week vet. I chose to go there becus while this wasn't really an emergency, they don't require appointments and I have trouble keeping to an appointment becus I sometimes have trouble capturing Waldo when it's time to put him the carrier. Also, they are a mile away from me so it was super convenient to go there after work.

I did talk them into a $50 refund for the urinalysis because she was unable to collect the urine while he was there and I didn't collect it at home either.

I will have to take him to my regular vet for the followup in 2 weeks; I don't bring the cats to any vet "regularly," but this was the vet who saw him when he lived at the cat shelter.

I started physical therapy because I still have 3 numb toes after pulling a hamstring last September. After the first session earlier this week, it really seemed like I had 4 numb toes; all the stretching exercises seemed to worsen things. I spoke to them about it and they said skip the at-home exercises for now. But since I'll be returning tomorrow at 5:15 p.m., I got the ok from my boss to work from home tomorrow. Nirvana.


The Famous Hooked Toes - Waldo's a cat who likes to feel anchored.


A closer look...


Just hanging out with mom.

Spring has sprung. All is beautiful in Connecticut.

I did my monthly expense and investment report a few days early and am pleased to see that I'm just $20,000 short of $1 million in total assets. I currently stand at $980,006.

That includes my home value but the rest is savings and investments. My investments for the month of April were up $16,000 from the previous month, and the current value of my investments alone is $699,727.

While this is all very nice, the REAL milestone for me will be when I hit $1 million in investments alone, not including the house value, which I think is cheating a little since you have to live somewhere.

I recently rejiggered my asset allocation to be a tad less aggressive, given I'm approaching my 56th birthday.

My current allocation is:

Total stocks: 58% (Domestic: 43%/Intl: 15%)
Bonds: 32%
Cash: 10%

In the domestic stock category, I also reduced my small cap exposure to just 5% as I keep hearing volatility will increase this year. I may also increase my international exposure as the Street says domestic stocks will be very mediocre compared to abroad.

That's the nice thing about having money in IRAs; you can move things around among IRA accounts without tax consequences.

I had a productive day today, and the nice part was, I didn't have any special plans.

1. Loaded and hauled another 3 or 4 wheelbarrows full of bricks from north side of house, where an old garden path is obliterated by weeds, to the driveway. The goal is to eventually plant grass seed from the overgrown area I'm hauling bricks out of.

2. Changed the hummingbird water.

3. Dropped off donated food at the animal shelter.

4. Took a 35-minute walk.

5. Did a load of laundry.

6. Filled the bird feeder.

7. Made a mason bee nest using a bunch of paper straws. This is the time to put these out as they finish laying their eggs end of May/early June.

8. Spent lots of quality time with Waldo, aka Purr Machine.

9. Dropped off some donated books at the library.

10. Made an edamame, corn, black bean and tomato salad for my lunches this week.

11. Made plans to get together Wednesday after work with someone I recently met online. He lives in the town I work in, so that's convenient. He seems very nice on the phone. He worked as a labor lawyer for 20 years and then 8 years ago after being let go he got into teaching, which he seems to have a passion for. The city I work in is known for its drug and crime issues. I'm feeling nervous already.

12. Fenced some peonies just now emerging from the ground so the new lawn mowers don't run over them.

13. Checked on the area of my veggie garden that I reseeded with grass a week ago; i think it's been too cold for it to germinate and not a sign of grass yet. Wondering if using grass seed leftover from last year will work okay. It's so expensive.