1. The garage's load is a little lighter today and will further lighten on Wednesday. I made a trip to the dump (also known as the Shoshone County Transfer Station) and deposited a truckload of different items I brought up from the basement. Christy and Carol and Paul sorted through things and took some items home. Paul and Carol will take more things home tomorrow. I'll get to work on the next level of sorting: deciding what remaining things become charitable donations and what goes to the transfer station.
2. One of Mom's chief concerns over the years was how she looked, especially when she left the house. Whenever we went anywhere, whether to a medical appointment, a wedding or funeral, a shower, a summer musical theater production, a meeting of retired educators, shopping at Wal Mart, out to eat at the City Limits or (when it was open) the Silver Spoon, a production at the Sixth Street Theater, or dinner at Carol and Paul's or Christy and Everett's, Mom started getting ready at least an hour before we left. She never just threw something on and dashed out the door. She cleaned up, meticulously applied her make-up, often cleaned and combed her wig, sometimes wiped clean whatever shoes she was wearing, and chose something to wear from her many combinations of dresses, pants, slacks, blouses, shirts, jackets, and sweatshirts. In particular, Mom loved the Alfred Dunner line of clothes as well as clothes she ordered from Blair Clothing.
The many outings Mom and I went on over the last several years rushed back to mind today. I couldn't help but think about how getting ready to go was becoming increasingly difficult for Mom the past three or four years, but how she was determined to look good, no matter how difficult it was to pull a blouse or shirt out of the closet or to change from around the house pants into nicer pants or slacks.
Our family did Mom's laundry when she lived at the nursing home. I took over washing and drying Mom's clothes after I arrived in June. Mom made it a point back in June and in early July to tell me to take the clothes out of the drier right away so they wouldn't get wrinkled. If they still came out wrinkled, I knew to either iron them before I brought them over or spray them with Downy Wrinkle Releaser in her room. Mom didn't often leave her room at Kindred, but it didn't matter. She wanted to wear good looking clothes, wrinkle free.
Now her clothes are all in tubs, sitting in the living room, awaiting their next destination.
3. Christy, Everett, and I met at Dick and Renae Costa's for a patio party with drinks and a generous variety of food: meatballs, cheese, salami, broiled French bread slices, a cherry cream cheese spread for the bread, salad, a vegetable tray and more. Renae had lemonade ready to go to mix with gin and muddled cucumber. We met Dick and Renae's friend from Madison, WI, Connie, and Connie told me about her son who has completed studies at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting and is now doing a paid internship in a theater in Cincinnati and who loves Shakespeare. It was a great evening. I was sorry that I had to call it quits kind of early. I was just tired after another day of working to empty Mom's house.
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