Skip to main content

A New, Unexpected Chapter

Readers know my father passed on Monday. For friends and family members reading this, services will be at 11 AM Tuesday at Weston Lodge, 5718 S. Rapp Street, Littleton. If you wish, gifts in Dad's memory can be made to Bonfils Blood Center (Dad was a 50-gallon blood/plasma donor).

Back at my parents' home, things are still moving fast. It's no disrespect to my father--circumstances are driving it. Mom is living there again, feeling like she made a jailbreak from the nursing home. A month and a half ago, we didn't think she'd be able to live at home anymore--she was having dialysis and was so sick she still doesn't remember even going to the hospital. Yesterday, we went clothes shopping because she lost a lot of weight and needs something to wear to Dad's funeral. Today, when I mentioned (for the 20th time) that the estate sale people were going to start setting up the sale in a few weeks, she balked. (I'd set it up when I didn't think my parents were going to be back.) The signed contract, the expense of living in her house, and other hard, cold facts got me yelled at. I worried that if she didn't have a sale soon, she never would--and she'd never move. The house is too much for her to take care of and even with help, I can't do it for her. I tried this year. The estate sale people said they'd have to use part of the yard to set up--apt to be a muddy mess when it's much past early October in Denver.

They say that in a negotiation, you have to give something to get something. I showed Mom photos of a condo for sale near my house and other amenities, hoping she'd sell the house and stuff if she had somewhere else to go. It's a beautiful place, well designed for a senior. Mom was so pleased with the condo that she already wants to move there. It's something I tried to get my parents to do for years: move to a smaller, manageable place close to my house--which is close to public transportation, a senior center, a hospital and a gazillion doctors. Mom could go to Walgreens and the Country Buffet every day. She likes the idea of continuing to own her own home. If she ever has to take out Medicaid, she won't have to leave it. Talking about it, she was the happiest I've seen her in a long time.

If she wants to buy the place, the next step is...having that sale. (Even if she doesn't want to buy the condo, she'll end up going to some other condo, in which case the next step is...having that sale.) So the sale is on.

Want to buy some 60s or 70s furniture or collectibles? CDs? Vintage patterns? Power tools? Furniture? A house in the suburbs of Denver? It's got to go.

Comments

tess said…
well managed, Lori! :-) that'll makes both your lives easier!
Lori Miller said…
Thanks, Tess. Getting back to normal would be fantastic.
Just makes so much sense Lori for you and your mom. Special thoughts for next Tuesday.

Best Wishes Jan
Lori Miller said…
Thanks, Jan. If the place checks out, it really would make a lot of sense for Mom to move there.
Galina L. said…
I am happy for you and your mom.
Lori Miller said…
Thanks, Galina. Mom looked at the condo today and loved it.
Galina L. said…
Did mom say anything at all about 99% of junk missing? Probably her old house looks less familiar for her now and easier to part with.
Lori Miller said…
Oh, there's still a lot of stuff there. Even so, she told her assistant how bare it looked. :/
Val said…
Before these latest episodes pretty much confined my dad to his armchair, he went on a major "clean-out" campaign... Of course my mom was livid (& there's still a lot of stuff!!! as you note, Lori) but it helped a lot. His workshed sits empty as well as 3rd space in garage, which will be handy places to shift things when it's time for The Really Big (Permanent) Clean-Out...
Lori Miller said…
They must have a lot of stuff if they have a place with three garages and it's mostly full. At least your dad made some headway.
Val said…
Well the 1st two stalls contain CARS as they should ;-) !!!
The 3rd stall had been serving as impromptu storage but yep, there's still a lot of stuff... I don't look forward to that, but a friend told me about services which will come in & do the estate sale for ya.
Lori Miller said…
There's no way I could do an estate sale myself. Cleaning, displaying, pricing, advertising, ringing things up, and preventing theft and damage is more than I can do.

Popular posts from this blog

An Objective Book about Other Childhood Vaccines

Today's decision by the CDC to add COVID shots to the schedule of childhood vaccines has some people concerned about the rest of the vaccines on the schedule. Contrary to fact-checker claims, adding COVID shots to the schedule means children will be required in about a dozen states to get a COVID shot to attend public school. Indiana isn't one of them--our childhood vaccination law doesn't mention the CDC and such a requirement could run afoul of our ban on COVID vaccine passports. But even freewheeling Indiana has some vaccine requirements and this kerfuffle has people wondering how safe those vaccines are.  There's a book called Vaccines: Truth, Lies and Controversy  by Peter C. Gotzsche, DrMedSci and co-founder of the Cochrane Collaboration, about the safety and efficacy of all those vaccines, including COVID and others. Cochrane was founded to "to organise medical research findings to facilitate evidence-based choices about health interventions involving healt

Blog Lineup Change

Bye-bye, Fathead. I've enjoyed the blog, but can't endorse the high-fat, high-carb Perfect Health Diet that somehow makes so much sense to some otherwise bright people. An astrophysicist makes some rookie mistakes on a LC diet, misdiagnoses them, makes up "glucose deficiency," and creates a diet that's been shown in intervention studies to increase small LDL, which can lead to heart disease. A computer programmer believes in the diet and doesn't seem eager to refute it because, perhaps, scientists are freakin' liars and while he's good at spotting logical inconsistencies, lacks some intermediate knowledge of human biology. To Tom's credit, he says it's not the right diet for everyone, but given the truckload of food that has to be prepared and eaten, impracticality of following it while traveling (or even not traveling), and unsuitability for FODMAPs sufferers, diabetics and anyone prone to heart disease (i.e., much of the population), I'm

Not Only Cheaper, But Easier

A while back, I wrote about saving money on break time coffee and snacks. I haven't done very well putting it into practice. But a post by James Clear today got me thinking about it again: Warren Buffett uses a two-list system to prioritize things. Check it out --and follow the instructions. Using Buffett's two-list system, two of the goals I ended up with were taking care of myself and saving $400 more per month than I already am. As I said, I've been wanting to save money, and the system made me really focus on this. I came up with 11 money-saving ideas, six of which had to do with food. Buying hamburger in bulk. Ranch Foods Direct sells one-pound packages of 80% lean pastured ground beef in bundles of 20 for a lot less than Whole Foods. Sprouts only carries super-lean beef that's grass-fed, and it's more expensive, too.  Not driving to Whole Foods. Whole Foods is out of my way, and saving a weekly trip saves gas. Coffee at home, tea at work. Tea is fr

This Just In: Yogurt Doesn't Improve Health

A recent study from Spain finds "In comparison with people that did not eat yogurt, those who ate this dairy product regularly did not display any significant improvement in their score on the physical component of quality of life, and although there was a slight improvement mentally, this was not statistically significant," states López-García. Most yogurt is pretty much pudding with a little bacteria . Pudding is a sugar bomb. Hard to believe the stuff doesn't improve health outcomes, isn't it? But as usual, researchers are calling for...more research. "For future research more specific instruments must be used which may increase the probability of finding a potential benefit of this food."

1972: Carole King, M*A*S*H and...Food for 2014?

I feel well enough to try Atkins induction again. The palpitations are gone, even without taking potassium. My energy level is back to normal--no more trucking on the treadmill early in the morning  to burn off nervous energy or emergency meat, cheese and mineral water stops after yoga. It's back to lounging around to Chopin and Debussy in the morning and stopping at the wine bar for pleasure. I'm using the original Atkins book: Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution from 1972. While looking in the book for a way to make gelatin (which is allowed on induction, but Jello(TM) and products like it have questionable ingredients), I felt the earth move under my feet : those recipes from 42 years ago look delicious and they're mostly real food. It makes sense, though: the cooks who wrote the recipes probably didn't have had a palette used to low-fat food full of added sugar or a bag of tricks to make low-fat food edible. Anyone who writes a recipe called "Cottage Cheese and