Happenings

It's been a while since I have blogged, and I apologize. I have been reading and the list of books that I need to blurb is pretty long since its been two weeks, so I will get to that soon, but not today. Instead, today is about the other stuff...you know, what I've been doing while not reading.

Last Thursday, Friday, and Saturday I spent going over to my parents house to help my mom pack. Well, really we were trying to clear out the garage. First, I need to explain their garage. My parents have lived in the house they are in for 11 years and somewhere along the way it became somewhat of a storage/catch all. When my sister and her two kids lived with my parents, Randi had a lot of stuff that she couldn't fit in their bedrooms. They had the entire upstairs as their own, which is 3 bedrooms and a bath, but then she used the garage for her extra storage. When my mom quit teaching she moved all her boxes of teaching material into the garage. After eleven years it was so packed that you couldn't walk through it. So Thursday and Friday my mom and I decided to at least make a walking path. We started with Randi's storage crap since we knew most of that would be going to the trash or Goodwill. My sister and tubs and tubs of Isabella and Isaiah's baby clothes. Don't get me wrong, a lot of people save their baby's clothes for a number of reasons...maybe they plan to have another in the near future or whatever. Well, Isabella is 10. Isaiah is 7, so there was no reason to save it any longer. I am not kidding when I say that I have never seen so many baby clothes. The plastic tubs were all labelled too. "Isabella 0-3months" Yup....she had 0-3 all the way up to 5T clothes for both kids...tubs of shoes, infant and baby toys...it was so ridiculous. So, Thursday we ended up loading the entire bed of my truck, plus the inside with trashbags full of clothes, and dropped them off at Goodwill. This barely made a dent in the garage. Friday morning after dropping Logan off at school, I headed for my mom's and round two. Again, we loaded my truck with more clothes and toys. We used an entire box of trash bags on Randi's stuff alone...56 trash bags! yeah...crazy! Next we started on my mom's crafts. My mom loves crafts, she has a couple of sewing machines (which I took one of) several tubs on materials, then the whole scrabooking tub, then her crocheting tub, then the cross-stitching tub...yeah - it goes on. We went through all of that and got it really organized and threw away a bunch of stuff she didn't want of need. By then it was time to head to goodwill and then go pick up Logan.

Saturday, JR, and the kids came with me. My dad had come home Friday evening so he could help out and he was taking a bed back with him so he could move out of the hotel and into their new house. I became in charge...it was kind of awesome. My plan was to take EVERYTHING out of the garage and make piles of stuff they were keeping, stuff that needed to go to the dumb, and stuff that was going to goodwill. Just to give you an idea of what else was in their garage....5 no longer working tv's, and old oven, a bed and bed frame, along with a mattress and box spring, a load of Vanessa's stuff from college. 3 computer desks, 2 dressers, about 3 bookshelves, 3 lawn mowers - 2 push and one riding....and more of those plastic tubs containing everything from VHS's, DVD's, books, and loads and loads of pictures - loose pictures, framed pictures, picture albums...2 small refrigerators (the kind you use in a dorm room)...the list goes on. By the end of the day, we took 4 truck loads to the dump and 5 truck loads to goodwill. And the amount of stuff they kept could probably fit into one truck bed! Woohoo! so proud. I wanted to get the garage done, because on the inside of my parents house....there was boxes and MORE plastic tubs EVERYWHERE. I told mom to start lining up the boxes in the garage so that they were out of the house, and when the times comes to load the U-haul, it will be easier to just move everything from the garage to the truck. Also, I told my mom to start packing in those plastic tubs because they have SOOOOOOOOOOO many, and they are sturdier than boxes anyway, she may as well utilize the space. I would estimate that they have around 40 of those things if not more. So crazy!

While we were emptying the garage, JR leaned over and ruptured a disc in his back. It was terrible. It's still bad. I ended up taking him to the emergency room on Sunday. He has taken the entire week off work. Yesterday we went to a physical therapist, and he will go see an orthopedist sometime either this week or next and he's got to have an MRI. He can barely move, so I have been trying to help him. He was given some pain killers, muscle relaxers, and steroids, and is doing a little better, but he still can't sit down, and can only stand for short periods of time. He has to be laying down on his back. It's really bad, and after 3.5 days of doing nothing but laying down, he is bored and grumpy! Poor guy!

This weekend is Vanessa's 24th birthday celebration. The whole family is supposed to be going to Coushatta to do some family gambling...JR had always planned on staying home with the kids so that I could go, but now I am not sure if I will be able to go...which sucks on so many levels - one being that I put the whole damn trip together. SUCKS! Not only do I have to figure out if JR will be healthy enough to stay with the kids, but we have already spent so much money at the ER, the PT, the prescriptions, and we still have the specialists appt. to pay for and the full cost of the MRI, since we haven't reached the deductible for our insurance yet. Ughhhh! AGAIN, SUCKS!

Okay, I think that's about it for now...Happy Hump Day!