Adventures in Parent-land

I'm still tired. Went to help unpack the parents. Totally forgot sticky notes, but the sister had them at her house, so my niece made them out for the cabinets.

We worked like mules trying to get boxes unpacked and things put away, at least in the kitchen, trying to get the living room usable and the beds put together so we'd have a place to sleep. The sister and I worked. Mama was having chest pains. (She does that when she gets overworked.) The sister-in-law came over and worked too. She was the driving force to get the living room organized.

The house will be good for them, but it needs more work than I realized. For instance, the master bath was demolished for remodeling, only the remodeling never got done. So the master bath has no walls, no shower stall to go with the shower head, no floor... You get the idea. The other bath works, but it's pretty worn. Then they had sewer trouble the day after I left to go home. And I'm worried about them being able to coordinate things and remembering to get it done. It really needs to be done as soon as possible.

My brother-in-law is disabled, so he's home most of the time, and if the pain's not too bad, he can make phone calls and help them out some. He was there organizing--we had to watch him like a hawk to make sure he didn't try to move anything, though.

Downsizing will be a struggle for them--and we'll be working on some downsizing too, I think, in the next few weeks.

Finished my character interviews this morning, so I'll probably get back into the writing (I hope) tomorrow. This is for Old Spirits. Got to get rolling on that.

Weather's kind of iffy to go out to the seawall today--lots of wind, clouds. Maybe even rain--can't tell through the windows at the newsroom. Maybe just fog or mist. We'll see how it is thirty minutes from now. I do think it's far enough into spring that it's safe to put all the houseplants outside if I put them under the covered porch where the wind can't get them. I just hope the salt fog can't get to them either. It gets to the cars every so often...

Oh! The house has azaleas outside the breakfast room window. I've always loved azaleas, but have never lived anywhere they would grow. I'm going to find my clippers and go out and cut some. Maybe a rose, too, if one of them looks good.