Monday, January 14, 2002
The knick-knacks won (though just barely).
I spent this past weekend at my Mother’s place, trying my best to clean it up.
I started out Friday afternoon, after spending a semi-sleepless night due to a hungry baby Annie needing food at 3am in the morning. Realizing I couldn’t fall back asleep soon after, I gave up, got up and went to work online. It was interesting working in real-time with my HK colleagues (as well as the early-risers in Britain). I finished work around noon and then headed off to Keswick.
First thing I did was go to the local CIBC bank and get power of attorney over my Mom’s finances there. Once done with that, I decided to walk the mile or so to my Mom’s house, taking in the changes to Keswick along the way. A collection of the new and the decaying. New businesses, new plazas, new (and ugly) cookie-cutter houses row upon row, and then there's old and sometimes decaying properties, falling-apart bungalows with rusting old hulks of cars in their backyards and empty, closed storefronts with fading “for sale” signs on them within a block of a spanking new school, and so on. I have a grudging fondness of the place, but it is no longer home for me.
I started my work soon after getting into the house. Erika and I had discussed things, and we both decided that one of the goals – in addition to reducing the dust in the place – should be to “simplify” the place, by taking out some of the bulkier items of furniture and the myriad of knick-knacks and placing them in storage. By the end of Sunday, I managed to clean up what used to be my old bedroom (which was filled with gack), taken out two large shelving units, moved a sofa-bed out of one room and putting it in another (restoring it to the bedroom it used to be) and packed away maybe 85% of Mom’s knick-knacks. (Like I said at the outset, they beat me. ;-)
There were several visitors over the course of the weekend. A neighbor dropped by, enquiring after my Mom’s health. A young fellow delivered oxygen bottles and related equipment to the house, and a Real Estate agent I had previously contacted came by and assessed the house’s value. It was sobering, though not too surprising, to find out that the value of the place is about equal to the price of our Land Rover. Still, this should be more than enough to look after Mom’s expenses in addition to her retirement income for a long time.
Erika also came up (with little Annie) and was a great help. She managed to sort out the majority of my Mother’s clothes, and was handy in that she’s much more ruthless than I was at throwing things out. In fact, when it became obvious to me that we were throwing out a lot of garbage – more than the municipality would likely accept – Erika called up a waste disposal firm and got them to deliver a half-sized dumpster that same day. I had a wonderfully cathartic time tossing broken bits of furniture, heaps of ancient papers, and assorted crud into it over the rest of the weekend.
I stayed overnight in the place on Friday night, but Erika didn’t want to be there with baby on Saturday night, so we opted for staying at a Bed and Breakfast on Saturday. The By-the-Lake B&B was pin-neat and had a Jacuzzi bath-tub that we both gratefully slipped into after a hard day’s work dealing with dust and cobwebs at Mom’s house. Immediately prior to that we dined out at a new restaurant in Keswick called Michael’s, whose haute cuisine dishes were a distinct cut-above the various burger, and franchise food outlets that otherwise dominate the restaurant scene in the town. Both were welcome and well-deserved treats.
Erika had to head back early on Sunday in order to pick up Vanessa, who was staying with a sickly Jean. Erika did some much needed mass-laundry and food- shopping on behalf of my Mom before heading off with a few boxes of stuff to take home (which includes my old toy chest, slide projector, the rest of my Dad’s stamp collection, and some books of mine). Two of the boxes contained material destined for Deloro, including a bunch of my old games, some additional mugs and surplus kitchenware, and some antiquated but fun nature books.
Erika left soon after the Maid Service she had arranged to come by came to the place. The two girls did a great – over 4½ hours they cleaned the place top-to-bottom, which included doing a much-needed wiping-down of the walls and cleaning nooks and crannies where dust collected. When they left, there seemed to be significantly less dust in the place, and a pleasant clean lemony scent permeated the house.
I originally planned to visit Mom at the hospital on Sunday, but by the afternoon I was bagged out and instead I had a good long chat with her over the phone instead, explaining what had been done to the place. I also have to give kudos many times over to my great wife, who was a great help over the course of the weekend.
I caught a bus from Keswick at about 6pm, arriving home just after 8pm.
Next Friday I am to return, escorting Mom back to the place and assessing how well she does – I am not supposed to lift a finger to help her in her day-to-day chores in the house. Am not sure I will be the most impartial assessor – I know she’d rather stay in her home than head back to the hospital waiting for a room at a nursing home – but it will at least give me a chance to finish doing the cleaning up work I had started on (and finish filling up the dumpster as much as possible).
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