No-well

While Jimmy recovered from that nasty cold he got Thanksgiving, I industriously tackled an array of projects, some seasonal and some long overdue. I bought a tree and decorated the house for the first time in three years. At home I cleaned out closets, rearranged drawers, decluttered cabinets, and spruced up two spare bedrooms that had become catchalls for deferred decisions: junk rooms.

I helped younger son Maxwell move out of the little cottage on Cranford and transfer his belongings to his new bride's house. Cranford looked like a typical unkempt bachelor's pad after Max's departure, and a fair amount of work went into making it habitable so that Jackie and Mary could move in from their apartment. It sounds like a big fruit basket turnover, and it was.

I was on a roll. Mama's house has sat empty for over two years now, and I haven't had the time or the emotional energy to deal with it. My brothers have been wonderful, and have done all they could do, but there were things that, as the only daughter, I needed and wanted to do myself. Now seemed like as good a time as any.

Son-in-law Patrick, who did did a fine job helping me renovate Cranford, rented one of those huge dumpster things and parked it at the end of Mama's driveway. The dismantling began, and it's truly amazing how so much stuff can accumulate in fifty-plus years of living in a house.

The family had already claimed what they wanted to keep, so most everything left had to be sorted through and donated or thrown in the dumpster. Every drawer, every cabinet, every closet, the garage and the attic were emptied. The yardman and my cleaning lady helped me and we got it done.

During the last couple of days of The Great Purge, I felt like I was catching Jimmy's cold, and I normally shake things like that off pretty well, but breathing all that moldy mildewy dusty air of a closed up house didn't help. I caught a doozy of a cold, which allergies probably exacerbated.

Spending the two weeks before Christmas on prednisone and antibiotics and slugging down cough syrup wasn't exactly what I had in mind for the holidays, but I'm on the upswing, and it has been nice to have Jimmy babying and fussing over me. He's an excellent nurse.