Monday began my week off of work. I took a bereavement leave this week so that I could go help my dad clean out my grandpa's house. Josh decided to come with me too, and he'd drive the truck and trailer, but he couldn't get off work until Friday. So, I still took the week off, since I'd already planned for it, and spent a lot of time devoted to catching up my college work instead. I've already gotten behind in my schedule to get this entire semester done by June 1, partly due to the funeral, so I felt justified in taking the leave. On Monday morning, I dropped a few things off for my sub at the elementary school, and then I went to the Bakery in town for about an hour to finish reading the last chapters necessary (they have internet there) before I took the final exam for that college class. I drove up to the innovation center to take my proctored exam, and was there for almost 3 hours. I've never taken a test there before, and it was a little nerve-wracking because the online proctor said if anyone came into the computer lab during the test, then we'd have to stop and reschedule it for later. Thankfully, nobody did, but I was on pins and needles the whole time, and I didn't score as well as I would've hoped, but I got a passing grade, which means I finished the class! Yay! I came home, ate lunch, and worked on things around the house: garbage, laundry, dishes, etc. until the boys got home from school. I made taco salad from dinner with the lettuce leftover from Saturday night's dinner at the Jackson's house. I MADE the boys all use some as the base of their salad, for which they all complained about (except Ammon), and in doing so, got almost the entire bowl used up! Success! Jonah and Micah's basketball practice got cancelled that night due to the coach being sick, so I went to yoga since I had a free night. Gina came with me and brought her daughter, too. I haven't been to yoga since December, and my body could tell. I broke down and cried during one move, because my body felt so out of shape and I felt ashamed for allowing it to get to that point. I'm determined to move forward and get back where I need to be--after all, I am supposed to be running in a 5K in 3 months!!
On Tuesday, I spent a very full 10-hour day working on my next college class. On Monday, I finished Instructional Planning and Presentation (a 2-credit class), and on Tuesday, I worked on the partner class Applications in Instructional Planning and Presentation (worth 1 credit), which is the project part of it. I had to write a lesson plan for an elementary classroom in the subject science, and there was a huge list of criteria that I had to include in it. Then I had to write an essay paper with evidence to support each of the criteria that I chose to use. I started it at 7:45 that morning, and worked until 9:30 that night, when I submitted the 2-part completed project. I took about 2 1/2 hours off during the day--one hour for lunch, and an hour and a half for my piano lesson, helping Kanyon with homework, and working on dinner. Josh helped me make dinner that night, thankfully. I made the bacon as he made the pancakes (he is the designated pancake-maker in our family because I seriously can't make them right!). I was so grateful for his help! By bedtime that night, my brain was fried, but I felt really good about my lesson plan, and I worried just a tad-bit about one paragraph in my essay. When I submitted it to be graded, it was 17th in line, so I knew I just had to wait to see if it passed, which wouldn't be until at least the following day.
I basically spent all day Wednesday catching up on my blog--I did 5 posts in one day. I did one about my Grandpa, one about his funeral, one weekly post, and two reviews (monthly fb and seasonal top ten). Because our internet is so slow, it takes forever to upload photos, which is why it took so long to do it all. I kept checking on my submitted college paper every hour, though, and the line seemed to move SO slow! Josh came home for lunch, and it was nice to see him mid-day! Since Wednesday night is always our busy night, I wanted to have a game plan already in place for our meal. So when Josh was home, he helped me start dinner in the crockpot. He prepared the slow-cooked ham (he's the best meat chef in this house!), and I prepared oven-baked cheesy potatoes. By 4:00, I was 9th in line waiting for my college paper to be graded. I went into town to do my piano lesson, picked up Kanyon from scouts, came home and ate dinner (the ham was super delicious--all Josh used to cook it with was brown sugar and honey and it was divine!), and then Josh took the twins back into town for their basketball practice because he had to meet up with a guy who was purchasing Ammon's motorbike. Ammon bought a new [to him] motorbike 2 weeks ago, a Honda CRF 450, and Josh has been helping him try to sell his old one (a Suzuki DRZ 250) ever since. Ammon has been wanting a bigger bike for a while, and he bought the Honda from a friend in town. We weren't having any luck selling his Suzuki motorbike to anyone local, so Josh listed it in the Boise area, and that's where the guy was coming from to pick it up that night. Josh was so glad that he was able to finally sell it (he paid for Ammon's new bike, and this was his payment back). Throughout the evening, I kept checking my college assessment site, and finally at 11:00 that night, I got the report back saying that I needed to revise 6 things on my lesson plan, and 1 item on my essay (the area I felt iffy about). I was kind of bummed about the 6 things on my lesson plan, though, and I went to bed feeling a little discouraged.
I woke up Thursday morning feeling all motivated and ready to work on my college class assignments again. I felt rejuvenated and focused, and I banged out my revised college papers in an hour and a half with all the revisions necessary! I felt super confident about it, and submitted it again; this time there were only 8 ahead of me in line, and I was sure that I would know the results by the end of the day. After that, I worked on balancing my checkbook, checking last month's expenses compared to last month's budget, created a new budget for March, filled out my background check applications (a requirement to do my student teaching) and mailed it to the FBI. Then I worked on some housework: vacuumed, swept, washed dishes and countertops, and cleaned the toilet. Then I took a shower, and drove into town to do a couple errands before getting Kanyon from school at 12:45 to take him to Idaho Falls for his dentist appointment. I somehow missed taking him to the dentist last year; I didn't even realize it until I was working on all my tax deductions in January. He had an appointment last July, but when that date arrived, it didn't work out for us to go, and since we live 2 1/2 hours away, I told the dental office that I would call whenever we were coming down that way to make a different appointment. And I did call 3 other times, but they never had an opening on those days, and then I forgot about it. Last week, though, he complained of his teeth getting super cold when he was eating ice cream, and I knew he probably had a cavity, so I called the dentist and was extremely lucky to make an appointment for this week. The car ride down was pretty quiet, because Kanyon slept for most of it!
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| A pretty sunset near Mud Lake on the way home |
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| Ammon's new goldfish "Tyler" |
On Friday morning, I was getting things ready for a trip to Spokane with Josh to go help my dad clean out my Grandpa's house. Dad had already been there a week since the funeral, and my sister had been there for several days as well as my uncle and his wife, but my uncle and his wife had left that morning, so Josh and I were going to help for a few days until my mom could go help my dad. My grandpa was a hoarder--not the horrific kind that you see on T.V., but one that couldn't throw things away that he deemed usable, and every cupboard, drawer, and shelf in that house was full of stuff that needed to be gone through. and a lot of it was garbage, but there's a lot of valuables, too. I knew it was a huge job, and we were glad to offer our assistance. Everyone else lives further away and flew into Spokane, but we live a little closer, so we told my dad we'd bring the truck and trailer to help take big loads to the the dump and take some of the furniture. I went out to the shed that morning to get all the big plastic tote boxes out, so that we could take them to Spokane with us. Most of them were dirty, from storing pumpkins and yard items in, so they needed to be washed out. As I was removing the boxes, I noticed one had something in the corner of it. I couldn't figure out what it was at first, then I thought it was a dead lizard, and then I realized it was a mummified mouse. We had a mouse problem in our shed last summer that I wasn't even aware of until December when I went to get my tree skirt out of a box and realized a mouse had made its home in it and had chewed a large section away. Then when we went to get our ski boots out of the shed right before New Years, we noticed they were full of cherry seed pits from the nearby chokecherry tree that were remnants leftover from mice meals. I was both grossed out and relieved that one of the mice had died as a result of living in my shed: there were two empty plastic boxes stacked on top of the other, and it had gotten stuck in the bottom box and couldn't get back out. With the tight space available at the bottom of the container and the lack of oxygen, the mouse was able to keep its overall form. And then with the hot summer sun, and the freezing winter temperatures, it mummified the mouse. It's hard and brittle! I showed the boys, and they were so fascinated by it, they told me to put it in a glass jar to keep for a science show-and-tell or something, so I did, and Jonah took multiple pictures of it in its new glass jar setting and posted them on Instagram and Snapchat! That totally cracked me up!
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| the mummified mouse as I found him in the plastic tote |
As I was getting stuff ready at home, Josh and Ammon went to work at the golf course that morning, and while they were there, Nykell came out and asked Ammon to the upcoming MORP dance. She stood by the #9 green holding a poster, and had two balls on the ground: one said yes, and one said no. Ammon walked up and hit the "yes" one in the hole with a putter. What a fun way to ask!
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| The poster says "Quit putting around, it's tee time. Only one shot, let's hope it's an ace! MORP???" |
Josh and I left around noon in the truck with the cargo trailer hooked up to it. We'd never taken the trailer that far from Salmon before, so Josh had worked on it a few times earlier in the week to make sure the bearings and brakes were all in good shape. It's about a 6 hour drive to Spokane from Salmon, and unfortunately, we got in a little fight about 10 minutes after leaving Salmon, and spent 5 1/2 hours of the drive not talking to each other. He realized about 3 hours in that he'd been a jerk, and he apologized, but he'd hurt my feelings earlier, and I didn't feel like talking to him after he'd said some hurtful things. I was really looking forward to the trip alone with him, and I couldn't believe he would start it off the way he did. Anyways...we got to Spokane about 5:30, and when we arrived at the gated community that Grandpa's house was in, the gate wouldn't open for us. That's never happened to me before, so I tried using the intercom at the gate to call Grandpa's phone, because there's a button on the phone that directly opens the gate from the house, but the intercom said the number was disconnected. So I called my dad's cell phone and asked what the code was, and he said he didn't know, and kept telling me to just back up the truck and drive closer to the gate, which we'd already done 5 times before I even called (and we even bumped the gate once but it still wouldn't open). I told him the code was written on a notepad right next to Grandpa's phone, but he said there was no such thing, and he was getting angry, so I hung up on him. Thankfully, a guy pulled in behind us and entered the code into the gate intercom, and it finally opened for us. But when we pulled up in front of Grandpa's house, my dad was mad at me already, and the first thing he said when we pulled up was "I knew you'd come here and make trouble for me". I was really beginning to doubt whether going to help was such a good idea after all since both Josh and my dad had now been mad at me on the same day--and not because I'd done anything wrong, either--they were just both projecting their own stress and guilt and transforming it into blame onto me. Men are so dumb sometimes. After Josh parked the truck and trailer down the street (there's a HOA code that doesn't allow for parking on the curb in their gated community), Dad took us to dinner to Cafe Rio, but not until after driving around like a mad-man first, and making lots of wrong turns, and acting like he knew where he was going when I questioned him, but finding out that he really didn't. Dad had never been to that restaurant before, and when we walked inside and he saw the line, he said "let's go somewhere else", but all the other restaurants in the area had full parking lots, which he commented on as we drove past them, so I knew it wouldn't be better anywhere else. We ate our dinner, and the best part for me was the horchata! I love that drink so much! When we got back to the house, Josh helped Dad take out most of the mattresses out of Grandpa's house and load them into the trailer. Then I worked on going through items in the kitchen, picking out some of the pans and bowls that I wanted as Josh worked on going through some of the cupboards in the garage. Then I went out and cleared out a few shelves/cupboards in the garage as Josh went through some boxes and tool chests, picking out a few things he wanted to keep. And without realizing how late it had gotten, it was past 11:00 and we were both tired and went to bed.
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| This note that I wrote last summer on our visit was still on his fridge. |
Dad, Josh, and I worked all day Saturday. We focused on cleaning out the back corner of the garage, working in the storage room downstairs, cleaning out under the back deck, hauling two loads to the dump, and moving large furniture items upstairs and out into the garage once we'd cleared some room out. Here's a picture documentary of our day:
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| Dad and Josh working on sorting through and clearing out sections of the garage. |
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| Grandpa was an organized hoarder. This is just ONE example: this cupboard in the garage was full of screws, nails, nuts, and bolts, all labeled in tiny reused containers. It was exhausting to go through it all! |
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| This was the first trip to the dump in our trailer: it was 1100 lbs. The second trip taken a few hours later was another 900 lbs! |
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| Every drawer was full of items--there was a LOT of plastic items saved--in this drawer, you can see napkins on top of bags. Inside each bag was a stack of USED ziploc bags. |
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| He didn't throw anything away: these are pill bottles reused as seed sorters (he also used pill bottles as nails sorters), and in this bag was tags from every flower he ever grew at their Spokane home. |
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| Once in a while, a box or drawer had a treasure inside, and you felt like you struck gold amidst all the garbage. There was absolutely no rhyme or reason to where things were stored, so you had to look through every single item in order to make sure it wasn't garbage. You couldn't just throw a box away. For example, this was my favorite box I opened in the garage: full of old toy army men and airplane trading cards. They were some of my dad's toys when he was a kid. It was stored on a shelf with old used gloves and maintenance tools. |
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| In one of the boxes downstairs in the storage room, I found two of Grandma's journals. She was an avid journaler, and wrote almost every day of her life. Her various journals were all over the house. These were from 1932-33 and 1935, when she was 16 and 19 years old. |
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| I loved reading her thoughts from her 16-year-old self. |
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| This was on the last page of the journal completed in 1933: "In case of Death, I will my Diary to Min Ford [her best friend at the time] to Burn after secretly reading and promising not to tell any one its contents". |
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| In another shoe box downstairs, I found a whole bunch of pictures from 1944. These were some of my favorites of Grandma and Grandpa. |
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| Ooh La La, Grandpa! |
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| He always loved that photo of Grandma. After she passed away in 2009, that same photo was on his nightstand so he could see her every morning and night. |
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| Dad modeled the ridiculous beanie that Grandpa had to wear when he was a Freshman at the U of U. It was required of all Freshmen to wear that dumb cap. |
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| Josh helping dad move the gun cabinet up the stairs. They also moved up the stairs a chest, a recliner, 6 mattresses, a shelf, 2 dressers, a nightstand, and lots of boxes. |
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| We love this store! It's mostly a sporting goods store, but they have some great deals, and we've been shopping there since I was 6 years old, when our family lived in Spokane! |
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| It was across the street from this house that I nearly got kidnapped riding my bike alone in a church parking lot. Down the street from this house was the park where hot air balloons would be filled with air and launched multiple times throughout the summer. I began swimming lessons at an indoor pool built behind the house of a woman in the neighborhood, and I almost drowned there once (my brother jumped in and saved me). We lived in this house when I had my sledding accident that cut my chin open, and this was the house that my older sister Lisa (who lived in Virginia) spent one Christmas with us back in the mid-1980's. |
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| My Grandma had lots of collections. One thing she used to love was geese. I remember these geese from my childhood on display at their lake house. One of my tasks was to box up a bunch of fragile figurines, and I didn't want to box these up: they are big and out of style. I asked all my siblings if anyone wanted them, but nobody did, so I told dad what I'd like to do was just bash them together, and he said "I'd like to see that!". So that's just what I did! |
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| When one of the geese didn't break at all, I threw it into the box on the ground, and then dad came over and stomped on it! It was actually very therapeutic to do this! Whenever I get mad, I want to hear the sound of shattering glass (I know that might sound strange), so doing this definitely got some frustrations out! |
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| Josh taking down the "P" sign that used to be on the boat house, and has been hanging over the garage in Spokane since they moved into the gated community in 1999. It was screwed in really well, and took about 10 minutes to undo all the long screws! |
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| Some of the piles inside the house; this is just the upstairs living room. |
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| On the left at the bottom of March 25, it says "Harry came over. Oh gosh, I'm so nuts about him I've simply got to get him back. Tell me how is the guess" [she liked Harry a lot this year, but he went back and forth between flirting with her and other girls]. The very next day, March 26, she wrote "Ralph and I went to Bountiful to dance [he was her main dancing partner], came home, Ralph came in and had some cake. He stayed until 2:30am and he kissed me and I'm telling you I had to use remote control to keep calm". Remote control!!! I laughed so hard at this!!! |
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| Her 19th birthday--she said "I love no one but Harry. -Gus" (her name was Augusta, but she was known as Gus or Gussie). |
After reading Grandma's journal and letters, we went to bed. It was a fun ending to the long, hard day! This morning (Sunday), we got up, ate breakfast, and began loading the trailer to leave for home. Josh and Dad loaded in the furniture, and I helped Josh put the boxes in, and then we put the upright freezer in last. Then when our stuff and pile was all in the trailer and cleared out of the garage, there was room for Josh and Dad to move Grandma and Grandpa's bedroom furniture set and the gun cabinet and the recliner into the garage and out of the house. We felt like we got a lot accomplished in our day and a half in Spokane. Grandpa's room was completely cleared out, the deck and under the deck were completely cleared out, and we'd gone through a lot of the cupboards in the garage and cleared them out. Thankfully, Tabbi had done a lot of work when she'd been there several days before we came, and I could see steady progress being made on the house, but it's very time-consuming and hard to see the progress when you first walk in because of the stacks and piles and messes everywhere. I'm proud of my dad for sorting through it all and taking the time necessary to do it. I'm glad that he's retired so that he has time to do it. My mom is going up in two days, and she is staying to help him until the end of March. Josh and I left about 11:00, and drove the truck and trailer back to Salmon, stopping in Missoula for lunch and gas. We got home about 5:30, and the boys helped us empty the contents out of the trailer, truck bed, and back seat of the truck. When we opened up the trailer, the only thing that had shifted during the drive was unfortunately the freezer. We'd taped the doors shut on it, and Josh had put tie downs around it, but it shifted during the drive and the door opened up a bit and food had fallen out onto the floor. We threw away some, and sorted and moved the rest in our current freezers so that the freezer we brought from Grandpa's can thaw out and get rid of some the built-up ice before we start using it. Josh and I were pooped when we got it all unloaded, and didn't feel like unpacking any of the boxes tonight. Now it looks like my house has a hoarder in it!
It's been nice having a week off of work, and I've gotten a lot accomplished, but I'm kind of dreading going back to my regular schedule again tomorrow!
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