Day One of Vacation

Another hot, hot day in the great American midwest. Temperatures rose above 100 again today. I got up at about the time I usually get to work, putzed around on the computer awhile, then got dressed and went into work. --Oh, but only for a few minutes! I had to drop off the charger from the on-call phone, and I also wanted to check in and make sure everything ran all right after our emergency fix on Saturday. As I hoped, all was well.

After lunch Husband, Youngun, and I went out shopping in the HEAT. We came home with a box of mousie litter, a portable DVD player which Young'un bought with his graduation money and saved allowance, and six plastic storage drawers for the furnace room. Before I had time to think much about it, I went in there and got all the cardboard drawers out and set them on the floor of Firstborn's old room. I spent the next couple of hours going through their contents.

This cardboard storage unit had been my mother's, and I hadn't really gone through it when she died -- I just brought it to my house and put it in the furnace room. I knew she kept her dollhouse miniature stuff in there, and also some other collectibles and small antiques. The top two drawers also contained some of Firstborn's old books, and some of Stepson's model-railroad equipment, and a plastic thing that I was not able to identify. I put those aside to deal with later.

All the rest of the drawers contained Mom's miniatures. I was truly amazed at how many tiny objects she had! There were sofas, beds, lamps, chests of drawers; wicker furniture; Chinese chests and bureaus. She had dollhouse-scale wallpaper and carpeting. I was touched to see that she had saved the tiny "broomstick lace" rainbow afghan I made for her dollhouse, using a pencil in place of the broomstick. She'd also saved the miniature karate gi and green belt I sewed for her when I was a green belt. She had a miniature piano, and a chaise longue, tiny vases and knicknacks, a slot machine and an old-fashioned Art Deco-style jukebox. I'd just about decided she had everything in there but the kitchen sink! --But then I saw...



By 5:30 this afternoon I'd been through all of the cardboard drawers, and had everything packed neatly in the plastic ones. They're not in the furnace room yet; I'll save that job for tomorrow. It will be a bit of a job, because I'll have to take out everything in that corner in order to get the cardboard structure out. But that's the easy part compared to what I did today. Go me!