It's been months since I sat down to post.  It was a couple weeks before Mom came to stay with me.  Where she lives, they were to start on her parking lot the end of March and be done "hopefully within a couple weeks."  My understanding is that the contract itself gave them 90 days to complete it, but they apparently told the facility it should take "a couple weeks or so".  Mom, like so many of the residents, is not capable of waling a great distance without a lot of discomfort, and she's not terribly steady on her feet these days - she's been using a walker pretty consistently for probably a year or so.  So when they were told they needed to park a block or so away, I told her to just come stay with me.  We had pretty much decided that she would move in with me when her lease was up (which is this weekend), but we figured she would stay until the work was done, then go back and get things packed up and ready to move.  Well, the parking lot is still not done and no one can park on it, STILL!  So Mom has been here for 4 months as of now, and we've got her all moved in here and she's down in Plattsmouth with Merry, cleaning the apartment so she can turn in the keys.  I was supposed to work the airport today, but I woke up in the middle of the night with a good ol' head cold, or maybe a sinus infection... whatever it is, it's miserable and I'm I'm hacking and coughing and feel generally shitty.  Hopefully it will pass quickly... But I thought since I'm not really up to much more than sitting on my ass, I'd do a little catch-up here...

Well, I've passed some one-year... well, shall I call them "anniversaries"?  "Milestones" sounds so positive.  Mark is in my mind a lot.  In April and over the next several weeks, I was thinking about how it was a year ago that Mark started falling a lot.  How completely useless his arm was becoming and how it was throwing off his balance so bad.  How he was losing weight again, that further contributed to his imbalance.  How he had surgery on his carotid artery to prevent another stroke...Then we got to this month.  On the 9th, I thought about how we left for the hospital for his hernia surgery and he was waking up from his last night at home.  Then the 10th was the night of the storm that took out our power for 40+ hours, and that evening at Mom's (well, actually at the grocery store in Plattsmouth!) my foot went wonky.  The next day (a Sunday) I went to a quickie clinic and had it xrayed because it was so bad I wondered if I had a fracture...  It was just tendonitis and with the aid of a cane, I was able to visit Mark.  He wasn't doing well - he couldn't walk on his own and they were working with him to try to get him strong enough to come home.  After 10 days of trying, on the 20th I believe, they sent him to a nursing home for some PT to gain strength.  

Well, I think he had pretty much given up.  He lived only to have a smoke when I would come to see him, and they weren't letting that happen very much.  Because of covid, they were constantly changing how much I could see him.  Some weeks it was 2 times, some weeks 3, some weeks I had to fight to see him once.  And he just kept getting thinner and so, SO weak.  A month later, they told me he had made no progress and didn't seem to want to so they needed to move him to a "long term care floor".  He couldn't understand why he couldn't come home, but how could I take care of him when he couldn't even get himself out of bed and onto a portable toilet?  I think it was about the 20th of August when they moved him to the long term ward.  On Sept. 3rd, they called me to say he had pneumonia - I never got to see him after that.  I talked to him a few times - Monday morning (labor day) early, like 7:30, and was utterly confused, thought he'd lost his glasses in a warehouse (?) and I just tried very hard to calm him down and told him we would get a new pair of glasses if they were lost, that I would have someone look for them.  It was not a lucid conversation.  I called the nurses and asked them to check in on him and make sure he knew his glasses were there.  I called about 2 or 3 hours later as I was just sitting around worrying about him, wondering if they had checked in on him.  They were so short staffed, it was hard to get them to ever call me.  Of course, I got an aid and they would never talk to me, so they were going to have a nurse call me back.  A half hour later, the lady I'd been working with, the social worker I guess, called me back to tell me he had passed a few minutes before.  She said they had found him unresponsive and tried to revive him with no success.  It was the saddest moment of my life, but also filled with relief.  The last two years were so tough...

Anyway, I have a feeling this cold is probably just a manifestation of those feelings of remembering and wishing it hadn't been so hard for him, wishing there was more I could do.  Feeling some guilt that I didn't find a way to get him home to die in peace with me close by.  

What I really came here to do, though, was to remind myself of all the progress I've made here since Mark's been gone.  His health and stubborness kept my attempts to get things done around here.  I mean the big things, like painting, updates, etc.  About the only thing we'd done in the last few years was to update the downstairs bathroom, which I insisted we do after his bladder surgery.  There seemed to be mold in the old shower, on the outer part where the door met the wall, and I didn't think it wise to expose his new stoma to anything that could cause an infection.  And the only other thing was the back deck, which was getting very rotten.  There were SO many things that needed done!

When he was in the nursing home, they started painting the house.  That improved the appearance by 100%!  To keep myself occupied while he was in the home and I couldn't go see him, I started cleaning out the nooks and crannies in the basement.  There was SO much that needed to be tossed or given to a thrift store!  Then when he passed away, I really felt the need to change the space so it wouldn't make me think so much about the last few rough years.  By the end of the year, I had had cleaned out the basement - all but the last "shitty room".  I'd had the old TV hauled away, bought a new flatscreen.  I'd had all the walls painted and new carpet put down... a tile spot at the landing of the stairs.  Carpet stair treads with decorative fabric behind the steps.  Stuff back on the walls.  Went though my closet and took a lot of stuff to the homeless shelter.  Had my handyman remove the old 12-drawer unit and put the armoires in the closet.  

Then since the first of this year, I got the shitty room cleaned out and sold off most of Mark's tools, got the garage cleaned out with the help of Jeff and his brother (who Mark used to call "Frick & Frack"), had a garage sale (which wasn't worth the time).  The garage is now useful as a potting bench and storage for my plant-growing stuff.  I had fixes made to the walls in the living and dining rooms, chair rail installed and the rooms painted.  They look FABULOUS!  I had the color samples I'd gotten at LEAST 10 years ago and I love how it turned out!  Some photos...  the dining room:

I moved the tree sculpture from the living room to the dining room, and I really like it better in this spot!  And here's the living room:

 

That picture I put in place of the tree sculpture is one painted for my mother by a teacher she was dating in the 1970s who was killed in a car crash.  Let me clarify that - he started the painting and had not finished it, and a teacher/artist friend of his finished it, so it's a very precious memento of Mom's.  When she sold her house, she gave it to me and it's been sitting in my sunroom ever since.  I was always going to find a spot for it, but you know how it is - change is hard.  So when I finally got things painted, I decided I would put it up.  And of course it's especially nice to have it displayed since Mom is here now.

And now Simple Man is playing, so I'll take it that Mark is expressing his approval...  When the painter was here, Mom and I had gone to Plattsmouth and when we walked in, he had Alexa on and within a moment, it played Simple Man.  Then it would play another song and it would play Simple Man again.  It kept doing that and I thought maybe it was Mark expressing his approval of the changes... But it got a little weird after the 4th or 5th time, so I changed it to my "Favorite Rock Playlist".  Well, guess what?  Here it comes again, Simple Man!  It only comes up now and then on my playlist, so it felt like a heartfelt message...

So last week, the drywaller put a ceiling in the shitty room, textured it.  Of course, first I had Matt Jensen come put a couple outlets in and another light near the furnace.  I've gotten some really nice paneling (which the handyman brought over and put in the garage Thursday) and he's going to start on it next week.  Looking back, I can't believe what I've gotten done in less than a year!  And I feel like I'm on a roll now - looking for more things to get rid of, organize more, etc.  The shitty room, when it's done, will be my package packing room.  I'll get a table, preferably a taller table, or counter maybe, and I'll put all my boxes and packing materials down there so they don't take up the corners of my bedrooms.

I feel like I've made a lot of progress, and I'm feeling very positive about the space.  I guess I really needed to change my surroundings - a lot of people sell and move when they lose someone they've lived with in the same place for a long time.  But I love this house SO much, I really just needed to give it a fresh new feeling.  I figure all my best memories are from when it felt "fresher" and I don't need anything reminding me of the last few years...

Plants... well, I haven't sold hardly ANY this year.  I've been so busy, between the house projects, having Mom here and getting her moved in... But I've got tons to sell and plan to get going on that soon.  They aren't going for nearly as much, so my enthusiasm has waned a bit!  I just have to remember that they are still going for more than I would probably pay in most cases!

Most are doing well.  However, the first week of June, we had a hail storm that decimated a lot of plants.  So many of my Sansevierias are RUINED.  I literally had to whack them off at the soil line in hopes they will come back from pups.  And my Jades - oh, my poor Jades!  And as if that hail storm wasn't bad enough, a month later, the old cedar fell on the house!  I had just gotten home from work and a storm was starting - wind and rain.  I was walking up to the north window in the kitchen, Mom right behind me when I heard the CRACK and saw it coming right toward the window.  I was backing up, thinking it could crash right through the window, and it hit with a surprisingly mild THUD.  It was a huge tree, probably 60', but all the branches apparently "cushioned" the fall.  Here is the view from the greenhouse (east) side of the house:

If it had blown a few more feet east, it probably would have crashed through the roof glass, or may have even knocked the greenhouse right off the house!  View if you were trying to walk into the back yard:

Not gonna happen!  That shelf there against the house, where many of my Hoyas were decimated during the hail storm, was unscathed.  Here's a view from the west side:

 

It missed the shelves, and really didn't do a lot of damage to the plants on the porch (where the Jades were), but it did rip off that gutter over the porch.  The real damage to the Jades was from the tree removal guys, who got on the roof and whacked branches and tossed them onto the porch and down onto my landscape between the GH and the sunroom.  The air conditioner sits there and was shifted on it's cement pavers - that's how big some of those branches were.  Of course, all the landscape plants were shredded from the hail storm, but I had a gorgeous voodoo lily they broke.  I left it to continue to "grow" in the pot hoping the bulb will get larger for next year... I still need to whack the Jades clean back, but have just been procrastinating... Here's the stump when they got it whacked where it broke:

Of course, this was before they got the last of the debris cleaned up, and they did flatten off the top.  I had them leave about a 8' stump so I can have a reminder of the old tree I've lived with for 35 years.  I hope it turns into an "ivy totem".

But the indoor stuff is doing fabulous.  Lots of flowers, new growth, very few losses...  My "Michelle' in the kitchen has gotten some truly outstanding leaves:

Look at those markings!  No wonder there are dum-dums out there willing to pay $1000 for a rooted cutting!  (Crazy, right?)  And the leaves are nice and succulent, and nicely textured.  But boy is she a bitch when it comes to new leaves!  Breath on them and they drop!  My second one that's in a seashell is in the GH right now and it's putting on new growth...

I seriously whacked back my lobbii - it had gotten a little too crazy and it looked like it had developed that mosaic virus in some of the stems.  It was weird - I whacked off and tossed all the infected stems, and all the good ones had buds on them!  So I've got some rooting and some in water.  I'm hoping the good stems STAY good and don't develop the virus...  I may just throw the mother plant away once the cuttings root.  It's one that needs to be "rebooted" now and then because it gets so out-of-control!

I actually started this yesterday.  I got a decent night's sleep and feel better today, though I can tell the hacking is not going to be any better.  But I had a little fever yesterday and boy could I tell!  I was cold all day - yes, ME... cold!  (My feet were like ice cubes all day and I was tempted to go put on some socks, but I'm like... NO socks in July!  That's weird!)  And my head felt like a lead balloon - hot and heavy feeling, but I felt light headed and dizzy, eyes felt puffy.  I took a super-hot, long shower and got all toasty warm, and it felt like the fever broke shortly after I went to "bed".  When I have any kind of cold like this, I don't ever lay down because the congestion just gets really bad, so I spent the whole night in my chair.  I woke up a lot, but I was able to go right back to sleep each time.  I did end up getting up around 5:00 or so, but that's not that unusual... I'm sure I'll kick back a few times today...

August is almost here and I need to start thinking about getting plants in.  I won't probably put out Hoyas next year unless I can put up a protective structure.  Perhaps some on the front porch, but none out back where hail can get to them.  Besides, there's no tree to shade them from the sun...  But once again, I'm going to replace one of my shelves.  I decided last year I would replace one every year until they're all "new".  My plan is to take the one down to the room I'm finishing for propagating plants.  I've got so many beat up plants that gave me starts for next year, I'm going to have trouble finding where to keep them over winter, so I'll just buy a few more lights and keep the overflow downstairs.  

I'll try to snap some pics over the next few days and add more later.