Crazy lady ramblings...

Yesterday I agreed that my mom could come and stay with us from around November 19th to after Christmas. Here's why...

My brother called her and found out that she is going to finally marry my "step-dad," after living with him for the past 14 years, for health insurance purposes. If they get married, he can add her to his policy through work...before her policy from her former employer runs out. So my brother suggests that she come here to get married (even though she just wanted to run to the court house and get it done quickly) and to sweeten things for her he offered that she could come and see the sonogram of her next grandchild (my SIL is expecting in April.)

Mom needs to find out if she can even tolerate breathing at our altitude. She is still on oxygen and gets winded quite easily. And even though there is less air here, we are hoping that perhaps our arid climate might help to dry out her lungs (she still has pneumonia from last March) and help her to breath easier. So she is thinking that she'll need to stay here at least a month to see if she can make it.

So that's my first worry...getting her here on the airplane (can she go that long w/o her oxygen tank?) getting her back on oxygen and getting her to my house.

Next we have the fun that my house is 2 stories (bedrooms all on second floor) and you have to climb up 4 stairs just to get inside. Mom can't do stairs very easily. She thinks that she'll be okay if she sits down and pushes herself up with her legs. She needs to sleep with her head elevated so she wants to sleep on the recliner. Ideally we would like for her to sleep upstairs in the guest bedroom...but if she can't do the stairs...she'll need to sleep on the main floor. Which means that Darly & I won't be able to stay up so late anymore. (that's probably a good thing.)

If she's staying here a month...where ever her "room" is, she's gonna need someplace to put her clothes. The guestroom has a desk, but no dresser. See that room has part of the bedroom set that DH's parents gave him when he moved out...his old bedroom set. The night stand is in our room on DH's side of the bed. The dresser is in Darly's room and the desk is in the guest room.

Idea #1. Finally get Darly a bedroom set and move the dresser that goes with that set into the guest bedroom.

Idea #2. Finally get US a bedroom set and move our dresser into the guest room.

Idea #3. the cheapest, rearrange my things and finally get rid of clothes that I don't really use anyway and take my sweater dresser out of my closet and put it in the guest room temporarily. Which if we find that she actually can't do the stairs and needs to sleep downstairs makes the most sense as that dresser will fit nicely downstairs.

Technically my office could be a bedroom...but that would mean moving some things around in here. The closet in here is also the foyer closet. If I clean the foyer closet there would be room for Mom to use it for her things. I would still have to move the dresser down here for her and take some of these boxes out of here. It could work. I don't know how that would affect my ability to use the internet...but less time on line might be okay for a month...right?

That leaves the bathroom issue though. Our downstairs bathroom is only a half-bath. The room is large enough to be an entire bathroom, but the first owner didn't have them install the tub/shower. We have the time before she gets here to put in a shower...if we can figure out where the pipes are...the should be acessable from the basement if they aren't already in the walls. The bummer is that I've always wanted to knock out that wall and put in a closet for our coats by the garage door...but a shower in there wouldn't be bad...I suppose it might increase the value of our home.

Okay, I think that I've thought out all the housing logistics of having her here.

Then there's the fun of having my mom here for not one but TWO holidays. With my "stepdad" here for at least one of them and he's on a restricted diet. I may just have to tell my mom to stay out of the kitchen and tell "dad" to take more of his high blood pressure meds for that.

But first I need to clean the house. Now would be an awesome time for me to go through everything and get rid of a bunch of stuff we aren't using anyway...like all the cardboard boxes that I've been hoarding. See I have moving issues. We haven't moved ourselves since I got married, but I like boxes. The rabbits like boxes (and I have no problems sharing with them!) But do I really need all these boxes here? Our crawl space is full of boxes for all my stuff. The computer boxes in there are a good thing. The sterio boxes too. But do I really need the box for my crockpots & my gravy warmer? I'm thinking...no! DH is a hoarder of boxes too. We have one large box that is full of little boxes for all my knick knacks...that the last time we moved, I packed all together in another box. *eyeroll* So time to purge them!

We also really need to purge Darly's toys. She has so many toys that she doesn't even know what to do with them all. She pulls out stuff to find other things and doesn't put the first stuff back. Our house is a really big mess.

I need one of those "Clean Sweep" interventions. I really think that if someone else came here and hauled all this stuff out of our house onto the lawn that I could truely go through and get rid of 75% of it easily. But I would need them for almost every room of my house.
Do those organization companies do that for you?

I wonder if any of my friends is an organization junky and would be willing to help me go through all of this?

As you might have guessed...last night was NOT a restful night of sleep. I got up with DH this AM thinking about all of this!