C'mon Springtime!

Really sorry to have left you staring at the cold french fries for so long, but things have been uncustomarily  busy.  With the house kind of on the market, I am frantically trying to sort through all the accumulation I have virtually ignored for the past  mmgphfn years.  From start to finish this is a mind-numbing nightmare.  I  am someone who does not see the forest at all... when I start on the forest, I begin manicuring individual leaves, cutting off the dead ones, going sprig by sprig.  This is also how I tackle 11 rooms of abject chaos.  It takes time.

Main importance is that Jim continues to improve, by the numbers gleaned from his blood work, and by the fact that the weight loss has been reversed, albeit at a snail's pace.  Too often, I feel like a drug pusher, suggesting things I believe to be tempting, only to be rebuffed in favor or pea soup, or oatmeal.  Ah well, as long as he keeps putting calories into himself, what matter?  We visit the hospital today for our weekly appointment, and in several weeks, we may have the results of tests to see if the stem cell transplant beat back the multiple myeloma entirely, partially, or not at all.  

Overall, Jim is showing more signs of life.  Some day he sleeps insatiably, but he sometimes has a run of two or three days when he emerges and connects.  Still not much reading or computer (!) but he does show interest in going through papers and journals with an eye to discarding a lot.  It will be nice when Spring is permanently here, and I can attempt to cajole him out of the house (he's a dedicated home-body.)

When we moved into the house, we had not been connected to the sewer, so of course we immediately--did nothing, in the time-honored tradition set in the Muckerheide family motto: "ain't broke, don't fix!"  Only on the horns of complete desperation did anything actually get action.  So when the grotto of wood chips and pine needles Jim's  ever thrifty dad crafted in the corner of the cellar to use as "kindling" turned out to be directly under the line to the septic tank, we had quite a moist dilemma.  At that time, the honey-wagon had to send for back-up (as it were).  With chagrin, I watched two honey wagons, front fender to front fender, canoodle at our busy intersections,  at school let-out time, no less.  Um....  

Now we have the amazing recurring dumpster.   This is the fourth one we have had in the past five years, a frequent flier program no one wants to be part of.  Apparently other people throw out their stuff as it accumulates.  What a thought!

I am Linda and I have an addiction to magazines.  Gourmet, Bon Appetit, Southern Living (never lived south of DC) Martha, Fine Gardening... and miscellany that is no longer in print.  They are like former students...or teachers really.  Have a terrible time consigning them to that dumpster.  "Recycle," my brain suggests.  "Not on your life,"  my spirit counters.  And so I go, cleaning the attic by tearing out the article I might want in the future,  from one of literally several hundred publications.  Visualize a pile of unsorted magazine clippings, right where the wood chip pile of glop used to live.  Can you spell SLOW LEARNER?

Yup,  it's going slow.  Not fair that you get cold fries, though.   I'll do better... I promise.