Lifting, carrying, moving

These last few weeks have been very hard. My parents have decided to move to an assisted living complex. My sister Lynn has done most of the research, and I just show up when and where she tells me. :) She made a ton of phone calls, something that she's much better at than I am. We visited three or four places, made extensive notes, took pictures, and decided that one of them was the best--the best location, the best infrastructure, the best pricing--although "best pricing" leaves a lot to be desired. They are all extremely expensive. They are all very similar, and they are all mostly in the same price range.

My father is pretty sold on it -- since my mother's stroke a few years ago he's been doing everything, and he's pretty worn out. My mom isn't sure about it, she's changed her mind a couple of times, but we've convinced her that it needs to happen. Of course, it's stressful for everyone. They don't want to move. I had hoped that they could stay in their home, and maybe have someone come in to help them, but it's gotten to the point where that isn't really feasible.

So now we're figuring out what they want to take, what they want to keep but maybe not have there with them, what they want to get rid of. The house is full of sixty years' worth of stuff, and it's a lot. It's all so familiar, and pretty sad, but we're working through it. Lynn and I have been out there just about every day, packing things and helping Mom and Dad look through things. I've been to Home Depot a couple of times to buy boxes, and on Saturday we were packing books and hauling boxes around on a two-wheeler. I would say that I haven't worked so hard in a long time.

Yesterday I told Dad that today, Father's Day, was going to be a day of rest, and I stayed home. Bob came home from a ten day fishing trip to Minnesota, so we've been catching up on our respective weeks. On Friday I had to stay home all day to wait for an AT&T Uverse technician, so I did laundry, vacuumed, and worked out in the yard for awhile. Unfortunately, he never showed up, so that was pretty annoying, but at least I did get some things accomplished at home.

On Saturday morning I got up fairly early and went to the library to use their wifi to do a little work before I got my hair cut, then headed out to Home Depot for more boxes, then to my parents' house. Sometime while I was gone, the technician showed up, apparently, because everything was working when I got home yesterday evening. They had told me Thursday night that someone had to be here when he came, but fortunately that didn't turn out to be the case.

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