It is just a week short of a year since mom’s passing. We finally got probate started. Hopefully there aren’t more creditors than we knew about.

Next on the list was getting the house ready to sell. And we (mostly my brother) got it accomplished!

Some of the “chores” completed before listing it for sale were:

• everything removed from house, garage, and storage shed in the back – this was quite a feat! I have gone through more boxes of stuff than I care to remember or mention!
• paint inside and outside of house
• new stove and dishwasher
• new carpet
• yard cleaned up
• a few minor repairs

Thankfully, mom wasn’t a hoarder. I can’t imagine what hoarder descendants have to go through to prep a house for sale. Now we are just waiting for an offer.

As a reminder, please make arrangements prior to your death. A will would have made our lives so much easier, a trust would have been even better.

I can’t believe another week has passed. Tonight’s dinner was a Japanese curry dish I love to make. I generously use S & B Curry Powder to season.

We used stewing beef, onion, carrots, celery, potato, bell peppers (green, yellow, and red), and butternut squash this time. I also use cornstarch and cream in the sauce. We served it over cauliflower rice. YUM!

You’ll also notice new placemats and the new soup spoons! Bed Bath and Beyond and a person on ebay made a few dollars on us this week!

It has been a roller coaster of feeling for the last 2 1/2 weeks.

Mom was placed back on hospice care about 4 weeks ago on December 10th. (After spending about a year on hospice, they removed in March just as COVID was imposing restrictions and she was considered stable.) On Monday December 21st, I talked to her and she seemed ok considering. The nurse came on Tuesday and everything seemed stable and ok. Wednesday morning she didn’t answer my call – not unusual if the nurse is there – she usually calls back within an hour. My sister-in-law went to the house just to do a check-in and Mom was not responding normally. She assumed it was her blood sugar levels, tested them and they were normal. She called the hospice nurse who arrived about 30 minutes later. Mom most likely had a “small” stroke during the night – the right side of her face was slightly droopy. She was able to respond to the nurse but unable to sign her name as usual. The nurse said it is common in medically fragile people to have sudden changes.

Thursday morning (Christmas Eve), both of my brothers were at her house when the hospice nurse arrived. The nurse said to them she doesn’t have much time. They called to give me an update but didn’t make it seem like something major was about to happen. I live about an hour away and was about to get into the shower to go there when they called back to say she had passed. Both phone calls were 16 minutes apart.

So many emotions are running through my head even still. Maybe more on that in a later post. I think I need to do some “emotional sorting and decluttering”.

Add to all this the COVID restrictions and not being able to spend time with my own kiddo and grandkiddos as well as the political drama unfolding this week, my brain feels like mush!

Kiddo#1 gave us another granddaughter!

Welcome to the family Clara Violet! We can’t wait to meet you! 🥰

I finally have some breathing room. School started 8 weeks ago and I’ve had little time for anything other than teaching and lesson planning for this “wonderful” experiment called distance learning. I’m not complaining (much) – it’s just very time consuming planning and prepping for this versus in person instruction.

When I sat down at my desk today to do a few things, I noticed the growing pile of old receipts. We keep certain receipts until the return date has passed. Well, I think some from 2017 and 2018 qualify!

Today I decluttered 31 receipts!

On a completely different decluttering note, I reached the body fat decluttering milestone of 50 pounds!! Got on the scale yesterday – 50.1 pounds decluttered from my body!!

Do I get to mark those off on my 2020 things decluttered in 2020??

I am feeling very accomplished this evening.

• I’m all caught up on my blog reading!
• All of my grading is finished for tonight
• AND my lessons for the rest of the week and next week are ready to go.

And it is only 7:45 pm.  Guess I need to catch up on my blog writing!

We are home from vacation.  Boy, do I have some blog post reading and writing to catch up on!

Yesterday was National Donut Day. How could I not celebrate?

Unfortunately, these were the only donuts available at the truck stop.

We are feeling a little overwhelmed emotionally.  Sometimes life throws lemons at us and it feels impossible to make lemonade.

Barb’s mom started having medical issues in January requiring surgery, rehabilitation facility, hospital again, rehabilitation facility, and hospice diagnosis in early March.

John’s uncle passed away in early March the same week Mom was put on hospice with a funeral on March 23.

Our brother-in-law (John’s sister’s husband) committed suicide on April 2.  We are still feeling shock, anger, and guilt at not noticing anything out of the ordinary.  Services are next weekend.

Discussing and putting all of this in writing made us realize we’ve had a lot happen in a short amount of time.   We know things will get better, not on our timeline, but on His.

So yesterday’s rant about people who rant about California got me to thinking about population numbers.  Here are some statistics:

Los Angeles county has about 10,163,507 people in 2017.  This is more people than 41 other states!

Los Angeles county represents about 25% of California’s population.

If you combine to form the greater Los Angeles area (Los Angeles county,  Orange county, Ventura county, Riverside county, and San Bernardino county), the population is about 17,877,006 people based on the 2010 cenus.  (*I included Riverside and San Bernardino counties because a majority of their populations are within 60 miles of downtown Los Angeles.)

Only 3 states – Texas, Florida, New York – have a population larger than the Greater Los Angeles area.

The Greater Los Angeles area now represents about 45% of California’s population.

If our state/area is so horrible, why do we have so many people here?????

Sources:

http://worldpopulationreview.com/us-counties/ca/los-angeles-county-population/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Los_Angeles

California Population. (2018-03-14). Retrieved 2018-08-1, from http://worldpopulationreview.com/states/california/

So this is a sorta rant post.  With the recent news that California is now the 5th largest economy in the world, why do people outside of California think that Californians want to hear how horrible our state is?

• California has about 12% of the nation’s population.  Shouldn’t we get 12% of the electoral college?
• Why should our environmental rules be reduced to federal levels?  We cleaned up our horrible pollution by enacting stricter than federal levels.  While we don’t have  the cleanest air, we have made great strides.  Anyone remember Los Angeles during the 60’s?  Buildings across the street were obscured by smog.
• Why does everyone assume we are granola eating Birkenstock wearing hippies?  Ok, we eat granola regularly in our house and we wear Birkenstocks but I would never classify myself a hippie.  When our youngest went to college in Maryland and wore her Birkenstocks, other college students actually commented that they didn’t think of her as a hippie.
• And not every Californian is a celebrity, knows a celebrity, or wants to live like  scripted “reality” shows.  These shows do not show Californians as we truly are.  Don’t judge me based on the state I live in.
• Homelessness and drug use is a problem in many communities in the nation.  Why bash ours without looking at your own?  It is so much easier to “blame liberals” in California than to accept that this is a national issue.  Poverty, homelessness, and drug addiction is found in ALL STATES!

I think this in enough for today.

What would you like people to stop commenting on based on where you live??

We are hoping nothing major happens in the world during the next 11 days. We are about to leave “civilization”.

We will be dry camping (no water, electricity, etc except what we take in with us) in an area about 9000 ft elevation with no cellular reception within 20 miles.

We’ll talk to y’all in about 2 weeks.

Remembering all the socks lost over the years.  Lost Sock Memorial Day

I know Jen at The HiddenHoarder will appreciate this!

Our first grandbaby arrived! Kiddo #1 asked that this be one of the few pictures we ever post. And we wholeheartedly agreed!!

Evelyn Mary – named after 2 of her great grandmothers.

I received permission to post the first picture of the new GRANDBABY!!

Goals we both have:

1. Rid our house of 2017 (or more) items.  We are getting close to “finished” but maintaining a decluttered state requires effort too.  We already see stuff creeping back into the house and garage.
2. Have a “No Spend” month.  We are thinking February – it’s the shortest month!  Yes, we play mind games with ourselves!
3. Go through the garage!
4. Get a new garage door and opener.

Barb’s Goals:

1. Drink more water.  I think I need a chart like Jena at All-Round Better Me.  Sure hope Bullet Journaling doesn’t add to my clutter.
2. Declutter the boxes pictures.  Guess I need to develop those old rolls of film too.
3. The always present – lose some weight.  Maybe a separate bullet journal for food and thoughts??
4. Get the Mayflower Society application submitted.  PA vital records better hurry up with that birth certificate!!

John’s Goals:

1.  Clear enough out of the garage to park a car in it!
2.  Figure out what things seem to send blood sugar levels skyrocketing.  Margaritas seem to be a culprit but without them it sometimes goes really high.
3.  Lose some weight.  It’s like our clutter – it just shows up.

We have been seriously decluttering for about 2 years now.  It has been a very steady process with time off last summer while all our belongings were in storage (due to the Great Flood of 2015) and this summer while we took a 7 week trip across the country.

We accepted the challenge by Anne at Minimalist Sometimes to remove items for 21 days.  We modified it to be 14 days since a trip is scheduled.

We have discovered that some items were kept during the unpacking fun last August are now being questioned.  Thank you Anne for pushing us to look at things again!

So here is the item from the closet that had us asking when it was last used.  Neither of us could remember!  One of the discs had a project our youngest kiddo did in high school.  She graduated in 2007!  I’ll bet it was about that time it was last used.  We know we used it while the kiddos were in high school.  They had performances that I know we recorded.

Video camera and its associated cords,  2 extra batteries for recorder, a remote for the recorder, the bag to hold the recorder, 3 empty discs for the recorder.  Also in the bag was a roll of film (how long ago was that camera donated??), a rechargeable battery for a different camera, a duracell battery with a best buy date of March, 2013.

This seemingly simple bag then sparked a search for the possible computer software that might still be around.  And it was!  11 more items out of the house!

(originally published 2 Jul 2014)

All of this is being copied over from our old blog site at blogger.  It is easier for us to have all blogs together at WordPress!

Summer 2014 update 2 – South Dakota

We finally made it to Rapid City, SD!  Now we get to be tourists!  Today we visited Mt. Rushmore, Crazy Horse, Mt. Moriah Cemetery in Deadwood, and Cabela’s!  Buffalo steaks for dinner – YUM!

The simple things are making us rejoice and joyful.  We are feeling blessed that both our baby birds will be home for the holiday this year.  Can’t and won’t ask for anything else!
Kiddo #2 arrived today and gets to stay for 2 weeks!!  Kiddo #1 arrives Wednesday for a week!!

This is a copy of the editorial which ran Dec. 5, 2015 on the front page of the New York Times.  Bold is added by us.  We couldn’t have said it better.

Web address is:  http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/05/opinion/end-the-gun-epidemic-in-america.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region&_r=0

The Opinion Pages | EDITORIAL
End the Gun Epidemic in America

It is a moral outrage and national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency.
By THE EDITORIAL BOARDDEC. 4, 2015

Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times

EDITORIAL BEGINS HERE!

All decent people feel sorrow and righteous fury about the latest slaughter of innocents, in California. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies are searching for motivations, including the vital question of how the murderers might have been connected to international terrorism. That is right and proper.

But motives do not matter to the dead in California, nor did they in Colorado, Oregon, South Carolina, Virginia, Connecticut and far too many other places. The attention and anger of Americans should also be directed at the elected leaders whose job is to keep us safe but who place a higher premium on the money and political power of an industry dedicated to profiting from the unfettered spread of ever more powerful firearms.

It is a moral outrage and a national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed specifically to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency. These are weapons of war, barely modified and deliberately marketed as tools of macho vigilantism and even insurrection. America’s elected leaders offer prayers for gun victims and then, callously and without fear of consequence, reject the most basic restrictions on weapons of mass killing, as they did on Thursday. They distract us with arguments about the word terrorism. Let’s be clear: These spree killings are all, in their own ways, acts of terrorism.

Opponents of gun control are saying, as they do after every killing, that no law can unfailingly forestall a specific criminal. That is true. They are talking, many with sincerity, about the constitutional challenges to effective gun regulation. Those challenges exist. They point out that determined killers obtained weapons illegally in places like France, England and Norway that have strict gun laws. Yes, they did.

But at least those countries are trying. The United States is not. Worse, politicians abet would-be killers by creating gun markets for them, and voters allow those politicians to keep their jobs. It is past time to stop talking about halting the spread of firearms, and instead to reduce their number drastically — eliminating some large categories of weapons and ammunition.

It is not necessary to debate the peculiar wording of the Second Amendment. No right is unlimited and immune from reasonable regulation.

Certain kinds of weapons, like the slightly modified combat rifles used in California, and certain kinds of ammunition, must be outlawed for civilian ownership. It is possible to define those guns in a clear and effective way and, yes, it would require Americans who own those kinds of weapons to give them up for the good of their fellow citizens.

What better time than during a presidential election to show, at long last, that our nation has retained its sense of decency?

This editorial published on A1 in the Dec. 5 edition of The New York Times. It is the first time an editorial has appeared on the front page since 1920.

A version of this editorial appears in print on December 5, 2015, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: The Gun Epidemic. Today’s Paper|Subscribe

This has been an emotional week – WAY TOO CLOSE TO HOME – too many people we know knew someone who worked in that building or used their services.

We think the link below says it all!

New ‘Smart’ Menstrual Cup Will Text You About Your Period all from your vagina.

What will they think of next??  Would you use it?  

We’ve been nominated for the Liebster Award!  Thank you Melody @ The Minimalist Next Door!  We are glad someone has looked at our blog and felt it was worthy.

Continue reading →

This is our first post.  We recently made the decision to simplify our lives by decluttering our home with the goal of downsizing our possessions and moving toward a simple/sustainable/minimalist lifestyle.  We aren’t sure where we are on the continuum, but we will figure it out as we go along.

This site will address any positive results or challenges we face.