Life With My Elderly Father- One Year Later

One year ago on May 3rd  I quit my job of sixteen years, tried to start my own company and my dad came to live with me June 26th. He had been living with my older sister but he was tired of living so far away and I live closer to the places he's familiar with.

Initially I didn't know where I was going to put him. Although I have a 4 bedroom house, one upstairs room is never used. My daughter sleeps in the other upstairs room and eventually I know that I have to clear out that other room to fix it up for my son.

We have two bedrooms downstairs, one was my son's and the other was mine. I chose the easiest route and put my dad in my bedroom and I moved into Seth's room to share with him, thinking that I would eventually switch rooms with him and go back to my own room.

Here we are a year later and I am yet to make the room switch. Some people would say, "But you work from home, how could you not have enough time?" Good question. I don't know how. One of my excuses has often been that by the time that I'm done cleaning all the main rooms and have time  time to get to the bedrooms I have start all over again because the other rooms get dirty again.

We know that that's just a procrastinator's excuse. Here recently I have been incentivizing the kids to keep the main living quarters clean and it's actually been working fairly well for the past two weeks. That is a record for us! No more excuses that I have to start over cleaning these rooms if we can keep them fairly clean every day.

SO this weekend the kids are at their dad's house and I told myself I was going to work on the two downstairs bedrooms to start the switch. The whole day went by and I got one thing on my list accomplished. ONE. Cleaning some things in the kitchen. Well, at least it was one, and really three because I did three things in the kitchen, but it wasn't in any way close to the bedrooms.

Tomorrow I will try again. Even if I just get one thing done, like clearing out the closet in Seth's room for my dad's things. He now shares with me in my room because I have a closet and an armoire but even then we don't have enough room, thus the reason I have 2 closets for me to begin with.

If keeping the main part of the house this clean feels this good I have to imagine how great it is going to feel to finally get my dad in Seth's room and to get my own bedroom back. I've felt like I'm staying over at someone else's house for over a year because I'm sleeping in another room, in another bed.  All my clothes, shoes, and dresser things are in my room.

I have to get back into my room so I can feel balanced. My life has been out of balance for so long. It's time.

Queen Procrastinator

I went to my dad's house today and did something I had been putting off for close to 8 years. I went through the more than 12 boxes in my old apartment, packed up the ones I needed to take with me, and separated all the ones that needed to be thrown away. I could not believe I had so much junk back there. (the apartment is behind his house) I also could not believe that it took me 8 years to get back there to clean it out.

I really surprised myself. I looked at two boxes of thesis research material and I resisted the urge to take them with me. I looked at them and really thought hard about it. I thought, "Do I really need all of these articles? Am I really going to sit down to read them again?" However interesting I may have found the material at one time, I was pretty sure that I wouldn't. So I pushed them to the stack of boxes that need to be thrown away.

Plus the lizard helped me decide. One of the boxes had a lizard in it and I really didn't want to have to fish it out or risk taking it into my new SUV. So thanks to the lizard it made my decision easier.

I think the dust irritated me! I feel like it's in my lungs! YUK! But I'm also relieved that I got that out of the way before my surgery. I won't be able to drive for a couple of days after the surgery and I also can't lift anything heavy.

The best part of going through all the junk was finding a box full of old pictures and all the old love notes and cards my husband wrote to me when we were dating and early in our marriage. Aww!!!