May 30 - Massachusetts

Good evening intrepid followers! Long-ish post tonight. Rather odd week last week. Took my car in for an inspection sticker and a few other things. Spent a day sorting out the bedroom. Opened most of the larger remaining boxes. I have a beautiful large ceramic unicorn and accompanying colt that made it through the fire, and the moves, intact! I am so happy about THAT. Not ready to unpack it and place it yet however!

Unicorn

They were hand-made for me by a very special person, and mean a great deal. I cannot tell you how glad I am they made it in one piece. (Well two, as they are two pieces!)

Started opening some of the smaller boxes, and down to 2 1/2 left in the bedroom. One small bookcase made it through the fire. I cleaned it up and moved it into the bedroom as it fits perfectly in there :)

Weeded through tablecloths and such. Unmarked and mis-marked boxes. Spent over an hour going through my mother's recipe box. Ouch! Not only is her handwriting hard to decipher - she was an RN - but a lot of her recipes were not labeled. Even after all these years of reading her handwriting, I could not figure a lot of them out. Chicken something! Salmon something! So, bye-bye.

I love my Mom to pieces, but honestly she was not the best cook. We dreaded her meatloaf - it resembled sawdust. I could not eat meatloaf for years after. Her foray into kitchen experiments were the worst. Crock pot spaghetti. Need I say more?

She made up for that, however, in desserts! My Mom made the best cookies/brownies/you name it. Her specialty was cakes; she was a decorator par excellence! All of us had the best birthday cakes ever as kids. I especially remember one when I was 7, and she made a chocolate cake (my fave) with a small forest scene on top: a couple of evergreen trees and 2 deer.

For some reason that cake lives large in my memory. It was wonderful, and I recall every moment of that birthday. I got to drink a glass of Moxie soda (which I loved). My Mom did not approve of soda for kids so we only had it on special occasions.

And - alas - last week I could resist no longer and - uh oh - opened a few boxes of books. Next thing I knew - book boxes started exploding. Sigh... Book lust! My own personal Pandora's Box(es)! Moving the bookcase into the bedroom did it. I so want to be over and done with this move, and most of what remains are books.

Books!

Cookbooks

The lure was far too great. I have a lot of Nancy Drew books from the 1940s (which I had as a child, passed down from my Mom) and put those away. I also have some very eclectic (e.g. old) paperbacks by lesser-known authors, which will go there as well.

Bedroom bookcase

More books :)

And yes.... even here I am weeding through (albeit far more judiciously). Aware I cannot keep all the books I had, although I will make as much room as I can for them. Makes me sad, but I have hope someone will read and enjoy. I also know that a lot of my books did not make it through the fire, although I do not know what is missing yet.

Books waiting :)

I am hoping my Frost, Dickinson, Whittier, and other poetry made it unscathed along with my Shakespeare, Dickens, Poe, etc. I will be very seriously upset if they did not.

Where the firemen had to chop down the two walls in my old apartment was where a lot of my books were stacked. In the aftermath when we were let back into the building there was a very large pile of waterlogged and flame retardant soaked books on the floor. It made me quite ill at the time to see them. Many cannot be replaced.

I do not know what is left.


A very good friend came over with a lovely housewarming gift last week - bath salts!! I have not utilized the tub yet as I did not have any bath crystals to add to the water, which one absolutely must have! These are wonderful, and a most welcome gift. There is "green tea", "jasmine", "lemon citrus", and "lavender". I love them! They all smell wonderful and will make for very relaxing soaks.

My back and I are REALLY looking forward to that!!



The weather has been chilly and rainy; went from the high temps back to the lows! Was able to open the windows a couple of days last week, but still needed a warm jacket to go out. Good time for a nice relaxing soak!

So that was my weird week. Much progress has ensued.

And after once again overdoing it on my back the past few days I opted to take it easy today. I need to get out and get some things done this week.

My couch was delivered today (yay!), and I have more replacement furniture coming, which makes me very happy. Will post pix later this week :)

Stay tuned, my friends.