Brain only 90 degrees off

 Thought I'd check in.

My other brother arrived from Denver,  September 20th we finally got to walk into the house.

What a mess.  Big hole in the kitchen where the double island was, another cabinet missing where the oven and microwave were. 

The smell wasn't too bad but everything we touch is sticky from the deodorizing bomb.  A lot of it still is-sticky that is.

The living-dining room was full of boxes, some of which had been turn upside down.  It was hard to walk through it.

As Kermit the Frog said "There is nothing to it but to do it."  I began opening boxes in the living room. The boxes were all labeled but mostly the label had nothing to do with what was actually INSIDE the box.  My brother started in the garage.  For four days that's what it was like.  We had people in  on Saturday to repair the front door (where the cops kicked it in) put in new door knobs, locks and reconfigure the garage door opener.  The next day we arrived to find the garage door standing open and the motorcycle gone.  So that makes a car, a professional power wash trailer and a motorcycle plus and unknown number of tools that disappeared.  A thousand small things had to be dealt with, a lawyer consulted etc.  The Living room is now mostly presentable as is the garage.There is more to do.

I brought home boxes and boxes of "Stuff".  Mostly, photographs and memorabilia.  The house was my parents so all those photos, etc have made their way into my office--9 boxes and a stack of 14 trays of slides.  Everything has to be sorted, duplicates destroyed and checked against my photo files.  All the newspaper articles will be copied into my files and then destroyed.  (For all of us who keep newspaper articles--don't!  Take a photo copy of the article and destroy the newsprint.  Newsprint degrades very quickly and damages other documents .  That was learned working in the library at the Trails Museum!)

I guess I'll have things to do this winter.

 My brother has gone home to Denver (he'll be back.)  I have been going up and working a bit every other day slogging through the mess.  My local kids are coming to help this weekend.

We have the house under contract, although we can't settle until probate has begun.  That was a huge relief.  Neither of us wanted the job of putting the place back together.

I am exhausted and sore but that will pass.

I'm very much looking forward to Chris coming only 12 more get-ups!