Max's Visit 12/18/11

Max was in this weekend, which was wonderful. We watched TV and visited Friday night. Saturday we went shopping, came home, put stuff up and did "chores." Sunday morning he left in the early morning, so it was a short visit.

While he was here, Max ran cable into the kitchen so I can watch the little TV in there. The kitchen is in the far back of the house, very isolated. Usually I listen to books while I'm working in there. Variety is nice,too. I'm not tied to the telly, but there are shows I'd like to follow that aren't on Mom's Classic Movie Channel. I'm also a product of my generation in wanting audio input almost constantly. Since it's just Mom and me here most of the time, and she doesn't move or talk much, it's gotta be electronic input.

Max also hooked up a new telephone set so we actually have more than one working phone in the house now. Yay! The parents' old phone didn't have voice messaging on it, and the new ones do. I don't know whether that will be a blessing or a curse.

We got some new mini blinds for the kitchen and Joe's old bedroom. Hopefully they'll help keep out some of the cold air this winter and lower the electric bill. There has also been a big privacy issue in Joe's bedroom. For someone essentially very private,  in the last decade Joe had lost his concern about dressing in a room with open windows. The curtains Mom put on both the windows are extremely difficult to open and close - there's a desk in front of one and a bed in front of the other. Over the years, the ties she'd used have aged, frazzled and come apart on use.

Since I've been told there's a known Peeping Tom in the neighborhood - Eek! - having the windows covered will make me feel a lot better. I sure don't look forward, though, to climbing the desk and straddling the bed to get these things put up.

I got a couple of loads of washing done. Hohum, mundane, I know. On the front of cleaning the basement, though, I washed the curtains Joe had hung over his wine rack. You can see the very orange curtains in the pic on the left. OMG, I bet they hadn't been washed in 20 years. Max took them down for me as that was the corner where he was working to run the TV cable.

Slowly, slowly, we're working on trying to get the basement cleaned up. Oh, and I bought some face masks to wear down while I'm cleaning up. It's taken me all week to recover from the 4 hours I cleaned down there at the beginning of the week. Don't want a repeat of that.