Clean Up

Clean Up Progress, the garden area

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So this morning got off to a rough start.  I got a phone call from my mother, which is always touch and go.  After chastising me for not calling her (we’ve been in contact rather often, lately, so that in itself was weird), she informed me that some of my siblings would be coming over to burn the wood pile in the garden area.

No.  They are not.

It went downhill from there.

With the threat of fire hanging over us, my daughters and I went to start on cleaning up the wood pile.  We had intended to wait until more of the snow was gone, but it seems we don’t have much of a choice.

Ah, the joys of living in someone else’s house.  Even if that someone else in my mother.

Check this out, though…

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This is the deer path running through the garden and the apple trees, leading to our feeding station.  There is another one running through the garden in the other direction.

We got quite a bit of progress on the wood pile, sorting it into piles of twig, larger pieces that will be cut down after they are moved, and a pile of leafy branches that are still quite green.

After removing about half of the pile, we found…

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Old fiberglass insulation.

Something else to add to the “why is that there?” list!

Of the piles we’ve been making, this is the one that interests me most.

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These pieces are very straight, smooth and still quite green.  I am hoping to get a good amount of wood slices out of them for various projects I have in mind.  The rest will be fuel for the fire pit, once we get that cleaned out and set up.  Looking forward to some late night wiener roasts! :-D  I’m also looking to build a cinder block cooker, though that might have to wait a year.  With all the clean up of deadwood, just in the yard, we’ll have plenty of fuel for that.

Much to my surprise, not long after we came in for the day, I saw Hungry Girl and Barbecue outside our window.  With all the activity outside, and the changes in the garden area, I thought they’d stay away for longer.  As I was taking photos (I’ll post some this evening), I was greeted by this, in the corner of the living room window.

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So much ew.  Can you tell that I’ve cleaned this window ledge recently?  No, I can’t, either.

And that’s just one corner of one window.

Time to break out the vacuum again.

The Re-Farmer

Okay… this is the worst find yet

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I thought, after the horror tunnel, desiccated mouse carcasses, and other strange things we’ve found while packing up and cleaning away 4 decades of my parents’ stuff in our new home, I would have been beyond getting surprised by things we find.

I was wrong.

I must admit, it’s not so much the contents, but the circumstances of it.

Though we really don’t have the room for it in the growing pile in the dining room intended for the shed, I am just really not happy with having the litter box in the dining room, even if it is in an out of the way corner.  Having cleared everything else away, I decided to move the dresser and the stuff on the wall out of the little nook they’re in, so the litter box can be moved away from where we eat.

After removing the drawers, the first thing I discovered was a scale under the dresser.

Why is there a scale under the dresser?  It’s not like it was accidentally pushed under it.  It was way in the back corner.

Okay.  Fine.

I start moving the now drawerless dresser.

*clatterclatter*

A broken broom handle, with masking tape on the broken end, falls to the floor.

It had been between the dresser and the bit of wall on the bathroom side.  I had noticed that something was there, but forgot about it before moving the dresser.

Okay.  Fine.

I carefully pull the dresser out, hearing all sorts of crunching, grinding noises from the floor.  Oh, dear.  I called for a daughter to help carry it, since it sounded like pulling it along the floor would cause damage.  However, as I maneuvered it out a bit more so a daughter could grab it from the other end, I found it was really, really light, and not making the noise anymore.  So I just moved it myself, down the hall, up the two stairs to the new part of the house, and into the space I’d prepared for it in the dining room.  Then I put the drawers back and went to continue cleaning.

This is what I found.

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What on earth?

This is a flash picture; there is no light in this corner, so I really couldn’t see very well, but that plastic container on the floor?  My first guess was that the dregs on the bottom was mouse poison.  And what was all that on the floor?

I moved the scale and that plaque beside it to the pile of stuff for storage.  The plaque?

It was a prayer.

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Okay.  Fine.  I can see something like that falling between the dresser and the wall and being forgotten about.  That black piece of plastic?  Probably put there to get it out of the way and forgotten about as well.

I very carefully moved the mirror next.  It was just leaning on the wall, on top of that piece of wood.  The far side of it is a broken edge.

Then I come back to clean up the rest.

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That plastic bowl?  Is a glass bowl.  The crud on the floor is ancient cat litter, complete with several desiccated turds.

And a piece of bread.

So, it looks like this area was used for both a cat litter box, and for… cat food? before.  I threw the bowl out, but I’m guessing it’s the remains of some sort of cat food on the bottom.

All of this means that someone took out the litter box, but left the mess behind.  Left the bowl and the bread and added a bathroom scale.

Then put the dresser on top of it all.

Then used the dresser to store extra towels on the bottom drawers.  Above the cat poop and drying food.

Oh, and as I was going back and forth to move things, I found a pile of something that had fallen out from under the dresser as I’d moved it up the two steps.  As I swept it up, I took a closer look.

I’m pretty sure it was a very old mouse nest.

Once clear, I mopped the area with disinfectant cleaner, including the walls, then used a scrub brush in the area (including on the other side, where I got the girls to take the stuff leaning there upstairs), then mopped it again.  The only thing in that corner that still needs to be moved is one last large mirror, which will require a screwdriver to remove.

I don’t have the energy for that anymore.

I also found a shoe tray that I scrubbed; it will go under our litter box when it gets moved.  For now, the entire area is being left to dry.  We will move our litter box in tomorrow.

This just blows me away.  It’s one thing to be in the practice of keeping things that might be useful, and just shoving them somewhere for storage, as is likely the case for most of the things we’ve found.  It’s quite another to deliberately put a dresser on top of cat litter, cat turds and cat food.

And a scale.

I just don’t understand.  Who did this?  I don’t know how long that dresser has been there, but I don’t think either of my parents were strong enough to move it.  Well; maybe my mother, depending no how long ago it was done, but she usually got other people to do that sort of manual labour for her.   So I have no idea.  And why?  Why was it done like this?  I can’t imagine any of my siblings doing this.

I’m at a complete loss.

I think I’m going to take a shower now.

The Re-Farmer

Sunday Adventures in Vehicles and Bugs

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We are still on the lookout for a church in the next town, so this morning I headed out to visit a new one I’d never been to before.  I almost didn’t make it, having been up until 3 am this morning (actually 2am, but then daylight savings time happened), but it worked out.

This time I went to an evangelical “free” church.  In all my years growing up here, I had no idea it even existed, as it’s in a residential part of town I’d never gone to before.  The only reason I knew where it was was because my daughter and I had found it while playing Pokemon Go a month or so ago, and all churches are Pokestops.

I honestly don’t know what to think of it.  The church itself has no online presence, but I was able to look up what an evangelical church is, and it’s a solidly grounded non-denominational church.  Like most churches in the area, there was a small core of regular congregants.  This being a resort town, the population basically doubles in the summer, and all the churches get fuller.  People were friendly in welcoming.  They have a pastoral couple, rather than just a pastor, which was not something I’ve encountered before, though I was aware of such things.  The sermon was good, though there were a few things about the service that I found a bit strange; little throwaway comments that were intended to be humorous, but were inadvertently sexist.

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More Packing Up

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After much procrastination, I finally started working on a corner at the end of the hall, between the bathroom and old kitchen doors.

There is a dresser in a little nook there, surrounded by a couple of big mirrors, and with some sort of little memorial shrine or something on top.  It ended up being a catchall place for things, both our own and stuff from when we were cleaning the bathroom out.

I finally started to pack it up.

After finding places for our own stuff, I started boxing what was on top of the dresser, then moved out the mirror that was sitting on top of the dresser, leaning against the wall.

That’s when I noticed this.

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Has that gap always been there?  I have no memory of it, but as a child, it’s not something I would have noticed.

This area is where the add on that the old kitchen is part of is attached to the log portion of the house.  So the wall on the left with the opening is log – which is why it’s as wide as it is – while the rest is more modern materials.  You can see more of the log portion of the opening in the mirror, up to the wall the stairs are against.

After moving the mirror that is in the photo, I finished packing up the contents of the dresser.  It turned out to be an odd mix of things.  The top drawer had all kinds of gloves – painters gloves, I think – paint brushes, stir sticks, a couple of wooden crosses that looked like they used to be mounted on the top of something, a Canadian flag, an envelope of flower seeds, a couple of children’s sweaters… ???

The other drawers seemed to be used to store old towels and fabric pieces.  The towels in the bottom drawer where hiding a whole bunch of mouse poop.

Which actually reminded me of when this dresser was my own.

When I was a kid, what is now my office was my bedroom.  My bed was in the corner my desk is now in, and the dresser was against the bit of wall between the door and the closet.  The closet itself had no door back then.  I don’t think it even had a curtain, yet.

Above the side of my bed was an outlet, where I had a nightlight with its own switch.  I also had vanity with a mirror – which I now have in the master bedroom – against another wall.

One night, I was awakened by the sound of something falling off my vanity.  Turning on my nightlight, I looked around, but never did find out what got knocked over.

Going back to bed and turning out the light, I lay awake for a while.

That’s when I started to hear the noises.

By the vanity.  The dresser.  The closet.

Rustling.  Scritching.

I turned on my nightlight.

The noises stopped.

I turned it off and waited.

The noises started.

It was mostly around the dresser.  In the dresser.

This time, when I turned the light on, I pulled one of the dresser drawers out a couple of inches.

Then I got back in bed, leaving the night light on, and waited.

After a few minutes, the noises started again.  Then I began to see them.

Mice.

They had been climbing somewhere up the back of the dresser, and with the drawer open, I would see a head pop up and look around every now and then.  I heard them scurrying between the dresser and the closet, and then I saw a mouse start to climb up my clothes!

I think I saw about 6 mice different mice that night.

The next day, I found one of the friendlier barn cats and brought it into the house for the night.

The cat was okay with it, for the most part.

Then, during the night, I rolled over and my head landed on something soft and furry.  The cat had curled up on the pillow beside me.  I don’t know which of us was more startled; me, or the cat!  I felt so bad for spooking it.

I don’t know how successful the cat was in hunting, but I didn’t see mice in my room again after that.  Perhaps the cat caught them, or the cat’s presence scared them away.

Either way, they were gone.

Over the years, that dresser was used by my grandmother when she moved in with my parents – my room became hers – before passing away, and then by my father, as he started using my old bedroom because it was so much warmer (and closer to the bathroom. :-D ).  I don’t know when or why it was moved out to where it is now, replaced by a different dresser.  Maybe my dad was starting to have troubles opening and closing the drawers.

Once we get the dresser out of that corner, along with the other large mirror, which is just leaning between the wall and the dresser on top of a piece of wood, and the framed copy of the Mona Lisa, that corner will be the permanent spot for the cat litter box.

I was really hoping to have had that done by now, but the dresser is too big to add to the rest of the items stacked in the dining room, waiting to go into the shed for storage.

I’m not looking forward to dealing with the cobwebs. :-D

The Re-Farmer

Horror Movie Set!

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Oh, my poor, brave, brave daughter!

I got a response from my brother, after I told him about the drip in the bathroom ceiling.  Among the things he told me was to check in the crawl space above the bathroom.

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This picture is from when the girls had started cleaning the upstairs in preparation for painting.  Look at the top left.

See that triangular bit that’s brown?

That’s where the access panel is.

The wall is at an angle under the roof, and there’s a section about 2-3 feet high that’s walled off to hide the ducts and pipes and wires.

I honestly thought it was closed off, but it turns out that panel just pops right off.

That’s where the pipes and ducts for the bathroom are.

My younger daughter is the only one who could possibly fit in there, and still be able to move around.

At least, in theory.

Because it was painted, the panel needed to be pried off.

There’s stuff in there.

Not right at the front.  No.  Further in, and all the way to the back, past the pipes and ducting.

Also, lots of old mouse droppings.

I had grabbed a hook I’d found when cleaning my mother’s old bedroom, made from a straightened wire hanger, and my daughter poked around a bit.

Which is when she found a live spider.

She is arachnophobic.

That was it.  She was willing to crawl into the horror movie death hole with dusty books and jars, cobwebs and mouse droppings, right up until live spiders came into play.

The poor thing managed to hold it together, but she just couldn’t do it.

So I figured I’d give it a try.

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Why is that stuff there?  How is that stuff there?

My knees are shot, so I borrowed my other daughter’s knee pads (she has a bum knee, too), and set up the vacuum cleaner.   I vacuumed the mouse droppings and dust from the front, used the hook to drag some stuff out, vacuumed again, hooked out some more stuff, vacuumed again, hooked out some more stuff, vacuumed again…

And that was as far as I could reach.

The photo is from after I’d vacuumed and taken out the stuff closest to the opening.  You can see all the crud that got dragged with it, that I needed to vacuum again.  I’m not sure if you can tell, but there is what appears to be fabric – an old coat? sweater? – way in the back, past the duct and pipes.

After clearing things out as much as I could, it was time to try and crawl in.

I couldn’t even get into the opening.

To get in, you have to bend around a corner.  My shoulders got jammed between the slanted portion of the wall and the edge of the opening.

Theoretically, I could have squirmed down on my belly and squirmed my way forward.  Maybe.  Not likely.  But even if i could, once I reached the stuff I couldn’t clear out, that would have been it.

At this point, my brave, brave daughter was willing to try again.

She donned the knee pads, gloves and mask, grabbed the flashlight, and started to squirm her way in.

She couldn’t get all the way in the opening.

Because of the angle, the only way she could have fit would have been to combat crawl her way along the bottom.  And while she does not share my generous proportions, it was still too tight to move much as at all.  Then she would have reached the stuff I couldn’t put out, which would have blocked her way, and would have had to somehow pass it back to me, then continue on.  Because of where the drip was happening, she would have had to go at least as far as those pipes.

It wasn’t going to happen.

She could, however, see more from her vantage point.

There are obvious signs of old moisture damage, but nothing looks recent.

Wherever the water was getting in from, it doesn’t look like it was coming through this space.

But without going all the way in, we really can’t say that for sure.

I’d responded to my brother, mentioning that I hadn’t thought the crawl space was accessible, and he’d written back.  Oh, yes, he tells me.  It’s quite accessible.  Then he described having to go in there to put in the wiring for the new electric furnace, dragging himself along a few inches as a time, while pulling the wire.

Now, my brother is a thin man, but he’s not tiny.  With the angle of the roof on one side, it would have been like a giant sausage casing.

This is like a scene straight out of a horror movie.

Speaking of which…

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This is the stuff I was able to get out of the horror tunnel.

First aid books.  An old Polish prayer book.  A jug from pickling vinegar.  An empty binder.  A book on car repair.  Maps.  And… other things.

I didn’t want to look too closely.

Why did the stuff get put in there?  HOW did the stuff get put in there?  When?  I mean, if my brother crawled around in there, was it already there and he just crawled over it all?  If it got put in after, how did stuff get so far to the back?  Or has it been there since the area got walled off, after we got running water and the bathroom was installed?

I’m just… amazed.

Just think.  If we hadn’t had that drip, we wouldn’t have had a reason to open the space up and wouldn’t have known there was stuff in there.

I could have lived without that knowledge.

The Re-Farmer

Old and New

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One of the areas I had on my list to tackle today was my desk.

Yes, the desk I’ve been using for a while now.

I’d emptied the drawers and packed away the contents that used to belong to my dad, but that was as far as it got.  Today, I was going to clean them out, so that I could start unpacking some things into them.

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Eight

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Okay, I’ve made up for lost time, that’s for sure.

I finished clearing, cleaning and disinfecting the linen closet.  The shelves are made of plywood that’s painted.  It’s quite rough in texture.  My mother had lined the shelves with sheets of plastic, tacked into place, to protect her linens.  I haven’t decided what I want to do with them to fix the roughness on a permanent basis, but I still needed to do something to cover them, so they won’t damage my stuff.

Cardboard to the rescue.

I cut a couple of boxes we’d unpacked previously, to fit the shelves.  It worked out quite well.

It’s amazing what getting that one thing done led to.

I was able to unpack 8 boxes.  I was also able to move two long bins designed to fit under beds, under the bottom shelf.  These hold things like our collection of canes, umbrellas and shinai in one, badminton and tennis rackets in the other, so we do want to keep them handy.  They stick out of the closet, which means the door can’t be closed, but the door is broken, anyhow, so it doesn’t really matter.  At some point, they will actually get unpacked to more permanent places.

With the linen closet now clear, I could not only unpack my linens, but move some of the ones already unpacked and shoved into the wall of shelves.  I was then able to pack a bit more of my mother’s things away, which in turned helped clear more shelves.  I was then able to clear and clean 2 columns of shelves in the wall of shelves, then unpack boxes of papers, binders, folders, board games, etc.  Some of it will need to be gone through and put into more permanent places, or at least better organized, but the main thing is they are no longer in boxes.

All that finally allowed me to unpack my last box of linens.  These I was saving for last, as it included things like an antique, cut work embroidered linen table cloth, and table cloths and napkins embroidered for me by the same amazingly talented family member who gifted me with the ceramic sugar and creamer set that the movers broke the creamer from.  She’s actually the one who inspired me to get into crafting myself.  I’ve also got items embroidered and crocheted (some pieces have both) by my great-aunt, who was amazingly skilled.

One box, oddly, was half blankets, half kitchen stuff.  The movers packed that one.  I unpacked the blankets half, then took the box out to the dinging room.  After I stopped for supper (which my daughters were awesome enough to make for us), it was there anyhow, I unpacked the rest of that box, too.

The best part is, I no longer have a wall of boxes along my side of the bed that I need to squeeze past.  Yay!  There’s now just a few things than need to be finished up and re-organized in the bedroom before it’s done.  Well.  As done as it can be, for now.

The next major area of boxes that needs unpacking is my office.  Some of them are my crafting materials and tools, but not all.  As usual, the challenge is, where do I unpack them to?  I still need to work out a space to unpack all my cookbooks in particular, since I do want them actually near the kitchen.

All in good time.  Right now, I’m exhausted, but in a good way.  I think my goal for tomorrow is not to unpack anything else, but to rearrange our bedroom and maybe even *gasp* vacuum it.  I do wish we could rip out the carpet.  The lumps and bumps are quite the tripping hazard.  That, I am thinking, will wait until we can install the second bathroom.  If we’re going to be doing construction in there, anyway, that would be a good time to get rid of it.  I have no idea how we would take out that wall of shelves, though.  It’s more than 10 feet long.

Ugh.  I can’t start thinking about that now!  Especially since it’ll probably be years before we can come up with the money to do it.  I’m more interested in getting more boxes unpacked and hopefully finding the stuff of the girls’ that’s missing.  I don’t hold out much hope for that, though.

The Re-Farmer

Trapped trap

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While vacuuming the linen closet, I went into the carpeted area under the bottom shelf.  In one corner I used the crevice tool to pull out what looked like a very old nylon knee high (they do NOT make nylons in that sort of fabric anymore, and haven’t for a very long time), tied into a loop.

I didn’t look took closely.

Then I saw a piece of wood tucked into the opposite corner.  Not an unusual find in this place, really.  I tried to use the vacuum to bring it closer, but that didn’t work.  So I bashed it around a bit, only to realize it had something on the other side that was caught on the carpet.

The carpet does not seem to be adhered to the floor at all, so it kept lifting up.

Eventually, I got it loose, and found this…

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It was the hooked end that was caught on the carpet.

I imagine that someone tucked it into the corner years ago, it got triggered without catching anything, and was simply forgotten.

I’m glad I didn’t find a little corpse to go with it.

Since I needed to use a little step ladder to reach the top of the closet, I took the opportunity to finally get into the very top, where there are sliding doors that hid the contents.

I found my dad’s old water bed mattress, what looks like rolled up blinds, some poster paper, also rolled up, a tied up bundle of fabric, what a plastic grocery bag with what looks like a folded up sheet of vinyl.

I had to show the folded up mattress to my daughters.  This was from when water beds first came out, so it is literally just a big vinyl bladder.  I still remember how fun it was to go on the bed and make waves, and the struggle to get out of it.  The mattress was held by a sturdy frame.  The mattress, of course, would sink as you sat on the edge, which would leave your legs hung up on the frame.  It could be quite painful, with that wood digging into the backs of your legs.

I’m procrastinating, now.  It’s all vacuumed out.  Now I need to clean and sterilize it.

Time to dig out the gloves…

The Re-Farmer

 

Ensured about Insurance

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After an hour on the phone yesterday, I have finally dealt with our home insurance.  It’s content insurance only, which is all we can get even here, since we do not own the property.  I cancelled our previous content insurance and, since we left almost 2 months ago, will be getting a credit on that.  We were still paying for an address we weren’t living in anymore.

New content insurance for our current location was set up at the same time.  We now have the same coverage as before, with only minor differences due to location and zoning (we can’t, for example, get sewer back up insurance here.  We have no sewers), and it’s going to cost us about $20 a month less than the new charges would have been with our previous location’s insurance, which was on automatic renewal, and was in the process of rolling over for another year.

Which led me to talking to my older brother, who had to get the property insurance on behalf of my mother, this morning.  Oh, the hoops he had to jump through to get it done!  No company wanted to touch an unoccupied property, for starters, and the amounts things are covered for are woefully inadequate.  No where near replacement value, if something happened.  Not all the buildings are insured, either.  It took him weeks just to get what coverage there is, so this is certainly not a complaint.  Any insurance is better than no insurance.

One of the things we agreed to do in exchange for living here is to take on the expenses of the place, including the insurance.  It will be up for renewal in the spring, so we have some time to figure that out.  A lot will change, with the place being occupied again, but we are also going to make sure there is adequate replacement value coverage.

Among the questions I was asked while getting our content insurance was how old the house was.  I couldn’t actually answer that.  I know the new part was built in the late 70’s, but the original, log cabin part of the house is far older.  I’m trying to figure it out, based on what little I know about when it was first acquired by a family member, then by my father.  It may well be 100 years old!  I wonder who in my family would know?  I’m now very curious.

The important thing is, it’s done.  We’re insured.  As it stands right now, it looks like we’ve got better content insurance than my mother was able to get for property insurance.

Meanwhile, I may have found out about what those seeds were that we’ve been finding in our linen closet and the couch.

My brother wasn’t sure, but his best guess is, it’s poison.  It seems there’s a type of mouse poison you can get that is in seeds that gets put where the mice might go. No photos I’ve been able to find match the seeds I’ve seen, but the pictures I’m finding are all much newer products than this would have been.  They now come in pellets or blocks, and/or are brightly coloured.

This would explain why it was found under the couch cushion, and under the linens, along with the mouse shit. It’s possible that my late father had sprinkled it under the couch cushion, though considering how long the stuff in the linen closet has been sitting there, whoever put it under there did it many, many years ago.

It’s a good thing I was already planning on taking precautions when cleaning up that linen closet.  Also good that I had made sure to vacuum up the seeds that had fallen onto the floor as I took things out of that linen closet so quickly, and that it’s currently so blocked off, the cats can get into it.  They have certainly been trying.

I have to admit.  Poison is not one of the things I expected to deal with while cleaning up and packing.  Not that I didn’t think poison was ever used; I know it was.  I just didn’t expect it to be sprinkled about so generously in the couch and closet.

The Re-Farmer

Okay, I’m Kinda Horrified

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Today, we finally started on the bathroom.

I got my darling, somewhat more able bodied daughters to clear out the shelves for me.  Among the things they found was a box of prescription medication from 1984.

It seems they didn’t do child safe containers back then.

Then I started on the counter, and an item we’ve been really avoiding until now.

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