Strange story

Mr Footless died close to midnight  on a Thursday. I called no one because I didn't see any need for anyone to lose sleep who didn't have to.
The next day I talked to MyMom (among others) who was having troubles of her own. She had just been flooded out of her apartment the week before and had found  a place to roost in Camp Stuffy, the senior living facility she graces with her residence.. She got settled in a meeting room where she had just the essentials. ( I visit her on the weekends which is about what I can manage) Making sure that she had adequate housing had been part of the alarums and excitements of the week before. Also due to the floods I had not been able to go see her.
The roads being washed out and therefore closed does that.
After telling Mom about Mr Footless, there was a silence on the other end of the line. "Well" She says,"Are you coming down to see me this Saturday?"
I said that I would indeed be seeing her then." Good" She says."I need some things from the store."
Alrighty then.
 By Saturday morning a good friend did the research for me, and got me in touch with a coffin maker in one of the towns south of here and north of MyMom.  So I stopped on my way south and picked up the coffin which the maker kindly roped down in the back of my truck. Lucille has a tool box in her bed that shortens the bed by a good two feet so the coffin was propped up on the tailgate, large as life and twice as natural and obviously exactly what it was.
 So I rumble on into Snooterville to meet up with MyMom and do what needs to be done in terms of grocery and basic needs shopping for an eighty plus lady who has been rendered temporarily unhomed.
 After picking up some of the basics MyMom decided she wanted to eat somewhere that wasn't the dining room at Camp Stuffy. That's ok, I have no connection with my body at this point and so I am eating when I think I might need to refuel because I can't tell if I am hungry unless I am so ridiculously low blood sugar I am about to faint.  I'm not fainting yet but it has been a while so eating would be good, right?
My Mom decides on the restaurant, and off we go to a medium high end place at about three in the afternoon.  I had forgotten about the coffin in the back of Lucille as an actual coffin, and started seeing it as the visual obstruction in the middle of the rear view mirror, causing me to use the side mirrors more and the rear mirror a lot less.
If I had been thinking about something besides getting MyMom into the closest parking place so that she had the shortest trudge for her knees, I might have considered the effect of my somewhat battered truck and it's macabre cargo a little more and not parked center front  in the windows of the medium high end place MyMom wanted to eat at.
You would think that waitstaff would be too busy to look and had seen too much of everything that living in a town with Snooterville U could come up with to be at all interested in my load.
Aparently not.
We eat, and we head out to discover a group of people standing around the bed of my truck and speculating on what I might be going to do with the obvious coffin in the back.
I lacked a sense of humor  right then, or I might have had some fun. As it was I packed MyMom up and headed back to Camp Stuffy.
It wasn't until quite a while later that I thought about the effect it must have had on the people watching to see my show up with a coffin and a little old lady.
Mr Footless had a sense of humor that was both pretty black and bizarre. He would have gotten a good laugh over that.

In praise of steam, steam mops and cleanliness.

Due to the distressing circumstances that the house was in for the last bit of time it is to put it mildly, a pit. An ugly really grotty pit at that.
There was absolutely nothing that wasn't gritty, grimy and crud covered from one end of the place to the other. Even after some heavy duty scrubbing  on some sections there is a lot of this place that is grossly dirty. I have never been all that concerned with the process of getting things clean. In fact I have found that for some reason cleaning was something that I did when I was angry. I thought that  cleaning made me angry, and then I thought that I was using anger to clear my head so that I could get things clean.  It turns out that none of this is true.
I find that actually I like cleaning things when  they stay that way for a reasonable length  of time, it actually calms me and leaves me feeling happy.  That really surprises me, Who would have guessed that?
Over time I have had some conversations with My Stepdaughter Who Will Be the Death of Me Someday. She has her difficulties but she is hell on wheels when it comes to cleaning. I think that it is a backlash from living with Mr Footless who was profoundly uncomfortable with clean. ( Thus the condition of  the house)
She sang the praises of her steam mop and how much grime came up without having to use  cleaners and how easy it was to get the floors done up with minimal scrubbing.  I borrowed one.  Then I bought one. It is everything she said it would be.
As someone who is removing carpet and laying laminate from one end of the house to the other and who is entirely grossed out by the incredible amount of dirt that is in said carpet, I need something to take care of a lot of floor.
At present I have been trying to figure out how to use Stanley the clothes steamer to do things that the mop doesn't, like the tile in the shower, and the walls and the stove top. I think that what I am missing is some rubber bands to tie down the towel to the steam head. I am stunned at how much crud migrated to the towel while wiping the steam over the wall that I chose to try this out on.  Mind you  I had washed the wall not too long ago with soap and water and gotten  a layer of dirt off. I can see that I have some of the kind of experimentation that I find the most fun, how do I get this to work?

Tiddly Pom

The weather has reverted to winter. it has snowed and snowed again, and for what reason should I be complaining? We need the water, we need the moisture, we need the time for quiet contemplation.
I am really fine with it Except, the walk needs shoveling, front back and side, and some time today I am going to have to go to the store. The store will be slammed with people who are frantically buying all the eggs, milk and bread for what purpose I can't imagine. Epic amounts of french toast?
I think I can pass on most of it.
Then again I need to talk to Mum about my usual visit to her, because tomorrow is the huge enourmus gladiator fest AKA Superbowl, where men in armor give each other traumatic brain injuries and throw an odd shaped ball around.  Anyway she wants to watch it and I want to not be around on the streets when it is over, because the number of  Drunk People Having Fun in Cars is more than I can imagine dealing with.
I think I am electing myself for wimp hood.
I think it is a relief to just admit that I am scared to be out on the highways with a bunch of people at night who have made themselves unreliable.
I am a grownup. Grownups are not scared of things right? So who made up that lie?
Actually, mostly thinking about it is far worse than doing it. So where is the anxiety leaving off and where is mature sensible caution beginning?
I think that I will be doing any out things today and not tomorrow, and I think that I will no longer beat myself up for what I am scared about.