Monday

Public holiday today, so I was home from work.

I got up early, went to the supermarket and picked up buttermilk – M is going to make pancakes.  Took Ernie with me and we stopped at a park for him to have a walk.

Came home and did laundry and wandered about randomly picking at things. Trying to sort out what toiletries I have left (I had huge stockpiles that I have been working through).  I need to put together a bath bag, because there’s only one bathroom at mother’s house and there will be 4 of us there until my brother goes overseas – I will need to take my stuff to and from the bathroom.  

I cleaned the dust off an ancient doctor’s bag that I have.  The plan is that we will pack our glasswear and fragile stuff into shoe boxes, then pack those inside the doctor’s bag, and then the doctor’s bag will be put inside a cardboard box for shipping.  The doctor’s bag felt damp in the lining (the damp and the mould here are just off the scale) so I have thrown a few moisture absorber packets in there and left it open in the bedroom, where the heater runs to dry the laundry. 

There are small patches of space appearing in the apartment. Cupboards emptying. I took all the papers off the fridge today, and now it looks bare, too.  Not enough, though! Everywhere I look I see things that I just want to THROW IN THE GARBAGE, but I have to argue with M over every little thing.  He certainly has hoarder tendencies, and keeps talking about us giving things to members of my family, things that I (and they) would see as JUNK and just throw out.  It’s very awkward and I have to keep explaining to him that giving my mother a whole stack of scratched cds in broken cases is not a FAVOUR, it’s a PAIN IN THE ASS because now she has to dispose of them because she won’t  want them either. 

This week will pass quickly with work, as it tends to do. I need to just keep at this and do a few things each evening. Next weekend we can take a few car loads of stuff over to mother’s house.  I will be painting the extension with her, and then I need to round my brother up to help him move his stuff into there.  I can then clean out his old room, and we are in business.