|
From the April Update:
“In 2004 we began preparing to move out of our large home and move into our fifth wheel trailer. We bought a forty-foot sea can (deep sea shipping container). It was trucked from Edmonton and dropped it on the half of our property we had subdivided off. The other half we sold with the house.
March 31, 2005 we moved into our fifth wheel trailer parked on the same property as the sea can. There is a less room in a 34-foot fifth wheel trailer than in a 3,000 square foot house. Some of the surplus from the house we packed into shipping boxes. The bottom layer of two cubic foot boxes was arranged in a three by five box layer, wrapped in plastic and a sheet of OSB placed on top. Four more layers of boxes, plastic and OSB continued to near the ceiling at the end of the sea can.
This monolith has sat there, mostly undisturbed, for the past nineteen years. This is the year to start tackling it. In the waning days of April we began.
Many memories. Much stuff for family. Much stuff for the burn barrel. Much stuff for the dump. A little stuff to outright donate. Much stuff to donate after family has gone through it for first dibs. Despite the contents being placed in a clear plastic leaf bag sealed with a twist tie, the bag put into a box, and each layer of boxes being wrapped in plastic there is distinct musty odour to everything.
We have used lots of Febreze. The washing machine has been getting a workout.
That was April.
The last bit of the write-up above looks like it will cover all of May and maybe a good chunk of June.”
That pretty much described most of the month of May. A few other things happened.
A cheque showed up in the mail on May 1 for a pension over contribution. That took some phone calls to make sure it wasn’t a mistake. I sure didn’t want to cash it if it was sent in error, because of tax and other concerns. If it wasn’t legitimate, it would be easier to just return it than to have it show up as income and then back it out of the system.
On May 2 we had snow. We drove the hour and a half to North Battleford to deposit the cheque and do some stuff at another bank that doesn’t have a local branch. That’s what happens when you move around and want to maintain a bank history. With online banking it mostly doesn’t matter where your bank is. Mostly.
That was a nice mini-trip then it was back to going through sea can boxes. In the evening on May 3 we attended the annual piano recital. Kohen did well. His sisters are beyond that phase of their lives but were both there. Sonja was in town for a work term as part of her librarian training. On May 28 we went to Saskatoon and attended her convocation.
Going through sea can stuff we ran across an old photo album of my grandfather’s. It was professionally bound pictures of CPR and the Rockies from around a hundred years ago. Other family photo albums from my parents’ 50th and 60th wedding anniversaries. Who are these people? A cousin helped id a few. I’ll take that the one album to the coast in August and see if my sisters know anybody.
Not really sea can stuff, but I organized a plastic banker’s box of EI claims over the years and stored it in the crawl space. While in the crawl space I looked briefly at the doorbell transformer. That’s interesting. It has the red and black wires on it. Last fall I installed a video doorbell. It had an internal battery but supposedly would never need removal for re-charging if it had a voltage source from a transformer. Halfway through the winter the battery ran out. Son-in-law, Ernie, came and removed it, took it home for charging and re-installed it. Since we got back I had to re-charge it once. While it was out I checked for voltage on the white and black wires it was wired to. Add checking the transformer to the list. Never got to that before moving file boxes to the crawl space. When I came out from under the house I swapped the wires at the video doorbell to red and black. It’s been 100% charged ever since. Go figure.
Snow on May 2nd but first spring flowers we noticed were on May 10th. It’s not polite to suggest there are issues with climate change but there is no skepticism about weather change where we live. Take each day as you get it.
One of the treasures we discovered in our digging was Elfie, a stuffed plush elephant my sister brought me home from Sulphur Gulch, a 1950’s hometown carnival. I must have been about four years old and treasured him. Old friends! Even if they smell a bit at their advanced age.
Somewhere during the month we stayed up late and watched the Northern lights which were predicted to be spectacular. Nope. Not for us. Dim enough we debated whether it was northern lights or just glow from the town ten miles north of us.
May 11 was camp clean up day. I went up to help clean up at the kids’ camp we volunteered at a lot during the first years of retirement. We backed away from that partly because I noticed that if I did a lot then other people felt they didn’t need to do anything, plus there was always something suitable for me but less for Juanita to do. On the way to the camp I took load of trash from the sea can to the local dump.
At the camp I did some minor plumbing and cut up a few dead falls near the beach. On the way home I stopped in Dorintosh to reward myself with the rare treat of an ice cream cone. They haven’t sold ice cream cones for two or three years apparently. I opted for a minion popsicle. Opening it back in the truck I briefly thought I must be smelling diesel from the gas pumps. Nope. That slightly petrochemical smell was from the minion bar. It tasted the same. I was raised to eat all of whatever was on my plate so I ate it. Had to stop in town for an ice cream cone to remove the taste of the minion bar.
The evening of May 11 yielded not much in the way of Northern Lights. On the 12th we celebrated Sasha’s birthday. Becky and her kids were in town to celebrate. While here everybody went through boxes and boxes of potential thrift store donations to claim anything they wanted for themselves. The following week we took a truck load of remainders to the thrift store.
On the 14th the Edmonton clan spend the day with us. Eliana and Ansel assembled a Costco target game while Ezekiel and I worked on his snowblower engine. Then we all planted some wild flowers and put caps on the fence posts on the property line as we walked the woods.
Between loads to the thrift store we started shopping for and buying bedding plants. Hope springs eternal!
One decluttering item came from the crawl space rather than the sea can. It was a dehumidifier that had quit doing its job. It has sat next to its replacement for a couple of years. WE loaded it in the car and took it to the dump. They wanted a $25 freon fee to drop it off. If I had known that I might have left it in the crawl space, but I wasn’t going to take it home and put it back in the crawl space so we left it and drove home lighter in the car and lighter in the wallet.
On May 16th I woke to a strange noise. It was young bear outside on the deck, chewing on the bedroom doorknob. There was another bear across the lawn molesting the crossbow target. Not having my wits about me I pounded on the door and the bear at the door went back to the ladder and climbed door. Missed a photo op. Just have a picture of his butt disappearing over the edge. And a picture of him up in the tree after I blew the air horn. His buddy ran into the woods.
At the end of her work term we took Sonja to dinner at the restaurant of her choice. The next night we took Kohen to dinner at a restaurant of his choice.
Other than that, our time was mostly spent doing sea can stuff. Speaking of stuff, I read of a study that says menthol helps prevent Alzheimer’s but I keep forgetting to follow up that information with action. I did order a slide scanner from Amazon and tried it to make sure it worked at turning old 35 mm. slides into .jpg digital files. That’s a winter storm or rainy day (weeks) project but it needed to be checked within the return window.
On the 27th I reached 365 days in a row of over 10,000 steps a day. Apparently, the app allows me to take a rest day every seven days without breaking my recorded streak. I haven’t tried that but might try it once and then as needed for weather, travel or feeling poorly.
As mentioned above, on the 28th we travelled to Saskatoon for Sonja’s convocation followed by dinner at a downtown restaurant before driving back to Meadow Lake. We ended the month by heading to Edmonton.
|
