Slowly Returning

I'm slowly trying to sort through things of the past week -along with loads of things that go back over the years too -and as I'm doing that, I'm going to try to get back into the blog stuff once more.

I haven't read but only a few blogs since Sunday really so I'm way behind on that task. Haven't blogged either since Sunday or Monday and after the past five days, I'm kind of taking a bit of a breather, of sorts, today and easing back into all this as I still have a lot of stuff here to take care of now.

I did posterboards with photos arranged on them in a collage type for the viewing yesterday for my aunt. It took two large tri-fold posterboards as well as two good sized single posterboards to even begin to display from the wealth of photos I had to go through. Talk about a difficult time trying to find pictures that would, hopefully, show almost everyone of her nieces and nephews as well as many of the great and great-great nieces and nephews she had was something else! I didn't get the last display finished until about 4 a.m. Wednesday morning and boy, was my back ever happy when I did get that last one done!

After standing in the funeral home for over two hours yesterday, then thankfully we were seated, of course, for the service, but then the interment and dinner following that, by the time I got back home about 3:15 yesterday, I was totally whipped! My back and legs felt like the best cure would be to cut things off at about my waist, ya know! But a nice restful nap yesterday afternoon for me, Kurt, Mandy and Maya too and we were all feeling much better then by evening.

Last night though, I finally got around to trying the organ that my son and future son-in-law managed to get brought down to my house from my Aunt's home on Monday. Boy, did I get a scare though because I couldn't figure out how to get the darned thing to turn on and get the keys to work. I was worrying then that something had happened to it and I would have to call someone in to check it out and repair it.

However, I went online last night looking for information about Hammond organs, operating instructions and the like and finally, this morning I found a page with lots of information along those lines and in the process, I found out then how to turn one of the puppies on too! The nice thing is that it has two switches - a start and a run switch and both have to be activated in a certain time manner, etc., so that means I won't have to worry about certain little fingers going and messing with the organ at any time now! I have a new, big, beautiful "toy" that has very special meaning and purpose just for me, all to myself (selfish brat only child that I still am ya know)!

Now, in addition to trying to figure out how I am ever going to get all these many photos I have here now from my Aunt's home scanned in and save to dvds or cds and then finding a place to safely store the photos too till I can check with my cousin as to where he wants them or what he would like for me to do with them, I also have to start trying to figure out what I should cook to take to a special church dinner this coming Saturday evening. It is a pot luck dinner to give the congregation an opportunity to meet with the pastoral candidate we now have before she preaches her first sermon this Sunday morning after which the congregation will then vote whether to accept her or not. Mandy has already met her at the Church Council meeting about three weeks ago now and she was very highly impressed with the young lady. So, I'm just hoping all goes well Saturday and then Sunday and that we will soon have a new full-time pastor for our church again. The last time we had a vacancy here it too the church almost four years before we were able to get a replacement and many of us were worried that we might have the same problem again. It's very difficult to get a pastor willing to relocate to a rural and somewhat economically stressed area so it is quite a blessing that we received a candidate interested in our parish this quickly.

As to the dinner Saturday evening, I am a little worried about how I'm going to manage to get out to church because Mandy has to work that evening and I KNOW I can't fix a covered dish, get it and the kids and myself ALL out there and manage the kids alone there for a meal! Just ain't in the cards, ya know! So that's going to take a bit of manipulation on my part, for sure!

And now, I'd best get my fanny moving -while it's still able to move and my back and legs haven't started to act up on me again -not yet, anyway! Lots to do to get the house looking half decent again what with all the new items in the living room, just for openers and that says nothing at all about working with all these photos too! Anyone want to come help me scan pictures?

But I'll be back and forth with the blog again. I feel much better now about many things that had been really wearing on me for quite some time. Especially all the issues with my aunt.

Much as my cousins and I -my kids and grandchildren too -were saddened by her passing, we all realize she is in a much better place now with no pain, no suffering, and for that we can be and are very grateful. In so many ways, she had left us, piece by piece, over the past five years or so as her mind started to fade from over that time.

I'm just so grateful to have had her as such a large part of my life for as many wonderful years as she was with all of us. My grandson, Alex, who is ten years old, is really having a difficult time with this as it is probably his first experience with losing someone he for whom he cared very deeply and who had returned his love so often and with so much mutual adoration they had for each other. It was very difficult yesterday to watch him, to see him hurting so much and so little any of us could do to help him cope right now. He does understand how sick she was, how much she had endured and that it was indeed time for her to rest but it is still much harder for children at times like this. Thankfully though, he too has many wonderful memories of her and we have many, many photographs of Aunt Mike with Alex too.

Now, time to get to work!