...I actually wrote something worth reading in this journal. (Well, I suppose the "worth reading" part is a subjective opinion.)

A lot has been going on, mostly with my mother. We moved into the house she is still in, in 1964, I believe...I was around 4 years old. (Dates me, doesn't it?) My dad died in 2005, and near the end, when he finally realized that he didn't have much time, he told my mom (in my presence) to sell the house, that it was too much for her.

He loved that house. It was his pride and joy, and of course, my mom was unable to make any moves in the direction of selling until about 1 1/2 years ago when she finally put it on the market. Of course, this was about the worst possible time to try to sell a house. The market was sinking, and the price point we put on the house, which of course we felt was on the low side, generated virtually no interest. No offers, to be sure.

We switched realtors, and his advice was to lower the price even further, supporting his advice with comparable sales over the past 4 or 5 months. This price point in turn limited my mom on what she could afford to buy. But we did find a nice condo, and a few days after an offer was signed on her house (at just about what the realtor suggested), our offer on that condo was accepted.

So she's moving out of the house next week. Monday she will move out, and the furniture will be loaded onto a truck, held overnight, and closings will be on Tuesday. Then the movers will come down with the stuff and move her in that day.

There's about 45 years of accumulated junk and non-junk in the house, a lot of stuff. Hopefully she'll be able to fit it into her condo. She's got a pretty big garage over there. I don't know.

I think it's hitting her (and me!) that the house we spent most of our lives in as a family is going to be someone else's very shortly. I wish there was a way for us to have kept her there. But it's too far from me, and too much house and land, for an 80+ year old to manage, even one in pretty good health.

To complicate things, she has had a run of clumsy bad luck...falling off a short ladder and cutting her hand badly, banging her toe on a threshhold and probably breaking it (nothing to do with that except tape it) and falling at church and tearing some cartilage in her shoulder. She's working too hard on getting things ready for the move, and that's good and bad. It keeps her busy, keeps her mind occupied and off the move itself and the reality that entails, but it makes her tired and prone to these accidents, I think. And she just won't stop...when I'm there I do what I can and keep her from overdoing it, but when I'm not, she just gets back to it no matter what I tell her.

So, here's hoping that things aren't too stressful over this weekend and throughout next week and through these Christmas holidays.

And yes, I'm still hereabouts. :-)