Oatmeal

That's my brain today. Not so achy this weekend, which is wild considering the outdoor work we put in. Really, really angry with my Lil Bro...he was supposed to go to Mom's on Sunday, and he bailed on her without even bothering to call; she had to track him down. I don't believe his excuse, and I don't know quite what to do to remedy this anger I'm feeling toward him. He's stolen from Mom (last month) and continues to disrespect her. My god, but I want to shake him!

This Tuesday, the realtor comes again; we hope to put the house on the market this week. This weekend, she and I took down the living room desk, moved a smaller desk from her bedroom to the living room, moved the extra computer desk out to the garage, and moved another table out to the garage and numerous boxes. We took down his workout equipment (which was a 2-man job, since the bolts were rusted - Mom held the nuts with an adjustable-end wrench while I went at the bolts with a socket wrench), and moved it outside.

The backyard has 2 trees on the left side, and with temps what they were this weekend, I was thanking god we were working in the shade. Between these trees was an old cement mixer, a wooden ladder, and a catchall area for fallen tree branches. We bundled the branches, raked about 8 bags of leaves...discovered the ladder was bolted—yes, bolted!—on both sides to one of the trees (my dad was an odd duck), but thankfully was rotted through enough where it didn't require much effort to remove it. The cement mixer was a 40-year-old relic, solid metal, about 5 feet tall with 2 broken wheels, and the non-wheel end had sunk into the earth a good 5 inches. We dug it out, moved it to the end of the driveway, and Mom said how she doubted it would still be there come garbage day because of how people will "acquire" things that are left out for the trash. Given the size and age of the thing, I was skeptical. Within an hour(!), a teenager was knocking on her door asking about it and it was gone!

I'm 75 pounds overweight. Mom's 66 years old with multiple areas of arthritis and a degenerating disk in her back. Obviously our weekend would've been made easier by a 6'4", 200 # physically fit male to help out. How can he not see that? At what point do you stop associating yourself with a purely self-centered, negative presence, even though it's an immediate family member? I've never felt the need to estrange myself entirely from family (I realize I've been lucky in that respect). But he never even bothered to call Mom this weekend; Mom finally called me at 2:45 p.m. on Sunday to go over to his place, because he hadn't shown up and wasn't returning her calls. Les tried him by phone and got through, and it was obvious he was going to bail, so I didn't bother, just went straight to Mom's. I'm happy to do it, even though I seethed at Cyril the whole time. I know Mom needs me right now, and I've been getting such a boost from helping her on the weekends...and the house looks great! But I'm done with Lil Bro, until he can show us that he's actually making an effort to respect Mom again.

So other than that nonsense, I didn't get a damn thing done at my place this past weekend. Husby has the flu, and I slept late Sunday morning to recover from Saturday, only to have to go over to the Westside again, so no planting, knitting, or cleaning occured at chez Johnson. The dining room's a disaster area. I'm quite tired.