And now May

We're pretty far into May already, actually -- it's May 5th, Cinco de Mayo, and my grand-niece Mari's birthday. Tomorrow is May 6th, my mother's birthday. I like May, usually. I don't like it very much today, but I'm sure things will get better. We've got about six iris showing flower spikes, so that'll be nice, soon. Lilacs are blooming all over town, though of course ours isn't yet (it's a very late lilac). Next Sunday is Mother's Day and I always like to get a bunch of annuals to plant that day. We'll see.

Rocket Boy went back to St. Louis yesterday, after a week of just working himself to death. He did so much and looked so tired. I was reminded, distressingly, of my father cleaning out the gutters the day before he went to the hospital to die. 

I was very sad yesterday. I'm still sad today, but I'm trying to cope.

Here are some things that Rocket Boy worked on while he was here.

• The furnace. He called our furnace guy, Lucky, who was amazingly still alive, barely, and got some advice from him over the phone. They called each other back and forth, while RB went up and down the stairs to the basement, trying different configurations and thumping on the ceiling to get me to turn the heat on or off. Finally he admitted defeat and we called an HVAC company that had been recommended by a neighbor. They're coming out Thursday to look at both our furnace and the rental's. So that's all good, even though we still don't have heat.
• The bathroom door. He agreed with Teen A that the closet door doesn't make a great bathroom door for the long haul, because it has a big gap at the bottom. So he examined the door I'd gotten from a neighbor (not good), we went to Resource to look at their doors (nothing there), and finally he ordered a new door from a door company in Lafayette. He spoke with them on the phone about a dozen times and eventually we took the old door out to Lafayette so they could measure it exactly (and then they recycled it). The new door will be ready in a couple of weeks and Teen A and I will have to go get it and hang it up.
• 
  The gigantic branches. Together we managed to dislodge the biggest branch from the fence and RB sawed it up into several pieces. We filled a few leaf bags with small branches, plus the compost bin, and RB tied several bundles of small logs for compost pickup. I dragged numerous branches around to the front yard and we worked on them there. Both front and back yards are still full of branches -- it doesn't really look like we did anything -- but we DID, we made a good start, and I will continue to work on it throughout the summer. The tree guy gave us a reasonable quote and I told him to go ahead and schedule us, so we're waiting for that.
• 
  The hole in the patio roof. RB went up on the roof and inspected it. He used a broom, rake, and snow shovel to clean the roof, scraping the mess into a leaf bag. Then he placed a tarp over the hole and weighted it down with bricks and logs. (I stood below, holding the ladder and handing up the tools, leaf bag, tarp, bricks, and logs.) But now we need someone to fix the hole. We both, independently, thought of his old weird friend Ray, who did a lot of work on the porch roof about 20 years ago, but neither of us could remember his last name. How sad is that? RB used to call him "Ray save-a-buck Something-or-other" because he was so cheap, but he was a hard, though very slow worker. However, the last we saw of him he was heading back to Iowa, where he owned a falling-down house with no utilities, and I would think he's almost certainly dead by now. So Rocket Boy started calling handymen. One came to look at it and started lecturing us about how the entire patio should be redone, not just the roof. The second said he'd gotten a regular job and was no longer a handyman. The third asked for photos and after looking at the photos said no, not our kind of work. The fourth finally called back today and said he thought he could do it. We'll see. It would be in a few weeks.
  
• The clothesline. The old retractable clothesline was destroyed by the branch that fell on it, so we bought a new one from McGuckin's and Rocket Boy installed it. Unfortunately that one didn't work, so he went back to McGuckin's and got another one, and installed that one, and it works. I used it yesterday. We agreed that we will not leave the lines up -- after using it, I will retract it each time, so it can't be smashed again and will stay cleaner.
• The storm doors. Rocket Boy fixed the latch on the front storm door, replaced the handle on the back storm door, and switched out the glass on both doors for the screens, for summer.
• Driving. Rocket Boy also drove with both twins. Teen A now has 40 hours & 42 minutes (out of the 50 he needs), including over 10 hours of night driving (all he needs). Teen B only has 24 hours & 24 minutes, with only 1 hour & 15 minutes of night driving, so I'll need to work with him more. But we're coming along. 
• Spaetzle. On Friday, Rocket Boy asked me what we should have for dinner. I didn't really want to cook, but we'd been eating out a lot, so I looked at my recipes, chose a main dish and a side dish, and said I'd pick up the ingredients on my way home from getting my hair cut. I had to go to two different grocery stores, and when I finally got home, RB had made spaetzle and gravy! Not to mention, the kitchen was a disaster. We had a big fight about the whole thing, but we worked it out (when you live in different time zones, you can't let fights fester). In the end, we had mahi mahi burgers from Trader Joe's for dinner, with the spaetzle as a side dish. And I've still got the ingredients I bought and I can use them to make dinner tomorrow. So it's all good.
  

Just writing all that down makes me tired. Thinking about all that Rocket Boy did makes me tired and thinking about all that's left to do makes me tired. I'm now going to be waiting for the furnace guys, the tree guy, the handyman, and the door company. Hopefully they won't all show up at once.

One step at a time.

It's May, so I should review April and my resolutions and think about what I did and didn't do. I know I didn't do some major things that I had planned.

1. Read at least 52 books, i.e., 1 per week. I read 8 books in March. That's 45 books so far this year.

2. Read biographies of at least 3 presidents. I left Warren G. Harding for May (already started a bio of him).

3. See at least 24 movies, i.e., 2 per month. Rocket Boy brought some movies with him, so we watched "Nowhere in Africa," a German movie that we both enjoyed very much.

4. Go to at least 12 special things, i.e., 1 per month. Rocket Boy and I went to see Teen B's band concert on the 30th.

5. Continue blogging/write another novel. I hardly wrote anything this month, just the blog. It's OK. April was a stressful month.

6. Take a walk every day and do a stretch video every morning. I took just a couple of walks in April, including one with Rocket Boy the day after he arrived. It was such a horrible month that I mostly didn't want to go outside, too depressed. I did do stretch videos on 20 days, so that was something.

7. Take a hike every month. I thought Rocket Boy and I would do a hike together this past week, but of course I forgot about his leg. I just don't want him to be less than 100%, and so apparently I pretend he's fine when he isn't. We took one 18-minute walk together. No hikes.

8. Take a load of stuff to either Goodwill or Charm every month. Didn't do this either. We went to Resource to look for doors and the Center for HArd to Recycle Materials is right there next to it, but I'd forgotten to bring anything, even my bag of old batteries. Oh well.

9. Do something to improve my wardrobe every month. In April I had planned to work on shoes, but it never happened. Too depressed. So that'll be my goal in May. We'll see how it goes.

10. Work on the files. I resolved to focus on the files in April, but I barely touched them. I'll try again in May, but I also need to work on the yard. We'll see.

I think mainly I'm just glad April's over and we're still here. Still in our snug little house -- with no furnace, but the weather's getting warmer. Actually, we're supposed to have some bad weather the next couple of days: a little rain, possibly a little snow, and very high winds. May in Colorado. Today is a nice day, though it started out overcast and gloomy. Maybe I'll go for a walk.

Now that Rocket Boy's visit is over, I've started planning our trip to California. We'll go at the end of the month, after school gets out. I'm a little bit excited about that, but I also feel a sense of dread that I'm trying to tamp down. Will I be up to it, will I be up to the driving, that kind of thing. Of course I know I will be up to it, and I'll have the boys to help with the driving if I get tired. It's just so overwhelming. All these people coming to work on the house, all these people to make arrangements with in California. It's going to be a complicated trip no matter what. I have all these people I want to see, or at least try to see, and they live in all these different places. And they're all so old. If I don't see them on this visit, that might be it.

May is a long month, a 31-day month, but looking at the calendar I feel as though it's going to fly by. Trip planning, dealing with workers, and getting the kids through the end of school. They have two more weeks of school, then finals week, and then it's over. There's a lot to get done these next few weeks, and they're both sick. Hopefully just colds, but the district sent out a rather disturbing notice a few days ago saying that they may have been exposed to whooping cough! I thought, OK, we've all been vaccinated against it, no big deal, but according to the letter, immunity wanes over time. Apparently you can still get it, even if you're vaccinated, though it may be a milder case. So, if the kids start coughing violently next week, we'll probably have to get antibiotics. As long as we can deal with this before the California trip, I'm OK with it.

Speaking of illness, I have a bit of a headache. Maybe I'll go back to bed and read.