Quieter Times Ahead

The Estate Sale at Grandma’s is all over, Kathryn and Ernie are on the way home, and Anne-Marie and I get to clean up the place, but at our own schedule.  The sale disposed of a lot of stuff, and we need to gather the remaining items that didn’t sell, into a group so that the Salvation Army folks can pick it up.  The sorting out of the family mementos took a bit longer than anticipated, and in haste, because of the upcoming sale, a large pile was not boxed up, but covered with blankets, to protect from being sold.  The remaining pile needs to be boxed and put into storage by Anne-Marie and I.  The house is still listed for sale, but there is a chance that we have a renter lined up for the winter season.  This house had only a couple of boxes of nonmarketable trash in it, total.  Grandma and Grandpa had traveled full time for 20+ years, and had a lot of little souvenir items, from all over the world, and this took a lot of energy to sort.  This house was tidy, and nothing compared to the estate sales that I helped with, back when we had a book store at home.  I remember some houses that had so much junk, that in the end it sorted out to less than one box of good stuff, to 10 boxes of trash.  The estate sales, at one point got to be the same pile, just at a different house.

Anne-Marie and I are just numb and tired from the whirlwind of energy that was used up by all of us.  Yesterday we did a small shopping trip, and we forgot several items that were written on the list that we had in hand.  This was a week of high energy work for us, but Kathryn and Ernie, after driving 835 miles made it a week of vacation for them, and after all of this, they get to have a relaxing 835 mile drive back to Carson City in Nevada, so that the both of them can rush back to work tomorrow.  Anne-Marie and I had vacations that involved long drive times, and high energy activities, and a rush back to work to rest from the vacation, I don’t know how we did it.

Anne-Marie and I are just beat, but not from the physical work, but the number of decisions to make, and the overwhelming amount of stuff to look at.  This reminds me of when we were in the Great Lakes area this last summer, and we were trying to do two or three museums and attractions a day, and we both had information overload several times when we looked at too much.

Two coyotes this morning, and one about 11PM last night.  This picture shows the female sniffing a little container of ant poison, that was set out on a ant home.  The ants were traveling to a RV site, and becoming a real bother, and the RV owner set these pet safe ant baits along the ant trail.  There is a coyote in the distance straight up from the seed block, at the edge of the wash.

The ant poison is what she doesn’t like.  She has visited nearly every night, and been captured by the camera, and she marks this almost every time.  This is the first daytime pictures of the coyotes, and I’m still waiting for the Javelina to come by.  A few nights ago, a neighbor just about 100 yards away, had a visit by the Javelina, so my turn is getting closer.