Mom and her house

They are talking about skilled care, sending her back. Her eating has decreased, she needs nutrition to heal. The staples are out in her leg, she is not feeling the 'pinch' quite as bad as she was.

Steve and I have been working on her floors quite a bit, each night last week we went up and puttered around. One night he put some skim coat stuff in all the doorways. This is to even out the transition areas when you go from room to room. It is the threashold where the doors are. In most houses you have division in the rooms. Since they used the same tile in the kitchen and dining room, there isn't one in this house. However the old doorway is still uneven and the old tiles broke when you walked on them. Steve is a perfectionist. He wanted them smooth to keep that from happening. So, we put the skim coat on, waited for it to dry, then went up to sand it down and put on a new coat. We took the little shop vac with us. I was running the vacuum next to his little hand held sander to keep the dust down to a minimum. There was DUST CLOUDS in the air everywhere. I kept pointing out to him it shouldn't be that bad, his little sander had a bag on it, surely it wasn't leaking that bad?!?!

It turns out the filter was blown out on the little shop vac. HE went home to get the BIG SHOP VAC. I was running it, there was some dust blowing out of the vacuum, but I thought it was normal. Soon there was a huge dust cloud all over in the kitchen behind me. Turns out that vacuum filter died, too. This made such a mess all over the house. He was so angry, he packed up and went home. This set us back on our work there. He had to go get more sandpaper, more filters, and something to fix the drain in Mom's bathtub.

It appears there is methane gas coming up thru the bathtub into the house. It is a wonder she didn't die from all of that going into the house all these years. He fixed that yesterday as well. Of course, like most projects we work on, he had to make more than one trip to the lumber yard.

Let's not forget the kitchen. He had the light on in there on Friday night, and it burned out. The ligtbulbs in there had to be located, luckily we had some at our house and he replaced them, plenty of light in the kitchen now. I got stuck at work on Friday until 9pm, he worked at mom's until about that time on her floors, sanding the skim coat to make the doorways nice and smooth so the tiles won't break again. He then put another coat on there for us to sand on saturday.

Saturday we worked all day, sanded the floors and laid the tile. We got done there at around 5:30pm. (Made a full work day, 8-5:30) we even had a 1/2 hour lunch. Sunday I went up and made sure the floors were cleaned, there was glue tracked all over them from us walking on the stuff. I washed them good, took the glue up, then washed them again. We had to dry rag clean all the walls in the dining room, then I washed the ceiling fan, and all the furniture. Put everything back, then started cleaning the kitchen where the dust had settled, and the living room. I worked until 4, then went home. I was so tired, I didn't do my own work all weekend.

It is a lot of work, but I worry that she won't do well if she gets chemo and her house isn't clean as it should be. It is a peaceful work, if only I had a book on tape to listen to, it wouldn't be so bad.