Quiet 4th, auction ready?

Mama and I had a quiet 4^th of July. Fireworks, we found out, were done on Sunday evening. Not that Mama would have been up to going out to watch the display, but she was a little sad to have missed it altogether. I was off for the day, so I used the morning to water out plants, replant some vegetable plants in the garden and to weed eat around the house and in the garden. I took a lot of extra time with the animals. Victoria has had to hurry through the morning feedings and neither of us have been diligent about cleaning out the waterers like Mama normally does. So, yesterday, all of them got scrubbed clean. Fresh water was given in the morning as well as in the afternoon. Maybe the chickens notice. Maybe they don’t. But Mama wants it that way.

I spent the afternoon in the office working on our current list. I have to decide today or tomorrow if Mama and I will attend the auction coming up next week, if I will go to the auction by myself, or if we will wait until she is able to go to an auction with me. When I was just about finished with the research I needed to get done, Mama called. I was going to grill hot dogs and hamburgers once I got home and we needed a couple things to complete the dinner. Mama suggested that I could either go to Walmart and get a few items or we could go together to Brookshire’s. I chose the latter, but the outing would require that Mama be able to get into and out of the Sequoia. We experimented once I was home and Mama was changed.

She was able to get into the back seat from the passenger side using the rails on the vehicle. It was not a quick process, but it did not seem too cumbersome. With her foot propped up on the console, we headed out.  At the store she was able to scoot across the vehicle and exit from the driver side; once again stepping onto and down from the rails on the vehicle. The little power scooters at the store were in far better condition than those we normally find at Walmart, so Mama was able to get around easily. Unfortunately, the aisles were not as wide as at Walmart and she almost took out a couple of endcaps. Everyone was quite forgiving. Once home, Mama rested a bit. I fired up the grill, chopped up onions, jalapenos, mixed the ground beef with ground turkey and got Mama setup to make potato salad, chili and slaw.

I put some chicken on the grill and pattied out the meat. Mama finished the potato salad and sat down to rest. Once I got the meat on the grill I started getting the kitchen cleaned up. Mama got up and made the chili for the hot dogs. Then she sat back down and rested. Once up again, Mama made the slaw. Then she sat back down and rested. She fussed about having to rest so much. It is to be expected. I explained that the body does not react well to the extent of surgery it has been put through and resting equals healing. After all, she is recovering from a surgery in which the doctor as much as cut her leg off and reattached it. Not a small procedure and the body recognizes the extent of the injury far better than we can understand. We really are “fearfully and wonderfully made.”  Right now, I can see that she is doing more than she was even a few days ago. Whether or not she will be up to making the six-hour trip to Hot Springs, spend the next day in the car searching out properties and then sitting through the auction the next day followed by a six-hour ride home after the auction, we have not decided. It all seems a bit much.

There is one outlier. There is a home on the left-over list that we are trying to get a realtor to look at for us. It is in the same general area, so if we go – or I go by myself – we can look at the property ourselves, but we need to see it before we take any action. It alone would be enough to get us started but we are not getting our hopes up. A property of this caliber on the leftover list generally means there is something physically wrong with the house – fire damage, a serious structural issue or the like. That is why we need to see the property. So far, we have not gotten a realtor to look at it for us. Maybe Mama can get that done today.

So, for now, we are making slow progress on various fronts. It is not the pace either of us hoped for, but it is still progress.