peace and quiet

Lisa's son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter moved out a couple of days ago. We had given them 30 days to find someplace to go, but they said "don't worry, we're leaving tomorrow." Lisa had been telling them for several months that she felt that they needed to have a place of their own so they could essentially grow up. They've had a more or less free ride here and it was causing stress for Lisa.

When they left, they took the kitten and another cat, Moe, but left the eldest cat, Jack. Lisa had told them long ago that since she had paid to have him neutered, he was now hers. He always spends the night in our room anyway.

Jack seems very happy to have the house to himself (except for Lisa, me, and Sage the dog). No other cats eating from his dish; no pesky kitten trying to play with him against his will. He runs like the wind around the house and yard and has even started hunting squirrels again. We would prefer that he not actually catch the squirrels, but it is heartening to see his attitude improving.

The job at the animal hospital didn't pan out, but I checked in with Winn-Dixie last weekend. They may have an opening for a stock clerk. The manager told me that a woman was on vacation and he didn't know if she would be coming back. Apparently she has been considering a move to another town. He told me to come back next week, when he will know more about the situation.

Another option that Lisa has been exploring is for me to get paid to care for her. As it stands right now, I do all the cooking and cleaning, take care of the animals, ensure that she pays her bills on time, takes her medications and goes to her doctor's appointments. I also check on her during the night; sometimes she falls asleep on the toilet (before I moved in, she once nodded off on the toilet, fell and broke her nose). She doesn't require home medical care, but does need a caretaker of sorts.

And so today we are busy: re-arranging the kitchen so we can find things, cleaning areas that were essentially the kids' responsibility (they didn't do a very good job) and later I will wash the sink load of dirty dishes they left behind.

One thing they never could seem to understand was why neither Lisa nor I ever washed the dishes that piled up in the kitchen sink(s). Our reasoning was simple enough: when we use a dish, silverware and/or a cooking pot, we wash them immediately. We even kept our own plates, bowls, coffee cups, forks, spoons and knives in our bedroom (two of each) so we would have clean dishes available when we ate. They claimed that they "almost never" ate and therefore could not have filled the sink with dirty dishes, yet over a span of two days one of the sinks would be literally overflowing with soiled kitchenware. At least they kept the baby's bottles consistently clean.

An unrelated item: I filled out an absentee ballot for the November election and it is going out today. Even though our polling location is extremely close to home, one can never predict what events could affect our ability to make it to the polls on Election Day. In 2004 I voted early, and was glad that I did because I was in the hospital on Election Day.