Saturday, August 7, 2021

Saturday, August 7, 2021

Tonight's picture was taken in August of 2002. Mattie was four months old and was sitting on the couch with me. I brought his basket of stuffed animals over and introduced Mattie to them. I did this over and over again the first several months of his life, so Mattie got used to their names, shapes, noises they made, and I could see which ones he gravitated to. For the most part, Mattie was never into stuffed animals. I had several favorite stuffed animals when I was a child, so did Peter. But none of these animals were that important to Mattie. 

Quote of the day: Today's coronavirus update from Johns Hopkins. 

• Number of people diagnosed with the virus: 35,730,560
• Number of people who died from the virus: 616,710

I woke up this morning feeling awful. I was running a low grade fever and had all my tell tale sinus infection signs. But I had to push through it because we rented a Uhaul this weekend to move stuff out of our storage space in our complex. In the basement of our building, our complex has given us free storage for years. Which is greatly appreciated as storage space can be costly to maintain. Over the years we have placed all sorts of things in storage, things that go back twenty years! For example this TV set. This TV goes back to the summer of 1989 when I met Peter at Union College. He actually lent me his TV so I could watch Days of our Lives. A generous fellow, and it is one of those symbols that reminds me of our college days and how we first met. 

This is what the storage space looks like. Tenants pick a spot and literally we store our things together. No one has ever touched our things and in a way this is like a community spot. Can you imagine a place where no locks are needed? This speaks to the character of long term tenants here, we respect each other's things.

This was the spot we chose to store our things over the years. Peter spent hours carting out bins and all sorts of things to the Uhaul. A majority of things belong to the Foundation such as Walk materials like posters, games, walk challenge cups, and so forth. 

We spent about three hours unloading the truck at the house and finding new homes for our Foundation items. 

Meanwhile, I have become the Next Door guru! This very large pool table lamp was left in the basement of the house. We did not want it, so I put advertised it on Next Door for free. Free is the magic word! A woman came to pick it up, so one down!

The former owner left us two large dog crates. Since Sunny isn't crated, I wanted to find good homes for them. So I put it on Next Door today and a woman who works for a rescue organization picked up both of them this afternoon. 

This crate is as big as Sunny! I am so glad they are going to a good home and will help other rescues. But frankly I can't tell you the amount of stuff the former owner left us to clean up! 

This is the next item I put on Next Door. Years ago a friend gave this double bed frame to me. It is lovely, nothing is wrong with it, but I no longer use it and want to find a good home for it. 

In between working hard, we had lunch on the porch. If you look closely, you can see it was pouring. Sunny was on the porch with us and was behaving himself. I think he learned his lesson last week. His digging activity in the rain landed him in the ER last Sunday and then all week, he was kept at home in DC, with low to no activity.