Saturday, September 25, 2021

Saturday, September 25, 2021

Tonight's picture was taken in September of 2008. By that point, Mattie was in treatment for about a month. All the PICU rooms had little windows that faced the hallway. Even early on Mattie was into catching the attention of nurses, making them laugh, and playing antics. Peter blew up several gloves for Mattie to play with, as Peter was trying to lighten the mood in our room. Early on we did not realize all the items we would need to bring to the hospital. So we had little for Mattie to play with and keep him busy. We learned quickly however, and subsequent admissions or discharges, people could hear us coming, as we literally had BINS, and BINS filled with all sorts of things we needed from laundry detergent, toiletries, food items, clothes, things to decorate the room, and of course games and toys. The bins were on wheels, and I am sure we were a sight to others. But we were prepared for just about anything that was needed!

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

• Number of people diagnosed with the virus: 42,897,295
• Number of people who died from the virus: 687,696

It was another full day at the Farm. Honestly everything seems to take ten times longer here. Peter commented to me today that there still seems like SO SO much more to do! Indeed that is true, but I tried to be positive and reflected on just how much we have done already.

Because of all the work we did to paint the house, I am on a kick that I don't want to put nails on the walls for smaller pictures and frames. In DC we used to use velcro 3M products to attach things to the walls. We tried doing that here, and literally frames fell right off the wall, and broke in thousands of pieces. So I bought this heavy duty two sided tape. We used it for Mattie's artwork today. Honestly this stuff is so industrial, I think the wall will fall first, before the photos. Which has its pluses and minuses, so now I am thinking about going back to using nails. Any case, these photos are of paintings Mattie created during his cancer treatment. Several of Mattie's painting were ceiling tiles in the clinic. When they renovated the clinic (after Mattie died), they gave me the huge ceiling tiles to take home. But I was worried about the safety of the materials comprising the tiles, and therefore decided to take photos of the tiles, and frame the photos instead. 

The previous owner had lots of curtains. One pair I absolutely hated and donated them, but two sets were neutral enough. So I had them dry cleaned and pressed and I ordered new curtain rods because the rod the previous owner had in the dining room was sparkly with rhinestones! Not my style. Instead, I wanted something in the bronze family and shopped around until I found what I was looking for. Peter and I have never hung curtain rods before. So the dining room took us a bit of time to figure out. But thankfully Peter is very mechanical and skilled around the house. 

After tackling the dining room, we moved onto the living room. A tough space because there isn't much wall space to hang the hardware for the rods. Which is why I had to purchase rods and finials that would fit this space. Tomorrow we are going to begin to assess the basement level. Right now we have things stacked down there and I have to begin to unpack and find space for Mattie's treasures and keepsakes. Which most likely will mean that Peter and I need to build out the storage closet in the basement.