It's Been A Busy While

After moving the office and doing a lot of de-cluttering, my parents asked me to do more of the same at their place. I have now spent hours with sorting through years of accumulated (to be nice, let's call it) "stuff." One of the consequences of the office move was relocating a lot of my father's business stuff that was stored in the office where we had plenty of room.

All of it was moved to my parent's house and into their basement. Their basement wasn't fit for even mice, being dark and clammy. So the first order of business was to install a lot of overhead lighting and then, once they could see the sorry state of things, I was asked to paint all the walls white along painting the cellar steps. 10 gallons of white paint and 2 gallons of grey paint later, the cellar is much brighter. Then de-cluttering took place with me being able to see what I was looking at!

This lead to me being asked to paint their dining room, then their living room, and then their bedroom, a couple hallways, and bathroom. I even hung some wallpaper (borders.) All this done, they asked me to do some painting down the shore. I have painted and de-cluttered until I have dropped. And there is still more to do. The last bit of painting was their garden shed as you can see in flickr (on the right.)

This is a murky shot of the house down the shore's attic. I removed an entire dumpster worth of "stuff". The attic had never been emptied even by the guy my folks bought the place from. The previous owner was a depression-era child - so he hoarded old rusty nails, scraps of wood, old ripped out electrical wire, half-used paneling, odds and ends of dry wall, you name it. I even found two old bathroom mirror cabinets - apparently obtained at a garage sale for $2 each and left upstairs for that "some day project." That some day never came.

Wondering about what had become of the previous owner, I located one of his sons on the Internet and we exchanged a number of "catching up" emails. They were family friends of my parents - time just caused us to drift apart. Sadly, the old-timer has passed away, after a slow decline from Alzheimer's Disease. He taught me a bunch of things about boats, being an ex-Navy man that served in WWII.

Elsewhere's down the shore, people are still recovering from the aftermath of "Super-Storm Sandy" and work continues with many seashore cottages being "jacked up" so that the next flooding shouldn't be so harmful. Just watch the first step as you leave the house!

One of the low-lying houses that I spent some hours of my boyhood in is no longer there. The lot was cleared this past month. The memories of happy times enjoyed at the shore haven't been cleared from my head - but the place died a little - it just isn't the same without both the people and the places that used to be there.

As some of you know, me and my two brothers were called the "Three K's" when growing up since we all have names starting with "K". So I found the name of this boat to be of humorous interest. I sent the phone-photo to my brothers when I saw it. :) The "Two K's." My brothers are still arguing over which of us would be the missing "K" continuing with this morning's go-round about someone being a "Special K."