Sunday Stroke Survival: Ready, Set, Butterflies

 Next Sunday I'll be posting from Savannah, GA. EEK! Yippee!

The boxes I could pack are pack in the staging area in the living room. I switched to plastic totes instead of boxes. I was easier to pack my clothes and kitchen stuff in them. Everything I own fit neatly in 5 of them. I do have another 5 extra large totes in the barn/workshop that also need to go on the truck also. They never made it into the house. If it wasn't for the lift chair, bath chair, bedside commode, chest of drawers, rollator, and wheelchair being so bulky, we could have gotten away with  a cargo van to move me back to the coast. Even when you fold up the things that can be, they still only shrink down so far. I've packed and staged everything to go I can do and the rest is up to them when they come.

I'm actually getting butterflies of excitement about the move. Seeing family again has been an unfulfilled dream for the past three years. Between health and car issues, a trip back home to see everyone hasn't been possible. I spoke to my father and his wife last week. All of us got excited by the prospect of me being an hour away instead of six hours away. Plans were made that when daughter #3 had two days off in a row that I'd go to Daddy's house for those two days. 

My stepmother now has heart issues similar to mine and she's still the primary care taker of my invalid father.  She's got almost 20 years on me too which makes life more difficult for her. Worse comes to worse, I'll at least be able to make up some freezer meals for them. Possibly some meals in a jar to help her out some. Similar to what I made up on the homestead. I've become well versed on them. Much better than regular frozen TV dinners. Those are heavy in fat and salt, and neither of my heart impaired folks need that. I may even wash a load of clothes or two. I'll leave the folding for her two handed self. I can't do much, but I can at least do that to try and give her a break.

Sleeping on a queen sized bed again will be a novelty. The fact that it is my old bedroom set will be bittersweet. It was my mother's before me. I really liked sleeping on the twin sized bed. I didn't instinctively reach over to feel my husband's side of the bed because there wasn't one. But it's been almost seven years since my beloved left me, surely I won't pick that habit back up, will I?  If it becomes a problem, daughter #3 also has a twin size bed they can change it to. So it remains to be seen. 

Poor Lil Bit won't know what to do with so much space on the bed. She's so used to curling up in the hollows around me on the twin to sleep at night. Once I get settled at night, she stakes her claim on a hollow by placing her paws on whatever extremity is handy, and then gets comfortable to sleep. And, at daughter #3's house she won't have to share the bed during the day with Kassity. I'm thinking she's gonna miss that dog because they've had a friendship brewing since she got here as a pup. Maybe, daughter #3's pit bull puppy, Jay, (6 months old) and her can become friends. Daughter #3 inherited him from daughter #2, when her new apartment didn't allow pets.

While the other household cats (Dervish & Patches) chose to teach dogs by hissing and scratching Kassity to teach her how to behave around cats. Lil Bit chose a different tact. She chose to touch noses and light sniffs were okay. Rough-housing with her was not. She'd jump up on the table and box the eager nose with her claws. Not hard enough to draw blood, but to say stop that. Since she was the only cat to make friends with her, Kassity learned. They check on each other when sick or hurt. They'll even leave portions of their "goodies" for each other. That's as close as they have gotten in friendship between a cat and a dog. 

Will Lil Bit be happy without Dervish or any other cat around? Dervish is the Queen cat around here. Lil Bit is either tolerated or harassed by her. Lil Bit doesn't know from one minute to the next what Dervish will do. To be the only cat in the house? I dunno how she'll  like it. It will be a first time for her. She's always been the baby in a multi-cat/multi-animal household. But I think she'll do fine with me there.

So the countdown is almost over. Five days and a wake up and I close the door on another chapter in my life, but the saga continues.

Nothing is impossible.