Catching up.

I had not realized how long it had been since my last post.

So much has happened in our lives, and there have been some changes.
My last post was April 2018.  So here's a little Catch-up.

First - Mother in law, and the house in Granbury -

During the last half of 2017 and into 2018 Daryl's mother had steadily become more and more affected by dementia, and probably Alzheimers.  Daryl and Michael traded off, and were staying with her pretty much 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Michael during the week while Daryl worked, and Daryl on weekends to give Michael a break. It was tough not seeing my husband much, but his mother needed him.

She passed away suddenly on July 22, 2018. She had been good the day before, Daryl took her out for a drive, they got take out food, we video chatted from Raylen's 12th birthday party with them, and all seemed OK. Daryl got up the next morning, and she had passed away overnight.

After all the arrangements, and funeral were finished, came the task of trying to make her home bearable. She had been a hoarder, and while alive, would get so upset if you moved her papers, or put anything anywhere she didn't want it. Her bedroom had stuff piled at least 3 to 4 foot high everywhere, except a path to the bed, and path to the toilet. And the smell was awful.. She had rotted food, cat mess, human mess, it was just bad.

Took a while but the house became livable inside, and then Daryl started working on the outside. We decided we wanted to live in the house, so he will be buying out his sister and brother's part of it once the estate is all settled. Daryl is the executor, and that is another matter that is dragging on, not because Daryl is trying to drag it on, it's just he only has so many hours in his days, and his mother had not filed income taxes for almost 10 years before her death, and finding the correct paperwork to do taxes that old, (she had lots of stocks, with at least 3 or 4 different brokers...  ) is taking him a while.  Plus getting someone to do an estate sale of all her junk has been difficult. They want to charge a lot to do it, because there is so much "stuff". 

Early March we came down here to stay a week, then Covid19 hit, and we stayed. We just decided to swap the households, and do her estate sale in Fort Worth, and go ahead and just start living here ourselves. It makes it much easier for Daryl to do the work that needs to be done, instead of waiting for the weekend, he can do stuff when he gets home from work.  So we are all 4 (Daryl, Michael, Jessica and myself) are living here now. Plus the pets... 

That's another change in our life, we "inherited" my mother in laws cat Twinkletoes. Twinkletoes is not normal. Twinkle is weird. If you have ever seen Captain Marvel, Twinkletoes is like a Flerken. Seriously. SO we added her to our menagerie - we have 5 cats now... and the 2 dogs. We are almost all moved in with our things here, only real furniture of ours left at the other house is my vanity. But there is a lot of stuff in the 2 storage buildings and the garage. And the garage here is full of junk from Daryl's mom, his granny, and his great aunt. His mother kept so much junk.  Someday we will have this all done. Then we will sell our home in Fort Worth, pay his brother and sister for this place and we will be settled until retirement.


Second - NEW JOB for me!
In fall of 2019 American decided it was going to do away with home based reservations agents. They gave us plenty of notice to either transfer as office based, or take a furlough. I chose furlough. I did not want to work in that office.  I get sick EVERY time I go to the office for meetings, or any in office training...   Then in November they posted job openings for home based agents in Customer Relations !!!  I applied, interviewed, and got hired. I started training end of January, 3 weeks in office training (where I got sick the first week, and stayed sick almost the entire training time!) and 3 weeks on the job training  - doing the actual job, with help onsite. Then we transitioned home. My first week at home, our internet went out, Daryl suggested going to his mom's house, since we are paying for internet there, so I did...  and we never left after that - because the week after that all Covid19 happened.  Now I am so very very happy with this job, but due to Covid, I may not have it much longer. They are doing layoffs in a month, and I am super worried I will be let go. This is a job I was meant to do, I love doing it, and just appreciate it so much. I am pretty scared, and worried about this.

Third - Jessica graduated College! She graduated as a double major, with degrees in Anthropology and History, and a minor in Classical studies!  She is planning on getting her masters degree at UTA in the fall, in Public History with certification in Archival studies. She loves her history.  She didn't get to graduate, due to Covid. It was heartbreaking for her, and us to see how it affected her. Social distancing has made her life so hard. She's 23, has been cut off from her school, her classmates, her friends, it has not been easy on her. But she's doing pretty good now. Just have to figure out how we will pay for Grad school for her.

That's all the big news really -  Daryl and I dd take a trip to Paris France September 2018. I am going to write a whole big blog full of amazing photos about that!!!