We were lucky. Addie and Suzanne had a half day of school Wednesday. Lynne brought them down to our house for the afternoon. We got them tickets to an escape room. After the plans were laid, we learned that an adult was required to be present. Danita got herself a ticket, but she stayed quiet and let the kids try to solve the puzzles. It turns out this escape room has very difficult puzzles. They solved several puzzles, but not quite all of them. Still, everybody had fun. The kids entertained themselves the rest of the afternoon. We enjoyed pulled pork for dinner.

Thursday we visited AVAM (American Visionary Art Museum). This museum used to be dedicated to folk art. It’s changed since the last time we were there. The majority of the exhibits focus on global warming, genocide, and other “light” topics. I felt like I was being clubbed over the head. They still had plenty of our old favorites. After touring the first building, we had lunch on Federal Hill before visiting the second building. That turned out to be an excellent decision, as it was beginning to rain when we left. We drove through quite a storm to get home. After the rain let up, we played indoor Monster Mini-Golf. We kept score this time, which turned out to be more fun. The kids tried harder to do well. Danita got a hole in one. Since the kids aren’t eligible for the traditional round of drinks, we went to Uno’s for dinner. Brian managed to eat his entire individual pizza. We tuckered them out for sure. After the evening movie, both kids went straight to sleep.

I haven’t been taking many pics. Here’s a few.

We took it easy on the grandkids Monday. They had to get up super early to catch their plane. They ended sitting near the back of the plane. They didn’t get to sit next to each other. No matter how young you are, travel is stressful. The plane got in a few minutes late shortly after 10 AM. We went to Patapsco park. I knew exactly where I wanted to go. Unfortunately, the only way I ever go there is on the bike. They don’t let cars drive on pedestrian trails. We ended up going to the wrong park entrance and driving around for quite a while. But we got there eventually. We had a picnic lunch. We walked the pedestrian suspension bridge. We walked in the river and rearranged stones. And of course we listened to the cicadas.

Mom had a person from Erikson visit Monday afternoon to look at the furniture she wants to move. She measured the furniture and has the apartment layout. She will propose a layout that uses as much of the furniture as fits. I wanted to be on the phone with them. So I went over to the car to use my cell phone. I was surprised to find there was no signal! I had to drive to the other side of the park. Mom had done a good job of selecting what she wanted to move. The meeting lasted longer than I expected it to. And I didn’t have time to warn Danita that I had moved the car. Fortunately, Danita also noted there was no phone signal. Unfortunately, the water bottles were in the car. But I the phone call ended, and Danita saw me pull into the parking lot. Everything turned out fine. Note to Julia: look for several interesting rocks to be somewhere in the luggage when the kids get home.

We had sloppy joe’s for dinner and watched “The Man Who Saw Infinity”.

Tuesday we ramped it up a little. After lunch we went to Arundel Mills Mall. We started out with the movie Cruella. It is a clever movie. Who would think Disney would make a movie where all the characters are “bad guys”? We went bowling. We ate at the food court for dinner, topping it with Hagan Dazes ice cream. I was surprised to see there was only one closed store at the mall, and it had a “coming soon” sign. For after dinner entertainment, we watched the movie “Wonder”.

It’s a lot of fun to see good kids turning into delightful people.

We made good progress on Mom’s move to Charlestown. We have one more meeting to discuss what furniture Mom will move and how it will be laid out in her apartment. The person who does the financial review will come back to work this week. We’re in “danger” of being ready to sign the contract and list Mom’s condo in Florida.

This week will be a busy one for us. Bryon and Elizabeth are flying in Monday and will stay for a week. Look forward to lots of pictures coming soon.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Mark, Jiajia, and Mira visited this weekend. They came down Friday and left mid-morning Sunday, We had cool, rainy weather so Mira stayed indoors. Mark & Jiajia had a dinner out, did a food tasting for the wedding, and had brunch with some friends. You can see pictures in the website.

Ed and Lynne came up for dinner after a trip to Texas. They visited their grandchildren Masie and Annie and also visited Rick & Suzie. All of us had dinner Saturday. Danita made beef stew for dinner, with chocolate-raspberry brownies for desert. We have plenty of deserts. Mark & Jiajia brought some cheese cake.

Besides that, I got the garage, deck, and porch cleaned for the spring. Danita got Bud’s old apartment completely empty. She will turn in the key this week.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

I sold my bike. I rode that bike 18,000 miles and it still rides like a dream. It was a real workhorse. But I was riding the trike whenever I could. I finally got the panniers on the trike. It is far from perfect. It absolutely has to be improved. I don’t think the trike will be nearly the workhorse that my old bike was. But it is time to move forward.

I put the bike on Craig’s list Thursday. I figured there was a 50/50 chance somebody would see it and contact me sometime over the weekend. When I got up Friday, I had a dozen people asking to buy it. Everybody wanted to buy it sight unseen. Nobody was hem-hawing. The first person who contacted me wanted to pick it up right away, but Thursday is our dinner out night. I didn’t want to interfere with that. I made him wait until Friday.

Danita is finishing up the cleanout of Bud’s old apartment. She will finish packing up and bringing stuff home Monday. Then she has to call “800-get-junk” to get the last of the stuff out. Poor Bud is not enjoying his new apartment. He has said he is moving in with his parents, with is (deceased) sisters, etc. Unfortunately, he is no longer safe in independent living.

Mom’s apartment is almost done. A carpenter will take a couple of days to finish everything up. That will be one less thing for her to worry about. Her move is moving along. She has a Zoom appointment with a decorator (to discuss colors, appliances, and other stuff), and an in-home visit with a moving specialist (to discuss what to move, furniture layout, etc.) Mom has to fill out lots of forms, from financial information to how she wants her newsletter delivered. Unfortunately, her printer stopped working. I had been download forms to her computer and printing them out for her to complete. Then I would scan them and upload them to my computer. It was a wonderful system until the printer stopped working. Now we have to wait for the US Post Office to deliver things by mail.

This is biking weather and I’m taking advantage of it. Rides obviously get shorter during the winter. I have to do some re-conditioning this time of year. My goal was to be able to do a 40 mile ride with moderate hills. I met that goal last week. I have a shorter ride that I like because of the killer hills. I had to modify that route because my trike is not up to the most extreme hill on that ride. Oh, well. We all have to move on.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

This week was a lot like last week.

The mold in Mom’s house has been remediated. They had to treat it twice, but it’s done now. While treating the mold, they hang plastic floor to ceiling curtains to contain the infected areal. Because Mom’s bedroom was isolated, they used curtains with zippers so Mom could get in and out of her bedroom. They took the curtains down Saturday. Mom no longer has to crawl through two zippered slits to get from her bedroom to the rest of her house. That was quite an operation for her, managing her walker and zippers at the same time. I hope they will be patching up her wallboard this week.

Monday Danita and I will view a couple of apartments at Charlestown, bringing Mom in by Zoom. If she likes what she sees, she might select her apartment. There’s a lot involved in the move. The folks at Charlestown are telling us we shouldn’t expect her to move before July.

Danita is making good progress on emptying Bud’s old apartment. I went down with her this week and packed two boxes of glasses — wine glasses, brandy snifters, Manhattan glasses, water glasses, shot glasses, and many more for which I have no idea of their purpose. That’s two heavy boxes for Goodwill. I plan to go down with her this week to start shuttling stuff to Goodwill. We won’t be done this week, but we should be done the week after. Her other project is getting all of Bud’s sheets, towels, and clothing labeled. She’s labeling sheets today. Bud has two very large china closets in the apartment. No charities will take them because they are too big. We will be to using 1-800-GotJunk.

You may recall that bolts came loose, causing my new trike fell apart under me a week or so ago. I had to take it to the shop to readjust the gears. I was able to test my bike ramp. I actually can put the bike in the car by myself. After all that, I have decided it’s not wise to ride the trike up the steepest hills. I re-routed my hilly ride to avoid the most “interesting” hills. It’s a sad but wise thing to do. My last trike project is to find a way to carry a moderate load of stuff so I can ride the trike to the store.

That’s the news for this week. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

A couple of weeks ago I talked about being busy on two fronts. We upped our game since then.

Mom decided to move to a CCRC in Baltimore. Mom, Danita, Dani, and I had a Zoom meeting with Charlestown. We discussed several options. Charleston is an Erickson community. They work with a relocation company that specializes in elderly moves across the US. A relocation consultant will be visiting Mom soon.

Repairs to Mom’s unit continue. The leak is fixed. A mold company found two area of mold. A remediation team will be working on that this week. After that, we should be able to start on repairs to the drywall.

Danita is visiting Riderwood every other day to clean out Bud’s old unit. It’s a lot of work to find a new home for everything. For example, Bud has 4 sets of china. They had significant financial value when purchased, but today people want dishwasher safe. Ed, Lynne, and I help; but Danita does most of the work. Danita and I were at Riderwood yesterday. It was fun watching all the flower delivery trucks and visitors carrying flowers.

I visited the audiologist this week. I learned that dropping the hearing aid into my shirt pocket wasn’t caused by wearing the aid incorrectly. They offered a small plastic wire that is supposed to help keep the hearing aids in place. Later that day, I took my bike to a shop to have some adjustments made. I was discussing the bike with an employee when my hearing aid fell off my ear. The plastic wire did its job. I just put it back behind my ear. I’m back to wearing the hearing aids most of the time. However, I’ve decided that hearing aids don’t mix with physical activity such as home projects and bike rides.

Danita and I are enjoying our COVID vaccinations. We’re back to going to Church. We eat out at restaurant one dinner a week plus breakfast on Sunday mornings. Thanks to the early 7:30 mass, we were even able to get into Panera this morning before the serious crowds started.

That’s the news for this week. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We snuck out of town and drove to Julia’s Friday. We drove down in one day, taking the I-95 route around DC, Richmond, Greensborough, and Durham. This is the shortest but most stressful route. All those driver aids proved to be a big help. The trip down was uneventful.

We had a few misses this weekend but also had a lot of fun. The weather was perfect.

We started our Saturday watching Bryon at fencing class. Even the warmup exercises were interesting. We learned a lot about fencing. This time the class was organized as a mini-tournament. Bryon came in second in his group. (There’s more pics in the website. Bryon has his back to us in the pic.) Elizabeth wanted to come along. She spent her time entertaining herself.

While visiting, we like to take grandkids on adventures. Saturday we wanted to take the kids to a really nice mini-golf course and then pick some strawberries on the way home. The afternoon was a complete bust. The drive to the mini-golf took closer to an hour than a half-hour. The mini-golf looked great, but it was completely packed. There were long lines of people everywhere. We decided it wouldn’t be fun and didn’t stay. I even had trouble getting out of the parking lot. On the way home, we stopped at the strawberry farm. In spite of their website, they did not have pick-your-own. They had some great looking strawberries, but the only had huge buckets — far more than we could use before they went bad.

After dinner we made a recovery of sorts. We made some comments comparing Bryon to Zorro, only to learn that neither Bryon nor Elizabeth knew anything at all about Zorro. Saturday evening, we watched the 1998 version of “The Mask of Zorro” with Anthony Hopkins and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Everybody enjoyed the flick.

Sunday was better. We drove to a place called 40 acre rock. They have some very rare red plants that only grow in a few places around the world. Bryon got to show off his Boy Scout skills, identifying several types of plants and critters. He even sighted a dung beetle. It was the first time any of us had actually seen one.

We decided to break up the trip home. We’re in Burlington, NC tonight. We’ll make it home tomorrow.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

It’s been a very busy and stressful week, and it’s not getting better any time real soon. Mom had several recurrences of her leak. We thought we finally fixed the issue, but the leak came back yesterday. Because it started on the weekend, nothing will happen until tomorrow. Mom is understandably upset. In the mean time, Danita spent a lot of time at Riderwood preparing for Bud’s move. Ed and Lynne helped out a couple of days, and I helped out another. Bud got moved Saturday as planned. The move went well physically, but Bud is confused and upset. I could tell more detailed stories, but it’s the emotional issues that are hardest. By dinner time, we are generally both exhausted.

Danita and I took today off. We went to Church, had a nice breakfast, and spent the day resting. Danita will be back at Riderwood tomorrow, sorting through stuff. Tuesday is a family meeting at Riderwood to discuss what to do with the stuff that wasn’t moved. I’ll be staying close to a phone so I can talk with service people.

I had a humorous happening this week. I went to the audiologist to get fitted for my hearing aids. I was driving home, playing with the GPS, and noticing all the different sounds I was hearing with my hearing aids, when my phone rang. I was in our fancy new car with all its fancy features. I could answer the phone simply by pushing a button on the screen, which I did. The call was routed through the car’s sound system. It was Stew, the guy from the condo association. I wanted his advice on what the building’s responsibilities are. Unfortunately, the car continued to play the GPS instructions while I was on the phone. I couldn’t see how to turn the navigation off. So Stew and I talked, listening to the nav system tell me which way to turn, while I tried find the kill button for the nav, and also think through the implications of what Stew was telling me. And drive the car without hitting anybody. It was quite the technology tangle. It turns out there’s a big circle on the nav screen with an “x” in it. I don’t know why I didn’t see it.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

I visited Mom in West Palm Beach this week. We ate at restaurants and took care of “stuff”. Our biggest success was selling Mom’s car. Mom hasn’t driven since her accident. She desperately wanted to get rid of the car. This is a 2008 Honda Fit with 35,000 miles, a wrinkled quarter panel, and a wrap-around bumper that was flapping in the breeze. She was going to sell it to Carvana for $3K. She had a higher quote from CarMax, but CarMax is half an hour away. She definitely wasn’t going to drive to CarMax. The Carvana sale came to a halt when they wanted her to Email a picture of her odometer. She doesn’t even have a camera. While in WPB, I got a new quote from CarMax for $5300. I assumed that was an error, but we took the quote to CarMax. They offered us — $5300, flapping bumper and all. We were quite pleasantly surprised.

The other person in the accident is suing Mom. Mom was served a week or so ago. We’ve exchanged forms and information with the lawyer. The lawyer called while I was in WPB. She was very reassuring. She said that Mom was not at fault. She thinks it will take a year for the suit to be settled, due to pandemic delays and backlogs.

Our biggest disappointment was the air conditioner. The AC had condensation water leaking on the floor. Mom had several service people visit without fixing anything. We had a service person visit while I was there. It seemed to be successful. There was no water on the floor for the last 2 days of my visit. Unfortunately, the water returned after I left. This time the service person found a lot of water behind a wall with mold. So Mom is going to have to go through a semi-major repair.

On the home front, Danita, Ed, and Bud looked at two apartments in assisted living. They selected one with more closets and Danita signed the papers. Bud will move on April 24. Assisted living apartments are much smaller. Only a few of Bud’s items will be moved. We’ll be spending time at Riderwood selecting what will be moved and getting it ready. Riderwood generously allows us 60 days to empty the old apartment of all personal items. We’ll continue to be busy after Bud’s move.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.