Here’s a pic I took on the car train. Mom is in Charlestown. There’s a branch of PNC bank at Charlestown. She has a PNC bank account set up. Her direct deposits, online addresses, and online phone numbers have been set up. Her furniture is assembled and in place. Many pictures have been hung. The kitchen and pantry are organized. The TV and computer works. We lost one TV in the move. It was a small, inexpensive unit. Its value is less than the insurance deductible. As mom constantly reminds me, it’s not done yet. We’re working on it, but it will take some time.

Mom has made great progress finding her way around Charlestown. She goes to the restaurant and checks her mail. (She got a delightful card from Mark and Jiajia.) Tomorrow, Danita and I are going up to take care of a few things, but our main purpose is to make sure Mom gets on the bus to the grocery store. After that, I need to take some time to catch up at home. Plus our neighborhood office got a new router I need to install. And our website needs a large number of updates installed. Mom has her first visit with her new retina specialist Friday August 6. I’ll provide the transportation. Hopefully I’ll have time to visit the hardware store and get a few things Mom requested before then.

Today it was my team’s turn to count money at Church. Church staff did all the counting during the pandemic. They were delighted to have us start back up last month. This was our second time counting post pandemic. The staff requested several changes in our process. Our new associate pastor hasn’t mastered the fine art of opening the safe, so we got started late. Somebody seems to have taken a group of elementary students over to the sanctuary — I counted and wrapped 209 pennies in the poor box collection. (Lucky me to get the job of counting the Poor Box.) There was lots of discussion and quite a bit of tension. But everybody kept a positive attitude. We got the job done about an hour later than normal. I wanted to do a slow-mo walk out of the building, but it was raining so nobody would slow-mo with me. We’re still trying to figure out when we are next due to count.

I hope this finds everybody doing well. We are anxiously looking forward to Mark and Jiajia’s wedding celebration this weekend.