We are here until October 13th, so a total of six weeks. Normally, we don't come back to the Ottawa area for such a long time. But Ruth's brother who lives nearby needed a break from looking after their father and so he is taking off in his travel trailer for a much needed vacation down to the U.S..
Normally, I would get antsy to go somewhere after three weeks here. And that may happen anyhow! But at least I have lots to do here. The house needs a ton of work that hasn't been kept up with over the last ten years. It's a real shame, because it's a beautiful old house and he was really good at keeping it up. Some of the stuff is too big a job for me and someone needs to be hired to do the work.
But, there is a lot that I can do. Ruth has lots to do too! Her father won't be coming back here, and he is beyond the point of being able to sort through the 50 years worth of accumulated "stuff", so that job gets left to the children. There are filing cabinets full of papers that date well back into the 1990's!
We've got lots of visiting with family and friends to do as well. And, we will get out to do some local hiking trails and some day trips. And my guys weekend away with my old friends is coming up at the end of this month and I always look forward to that. And just before we leave for Ecuador, Ruth is going to her 40th anniversary high school reunion.
There is a 5 km (3 mile) walking route that we do from the house here. We will try and do that every day or two while we are here. At a fast pace, it's a 45 minute walk with a few hills to get the heart beating.
Remember when we were here at the end of April, and there was a bad flood? Here are some "before and after" pics for you...
Mid April flood.
Yesterday.
Mid April flood.
Yesterday.
Yesterday, we drove back over to our daughter's place to drop off the van. She then took us to downtown to pick up our rental car. It's a sharp looking black 2019 Chevrolet Spark with all the toys. Even has the computer "Infotainment" system that pairs your smartphone with on screen display. Fancy stuff. I had to read the owners manual to figure out how it all works!
But, the best deal I could find was $782 CAD ($586 USD) for a month. ($26 CAD, $19.50 USD per day, taxes included). We will keep it for longer than a month, but the same rate continues until we are done with it.
Not a fantastic deal, but it was the best that was available. At least it's a small car and will be easy on fuel. We tend to drive a lot of miles when we visit Ottawa!
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Nice price drop on the beige coloured 9' x 12' Reversible RV Patio Mat with carry bag
And in Canada...
You and Ruth will have lots to do in the next 6 weeks. It seems like a long time but you’d be surprised at how time passes by when you think you have a lot of it. There’s a lot waiting for you two to get done. I hope Ruth’s Dad is content where he is. I’m sure he’s getting good care.
ReplyDeleteYep, we sure do have lots to do over the next 6 weeks and yes, the time will definitely fly by for us. We can't believe how much there is too do around here and I sure that we won't even get half of the things done that we want to do but at least it will be a start.
DeleteAt times he is content where he is but he still wants to come back to his house which just isn't possible. Even when we had him here on Friday for the afternoon and for dinner he talked about wanting to go upstairs and downstairs and he just doesn't realize that he can't physically do that anymore. It is so very hard to see them getting old like this, when they can't do the things that they used to be able to do. He has friends at the "Villa" and I know that if he was here at the house he would end up wanting to go back there because he would just be too lonely here.
We had to do the same with my husband's parents house after moving them into assisted living. With some help from other siblings, we got it about 95% done in 3 weeks, but boy, was it a lot of work. In addition to all their stuff, the amount of paper (old tax returns and many other things) was overwhelming. We had a little shredder, and one of my main jobs was sitting there and shredding decades worth of paper! We also filled two huge dumpsters of stuff, and too countless loads to recycling, Goodwill, the library, etc. Also gave away a lot of free stuff to neighbors. It was a JOB. Best of luck to you in this endeavor.
ReplyDeleteIt is nice that you were able to work with your siblings to get the house cleared out. The problem that we are having here is that the house isn't being sold or even rented out. My dad hasn't lived in here for over 1 1/2 years, it just sits empty unless Kevin and I come to visit or my sister comes to visit and really it is only us at the moment that seem to want to start trying to clean things up and toss out some minor stuff that really is just junk with no value. And don't even get me started on the paperwork, I think it will be just like what you had to deal with, years and years of old paperwork that needs to be shredded and tossed. And then there is the maintenance that needs to be done on the house. It really would be best to clear everything out, get things fixed and sell or rent the house out but my dad doesn't want it sold. Although my brother is POI for him as he can't make the proper choices anymore, and my brother doesn't want to sell the house either until he absolutely has to or until my dad tells him too which I can't see happening. Anyways we will try to sort some stuff out to at least make things a little easier down the road. It is going to be one huge job someday down the road. :-(
DeleteThat is too bad, Ruth. I wonder if your brother just can't bear to make that difficult decision yet? If so, then just do as much as you can every time you are there. Eventually the big job of completely clearing it out and selling (or renting) it will be upon you, but for now, if you can't agree, and your brother has POI, I guess you have to live with the current situation. We were very lucky in that my husband's father was ready to sell, his wife had dementia so couldn't really have a vote, and once we moved them into assisted living, we never took them back to the house, as it would have been too upsetting. After the big clean out, we had a cleaning service come in and do a deep clean of the house, and my husband and I did a lot of work in the yard. With all that done, it sold in a week! What a relief that was.
DeleteThat may be part of the problem, I know that is the case for my sister but I also think that it is just a huge and overwhelming job to undertake and he just doesn't want the headache of it at the moment. I think that our best decision would be to come back next spring and plan on spending the summer here and have both my brother and sister here for a week to sort through a lot of the main stuff and sell what we can, get the repairs sorted out and fixed and then at least rent the place out with a management company to look after finding the right tenants and looking after everything so that my brother won't have to worry about the house until the time comes to actually sell it.
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