CHIPPING AWAY

...at oh, you name it. Odd's old bedroom upstairs, into which all his recent bedding had been dumped, blankets, clothes he'd worn over the past year or so. Had to go through it. Kind of a lump in my throat the whole time. A large bag went to Laurel Lake Nursing Home, they always seem to be short on sweatshirt type clothes, I remember one time nothing that came back from the laundry there was Daddy's and they had him dressed in some old green homeless-person type tattered trousers which looked like the last wearer had had a not particularly successful set-to with a grizzly. Another bag will go to Goodwill. Bonnie took a polo shirt for her husband's ex business partner that had SYRACUSE on the breast pocket, Odd's old alma mater. Never worn. A gift from me ten years ago. And finally, a shopping bag full of assorted desk items went down to the secondhand store at the bottom of the road here. I got $20 from the guy.  

Which I immediately used to buy two bottles of the Becket General Store's Best, some not very nice Yellow Tail Sauvignon Blanc, which, having tasted, have relegated to the back of the fridge. This would be the new fridge Peg has bought, currently sitting on the screened-in porch. And this would also be after mopping up major spillage from some extremely sweet rose wine which tasted like strawberry soda that yesterday's houseguests brought, opened, and then didn't screw the top on very well. The guests who I'd thought were arriving at dinner time but who walked in the door at 10:00 AM.  
_________________
Have also culled no-longer-essential (unless of course you are Peg) coffee table books on gardening, plants, Egypt, Norway From Above (aerial views), and a volume devoted to Supertankers which, the stamp inside says, seems to have been withdrawn form the Baldwin Public Library, wherever that is. Anyhow Peg took that one back, along with one of the Oseberg Viking Ship finds.
_________________
LATEST MOTHER- DAUGHTER DISCUSSION:

Lamb Ribs as opposed to Lamb Chops. In the freezer in the bar fridge--as opposed to the new kitchen fridge, or the porch fridge, or the fridge upstairs in Daddy's old office--are two packets of what the labels say are $54.87 worth of "Lamb Spare Ribs" and which Peg keeps saying are lamb chops. Berkshire Organic, which has taken over where Burgner's Turkey Farm was, now has a meat counter apparently. Sometime before I arrived, Peg stopped there with Bonnie and asked for lamb chops. The man handed these plastic packets to her, which she accepted. MY point is that no one (in her right mind) who'd asked for lamb chops would have accepted these spareribs. And tonight, I also learn that when Bonnie buys Peg chops, she buys racks of lamb ($$$$) which Peg then slices. And I guess that's what Peg thought she was getting at Berkshire Organic. Racks of lamb. But they are not, they are spareribs. Which I don't know what the fuck to do with but I guess will sling on the barbecue at some point. Anyhow she's now walked out of the room after banging the counter.

Why did I bring it up? Why couldn't I just let it lie? No idea.

__________________
GOOD NEWS ON FRUIT FLY FRONT:

Had noticed an inundation, and promptly either fridged or Zip-locked everything fruit or veg-like sitting out on counters. Seemed to make no difference. Was convinced something lay dead under a counter but never occurred to me to look in the wine/liquor cupboard in the bar. Principally because there are only 3 bottles of wine in there, two of which are champagne Odd saved from my first wedding, in 1976. We'd moved all the hard stuff out to a cupboard in Peg's room long ago to stop Odd drinking it all--a cupboard which, today, Peg and I were cleaning and, Daddy no longer being here, it was decided to return the bottles of scotch, vodka, akvavit and so on back to their home on the shelf in the wine cupboard. When I opened it, my eyes were drawn to a Price Chopper bag, knotted, lying flat on the shelf--containing what, I couldn't tell, but it looked nasty, about the size of a T-bone steak, and was repulsively alive with fruit flies and crawly things. I yelled for a Zip-Lock, Bonnie came running, we dropped it in, zipped it, then tried to figure out what exactly we'd captured and it turned out to be three bananas. How they got there, we don't know, I might possibly have done it, last May, to keep Daddy from eating one every time he passed through the bar, because too many bananas a day, as we know, does not bode well for someone who doesn't always make it to the bathroom in time. 
___________
Weeded the entire front of house area. Looks infinitely better, plus succeeded with zero ticks or mosquito bites. Except now I'm starting to itch, just typing those words.