I think we’re done organizing, for this trip. I think I’ve left the office in good shape: I’ve gotten garbage out of the files (and left five empty drawers in the process), organized the desk, labelled appropriately, and left my stepmother a functional office with up-to-date financial records in Quicken. Hopefully, she’ll use it.
We found the original insurance policies last night… of course, after we had put the stuff in the mail to the companies indicating we couldn’t find them. They were buried in the garage in a file cabinet. I was surprised at the age of the polices—one of them was issued in 1953 (whole life). None of them were that big. I’m bringing the notebook of them home with me, and I’ll write to all of them in there just in case they were paid up and still in effect.
My dad has loads and loads of photo albums. I can’t even start to bring them home. I think this is bringing home the fact that sometime in the next year or two we’re going to have to move. It’s not the moving (i.e., finding a new house) that bothers me, but the whole process of packing and getting the current house ready to show. That’s something to think about in a month or two as things settle down, and we start seeing what is really here. Somehow, I sense we’re going to have loads of trips down here to Orange County.
My daughter tuckered out my stepmother yesterday. S&F’s Chanukah gift was a day of shopping with her grandmother. It turned out the amount wasn’t the critical thing for her (she didn’t even spend what was budgeted), but the day shopping. They walked back and forth all over South Coast Plaza and Crystal Court, looking at clothes and all sorts of stuff (but buying little). I do think that the events of the last two months have brought them together, and that’s a real good thing. Everyone came home, and enjoyed the delightful soup that I made.
I’ve got a business teleconference this morning, and then we’ll be packing up the car. I’m not looking forward to that, as it is raining down here (and in the Valley), and we’ve got lots of loading to do. We’ll back up the cars to the garage to load; we’ve left the garage in reasonable shape, with distinct piles of donate and shred. My stepmother will call National Council of Jewish Women for the donations, and my dad’s accountant will help coordinate the shredding.
I’ve been looking at the binders in my dad’s office this morning. I’ve found a really neat list (see here) of Playbills from shows. I’ve found photo albums from all sorts of years that must have had special significance: navy years, early years with my mom, recent trips, pictures of family. I’ve found his letters where he courted my stepmother, which showed me some depths to the relationship there that I never realized. There are the binders from Plan Hold, where he was the original secretary/treasurer. Loads of books where he was trying to learn the computer. I’ve really gotten a better sense of the man; something I never got the opportunity to do with my mother—for various reasons, including the fact that we really we’re speaking as people at the time she died (we were speaking as mother and “son-who-is-obliged-to-call” at the time). I’m really glad I had the extra time to get to restore and rebuild the relationship with my father, and to get to know the man. He was a pretty neat guy. I think that even if we weren’t related, we would have been friends.
Tonight we go home. I’m looking forward to it, especially our own bed! I’ll then get to unpack, and perhaps do some work on the house. Curses for the current rain, however, as I had planned to straighten out the garage, which is a royal mess, but I can’t really do that in the rain as it involved unloading and reloading it. However, I think I’ll have my hands full integrating what I’m bringing up here into the stuff at home.
We still don’t have a lot of folks for the gaming party on New Years Eve. As I’ve said before: If you’re reading this list, and might be interested in board gaming on New Years Eve, please drop me a comment.
