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I hit 11,000 miles on the Fit’s odometer today. 1,000 of that is from the past four days.

On Monday Rick and I drove to Los Angeles to spend Christmas Eve with some friends at Cathy’s house. Cathy threw a great party with a plethora of delicious food. The next morning was a little rough, due mainly to a giant bottle of Jack Daniels that someone decided we should all finish off. Rick and I had a great Christmas dinner with Dad in Pasadena on Tuesday and then I spent a little time with Mom in the hospital. She’s doing okay. We’re still waiting for various test results.

We drove back to Paso Robles on Tuesday night and then on to Sacramento in the morning. My Grandma Helen (Gene’s mom) passed away last week in Los Angeles. Her funeral was in Sacramento on Wednesday. She was such a wonderful woman and I wish I had the opportunity to spend more time with her when I was younger. After the funeral the whole family had dinner together at my Aunt Carole’s clubhouse and it was great to see them all again after so many years.

We stayed overnight in Sacramento and then drove back home today. I am so grateful to be out of the car and back in my own place tonight.

*Edit: Just spoke to Mom’s RN and she said that they’re tapering her off the Dopamine. If her blood pressure stays up they will transfer her out of the ICU tomorrow!

1. No more helicopters
2. No more sirens
3. No more yelling from the street
4. No more bikers/ricers revving their engines at the stoplight
5. No more of that guy that sits in the parking lot next door leaning on his horn so that someone will come move whatever car is blocking him
6. No more cockroaches
7. No more rats
8. No more o’possums
9. No more trash to clean up from the driveway
10. No more fliers to collect from the fence
11. No more fence, period.
12. The windows all seal shut so the warm/cool air stays in
13. The doors don’t have holes drilled into them from crazy drug addicts trying to break into the house
14. The ceiling isn’t falling down on my head
15. There’s no need for an air conditioner when you live less than a mile from the bay
16. The shower tile isn’t collapsing in on you
17. The bathtub is not in the floor
18. The toilet is not on a platform
19. There is a medicine cabinet
20. There are heat lamps in the bathroom to keep you warm
21. There is a goodly amount of water coming out of the shower head
22. You don’t have to look at yourself in a mirror while you’re peeing
23. The light switches all work
24. The light switches are where they should be
25. There is a light fixture in every room (sometimes two!)
26. The kitchen cabinets are clean and pretty to look at
27. So is the sink
28. So is the floor
29. The fridge was made in the past 20 years
30. There is a dishwasher
31. And a built-in wine rack
32. And a serving counter that keep the place feeling spacious
33. The trash can goes on a little platform that slides out from behind a little cabinet door
34. The view out the window above the kitchen sink doesn’t have any brick walls, chain link fence, or “NO PARKING” signs

More to come as time goes by, I’m sure…

I love finding government services with websites that are actually useful. The Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation has such a site at http://www.lacity.org/SAN. There you can find information on the all of the services they provide and submit service request forms in case you missed a trash pickup, need new containers, etc.

The service of most interest to me is their Bulky Item Collection. I’m selling my mom’s house but to sell it, I have to fix it up. And to fix it up, I have to empty it. Not a small task, considering that my mom is a very impressive, very Filipino one-woman shopping machine. In clearing out the garage, I’ve filled a 4-cubic-meter dumpster and three 60-gallon trash cans with trash. I’ve also boxed up and donated another 4 ft. x 4 ft. x 20 ft. worth of stuff. I have yet to apply my DTK (Donate, Trash, Keep) process to the interior of the house.

The 4-cubic-meter dumpster cost $160. It was worth it, since I needed it at the last minute and the company came through for me, but I can’t afford to keep DTK’ing that way. So, I looked at LA BoS’s Bulky Item Collection as a possible source of hope. Everyone I spoke to said that that sort of pickup had to be a one-time-a-year thing but I called them today (1-800-773-2489) and it turns out that it’s unlimited. That’s right, unlimited. I could schedule a pickup every week if I wanted. They only require that you submit a list of the things they need to pick up with your request.

I am jubilant!