Lil sis and I flew down to Florida this morning to start the process of cleaning out mom's stuff. You never saw two sad people reluctantly doing such a miserable job and laughing as much as we did today.
It didn't take too long, after waking up in the wee hours of the morning and spending the first half of the day on a plane, for the both lil sis and me to become tired and then punchy. We tackled mom's dresser first, as per dad's request. That was pretty easy because it isn't where she kept the good stuff. Then the two os took some deep breaths and dove into mom's closet. This was a challenge. Mom had a problem and it was called shopping above and beyond. Also, mom didn't give her clothes up readily and going through her closet was like travelling the last 40 years in a time machine.
So, best moments of the night. We found some hats that I am pretty sure mom never wore. One hat was a black sequined kind of ski cap. Lil sis, who feels she has a tiny head and does not look well in hats, put the sequined ski cap on, looked into the mirror and declared "See? I look like a sperm!" Then she did a litle sperm banging on an egg kind of upper body dance move that had me laughing my head off shaking in my spot legs crossed in a desperate attempt at hysterical bladder control.
Later on in the evening right before lil sis and I called it a night, the two of us had spent about a solid hour in mom's walk in closet. We were both hot and tired and I had pretty much coerced lil sis to try on every single one of mom's 250 pair of shoes and then put aside about 25 of the sweetest pairs for herself. (My feet are too big) By the time we got to around pair #200 lil sis was seriously running out of steam. I kept pushing and pushing for her to keep trying on. She complained about the heat, about being tired, about having to explain to the world that she wasn't the one who spent a mortgage payment or three on the shoes, and lil sis looks around and realizes that we are close to the end of the shoe ordeal and says "Wow, we are almost finished! That's no small feat!" and I had to quickly do the "I am laughing too hard to breathe" leg cross again which was even more a challenge since right at that very moment I was sitting crossed legged on the floor of mom's closet.
See....
Posted by: danelle | July 23, 2008 at 02:20 AM
Your mother would be proud.
Posted by: Kristy | July 23, 2008 at 01:30 PM
Laughter is good. And I agree with Kristy, from the way you've described her, it sounds like she'd be proud.
Posted by: Laura | July 23, 2008 at 10:26 PM