After the Fall

It's fall.  This is the view from the front patio table, where I am currently seated with a cup of non-coffee.

There is still plenty to get done in the house, but I don't care.  I slept in and have done nothing so far today but skip therapy,  eat and watch youtube videos. I folded one of three loads of laundry. I also texted with my mother and brother. My brother may be discharged from the hospital tomorrow. 

Dave has gone off to a doctor's appointment with his mother. He scheduled an online meeting with a dog trainer for this afternoon. 

The dog we inherited when his mother moved into an assisted living facility is not great. I feel sorry for this dog.  He comes from an abusive background, was rescued but then adopted by Dave's mother who did not have the ability to care properly for him.  Then she basically abandoned him and now we have him. 

We've talked about re-homing him (Dave's sister offered to take him back to Indiana with her) but I don't have the heart to do that. He an elderly dog now and this is his home and we should try to make it work. Unfortunately, that means he's going to spend more time at a doggy day care facility so that we get a break and our cat gets a break from him. 

So that's going on, too.

We spent part of the weekend working on cleaning up the patio at the casita. We have my brother's truck so we took one truckload of stuff to the dump (that's what those photos above are from) and loaded up the truck again the next day.  We got a late start so we couldn't make it to the dump before it closed so we still need to do that.  There's probably at least another half load of stuff that needs to go to the dump then we have to bring all of our outdoor/garden pottery (about half of it is packed) and potted plants. 

We had so much stuff at the casita, both indoors and out. It's shocking. And now, when we're down there, I go inside and look at the 500 square feet we lived in for 17 years and it amazes me. It's such a tiny space and we lived there with our everything, our books and desks and beds and five cats over the years and all their stuff and all my sewing and art supplies and all of Dave's musical instruments and computers and clothes and pottery and art.  I mean, how? How?

We just did, I guess. I miss the casita and having Kelly and Kevin next door. It was a place of safety and refuge for me that got me through a lot of years. 

And now we are somewhere else.