Hot and Tired and Disgusted

My mother-in-law is moving to a Senior Living Place. She will have one large room. It's actually a room for two, but she'll have the whole thing. She is nervous about going, but it's the right thing. She's lonely and does not take care of herself well. This place will keep her FOR LIFE, no matter the level of care she needs. She'll have outings, clubs, dances, games, entertainment, religious services, and all her meals. They do her laundry and clean her room, too. It's perfect for her.

Mr. Puffy and I have been doing EVERY.THING. to prepare for this move. All the interviews, medical forms, faxes, packing, cleaning, boxing, placing ads, selling, mental and emotional support, legwork, calling utitilies, newspapers, charities to pick up stuff, etc. You name it, that's all we've done for the past few weeks. Mr. Puffy's sisters? Um. Well. They've come to her place to claim stuff they want. Um. They've taken home stuff they want. Um. That's about it.

We had a moving sale. I placed the ads in the newspaper and on-line. Mr. Puffy and I put up signs all over the place. One sister-in-law and her husband came by. She sat on the couch; he watched TV. They took more stuff home. The sale was in my mother-in-law's apartment so Mr. Puffy and I took turns waiting on the sidewalk in the 100 degree heat to guide people up to the 2nd story apartment. The sale was not outside, thank goodness. Brother-in-law waited outside for people for about 15 minutes; it was too hot for him and the baseball game was on TV. Sister-in-law waited outside for about 10 minutes; nobody came by, so she came back in the house.

We made $7. That's right. $7. SEVEN DOLLARS after the cost of the newspaper ad. I couldn't believe it. The entire apartment was for sale, including all the furniture, housewares, appliances, everything. We received a couple of calls and emails about stuff, but it didn't amount to a sale. Here's the best email I received after I posted on-line:

Hello. How are you and others of your Family? My name is Carlos, And i learnt from this group of my friends found on the web site that you have {Items in Garage Sales} And some more of it for sale which i have interestin buying it all from you (Firstly i wanna know the condition and i wanna let you know that the term of my payment is by Certisfied check....... Like U.s Poster money order or Certisfied cashies check because sometimes ago a client of my own me some money the amount of {$4,000} and he has promiseto issue me a Certisfied check, so you will stand on my behalf which mean the Certisfied check, will be written in your name ,so send your details both your Name, Address and your phone number so that i can instruct him to made the cheque in your name but will the trust you will diduct your own money and Extral $100 for the stress and help me to send the remaining balance to my shipping company for the pickup of this goods.So you don't bother about the shippment because i have my shipping company to ship the Them.Hope to hear from you asap. So please write to be back with this following information...... In process of shipping and payment and please get the advert of this out of the website so other buyers dont bother contacting you about them.. and if they do please tell them it sold cuz am a sincere buyer that will want a sincere saler to deal with me.. so please i will want you to do me that favour by deleting it from the web and waiting for the payment as soon as you send me your informations like....Full name......Address........Street.........State...........Country.........Zip Code....... And ur Phone # Number both Home and Office....... Carlos Regards



We've been at my mother-in-law's house every weekend for about 10 hours a day, for the past 3 weeks, going through her things and deciding what to save. All she does is read the paper and moan about moving. She doesn't lift a finger either. She is incapable of making a decision about any of her stuff. And we keep the air conditioner on too cold for her. Hello? Our fingers are black from newsprint, wrapping breakable items, and black from your filthy house. The layers of dust and greasy filth are unbearable. It took 2 hours to clean out her refrigerator for the sale. We're donating it tomorrow to "Out of the Closet," an AIDS charity. They're picking up the rest of the furniture except the bed.

Do you know how hard it is to find a charity that will take beds? St. Vincent de Paul Society will come to pick up the bed, thank goodness.

I really wish she could have made more money on this sale. She needs it. Her biggest asset: her car. Yep, you guessed it, one of her daughters took the car off her hands. Of course, Mr. Puffy had to do all the paperwork, transferring the title. She could have used the $3000 that it was worth. I found a bunch of loose pennies, nickels, and dimes. We went to a coinstar and got $51 for her from the coins. Yay! While we were there, we saw a display of the new Harry Potter book. Mr. Puffy went over to the 10 books (none had been sold) and read the last few pages because I wanted to know the ending.

Tomorrow is move-in day! I'm so excited for her. I know she'll love it, once she's there. The transition is difficult. Change is difficult. And I'm excited for me. I'll have my life back again. I feel good, being able to help her out, but it's mixed with disdain for her daughters. Of course, all her nice jewelry and the few nice "collectibles" she has, go to the daughters. It's so rude how she doesn't even consider giving anything to me, but I don't really care, when it comes right down to it.
*shamelessly pats self on back*

July 24 update:
8 am Out of the Closet AIDS charity says they're coming to pick up houseful of furniture at noon.

9 am Go to new Senior Living home to check in MIL and give her support. She asked, "I thought my daughter would have called and come today, too." My incredulous reply, "You did????"

11 am Out of the Closet calls and says they're at the apartment to pick up the furniture and where are we. We beg them to wait 20 minutes, since they had said they'd be there at noon.

1 pm Out of the Closet refuses to take the couches (not in perfect condition). Huh? Do you think we'd be donating NEW couches? The two burly movers didn't know there'd be so much stuff. They were there for 2 1/2 hours and had to cancel the two people after us, who got very mad at them. They pulled out the fridge, taped it shut, and disappeared. They left without the fridge.

3 pm returned MIL's new place to help put all her family photos on the walls to make her room look homey. I asked if the cable TV guy came. "Oh, he called and I told him not to come."
WHAT??? Now I have to call again to make another appointment. I left the check for him TAPED TO THE TV so he'll get his money when he comes. And I need to tell the cable TV company NOT TO CALL FIRST TO VERIFY THE APPOINTMENT---JUST COME!

4:30 Dinner time!! We stayed for dinner at the new place. We ate in the dining room with about 200 or so white haired ladies and 5 bald men.

Another 10 hour day helping her out. She was very appreciative and I think she'll do well there.

Russia, Part 3- Moscow!

Straight off the boat, we went on a driving tour of Moscow-a city of 10-15 million people (maybe some are hiding and don’t want to be counted). We saw the 1st skyscraper in Moscow, built by Gulag prisoners. The Gulag was the old Soviet forced labor camps. This 860 year old city is surrounded by The Volga, Oka, and Moskva rivers.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union 16 years ago in 1991, the city has lots of high rise buildings, many of them quite expensive. Traffic is a mess. There are 3 main circular roads with spokes of smaller roads sticking out. They are working on building a 4th ring to drive on.

We drove past the Bolshoi Theatre and the KGB Building.

Christ the Saviour Cathedral houses 10,000 people. I don’t say “seats” 10,000 people, because congregants do not sit down in Russian Orthodox churches. There are 3 floors of garages underneath. It used to be the location of a public swimming pool (who’d like to go swimming in the public pool in a city of 10 million people?). The original domes of the cathedral had 350 kilos of gold (for those of you who know what a kilo amounts to, please translate).

Look at this extremely long line of religious Russians waiting to get into the cathedral. These are worshippers, not tourists.

We went to the New Maiden Nunnery and Novodevichy cemetery which is the burial site for legendary cellist Anton Chekhov, Rostopovich, Yeltsin, Gorbachev’s wife, and Nikita Kruschev.

The best lookout over the city is Sparrow Hill, where we saw the Moscow State University, and the Olympic Stadium from the 1980 Olympics. We were in Moscow on Russian Independence day and they set off fireworks from Sparrow Hill.

The Russian metro system is excellent. We were in three metro stations. Some of them are lavish and highly decorated. Here's a picture from the Arbat Street metro station.

The Russian government is concerned about gambling. They want to move all gambling casinos to a few cities. The Russian mafia runs the casinos and launders money through them. So the government wants to localize them instead of having them all spread out. The doctors are corrupt. Medical care is free but if you want good medical care, you have to pay extra. The policemen expect bribes and everyone knows it. When a policeman stops you for a traffic violation, he doesn’t say “show me your license,” he says, “I have 8 children” and puts his hand out. Want to butt in line at Lenin’s tomb? Go up to the guard and offer him a bribe and he’ll let you right in.

Guess what this is?

A public women’s toilet.It was below ground level. We were told to use it because it would be the best one we’d see all day. Thankfully, we only experienced one of these. I actually thought it was better than the Western-style public toilets. You’re going to squat anyway, right? At least you don’t have to worry about your skin touching the toilet. We brought our own toilet paper or tissue and anti-bacterial gel or wipes, too.

We went to famous street called Old Arbat. Don’t you think that this monument looks like Art Garfunkel?

Next on our journey was the Central Armed Forces Museum, dedicated to WWII. A little band played American and Russian patriotic music and then we were greeted by a statue of Lenin. There are still statues of Lenin everywhere.

Russia calls WWII, “The Great Patriotic War.” They feel that it was them against Germany and that we helped out. In the 900-day long Siege of Leningrad, the only water they had was from the Neva river. People were buried in mass graves of 15,000 people each because so many people died daily. We saw the story of one Russian pilot who was shot down and left in the forest for 18 days. His legs were amputated and he continued to fly. There were 800,000 women, some were pilots who helped to fight the Germans.

One room of the museum was dedicated to the Allies. Nice of them. There even was one display on the Holocaust and concentration camps. Around 27 million Russians were killed in WWII. On June 24, 1945, there was a Victory Parade in Red Square. They burned all the Nazi banners. There were 20,000 soldiers in the parade.

Next, we had a Q and A session with 5 Russian WWII vets. One of them was a woman. It was so exciting. They shared their opinions on communism vs democracy on also shared memories of the war. They asked the American WWII vets in our group (about 8 men) to come up and shake hands with them. I asked one vet for his autograph. He asked in halting English, “phone number, too?” Well, sure!

After that serious adventure, we went to the famous Nikulin Russian Circus! It was fantastic! I surreptitiously took pictures from my lap with no flash. There was such a fun atmosphere in the lobby before the show and during intermission. Here's a tiger jumping through a hoop of fire.

The TV channels in the hotel included Animal Planet, Nickelodeon, MTV, and CNN. There was even a Russian news station broadcast in English.

I found a couple of interesting things here. The hotel elevators will only go to your own floor if you use your room key card. You can not go to any other floor without a key card for that floor. We went to a huge store, sort of like a Super Wal-Mart. They had escalators which only ran when the motion detector detected someone nearby. Good energy-saving device. They had no steps, which made it easy to put your shopping cart on the escalator. The shopping carts had wheel locks so they wouldn’t roll down the escalator ramp.

Red Square. St. Basil’s Cathedral. Lenin’s Tomb. We saw it all. Amazing. The domes on the cathedrals used to be helmet-shaped. They’re now onion-shaped so snow and ice don’t stick to them.

Here’s a bell, built in the 1700’s. It’s the biggest bell in the world. It was never rung because a fire cracked it soon after it was made.

Want me to name a few churches? Church of Assumption. Church of Tsars. Annunciation Cathedral. Patriarch Church of 12 Apostles. Saviour Tower. Archangel Cathedral. Church of the Spilled Blood. Church of the Transfiguration. Upper Saviours Cathedral. Christ the Saviour Cathedral. Here’s a few of them.

We went to a Jewish Synagogue in St. Petersburg and also to one in Moscow. Acceptance of other religions is more common now and there are various demoninations of churches and even Mosques in Russia.

A sculptor created a statue of Christopher Columbus and one of Charles de Galle. No other country would take them. So Russia plopped Peter I’s head on the Christopher Columbus statue. A close friend of the sculptor owns a hotel in Moscow so the de Galle monument is in front of the hotel, for no reason at all.

We went to the Russian National Dance Company’s show. Amazing. They showed the history of Russia through dance. The costumes throughout the centuries were spectacular. I couldn’t believe that they even had a segment on the Jewish peasants in the small villages. Look at this picture! I caught the men sideways as they did the traditional Russian dance, kicking their feet out.


Our final tour was to Star City, the training site for cosmonauts. The American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts train 50% in Moscow and 50% in Houston and must speak each other’s language. They live together like a family. We saw the MIR space station, the hydrolaboratory used to train them in weightlessness, and the Soyuz capsule. We met with Vladimir Dezhurov, a cosmonaut who has had several trips to space. He was on the flight when American joined the Russians for the first time. Interesting tidbit: he said they never get their original health back after a flight. He also said that it’s a pity that they do experiments in space, but we don’t make use of them on earth. He gave the example of gravity and cancer experiments.

Another tidbit: in space, they get one can of black caviar a day. Of course, someone had to ask about going to the bathroom in space. During take off and landing, you have to “hold it.” Here’s the contraption they use for toilet facilities in space.


Just before leaving Star City, guess who walked into the room? Two American astronauts: Mike Finke and Timothy Kopra! We got to talk to them for a few minutes. You can see me monopolizing the conversation with astronaut Mike Finke.

We woke up at 2:30 am to drive to the airport. Even though it was early, I didn’t miss the “Sephora” sign in a mall on the way to the airport!

On the plane home, we enjoyed watching our video on the camcorder and looking at all our pictures on the digital camera. It helped to pass the time. We flew from Moscow to Frankfort, where I WAS FRISKED! Everyone was frisked. Female security frisked the females. I couldn’t stop giggling! Mr. Puffy kept signaling me to behave, but I couldn’t. I even made the security lady laugh!

There was about 15 minutes of really bad turbulence on the plane coming home. Of course, it was right after the flight attendant had served us drinks. We were the last people to get drinks before the turbulence. The pilot instructed the flight attendants to stop serving and to sit down. Bloody Mary and red wine looks oh-so-nice on shirts. An Arab woman with her 3 children, about 3 years old, and 2 year old twins sat near us. Her husband slept the whole time. The kids had no toys, no crayons, no cars, no stuffed animals, nothing to keep them busy. They were quite noisy. One other item of note: my friend’s husband threw up on the plane about 10 minutes before landing!! I’m sure we will rib him about it on any future trips we take with them.

Here we are, back at home, reminiscing about our once-in-a-lifetime experience! A final sunset from Moscow: