monday

[dragonlady7]

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So yesterday I got most of the sleep that I’d gotten all night between 6 and 7 am, which was when the house was waking up, and only dragged myself out of bed reluctantly, after having several vivid dreams in which I’d dragged myself out of bed and gotten myself dressed and such only to awake and find myself still in bed. Sigh.

Someday I’ll re-learn how to sleep and it’ll be great, but that’s not today.

cut for length; a meandering story of the day

Got ourselves together, played with Farmkid a bit, read the LAST FEW PARAGRAPHS OF THE RAKSURA SERIES, had to find a new book for her. Last time, we just restarted the series, but this time she was wiling to concede that other non-Raksura books could be read upon the Kindle, so I started Minor Mage https://locusmag.com/2019/11/adrienne-martini-reviews-minor-mage-by-t-kingfisher/, which I think she’s old enough for if I read it and edit out literally about two details. (Actually I think that by gently spoilering part of it for her I’ve even undone the need for that; it wasn’t such a shock for her, then, when the scary things started happening, because she was in on it. I feel like that can’t be overstated, if you’re presenting ‘scary’ media to kids– just don’t startle ‘em with the scary part! I literally said ‘oh this book might be too scary, I dunno, there’s a part where [scary thing], you think you’d want that?’ and she was like ‘BOY DO I’ and as soon as the first sign showed that Not All Was Right With The Kindly Old Farmer she was like ‘AA IS IT [SCARY THING]? YAY’. Ha!) (I mean, I’ve read the Books of the Raksura to her twice each now and those are firmly adult novels, with a lot of violence and sex, but the tone of the books is not at all sensationalized so it’s easy to just read it straight-faced and judiciously edit out just a few details.)

Then we went over to Mom’s house. I guess it saves typing, to just say Mom’s house. :( ArmySister is staying there, and the two of them had gotten up and started Undoing Christmas, so we avoided the annoyance of dealing with the outdoor lights.

Farmkid threw herself delightedly into undecorating the tree, and every ornament she took off she asked Grandma if she could keep. Grandma told her yes to some, but to most she said “no, I only put up my favorites and those are my favorites and you can’t take my favorites.” Still, Farmkid went home with a large bag of ornaments. I took down the creche with Mom, and packed it away carefully.

The lights were wound onto the tree with incredible thoroughness, confirming that yes of course my father had put them up. He’d really secured them, as though he thought the indoor tree might be subject to wind– but that sort of thing is the John Kelly method. Never ever ever be the underkill guy.

Our secret weapon was that Dude is six-three, so he got everything down without having to stand on the stool Mom had forgotten to hunt up. (It was across the room.)

After lunch, we looked at some old family postcards from 1906, which was cool. (Mom had come into a family collection, and had some of them framed for us for Christmas. Mine are very cool and I’ll post pictures later.)

I went and visited, briefly, with Dad’s urn, a wooden box with a brass plaque, sitting on the dining room table. There was a folder of paperwork with it, which I discovered is his traveling paperwork– you need that documentation to transport human remains. It included the death certificate. It seemed very official. There was also a bundle of, like, those cards they give out at funeral Masses, some laminated and some plain, with a very banal Bible verse. Dad’s eventual tombstone is going to say “always in our hearts”, which is one of like three options you have for inscriptions on government-provided stones. Which of course Mom is going to see he gets, because it’s the sort of thing that’s very useful to future historians like herself that go through graveyards looking for war veterans. Which he is.

Mom had me move him off the table so we could cram around it for dinner, so I cleaned off one of the coffee tables in the living room and dusted it nicely and then installed him there with his paperwork and the folded flag that seemed to come with him, I’m unclear on his provenance. It had been sitting on the urn, but I tucked it behind instead, as that made for a nicer sort of shriney appearance.

Middle-Little came over; she’s chasing down the paperwork to take possession of Dad’s permited pistols. He had five. You can’t possess pistols without a permit in NYS, and if the permit holder dies, everyone says the law says you have fifteen days to establish the transfer of the pistols to another permit holder (and getting a permit can take years, so it’s crucial you have that permit ahead of time, and it’s why Dad paid for part of M-L’s pistol permit process, and incidentally why my sister is now in DF’s will to take his pistols should the worst befall him, because MM is not getting a pistol permit).

As it happens, the law does not actually specify a time frame. It says you should do it promptly, but it does not give a concrete time frame. M-L managed to get the guy at the county who handles that, and he says it’s his job to read the law and the law doesn’t actually say fifteen days anywhere. He said, very kindly, that at a time like this there are so many concerns to take care of that it’s understandable that this might not be immediately done, and provided we were doing all we could to be reasonable and safe in the interim, there was no need to concern ourselves overmuch about it, and we should just complete the paperwork as we were able. So that was nice, thanks Chuck from the County.

Anyway we bought M-L a compact gun safe she can install securely in her apartment (a lockbox, really, fastened to the wall and floor) (because the one dad owns is sized for rifles, and she’s no need of that; there’s no permiting requirement for long guns so Mom can just keep ‘em all in that lockbox for as long as she wants, and distribute them or sell them at her leisure), and got the paperwork in train to start that, and so on and so forth.

I’m going to do a separate post about Farmkid’s post-dinner antics, though, because this is getting long and I haven’t said anything i meant to but.

The upshot of the day was that we low-key discussed lots of things, but like. We don’t need to do anything. We were prepared to Do A Big Sorting Out but really all that’s got to happen is that ArmySister is going through the rest of Dad’s desk to make sure there’s no paperwork surprises lurking there– which would be very uncharacteristic, but could happen– and M-L has already gone through the basic paperwork and found whatever was crucial, and now Mom has to do some more paperwork she’s familiar with and not intimidated by, and…

the rest is going to wait until Spring. Everything’s safe and stable, BIL will come over and help move one vulnerable antique vehicle into better cover, Farmsister may come over to shovel snow off roofs of various outbuildings if there’s any fear of that, before I leave I’ll get Mom a good stock of kindling, and then we can just leave the rest. It’s stable, it’s fine as it is, and Mom can take her time and decide whether she wants to leave his things around, pack things up, distribute them, whatever– it’s all fine, and no hasty decisions need be made. (Your picture was not posted)