How goofy am I….

we don’t even have a house, and I’ve just registered my dinnerware pattern with Pfaltzgraff.com… Mission Flower. I am so in love. Ran across this at a pottery store with mom, and I couldn’t leave without buying at least one piece to take home, just to look at.

Had a great visit to mom’s, I think. JamesT worked hard on my brakes, changed my front rotors, changed the oil in my and mom’s vehicles, and got to enjoy a Saturday full of heavy rain storms on the tin roof of the garage with one bay door wide open. I always loved being in Dad’s garage while it poured rain…

Meanwhile, mom and I mixed stinky floor leveler and troweled it down to fill in holes and cracks… painted picture frames and hung a new series of Norman Rockwell prints she had while it dried… then started on the daunting task of laying floor tiles. JamesT finished up at the garage just in time to take over the process of cutting the intricate pattern of the final two tiles, which had to fit around a door frame to the pantry. It took us all day, but it is now a wonderful kitchen transformed!

For Sunday, JamesT was super-sweet, occupying himself with playing Zelda and watching the Olympics while I did boring girly things with mom. We just goofed-off checking out all the bedrooms, hanging and rearranging pictures, tossing some junk, and generally making sure everything looked nice for the impending house full of guests. Mom made me promise not to go buy anymore painting supplies, as she apparently likes doing the painting herself. We don’t need to waste the time you’re here doing that, when it helps me pass the time while I’m alone. But, all in all, other than her own bedroom needing a coat of paint (Dad’s ever-greasy mechanic’s hands have left their mark on many surfaces in that room) I think she can get by without painting anything just for the family gathering.

As goofy as I am, I think I had the most fun going through mom’s set’s of dishes and rearranging what is on display in her hutch. I had found her a large water pitcher in her Pfaltzgraff pattern, Yorktown, at a flea market last weekend for $8! It had been forever since I’d seen any of that pattern anywhere, and I’d thought they’d stopped making it. It’s been years since she’s been bombarded at Christmas by a ton of new Pfaltzgraff pieces from everyone. I’d forgotten how much she had, especially since she keeps most of it stored in the cabinet under the hutch. It was just fun to get out all the pieces and reminisce about who’d gotten her what.

She has service for five in dishes, for instance, from the first “conspiracy Christmas” where each of her five children bought her one place setting. That was the funniest Christmas… she found herself surrounded by five boxes of identical size and shape, but wrapped differently. She opened one, was happy. Then opened another, then a third… then a fourth. At some point we were harassing her to guess what was in the next box… by the fifth she was going nuts asking us how we’d managed to arrange this with the five of us living so far apart! We’ve tried to get her more place settings in the past, but she always said having five was special to her and she didn’t want to mess it up.

Oh well… despite all the improvements, we’re not in “sell the house” mode, yet. She’s singing the same old song about wanting to make ends meet so she can stay. She has several new ideas about how to do that, so I’m figuring that she probably will stay put for at least another year or two. Thus, all these little home improvements we’re doing are pretty minor and just for her. She seems to be happy with the new look of the place, and it’s jump-started her to want to do further things on her own. I hope it’s the first step to getting her out of her rut.

After all the work was done, we headed out to Olive Garden for a nice meal, then hit the road. Either mom is just doing better at going to unfamiliar places or else our overcompensating, new waiter just really set her at ease, because she seemed to be comfortable and enjoy herself. Even tried something she’d never had before.