Thank you for your kind thoughts.
And also, thank you for the info. How the heck do you get a hole in a window screen? A bird flying into it?
I'm also trying to unload about 2 gallons of used syringes and half a dozen boxes of unused syringes, lancets and about 50 bottles of partially used pills.
There's next to no info online about how to legally dispose of these - it's all per state regulations apparently.
Guess I'll have to call my local pharmacy.
As far as handymen...well, let's just say I prefer professional contractors. That way, I'm just a customer they know little about as opposed to a handyman who will eventually find out I'm living all alone in a house with windows that don't lock and a front door that's pretty much decorative and not much in the way of security and the fact that I'm not home most all of the day.
I know how you feel
Mandy, I wouldn't want to be doing what I'm doing if I had a choice, but I don't.
Within a month of moving in with my mom, my friend who graciously let me use her garage for storage (rather than me pay for a storage unit for all my stuff) decided to move 500 miles away. In July. So I was already on short notice on storage. Then about six weeks ago she let me know that her plans had accelerated and she was now moving at the end of May. So being completely unready to tear my mom's house apart and get rid of her stuff, I was forced to have a garage sale and try to sell most of my mother's stuff, have charity orgs and junk men come and haul away the rest and now have the movers move my stuff into her home, all within 6 weeks of her passing away.
So now I'm trying to rearrange things to fit - and completely remove her presence from the house.
In a way, all the last minute scrambling has been a blessing in disguise. On the one hand, I'm secretly seething, sure that my inability to grieve undisturbed is going to come back to bite me and on the other hand, all the work that needs to be done so that the house is in good enough shape to support my daily routine keeps me from spending hours haunted and sad among my mother's things.
I'm unused to living in a house. I'm used to being a single woman, living alone in an apartment where my privacy is sacrosanct and my friends and family NEVER drop by announced.
But because my mother made friends and had a support system among her neighbors, they continue to drop by - unannounced - to shoot the shit, see how I'm doing and other such things. Which is nice, but disturbing, because I need my downtime and the freedom to lay around in next to nothing, without the fear of unplanned visitors.
If they continue, it will prove interesting. My mother was a kinda-Christian woman, a Last Supper print on the wall, quotes from the bible framed that kinda thing. Not sure what the neighbors and family members are going to make of my nude prints, Ancient Roman/Medieval Japanese Sexuality coffee table books and pagan shrines.