Day One-hundred-and-forty-seven: Vehicular manslaughter

My title for this entry is "vehicular manslaughter" because it kills me to clean cars.  This is one good reason to do it as infrequently as I do.  I'm not even sure that I put it on my list but I know I needed to do it.  How creepy is this:  an apostrophe and a space converts manslaughter into man's laughter.  I would not want to be around anyone who could laugh at something like that.

I'm also cleaning the truck.  A friend of my son's, in fact a groomsman in my son's wedding, is going to run it for me while I'm off on my road trip.  Since it hadn't been run since the middle of September, it needs it.  It also really needed cleaning, a real good cleaning.

I found a Mother's Day card that I never gave to Marilyn.  I don't know what year I bought it but I remember buying two, one for Marilyn and one for my Mother.  It was the last time I did Mother's Day cards and had to have been earlier than 2007.  Marilyn always bought her Mother's Mother's Day card, whether or not she remembered to send them.  I didn't know I suffered from her card memory, but I'm sure they were for different reasons.  If she were doing the Gerson Therapy at the time, it would have been the reason I never got it filled out.

I also found a parking receipt for March, 2007.  We went over to Berkeley to eat at an organic burrito bar.  I was of mixed emotions for doing so but since she couldn't do Gerson Therapy any more, we both thought we needed to live in the time we had left to do so.  There were so few times in the last two and a third years of her life that we could be the couple rather than the care giver and the patient.  I do so wish that I had been laid off earlier.

I did stay up until 1:30 AM last night signing, stuffing, sealing, and stamping 37 of my Christmas Letters.  I was hoping to finish them up this morning for a combined mailing before 1:00 PM at my local mail box but other things intervened, like vehicular manslaughter.

I also ended up cleaning up a trash mess.  While our trash people are really sloppy and don't do anything extra at all, I think this was really my neighbor's fault.  He must have put something in his trash that was attractive to animals.  All I saw this morning was some items that needed sweeping up and one large item that either was deemed hazardous and not taken or had been dumped and not separately picked up.  What's worse, all of this trash residue was on my drive.  Trashy, a way of Life after Layoff.

The place looks a lot better with the truck out of the drive.  If I could get the garage cleared and put the Prius in it, it would probably even look better.  In the few days I have remaining, before I leave, I may park the Prius on the gravel just to make it look like I'm parking it in the garage.

I'm done with this round of Christmas letters.  I'll drop the last of them in the mail tomorrow or Wednesday.  I know I don't have a lot of addresses and hope that those who don't receive one and should have are understanding.  I didn't send it to one person whose address I did have.  These were people we met in 2004 while hiking on Mt. Baker.  The husband was a college professor and the wife was receiving treatment for a very serious cancer.  The wife took our pictures and sent them to us.  Marilyn emailed back and forth with the wife for a short while, letting her know of her own cancer but I can't help but think the worst has happened for both of us.  As I really didn't know the husband well, or either actually, I don't know what to say.  I've chickened out but they were part of a very special day and with the pictures have given me some great reminders.