Look what I found

sigh ...

I miss my Dad.

I miss my life. It seems so very long ago now that I had my own life.

My days are consumed with my father's Estate and my utter and complete lack of knowledge in that arena. Hit a major bump this week with a whackadoo of an attorney that had to be dismissed. Long story.

My parents never got rid of anything, so there is much digging and sifting going on up at the house. Tons of old business brochures, invoices, etc., but I dare not just heave the lot, for treasure has been found lurking in the most unlikely of places. WAH! So very tedious and time consuming.

On Monday, I was shifting some books around - I thought I had already gone through all the books, but no, wait, what is this???! Another bit of gold, tucked away.

I found this wooden book and I thought it must be a souvenir from our trip to Yosemite when I was eleven years old, which would have been grand but it turned out to be even better!

I found the visitors diary from my maternal grandparents cabin in Washington. Sadly there are only a few pages of entries and most of the handwriting is so very pale, blending into the paper now. But oh! It makes my heart glad! Seeing family members names and family friends names, that I remember hearing stories about in my childhood.

(love this entry ... "A wonderful chicken dinner, a swell time. Thanks so much.")

For all the finding of stuff, there are things that sill elude me. I cannot find my mother's grandmother's baby doll, I cannot find the quilt my mother was making me or the quilted pillows she had made. I fear my father must have given things away without asking me.

But I did find the ceramic donkey that held buttons all my growing up years and up to my mother's passing. I found him "buttonless" and underneath the bathroom sink, half a house length from his real home in my parents house.

I think he owes his sad fate to the first two housekeepers my father had after my mom died. Two charming ladies, sisters-in-law, who not only were great maids, but would move things about and decorate and cheer up the house for my father. Little did they know that they were messing with my memories and would create a search for me of some nearly fifteen years to find this beloved object of my childhood.

Alas, he is now packed away in one of the GAZILLION boxes in my poor little eleven hundred square foot cracker box of a house. (My house resembles a warehouse these days. WAH!) When I find him again, I will take a photo and post it.

Hope this finds everyone well and happy! I miss you all! Thank you so much for hanging in there with me.