Florida

I arrived around 8:30 PM last Wednesday. The drive took me 9 ½ hours to get to Fort Myers! I left Savannah later then normal and ended up in end of the day rush hour traffic in Tampa. It was bumper to bumper for quite awhile. Then it all came to a standstill in Sarasota.

Apparently there was an accident somewhere far up ahead on I-75. It caused traffic to come to a complete stop for a while and then it would start up again. Traffic only managed to go roughly 10 MPH, then stop, then start again, then stop.

This went on for an hour or so. By the time the traffic moved freely the accident was all cleared up and gone.

I have been rather busy since being here. I have been helping my mum de-clutter and get rid of things. I have removed all items from the garage attic. She may no longer use the attic. Recently she fell down the drop stairs. My siblings and I in a rare moment of solidarity declared the attic off limits.

One of the chores I have lined up is to clear out the garage and re-stain the floor. I never could understand why some people stain or paint their garage floors. My mother thinks it keeps the floor cleaner. I beg to differ. Her garage floor is messy like an unfinished floor. However since she chose to have hers stained she created extra maintenance because it requires to be refinished every couple years or so.

On Thursday I removed everything out of the garage and went through a bunch of things such as forty years of paperwork from my father’s corporation. Mind you my mum sold my fathers business 17 years ago. Apparently she is under the impression she must hold on to such items because something legal may come back to bite us in the ass. I think the legal threshold has passed.

On Friday I essentially had to clean the garage floor with some kind of noxious solvent and then I had to hose it down with water and let it dry. I had to use a large squeegee thingy to pull the water out of the garage. Later in the day we worked on more paper work. … So much paperwork!

Saturday morning I was up and early preparing the garage floor to be re-stained. You would think it would be easy, but NO! I was told I had to seal the cracks on the cement floor. What the hell! Goddess forbid our floors shows any signs of history. Essentially there is this stuff, which is rather like caulk. You squeeze it into the cracks and then use a putty knife to smooth it out. I had to do this to all the cracks and nicks in the cement!

I spent about a 1 ½ doing this and finally was able to start the staining process. My gods what an obnoxious odor that stuff has! It took me several hours, but I finished and it looks nice. If I do say so myself, but you know what? I can still see those damned cracks!
I was reunited with my wonderful scooter. I gave it to my mum when I moved here briefly after I lost my last mindless job. When I lived downtown it was the perfect vehicle to use, but now that I am Southside it just won’t do.

My scooter isn’t as pristine as it was when I gave it to her. Unfortunately my mum “crashed” it a few times. More or less she would fall off of it or knock it over with her car when pulling into the garage. It’s all scratched up now and both mirrors are broken and it also has two flat tyres.

She said I may have it back now. Wow, thanks mum! I won’t bring it back with me this time because I forgot to bring the hitch. So I shall be returning one more time before moving to North Carolina.

Today is Champagne Sunday … all by myself, but hey someone has to do it! It’s not all pleasure though because I did manage to caulk around a bedroom window and clean out a closet.

Now I am looking at replacement pieces of silver and china online while enjoying champagne in a Marie Antoinette glass. Life is good.