Monday, Cedar Chest

It snowed last night, so I got out and looked at the roof. The theory is that if Mom needs insulation in the attic, it will be because the heat of the house is leaking out thru the attic and the roof. When it goes thru the roof, it will melt the snow. But the roof looks pretty good. Solid white snow almost everywhere. There is one spot over the Sun Room that looks suspicious, but I don't think there is any access to the Sun Room attic space, so I can't do anything about that.

When Mom got up, we had pancakes for breakfast, at noon.

While Mom was sleeping this morning, I went thru most of the new boxes from the garage and almost have an inventory of them made up.

Mom is still looking for an old ring, and didn't find it in her jewelry boxes, so now she is looking in her cedar chest. Mostly the cedar chest has old clothing -- like Dad's Army uniforms from World War II and Korea. But there are also some old books. These are small books that Mom says were used in some place that she worked as a young girl and they were throwing them out, so she took them. There are 12 altogether, all but two in good shape.

There was also a scroll which when unrolled revealed a peacock painted on fabric, probably silk. This may be from Korea, since the style is similar to other Chinese and Japanese painted scrolls I have seen.

The cedar chest has two wooden nickels -- these are the only ones I have seen that are not round, like a coin.

And Mom has many of her old dolls from her childhood, in various states of disrepair.

There were also some random buttons and pins, including this one from the 1904 convention of the Knights Templar.

After looking over all of this, we took Blue for a walk. I managed to guilt Mom into walking too. We went around the block. Mom has a different style of walking Blue. I let Blue walk, and smell the yards and such, figuring the purpose of the walk is to get Blue out. Mom seems to view it as an activity to finish. She kept up much more speed than I do; a brisk walk at probably twice as fast as I saunter. And this was without a cane. Poor Blue never really go a chance to stop and smell anything -- it was just straight out and around the block at full speed. I had no difficulty keeping up with Mom -- I just adjusted the length of my step -- but Mom was on a mission.

Finishing going thru the 21 boxes of stuff from the garage. I'll type in a complete list tomorrow. One item to mention tho. In 1984 or so, Mom and Dad (and Sue) went to Sweden, and then Norway and Denmark. What do I find in a box. A hotel key. A hotel key for Hotel Eremitage in Copenhagen. Not just any hotel room key. Remember this was 1984. It was the key to ...

Room 911.

17 years before 9/11, Dad knew about it and saved the room key to warn us. Spooky!