I’ve got all the boxes unpacked, everything put away. Still a little zhuzhing to do, but pretty much settled in. Drapes were hung in my bedroom. (I are so happy!) A towel ring was hung by the kitchen sink for a hand towel. (Paper towels are for messes, not for drying hands — that’s wasteful.)
My furniture did not make it through unscathed what was essentially a two-stage move by two different moving companies.
The sideboard I’m using for a TV stand got pulled apart at the bottom to the point that there was a half inch gap in the bottom of the cabinet where the legs had been pulled apart from the carcass. The minute I saw it, I thought, “Wood glue and a ratchet strap.” I forgot where I was and asked somebody if maintenance had a ratchet strap, and got a very blank look. Tried to explain what I needed it for, and got an even blanker look. Sigh. Ended up ordering one off Amazon. *
The joint had been pulled apart so far that the cabinet door was crooked. (What’s more, they’d set my 55-inch TV on top of the sideboard before I realized the sideboard was damaged, and it was too heavy for me to lift down by myself.)
For those who don’t know, that yellow thing (below) is a ratchet strap, with an old, very paisley towel stuck behind it to keep the metal parts from damaging the wood
It has a gizmo on one end of it that works by means of a ratchet to tighten/shorten the strap. It’s a sort of manual winch. Very useful little piece of kit.
If you ran your car off into a ditch, and there was a stout tree nearby, you could hook one end of this ratchet strap to the undercarriage of the car, and wrap the other end around the tree and (eventually) haul your car out of the ditch by working that little handle back and forth. Or you could squirt wood glue into the pulled-apart joints of a piece of furniture, wrap the strap around it and ratchet the joints back together again. Voila.
Until I got those joints (both sides!) glued back and the glue was dried, I wasn’t about to try to hook up the DVD player to the TV because I would have to move the sideboard away from the wall to get to the back of the TV and I wasn’t going to risk the thing coming completely apart and dumping my TV into the floor.
Anyway, got that done. Now I just need to take the strap off and hook up the DVD player. Still don’t have any TV yet.
The result of the discharge planning meeting is that we have set a target date of October 18th for mom to come to the apartment. Her room is all ready, with a brand new adjustable bed and memory foam mattress, new sheets, four pillows, and all the equipment she needs. They are still working with her to build up her strength and teach her safe transfer techniques and wheelchair skills. The wheelchair we have was father’s. It is a transport chair and is intended to be folded up and put in a car trunk or back seat. Consequently, it does not have the big wheels you can turn with your hands to propel yourself. I’ve ordered her one like that (you’ll never guess where from), and it will be here Monday. I need to alert the front desk that a very big package will be coming. (And figure out how to get it up to the apartment to unpack and put together.)
Next week, I get to do the Don Quixote thing and go up against two government bureaucracies. The first one is the VA which has rejected a claim for a consultation that they scheduled! I’m not even going to try to call them until Tuesday, and even then I’ll get transferred two or three times and have to hold for at least half an hour to get to talk to anybody who might be able to tell me what the deal is. The other one is the DMV. Mom’s driver’s license expires Thursday and she needs to get it converted to a picture ID, and I’ll bet you money they’re going to insist she has to show up in person with eleven proofs of identity, which means we’re going to have to get the wheel-chair van to take us down there and then wait for it to come pick us up. (There’s no way she’s going to be able to get in and out of my car safely.) I’m going to go talk to the same guy I talked to about getting the discharge planning meeting set up and see if he has any ideas.
Oh, and mom has lost her pink hair brush. She has no idea where it is. Rather than wander all over town trying to find the kind she wants, I’ve ordered her some off Amazon. They’ll be here Monday, too. I’ve taken her a comb that will have to do in the meantime.
*Help! I’ve been mistaken for June Cleaver and I’m trapped in a 50’s sitcom!
The Owl Underground 
Hurrah for ratchet straps!
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Do you know about the product called Restor-A-Finish? It’s made by Howard, and it’s been around for decades. People who restore antique furniture use it, and I do, too. It comes in various wood shades — Cherry, Walnut, English Oak, and so on — and it’s absolutely wonderful for covering up little dings and scratches. It comes in an old-fashioned metal can, and one will last you a lifetime. It’s also inexpensive enough that you can buy a couple of cans, should you have different woods to deal with. Here’s their page. You may know about this, of course, but I thought it was worth mentioning.
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