Well, while Hubby was swimming the creek trying to avoid cottonmouths and alligators, #3 and I set ourselves to the task of packing the trailer with what we were able. Even with her diminished strength from the Lyme she is still stronger and more able than I am. She has to stop and think about what she is doing but once her brain connects to her muscles she does more than her share. While there is still stuff that needs hauling out…I think I can begin painting today.
For some reason or other, my father-in-law never wanted anyone else to paint his walls… or maybe he never felt they needed it. Probably more truthful, he didn’t really like to paint and he didn’t like to watch other people do work that he himself was not willing or able to do. This is a truth about him that I learned as I watched him get older. Unlike my dad who often would come and just watch me work (and make me nervous) Hubby’s dad would come and tell me to stop working, that I had done enough. Well, when one is burning brush and cleaning up messes, one is not done until one is done…so I would have to get a kid or a husband to go distract him while the job was finished up.
While the girls were living there I had them do a lead test on the walls and it came up positive. It was slated for the oldest daughter to paint the walls as she moved more into the house. Unfortunately, she was not free to do as she was instructed because others thought they knew better how to utilize her time. After a significant interval, when the dust had settled on all of that, she was getting more and more ill along with more and more unable to hang on to her thoughts. She did manage to get the inside of the kitchen cabinets painted but then she became unable to figure out what to do with all of the excess that came out of them. She at this point, was ceasing to be able to mentally function beyond the daily tasks in front of her. Neuro-Lyme turned this very capable young woman into a person who was unable to function in the realm of decision making. Thus people talked. The old saying is “people like to talk, and other people like to tell” is very true. Lyme can do bad things to the brain and the body…while not making one look sick. My daughter’s heart was being over-stressed, she was living with constant palpitations, her cholesterol levels were up over 300, she was operating life in an orb of illness that no one could see and even when they were told they declared they did not care. All of that to say, thus the covering up of the old lead paint did not happen on her watch as planned.
As I paint the walls, I will think of my oldest, because she likes to paint, she has helped me paint many rooms over the years, and she wanted to see this job done and part of her feels bad because she was not able to get to it.
I will also be sad to paint over her green room. It is beautiful as is. Her granddaddy thought house walls should only be white, until we dared to do the unthinkable, paint a wall in his home green. He stood there watching us paint it; he would go sit down and come back. After we were done, he declared, “that’s real nice” as he smiled.
I miss him.