Hi Debbie - Jumped in to check on you today and am so happy to see your post. Know that just by getting up and brushing your hair and teeth in the morning that you are strong enough to move ahead day to day. Despite the snow (even we here down "south" got snow yesterday) take heart and know that spring will bring sunshine and warmer breezes into that newly painted, cheerful bedroom of yours. You did a really good thing for yourself by painting. This is your home and it needs to be a place that makes you feel happy to come home to. Chelone, I understand how you are feeling also. We are finally at the point where we need to discuss alternate arrangements with my FIL, as our family is bordering on the breaking point. Everyone is trying their level best, but it is apparent that we are nearing the tipping point where he continues to thrive at the cost of the remainder of the household who must accommodate him. He is now 94 and a half. I wrestle every day with the question of how do I know when I can truly no longer do this... because we know we can bear almost any situation "just another day" and then "just another week" as others do in similar situations or worse. I beat myself up every day thinking "if I only could be more patient I could do this as long as it takes". "If only I weren't so self centered then maybe I could provide this care without feeling wrung out." There are people who seem to have an endless capacity for loving and giving and caring no matter how frustrating it gets. They just keep on giving and loving and caring with joy. I envy them so much. I know that I love my FIL - after all, I have been caring for him for more than 6 years and we are very close. So I know that when the time comes for him to leave our home, I will be a mess. A mixtue of guilt and grief and relief and sadness at the end of an era in my life. Debbie I'm so proud of you. Do your friends and neighbors a huge favor and make it a point each day to accept at least one person's offer of help. Al's friends and your neighbors are grieving in their own way at als passing, and helping you in some tangible way would help them too. Really. We feel helpless when we know we could be making someone's day easier somehow but they won't accept our help. Maybe there is some way to connect Matthew with a trusted friend who could do guy things with him from time to time? That would be a help to YOU as much as to him. I'd wager that there are several people who would be honored to do that for Al. Maybe a friend would take Carley over to the nail salon and treat her to a manicure. $10, such a little thing, but would make her feel special and loved if a manicure isn't something she would usually do for herself. The next time someone asks how they can help, have a little errand or two at the top of your head each morning that would be a big help if you could delegate it. I offered to take a friend's cans and bottles and cardboard to the recycling center for her after her husband died. It was an easy thing for me to do on my way to the recycling.... but a HUGE project for her in addition to all the other #$%$ she had to think about. The recycling wouldn't have made it to the top of her to do list for weeks and would have sat there weighing on her and piling up. Just a little thing to me , but it was big to her and I was so happy to know that I had really helped make her day a little easier. When I see her now, she will always give me a hug and say "I can't believe you took my trash to the dump for me! I love you!" and I know she means it. So make a little list and accept people's offers of help. You know which ones really mean it! Easter wishes to all of you. Trish

Funny thing about paintings.... especially family paintings. There are people who will go to great lengths to keep them in a family and pass them down through the generations. My great uncle was an artist who painted in oils in the late 1800's . He used to be a barber and had them all throughout his barbershop back in the day. He started selling some of them in Chicago to a department store. He used the money to help supplement his income. My grandmother wanted one particular painting of his that was in his home and when he died he left it to her. She also had a few smaller ones that she gave to my mom who eventually passed down to us kids. The large painting my grandma had was recently passed down from my uncle (who had no kids of his own) to my sister. She spent a fortune getting the painting back in shape by a curator. The curator commented that the frame itself was very valuable but not the painting. In spite of that we all have memories of that picture hanging in my grandma's living room. In the meantime, I found several of his paintings for sale on Ebay after deciding to look for them. Apparently they have been coming up from other estate sales. Since we all recognized his signature on the paintings we knew they were his. Since I am one of six sibs we have had to decide who is going to buy each one. Since I found his paintings online, I have been letting my sibs buy them. I havent found one that I really liked yet. And so far the ones that they bought fit their individual homes. Still waiting for one I like!

I just peeked at that "Charity Navigator" and WOW....if you look at the money the RC receives....it is almost like our National budget....I cannot comprehend those numbers. What I do remember is that when Elizabeth Dole ( I think) was the 'director' or something, she was paid more than a $million $$$$ per year. WHAT'S WITH THAT???? Our local Good Will 'person', administrator or whatever, in our little valley where unemployment is chronically high, and income is chronically low, is paid a million a year. WHAT'S WITH THAT,too? It just 'bothers' me when I am made aware of those facts. I was a RC volunteer during the Vietnam War, and did Service to Miliary families where I did not get or expect even my phone bill to be reimbursed. What IS this "profiit" making, or 'highly paid' volunteering or 'career making' inside a Non-Profit all about? Beats me. It kinda makes me want to hand over my money to the local shelter providing meals to under-fed children and out-of-work parents.....but then we are supporting two unemployed adult children and it just frosts me the way that all of their efforts are just not being successful. End of Rant. PS. Our adult children are not dead beats. DD left a abusive marriage of 20 years and her DH has their 140 acre farm (aqnd 50 rare horses) that they put over $1 million into in 2004; it has cost her thousands in attorney fees for a mere 20,000 that he pays her whenever he feels like it....unless she goes back to court again. DS, almost the same...wife has $600,000, 5,000 sq ft with pool home, in the high rent district that he bought and is owned free and clear.... that divorce is not even filed and the writing is on the wall that she will get it all as well as custody of autistic son who recently qualified for 'lifetime' care due to the story she claimed to the agencies and system that she learned to manipulate. (maybe I over stated that a touch...we are just learning of it) Yep....WE are middle class Americans, who have served our country and our state, raised good citizen children who have never had problems with crime...ever;... have alwayts paid our "fair share" and cared about the 'least among us', and still voted today to fund two swimming pools and recreation improvements to benefit the less affulent children of our town by adding to our taxes. My Rant for the year, I think. And, here is where I usually hit the "delete" and go back to bed.

Kevin, your post was interesting and touching, but, in my estimation there is a difference between something that you have made an effort to collect and the things that you have acquired through just living and now have an emotional attachment to. For the old guy sitting there among the debris of his life it is the story of him and the ones he loved. For me and my coffee mug collection it is/was about the fact that it just captured my fancy. I got infatuated with a couple of mugs that I bought new in a video store, of all places. This was during the administration of the elder Bush. One of the cups was political and one was SNL. They were so intriguing. That followed with a couple of cups of Mickey Mouse and I was on the trail of coffee mugs. Most of my mugs do not reflect pop media culture. There are ones that celebrate old cars, cartoon characters, witty sayings, small and large business, things that once were but are now gone, different government agencies, a few social causes, and a couple quirky ones with photos of loved ones on them. There are many other subjects on the mugs. There is no one theme to them. Each of them caught my attention at a yard sale or GW store. And that is the reason that they came home with me........they made me smile. They were the precursor to printed t-shirts as give aways. Now everyone gets a t-shirt with some logos or some such printed on it. I dont think that there are very many of these mugs being produced anymore. There is a difference between the emotional baggage of the household items that once made your home and the things that you collected with intent. I dont have an emotional attachment to my collection. I enjoy it. I have emotional attachment to the things that made my home or that came to me preloved by those that I loved. Those are the hardest things to part with. By the way, we do use the mugs. I rotate them in and out of service. When we used to have friends and family around the table, everyone got to choose their own mug when the coffee pot came out and it was just a fun little bit of interaction. I even used them at daughters wedding to serve the coffee. It was a bit of an unexpected quirk and a light heartedness.