Perpetual Ruminations

East or West, Which Way do We Go?

It's eleven o'clock on Saturday night; I  made it before midnight my time and the emphasis is on made it in.  Saturday morning, no alarm and everyone gets to sleep. But, I was up before eight,, even though I didn't get to bed until almost two-thirty. As a result, I was falling asleep in my chair a couple hours ago and figured I'd be in bed as soon as the girls were tucked in. I just got the last daughter tucked in and she is trying to go to sleep now. Of course, they did sleep in.

We had planned to go Christmas shopping today, but things didn't work out until it was already late afternoon, so we decided to put of shopping until tomorrow. But, I found a voice message from my mother-in-law earlier this evening saying she had been trying to get a hold of my wife and to have her call her. She also added that she needs a little help.

She purchased a small freezer she needs set up in the entry between the house and garage. Whoever hauled it brought it in but didn't bother to move anything and set it in place. Currently there is a bench sitting where the freezer needs to go. The bench needs to go to the garage, but before there's room in the garage, other things need to get moved to the big garage which is so packed full from some re-flooring, there's hardly room to walk. Again, most of this stuff should have gone to the big garage, but my brother-in-law who put the new flooring down was short on help.

We, my wife, daughters, and I, were supposed to go help move everything, but we had one sick daughter, just a bad cold, and had possibly been exposed to Covid. We had to self quarantine until the person had her test results back to know if we had been exposed or not. There was no Covod, just a nasty cold, which explains where my daughter caught it.

My wife called her mom back, but we didn't have an answer for her because we were both tired and wanted to discuss what direction we plan on going tomorrow. My mother-in-law lives about forty minutes east of us and our shopping will take us about forty minutes west, opposite directions.

I hate to not help her out, but at the same time, I hate to put off the shopping, too. With hind sight, I see we should have gone today, but of course, we don't have foresight until it turns to hindsight. There is also the other issue, my back. It's done great today and isn't even real sore anymore. But, being the first day of full recovery had me thinking that maybe it was a good thing we didn't get out shopping. All that walking, bending, and just the stress of shopping on a Saturday may have set me back. But now, on the same hand, moving furniture and a freezer may also be too  much too soon.

The part that makes it so frustrating is that the son-in-law who did her floor lives a couple hours away, but was able to come help her out. We live almost an hour away and make it over quite often to help her out. But, she has a son who lives about ten minutes, if that, who won't do any more than he absolutely has to. She also ahs two other daughters who live less then twenty minutes away who also won't do much to help her out. Of course there are adult grandchildren who also live close, one in the same small town, about three blocks away.

It's undecided, but if we don't go tomorrow, it's going to be next weekend before we can go help. I hate to leave her waiting that long. Besides, she wants me to change the light in her microwave for her, she asked last weekend. Of course, it would require removing the entire cover to do this, a rather big job. Also, the microwave is about twenty years old! We had planned on getting her a new one for Christmas, but maybe we can find one at a decent price  not too far out of the way and deliver her gift a little early.

Of course, that means paying more that if we go the other direction where there is a Menard's and a Walmart. What to do, oh what to do? I hope tomorrow I can update this item with our decision and how everything played out.