We survived the trip to Kansas to help my parents sort through their house and get it ready to put on the market. Barely. They’ve only lived in that house for about ten years, but I am quite certain there were boxes in the basement that hadn’t been sorted through since the early sixties.

If you’ve had to help senior parents sort through a house, you know what I’m talking about.

My parents live in a 1500 square-foot ranch home…with an additional 1500 square feet of unfinished basement below it. While it wasn’t wall-to-wall stuff (I wouldn’t be alive to tell about it if it HAD been), you can store a LOT of treasures in a basement that size.

It took three of us four days to sort through the basement, either packing, trashing, or hauling stuff off to Goodwill as we went. My husband did a lot of the carrying or, as he refers to it, doing an impression of a pack mule.

My energy was expended in a different way.

“Mom, this ceramic teapot has been in a box since 1963. You no longer remember who gave it to you. Can we put it in the big black sack of doom?”

“Hey, Mom, you haven’t used this now-antique sewing machine and cabinet since gaudy plaid pants were in style. It’s been broken since I was in second grade. Okay if we haul it out?”

“Mom, while this bookcase is a lovely yellow metal, you got it for free from your workplace when you retired. It’s heavy. And very sturdy. Do you think there’s someone out there who shops at Goodwill who would give it a happy home?”

I know it was a difficult week for my mother. She comes across as a practical, trucks-no-nonsense woman, so when I realized how much sentimental value she’s placed on just about every last item in that basement, I was a little taken aback. And thankful for my past career experience in sales.

Some of my personal favorites from the Stumbo Underworld:

* My school papers. Of particular amusement was a booklet from fifth grade that my teacher put together for parents. Each of my classmates wrote something for the Christmas booklet, my teacher typed it up and copied it on the purple-inked mimeograph thingey, stapled the five pages together and put a red cover with a poem on the front of it. Voila. Instant present for the parents. I have no memory of this, nor do I remember being particularly verbose, but put it this way. The poems and writings of the other 30 kids took up 4 pages total. My Christmas short story? One full page. Single-spaced. I guess we know why I write novels today.

* My mom loves bows — the kind you put on a pretty, wrapped package. When I say loves, I kind of mean obsessively hoards and recycles. We have a joke in our family at Christmas and birthdays…everyone makes a point of grabbing the bows before my mom can collect them. In spite of this attempt, she manages to feed her addiction. To the tune of EIGHT BOXES of bows in her basement. Not little shoe boxes. These were hat boxes. Oversized gift bags. Oversized shirt boxes. Eight of them. Big bows, little bows, bows of every color you can imagine. Glittery bows, two-toned bows, round bows, long ones. Many of them homemade and not those ugly cheap ones that I usually buy in a bag for 99 cents. And the best thing about it? My mom knows how to make beautiful, one-of-a-kind bows. Many of them in the eight boxes were ones she created. And still…she hoards, just in case. (We culled it down to a single box of her favoritest ever bows.)

* Sheet music. My mom used to be a church organist, and she still loves to play the piano, both for fun and profit. She collects sheet music. She has been for, well, judging by the basement, the past hundred and eighty years. Wedding music, church music, formerly popular music (emphasis on FORMERLY), classical, jazz, and then the random stuff from my childhood that I used for my own piano lessons. She still. Had. It all. And the best part of this chapter of the story is that as she sat in a chair in the basement going through every last bit of music, my husband and I endured a singing concert. Good news: I think we got the sheet music and books down to a mere 3 boxes.

* Books. If you know me and my family, you might have seen this one coming. I come by my book addiction honestly. In addition to the five 6-foot-tall bookcases in my parents’ bedroom, the one in the dining area, and one in the office (most of these filled with double layers of books), there were at least 4 bookshelves in the basement. Triple stacked. Plus boxes and bags of books. As of our departure, they’d donated 14 boxes crammed full of books to the Lawrence Public Library. And they haven’t made it through all of the shelves yet.

* Grandma art. Do you have a crafty old woman in your family? (No, I’m not referring to my mother with this one.) My grandma, bless her heart, loved to make things. She went through a particularly long phase of…plastic yarn crap, for lack of a better name. She made…angels, kleenex box holders, pot holders, coasters and so much more. My mom saved it all. We finally liberated most of it to live freely at the city dump.

I’m overjoyed to tell you Virginia was strong this past week. She said goodbye to a lot of treasures. My husband’s back may never be the same, and I’m still coughing dust out of my lungs, but their house is happy. Lighter. And much closer to being ready for a different family to fill the basement with mementos and scraps of a lifetime.

The family and I are going out of town this weekend and, okay, after taking 6 trips in 5 months, I have to admit it will be nice to get home from this one and STAY PUT for a whopping 5 weeks before the RWA National Conference. For one thing, I have a book or two to write and traveling isn’t conducive to rocking on the page count.

My brain is extra scattered and my blog is a cross-section of it…in other words randomania.

* My dad is having surgery today so you might keep him in your thoughts.

* My house looks like a hurricane went through…and I’d like to have it halfway presentable for the cat sitter who will come in daily while we’re gone. Of course “halfway presentable” would take about two weeks of work so you see my dilemma.

* I have a bajillion errands and tasks to get done before bed tomorrow night and yet…no list. I’m a list girl. I promise you two-thirds of it won’t get done until I have a list. But…I’m deep into synopsis mode and am going to see how much of one I can puke out first.

* Random conversational tidbit (courtesy of my friend Tasha): You can apparently tell what decade a person’s age is by the way they text. 20s: No vowels. 30s: Some vowels but lots of abbrieviations and no punctuation. 40s: Every stinking vowel and punctuation mark is used properly. And I’ll add to that last one…40s and writers: Proper spelling and punctuation AND if they mistype something, they resend it, corrected. Though I’m a mere 39, I fall into the last sick category. (Might have something to do with OCD as well.)

I’m not sure I’ll be able to check in next week but I’ll be on Facebook because, well, addiction….

Happy weekend to all (a little early)!