The Personal Property Distribution Document

Do you ever get obsessed over things that don’t really matter in the grand scheme of life? My latest obsession has been to figure out what the tiny orange light is for on my laptop’s touchpad. It would have been an easy quest for information if I had remembered what that area on my keyboard is called. I don’t use the touchpad because I’ve added the dong so I can use an external mouse. So first I tried to google keyboard schematics to find one that labeled the various keyboard areas, but in order to do that I had to figure out how to spell ‘schematics’ and Alexa was having a PMS day and wouldn't help out my dyslexic brain. Finally, I figured out that googling ‘laptop configurations’ would get me the word I was looking for and from there I learned that I’m not the only person who got obsessed over why the tiny orange light appeared out of no where to drive us all nuts. I was in a large club and some techies took great delight in explaining that sometime in our tiptoeing around the keyboards we must had accidentally tapped twice on the upper left corner of the touchpad to turn the silly little light on and to turn it off we had to tap it twice again. That’s twenty minutes of my life I won’t get back.

I allowed myself to get distracted from what I actually sat down at my computer to do because I have been putting off creating the document I’ve needed to write for over month now. Remember back when I had a Trust drawn up? Everything that had to be done regarding my estate planning book has been done except for a ‘Personal Property Distribution’ sheet of things I want to go to whoever like jewelry, art, family artifacts and my car. You should see the Personal Property Distribution document I had the last time I did my estate planning back after my husband died and before I did a major downsizing to move to this continuum care complex.  It was three pages long and most of that stuff I sold or gave away in recent years. Now, I’m down to twenty-five items on my draft and they’d all fit in a average size suitcase except for my car which may or may not get sold long before I die if my ability to drive safety goes first. 

If you followed my blog during the epic downsizing project that literally took me two years you’ll know my husband and I were materialistic by nature. Don had a T-shirt once that said, “The one who dies with the most toys wins” and, boy, did he try to win that contest. His favorite thing to do on a Saturday morning was to get up before dawn and get to the flea market while the sellers were still unpacking their goods. His family had lost most of their worldly possessions in two tornadoes that hit their farm ten years a part and and I think he was trying to buy back his childhood. He never passed up a collectible toy, hand tool or advertising piece made before 1950. And Barbie Dolls. In his lifetime he undressed more Barbie Dolls at flea markets and garage sales than a whole gaggle of little girls could do in their dreams. He never did find the elusive 1959 Barbie worth today around $8,000 to $10,000 but he did find 6 or 7 that we resold for $100 each which was good price back in the last century when we were buying and selling antiques. Don had the ability to read a book on a certain type of collectible and remember the key dates and the markings to look for.

Now, I look at my list of twenty-five items and think, “What does it really matter what happens to, say, a trench lighter from WWI that my dad had acquired? The youngest members of my family didn’t know my dad and as far as I know none of the middle aged one are into wartime history or collectibles or collecting Tobacciana even if that lighter does looks does like a Rube Goldberg contraption. What do you do as elderly person trying to find homes for stuff? Do you try to explain what something old and useless is and why you like it? Do your best to make them like it too, or do you sell it to stranger who doesn’t have to be talked into anything? Or do you keep it until someone hauls your stuff off to Goodwill where a collector like Don likes to shop to find their hidden-in-plain-sight treasures?

I’m seriously thinking of making a twenty-five page picture book of my favorite old things with their histories included. I know exactly where this longing to keep generations connected to family objects comes from. I didn’t have grandparents growing up but my best friend since kindergarten had two sets, one living within walking distant and her grandparents all told such wonderful stories about all their treasured antiques brought over from the old country. I was still in my teens when I started buying antiques and they spoke to me as clearly as the elderly people in my friend’s family. I could imagine, for example, all the places an old whale oil lamp had traveled before it landed in my hands. My old lamps are still some of my favorite possessions and young people don’t even recognize them as a lighting source today. 

The bottom line is that when I downsized I was happy to sell and give stuff away to people I thought really appreciate the stuff I had. For example, one time we went to an estate sale and many of the things the old man had, had notes attached that gave the history of those pieces. I bought the first pair old long pants the guy had as a child in 1902---a beautifully tailored, tiny wool pair of nickers---and I left his note in the pocket with one of my own when I sold those pants on e-Bay in 2020. The woman who got them was thrilled with the notes and said when she was ready to part with them she’d add her own note. If I were King that’s what would happen to all the interesting objects in the world. They would come with pedigrees. ©

* The pants at the top are actually nickers---knee length---that the old man had labeled "my first pair of long pants." Note the tailored hole in the crotch for little boys to use when they needed to pee. 

Trench lighter were flameless and were used during WW1 so the enemy couldn't see where the soldiers were hiding in dug-out trenches.

 

The Music that Went to War

Over the weekend I dug out my husband’s album of turn-of-the-century sheet music and divided it up into three lots to sell on e-Bay---one of Black Americana, one of WWI songs and another of popular-at-the-time music. One hundred and ten sheets and the largest lot by far was the WWI lot. I'd forgotten that we had over sixty pieces of music that had been written about the war and the mothers and sweethearts waiting on the home front. The titles alone tell a story: Will you be one of the Soldier Boys, I don’t Know Where I’m Going but I’m on my Way, I’ll Return Mother Darling, I’m Hitting the Trail for Normandy so Kiss me Goodbye, It’s a Long way to Berlin but We’ll get There, The Yanks with the Tanks will go Through the German Ranks, They are Tenting Tonight in Far off France, Three Wonderful Letters from Home, I Know They are Waiting for Me, Don’t try to Steal the Sweetheart of a Soldier, He was a Soldier from the U.S.A., There’s a Service Flag Flying at our House, Oh What a Time for the Girlies When the Boys come Marching Home, and my personally favorite They were all out of Step but Jim. 

Decades ago sheet music was collected mostly for the great graphics on the covers but they have fallen far out of favor. The values of antiques and collectibles are more fluid than many people realize but a good rule of thumb is this: Most people collect in the era that their grandparents lived during the prime of their lives and pickers need to keep that in mind if they are buying for resale. As the population ages and they start downsizing a younger crop of collectors comes along to turn another decade of old things into hot commodities like Mid-Century stuff is right now. Stuff at the top of the market only stays at the top for so long before the prices start falling. There are exceptions with longer or no windows of popularity, of course, baseball card collecting being one of them and Black memorabilia another. Of the latter, I’ve read there are two types of people who collect Black Americana: Some buy it to destroy the postcards, advertisements, nicnacks, etc., that show things like black children eating watermelons or being fed to alligators while the other set of buyers are setting up personal or public museums of black stereotyped memorabilia. Ferris State University has a Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia that tells a shocking-to-some story to those who are willing to listen and learn.

I’ll be lucky to find buyers for the sheet music who will pay more than seventy-five cents a sheet, sold in lots. If I were to e-Bay each one separately I still couldn’t get more than $3 to $12 each for the noteworthy ones but about a third would probably go unsold. Not that it matters because we didn’t have a penny invested---the music belonged to my husband’s mother. She taught piano lessons before she was married in 1918 and her maiden name is written on most of the music. Not a single piece has her married name inscribed and I found that kind of sad. She obviously loved playing. I can picture the quiet, unassuming woman I knew sitting at an upright piano letting her inner spirit out while pounding the keys to Strike up the Band Here Comes a Sailor.

I thought about offering the music on Facebook to my husband’s family like I did with the hand embroidery pieces my mom made, and I may still do that with the smallest lot of "popular" music. But Don has a lot of nieces and nephews and I’d end up mailing the sheet music all over the place. If only ten of them, for example, wanted 2-3 sheets it would run me $70 in postage, backer boards and envelopes, not to mention it would be time consuming. Plus Don’s brothers, their wives and the older nieces and nephews all got to go through the family home after his mother died and took whatever they wanted. No one wanted that sheet music back then. Someone might ask why I don’t just throw it all in the trash and save myself the trouble. I can’t do that with things that have been lovingly saved for a hundred years. One way or another the sheet music will get adopted or sold.

I always thought that my husband could play the piano by ear but now I wonder if when he was a little boy that he might have gotten some lessons from his mom. I never heard any stories of the family standing around the piano singing and her sheet music buying seemed to have dropped right off in 1918. I’m guessing her teaching opportunities dried up when she moved to the country after getting married. And it didn’t take long before life got too hard to allow much time for music, her being a farmer’s wife with four boys and a couple of hire hands to feed and do laundry for. She also kept a garden, canned for winter, raised chickens and walked several miles into town each day to sell eggs to a local grocery store.

I went through the sheet music several times looking for a cover that would look good with the color scheme I’ll be using when I move, thinking I could frame it in honor of my mother-in-law. I couldn’t find one but I’m keeping, Yes, There are no Bananas just in case I can find a place for it in the kitchen. I remember singing that song when I was a kid and the cover art reminds me of my Italian heritage for some crazy reason I can't figure out, even though the grocer who couldn’t say ‘no’ to any question was Greek. ©

Everything That was Old is New Again

I’m sitting here waiting for FedEx, UPS and USPS to show up with early birthday gifts to myself. Shopping online is way too easy. Coming today are my iron bed in a gun-metal gray (a new twist on a very old style), a box spring wrap (a new twist on bed skirts) a blanket and another set of sheets. The blanket I bought at Bed Bath and Beyond might go back, if I like the one coming from Amazon better. That store was a disappointment when I shopped it last week. They’ve enlarged a makeup section and cut down on the selection of towels and sheets. I guess makeup qualifies as “beyond” but most people think “bed” and “bath” supplies when they go there.

On my library shelf I have an 1895 Montgomery Ward and a 1905 Sears-Roebuck catalogs left over from an era when I day-dreamed that I was going to write historical romance novels. As much time as I spent studying those catalogs you would have thought I was living back in those times when ordering something took weeks to get delivered. Now you order, and two days later it arrives at your door. How cool is that! Over the years those catalogs have come in handy for identifying stuff we’d find in our travels. If no one could tell us what something was, there was a good chance it would end up in my husband’s collection. Sometimes it would take a few years, but eventually we’d figure it out, although I still have two things in the house that are mysteries. Even today I get a kick out of looking through those catalogs. You never know when it will come in handy to know that in 1895 you could buy a yard of 1¼ inch Irish Point Cambric Embroidery stitched on a three inch cloth for seven cents. Okay, so I’ve never actually been able to work that fact into a conversation, but I’m hopeful that day will come.

Back on topic. Here’s the deal. The bed comes today (Thursday as I'm writing this) and Saturday the guys from the service that Wayfair hooked me up with will come put the bed together. The mattress place only delivers to my area on Tuesdays and Friday so I’ll be in a holding pattern where I’m sleeping on a twin bed in the same room where my new bed will be set up. Tuesday the son-I-wish-I-had will be back to pick up that second twin---he’s already picked one set up to make room for the new bed. He has two sets of twin grandkids and they will put my old bed frames and mattresses to good use. Confused? You’re not the only one.

With the painters then all the other stuff going on poor Levi has been confused and out of sorts. I used those twin beds shoved up sit-by-side and he's been sleeping on Don’s side since a few days after he died. The first night with only one twin in the house Levi tried to claim it as his. I made him a nest on the floor next to the bed but he wouldn’t use it and there is no way I was going to sleep on a crate liner with a cushy blanket on top. It took him a half hour of pouting and pacing before he finally acknowledged me as the alpha member of our pack and went to the living room to sleep on the couch. The second night we agreed to share the foot end of the twin, but I was so afraid I’d fall out of bed that before I fell asleep I woke him up and made him move. He rearranged the nest on the floor, laid in it for two minutes then left to sleep on the couch. By the time he gets used to this temporary arrangement, the new mattress will be delivered and he’ll be confused all over again. 

Fun fact: The iron-look-alike bed I just paid $350.00 for on sale cost $7.50 in 1895 plus 35 cents for extra slats...and that one was solid iron. I had an antique iron bed that I had to sell when my husband had his massive stroke and it went for $800 on eBay. Everything that was old is new again.... ©

Here's all the photos of the finished bathroom redo:

view from the doorway, left side of the room---that linen closet is 22" deep

view from th doorway, right side of the room--the chest was not in the room when Don was alive and we needed the space for his wheelchair after transfers

This chest is one of the first pieces of furniture I refinished when I was in my teens. The 3-D photo on the wall was of one of my husband's gas pump faces. It was taken by a professional photographer who now sells them for big bucks. It speaks to me in ways I can't describe.

of course, we need one of these in a bathroom

This watercolor print was done by a local artist. It's of a channel coming from Lake Michigan and it's one of my favorite places on earth.

Going back out of the bathroom you see the necessary stuff on the counter top, although the linen closet has plenty of room for it if I want to hide it out of the way.

I wanted a pop of color on the floor without a pattern that fought with the shower curtain and I didn't want a solid color the would dominate the space. This 5'x7' rug filled the bill and is meant to look like a worn-out oriental rug. I had 23 rugs on my 'wish list' at Wayfair before I narrowed it down and I'm happy with my final choice.

Last but not least, pulling back the shower curtain to show the safety features in my shower. They are one of the reasons why when I was looking for condos a few years ago I couldn't find one that didn't feel like a downgrade for aging in place. If the portable chair is removed there's enough room for a rolling shower-chair for a disabled person. It might look like over-kill with all the grab bars but trust me, as the caregiver helping with showers I used them all...and still do to practice being safe in the leading place where seniors fall. Anyone remodeling a bathroom needs to plan for their needs down the road, think safety and accessibility BEFORE you actually need it. (Are you listening, N.K.B.?) After Don's stroke our houses sat empty and we were parked in a small apartment while our new house was being built because neither one of our old houses had bathrooms that could be remodeled to suit his needs. Even the apartment bath had to be approved before the hospital would release him to my care. In the stroke community I ran into a lot of people who spent unnecessary time in nursing homes waiting for their home bathrooms to be upgraded for safety and/or accessibility. 

If you think I'm being militant about this issue now, you should have known me a year or two out from Don's stroke, after we'd been through major housing issues. We had too much income to quality for the government subsidized apartment buildings that are set up for the disabled and the required 10% accessible apartments in large privately owned complexes were being rented to people who didn't need them. The apartment we did find had to have the bathroom and bedroom doors removed to accommodate his wheelchair while the apartment next to us had the government's basic ADA requirements---zero steps, wide doorways, grab bars in the bathroom---was rented by a young, healthy girl. Hopefully, the housing accessibility issue is better now than it was in 2000 but I wouldn't bet on it. Some states have since passed laws that large builders must build 10% of their houses accessible but back when I was following stuff like this, there was push back on making that a federal law. And ordinary people like to fool themselves into thinking they will never have a need for commonsense stuff like good grab bars. Drives me crazy! Rant off.