Mack Attack!

Last night while minding my own business, my voice got up and left. I think it was bored with the conversation. Then, when I woke up this morning, I not only felt like I'd been run over by a Mack truck, but I felt like it had backed up and decided to try it again. 

Twice.


We've got the crud that's going around, although it hasn't hit my lungs just yet like it has Scooter's. I have just been hit with overwhelming fatigue. Hopper has had the fever and the fatigue (she slept 21 hours the night before last and 16 hours last night), but she has no cough just yet. The Hubster missed 4 days of work from it last week, and Frank had it a few weeks ago. Bugster's lungs have been zapped with the crud, and she sounds horrible on the phone. So far, it appears as though the only one who has escaped unscathed so far is Bubster. Hope he doesn't end up with it, too.


I'm trying to take it easier physically. I don't want this crud to get the better of me. So I decided to work on paperwork.


A couple of weeks before Mom left to go home, she helped me in the garage. That's where we found all the extra boxes of laundry, after I thought we'd gotten it all done a few weeks prior. We cleared out at least 1/3 of the garage. We have this huge empty space now and can actually see the back wall of the garage. Before, we could barely make it out of the kitchen, and there was just a small path out to the porch. 

The clothes that were out there have been sorted, washed, thrown, donated or given away. I mentioned the other day that we donated 49 bags of clothes that had come in from the garage and 23 bags from the laundry that I'd been working on for the last 9 years or so. What I failed to mention is that I sent at right at 60 bags home with Mom for my sister's family, and I probably threw at least 50 bags, if not more.


The clothes that are still here are either going to be sold, worn, or put away for Bugster to go through to see, if she wants any when she has little ones of her own. They've been sorted according to size, folded and neatly put in some of the rubber totes that I emptied out and scrubbed with bleach. The totes will be stored in the garage inside large plastic bags, so there's absolutely no chance of bugs, mice or dust getting them dirty, so they'll take up a little bit of that free space we opened up.


What won't be taking up the free space is paperwork. After I dusted 2 dozen or so boxes of paperwork in the garage and brought them into the kitchen, Mom wiped them all off with a bleach-soaked cloth to disinfect them. Then she stacked them all neatly in the study for me to sort through. I started on them today.


I got through one box fairly quickly. It was full of proofs of purchases for items I was going to send in for rebates or special offers. There were soup labels, yogurt lids, cereal box tops, and the cardboard pieces that are torn away on boxes of tissues, so the contents of the box are accessible. The box was full to the top, and 99.9% of it went in the trash or in the shredables. And as tempting as it was to save the soup labels and cereal box tops for the local schools to send in for credit, I allowed myself to throw them away. To let go.


Then I started on the next box. It's a hard box to sort through. There's a lot in there I need to save. The medical records from many of the visits back and forth to Virginia are in the box, as well as the results of Bugster's genetic testing we had done 20 years ago. She's going to need that in the next few years, so I'm glad I came across it.


I'm about halfway through the box and I'd like to finish it before I go to bed, but I'm okay with it, if I don't get it finished up until tomorrow.


I can feel a caravan of Mack trucks lining up to run me down.