There are times.....

There are times.....that I really miss my mother. And the triggers that can bring the pain right to the top of things can be completely unexpected.

One of the results of my apnea fatigue was a lack of any attention to cleaning. Now those of you who have lived with me know that cleaning isn't my favorite activity (although I like the result), but I usually managed to keep things reined in enough to be livable. But the apnea fatigue defeated what little willpower I had for anything more than surface cleaning....

So I decided to take a good chunk of this weekend and try to tidy and get rid of stuff and generally make this place look a little less like a crowded pigsty. I'm definitely a packrat, so getting rid of stuff I don't use isn't easy for me..... so stuff builds up, and I lose sight of what's lower in a pile.

So I'm cleaning the second closet in the den tonight, and I find a pile of old purses. Now, I haven't owned that many purses in my life - I'm really picky about what I want, plus I spent much of my 20s either as a student or teaching, so I just used a bookbag for years.

But one of the purses in the pile made me laugh, then cry. You see, in two different states, without consulting each other, Mum and I bought pretty much the same purse a couple days apart. IIRC, hers had slightly fancier doodad on the handle, but otherwise they were exactly the same.

We found out we'd done it when we met in Pittsburgh for a weekend (a nice destination, as it was about equally distant for Ted and us to drive there, and for Mum and Dad to head down from WNY). I went to get something out of my purse, thinking it felt a little heavy, but not really paying too much attention.... until I opened it and it was different wallet ;-)

Yup, that mug that I have that says 'It's official; I've become my mother' had definite truth to it.

I've lost some weight recently, and may need to go clothes shopping at some point.....I'll have to drag myself, most likely.....as her presence was what made such trips anything other than just bearable.....even though we did have different shopping styles (she was slow and deliberate, I'm quick and let's move on, one of the few ways I was like my grandmother, whose birthday was yesterday; we didn't always get along but she was my grandmother and I loved her....). But Mum's company was worth the difficulties from the different shopping styles.

Hard to believe it's been almost 4 years....seems like just yesterday we were watching the Sox win their first title since Gram was a girl and planning an impulse trip to NYC (where we went to the Metropolitan Musem of Art [photos from a trip with them a few months earlier]- she was tired enough that October from the cancer that they drove into Manhattan to park under the museum; she went and had a nap in the car at one point while Dad and I kept browsing -- but she made the trip from Buffalo and then down here to PA/MD).