07172024 Washington Whirlwind & New Arrivals!

Last Thursday I was flying up to Bellingham to help my mom and I was pleasantly surprised to find a Tapa Restaurant at LAX in the satellite where Allegiant flies from. It was great timing because Houston, Emma, Alec and another friend are walking the Camino in Spain this month. The tapas were good at LAX, not as great as Madrid though.

Here are Houston and Emma out and about in that great city. I lived in Madrid for six months on the USC Spain Semester and miss it!

I arrived to my mom’s house around 9 pm, just in time to see the sunset. We are going to miss her house when it sells.

The next day was go time. Met with my mom’s realtor at 9 am and we loaded up 4 metal shelves to go to Teresa Meur’s storage units for the estate sale. We had moved all of my mom’s eBay clothing to the storage units last month and I had thought all of the rest of her 6,000 eBay items would have already been moved, but NO….ugh! Here is the first truck load.

I actually had to drive this truck with the trailer (not my best look) and at the first stop sign I text Jen (the realtor) and said is your speedometer broken? She wrote back hahahaha….it is in kilometers because it is a Canadian truck.

I thought it was very strange that she could bring that car over the border and license it in Washington state without switching out the Instrument cluster.

I know this because I bought a BMW in Canada and had to prove that I would be changing out the instrument cluster. Here is that story #23 from my 1st 100 Best Book.

What is even more interesting about this story is that I was talking to one of my best friends Jo Dallas about it and her husband Jon worked at the border in intelligence. I said to Jo, “Wouldn’t it be crazy if I got Jon when I drive it over?” and she said “No way, he doesn’t ever man the border crossing”.

Well, the joke was on her because I did get Jon Dallas as my border crossing agent….he was filling in for someone who had to use the bathroom. It was sooooo funny! But he didn’t give me a break on duty. Darn!

Later that day, I took my mom to an appointment with her new doctor and once we got home we loaded the truck and trailer full of eBay stuff. Load #2 Friday evening. Ughhhh.

That night my mom and I sorted through more clothing and books trying to get her house empty enough to stage and sell. Trust me this has been a long process…we started on this back in May. Here is what the garage looked like after we took that eBay load. Still pretty full!

My mom has a storage room behind her garage that was full of eBay items as well. Sigh. Luckily, Teresa had emptied that out for us! yay! Here is what it looked like empty and the intention was to paint it and add flooring so that her 2 BR 2 BA house would now be a 3 BR 2 BA.

There are 4 other homes listed for sale on her street. Supply is high and so far no demand. None of the homes even have an offer. Fingers crossed that hers sells and we can get her down here soon!

Here is an after/work in progress photo of that extra bedroom. It turned out great!

The next morning, Saturday, the little boys were coming up to go through their mom’s stuff. It was going to be a tough day.

Well, they didn’t arrive until 12:30 and by then we had another load almost ready to go. So they helped us finish it off and we headed into Bellingham to Bakerview Storage.

Here is my mom sitting in Teresa’s biggest storage unit as the boys and I unload. There will be some amazing estate sales here in the next month. For my Bellingham people, I will let you know the dates and times.

We got back to my mom’s house at about 2:30 and had 3 hours to go through my sister’s stuff before our dinner reservation at 6pm. We had 4 huge totes full of paperwork. At first, Kai, didn’t want anything to do with it. He was petting the golden retriever Earl who was there with his owner to work on my mom’s house.

I can totally understand how hard this must be for these boys. We did find some love letters to my sister from a guy we had never heard of so I text her best friend Shauna and said “Who is Chad Morris…we found a bunch of love letters?”

Shauna wrote back…”We grew up with him and he was super cute. Kiki never mentioned the letters to me…that is hilarious…she would love this.”

At this point we were all giggling and Kai joined in the fun. Even though it was hard, there was something so comforting about them getting to know their mom when she was closer to their ages.

Here are a few throwback photos that we came across. This is Kiki with my dog, Buffy, who she would show at the fair when I was away in college.

Then here I am with Lee & Kiki (brother and sister) at her wedding to Chris Thompson….she was only married once and did not marry the boy’s dad.

We had the wedding reception on my mom’s deck on 37th Street in Bellingham and we were singing “Delta Dawn” for karaoke. OMG…how fierce are we? LOL.

The boys are going to have to come back to my mom’s house several more times to go through all the paperwork. It was bittersweet, fun, sad and touching. I look forward to spending more time with my sister’s thoughts, letters and ephemera.

That night we met one of my best friends from high school, Kathy Rutan, for dinner at Anthony’s. Our fav!

And during dinner we were telling Kathy about my mom’s new doctor…who isn’t an MD, but a PA for 30 years. Kathy looked at us and said “I have the same doctor…Rob”. OMG! Such a small world…right?

Also during dinner, Kathy told my nephews that she had just seen a meme where all young teenage boy’s hair looks like Alpacas. LOL…TRUE!

I left Bellingham on Sunday after another full morning of loading another truck and sorting stuff. Here is the garage when we were done! I must admit that I was happy to get out of dodge!

I arrived at LAX at 5:30 pm and Indiana picked me up. Thanks honey! We went out to dinner at Tony P’s in the Marina and then I got in an uber home. LONG weekend! But lots done and fingers crossed my mom’s house sells immediately!

Nice to be back home with Cha Cha & Carlos and back manning the store. We sold a lot this past week so lots of holes to fill in. We sold the yellow sofa in the front window so here is a before shot of our new front window.

Here it is after Susan worked her magic with Kevin’s help. Don’t forget about our design services and that we can do this for you…in your home, office, beach house, boat or RV. Not sure about the RV…..LOL…but let us try!