(Raven in his shotgun seat in the rental SUV. Photo Socotra.)

This was an interesting trip Up North, if you care for things that are “Interesting.” I don’t.

Some things got done, and for the first time in a long while I did not spend a day knocking my head against a wall screwing with some IT problems. I ignored them.

I got the trash and the boxes stacked up against the garage out by the curb. Some of the boxes went to the scavengers, others to the Waste Management Professionals with the mouse in the trap and the scary bag of shrimp from the refrigerator.

I wrote status updates for Anook on Magpie’s broken tooth, the x-rays from yesterday’s adventures in emergency dentistry, signed contracts for the kitchen and bath upgrades to get the place ready to rent or sell. There is a Flyer from the City on the counter referencing what we can put out to the curb and have collected, and what we are going to have to hump to the dump ourselves.

I got nothing else done except write the two big checks and get the pictures off the wall in the dining room and yank the remote cameras we tried to use to monitor the folks well-being last year before things fell off the cliff. I yanked the wires out of the fireplace and off the mantle in the living room and put them in a box to deal with in the library, where everything is migrating in preparation for plastering and painting.

Got nowhere near where I wanted to be. There are still boxes (empty, best I can tell) in the crawl space downstairs, even if all the junk is now in the garage. All of Raven’s office is still there and so are all the furnishings on the lower level.

Accomplishments included returning the “Poor Box” that presumably came from the Methodist Church next door that I found with the lock jimmied on the steps to the Big Top, which apparently needs a new roof. Crap.

Accomplishments did not include doing anything about the lawn, the huge pile of cigarette butts where the trash goes and which is apparently a designated off-the-hospital campus non-smoke free zone for the employees, or dealing with the rail fence’s missing rail or getting everything off the walls in the living room, Raven and Magpie’s former master bedroom, or the guest suite downstairs.

I am exhausted. I am sorry I could not get more done. But I am of the realization that Raven is not long for the planet.

The biggest loose end is the one that aches the worst, and has all the mystery in the world.

Copyright Vic Socotra 2011
www.vicsocotra.com