Last things first . . . twitter has all but killed my blog.  I see things on other blogs, I find interesting things online, I have personal things to share, all of which I post . . . but not on my blog . . . I post it on Twitter.  Takes 20, maybe 30 seconds to do it on twitter (via the Twhirl application that sits on my desktop), which is much faster then writing an entire blog post.  Part of it may be the fact that you’re very much limited on the maximum amount of characters in a twitter post, so it makes for faster blogging.

However I don’t want the arackas.com to die, I want to repurpose it, make it more of a link repository and update center for Media sites that I find useful for A-V, I-T, etc. I’ll try to post links to them here on the blog. 

In other news, Grandma (dad’s mom, Mrs. Lankford) has moved up to Tennessee to be closer to family (that’s us).  It’s been an ordeal getting it done.  She’s 86 years old and two years ago had a brain tumor (that was removed) and had chemo therapy also.  Good news is that the tumor is gone, bad news is that the chemo therapy aged her considerably.  She’s good most of the time, but gets confused every now and again and her balance isn’t what it used to be.  So we found a house up here to rent (while we add a couple of rooms on to dad’s house for her to live in), but before the rental house was ready for her to move into she called us to let us know that she had hired movers, that they were in the midst of packing her stuff in the truck, and that she and all her stuff would be up here in a few days . . . um . . . what ?

Now we have a Problem (with a capital P).  The rental house wasn’t going to be ready until a week after her stuff was going to arrive, AND one of us wanted to be down there to help pack her stuff and get all the legal paperwork for the sale of her house and bank stuff done, AND we weren’t so sure that she wasn’t confused about the whole situation again and that maybe there were no movers at all.  WE were suppose to arrange all that stuff for her . . . but she jumped the gun on us and then told us when just about everything was done.

Long story short, we got everything straitened out (eventually) and all her stuff is actually IN the rental house in Tennessee now (and not on a truck SOMEWHERE around the country). The entire process has been like that . . . we find out things that she decided to do (without telling anyone) and then suddenly we have to fix it. 

But things are settling down now.  We are in the middle of unpacking all her stuff with the slight problem that she is moving into a smaller house then the one she had before . . . so things fit, but only just.  She, like many people of her generation, has furniture that is so solidly constructed and so beautiful that it’s probably worth a small fortune . . . but it’s also very VERY heavy.  She also has a set of couches for the living room that ‘are not for sitting on’ and a chair that no one is allowed to sit in (lest the chair or couches get worn out by use).  Which leaves no place to sit in the living room . . . at all.  She gave away her ‘sitting chairs’ and even if we were to buy another one there isn’t room . . . so (and this was a big deal) . . . she might have to sit on the couches or in the chair to watch TV.  She’s adjusting to the idea slowly, but she is adjusting to it. 

She has been staying at my apartment for the past week and a half.  Why not in the rental house you ask ?  Well that’s because the moving company didn’t know where the moving truck was for about a week.  Now that’s professional service there, you load up a customers stuff on a truck . . . and then loose track of the truck and leave them waiting for a week not knowing where it is or when it might arrive.

While she’s been staying with me, she has adapted very well and has been very nice (not cleaning away anything that I find important but that she labels as junk . . . like my 360).  But it’s also been nerve racking.  My apartment has some very steep stairs going from the living room up to the bedrooms and shower, and Grandmas balance isn’t too good.  And while there’s a hand rail all the way up, I keep thinking she’s going to fall and break something.  She also likes to wander a bit at night.  So every time I hear a creek in the floor or noise at night, I wake full up and listen carefully to see if it’s her about to fall down the steps or something.  So I’m not sleeping very well. 

She watches me play video games in the evenings, and gets the basic idea (though she kept asking me ‘who’s the man that keeps running in front of you’ in Gears of War 2 and I explained the concept of a third person game . . . which she seamed to understand pretty well).  She understands now that when I put the head set on, that I’m talking to other people (and not to her).  She asks questions for about 5 minutes when I first start playing and then she lets me be.  So things work out well.

But I’ll be glad when we FINALLY get her unpacked and moved into her own place.  I could deal with her living with me for a while, it’s not so bad, but the idea of her falling on those steps has me worried.  Her rental house is just a one story house, with just two small steps outside leading up to the door (which she had at her old house in Florida), so I will feel much better when she’s there. 

Anywho, that’s the big deal right now.  Learning all the rules to taking care of the elderly and trying my best not to worry too much.  Hopefully, when all this is over, I will start posting more regularly and not in such novel formats like this.  8- )