I'm Just Visiting This Planet

How great to be able to post about summer plans, even though one set of plans was precipitated by my dad's death. A big part of our summer (unplanned for!) is cleaning out the house on Rhodes Street. My dad died on May 29th, at 99 years and 4 months (although I’ve been saying 99 ½). The picture below was taken on January 11, 2020, Dad's 98th birthday. We were at Jonathan's in New Hyde Park. Jonathan's was dad's favorite restaurant, and where we had the funeral lunch. We moved into the house on Rhodes Street in New Hyde Park in 1955 and although we cleaned it out a bit when mom died in 1998 there is still a ton of stuff, including furniture, that nobody wants.  My sister Gini, my brother-in-law Bob, Anne, and I have spent five full days working on this over the last six weeks. Two of those days included filling a dumpster with the help of our cousin Jack. The plan is one more day of work and then we’re hiring someone who specializes in cleaning out houses. Once it’s ...

 Note: This entry was inspired by my friend Butch Armstrong-you can read his post here  https://marshallbutcharmstrong.com/2021/02/23/what-have-i-done-a-walk-through-of-my-employment-history/ It's kind of fun to look back on our working lives, isn't it? Butch made me remember all of the parents who entrusted their kids to me when I babysat all through high school. In college, I typed papers for $$. Summers during college I worked at Unicard, a credit card company, where I looked through printouts of people's credit when they charged something. Back in the "old days" when you used your credit card, the merchant would call the company and they (me!) would check to make sure that you had enough credit to cover the purchase. That job convinced me that I never wanted to do that for a living! Student teaching during my senior year of college convinced me that I wasn't meant to be a high school math teacher. After graduating from college I applied to VISTA-remember V...