Like pantaloons on a clothesline...

...dust hangs from the spider webs in the corner of our family room.  A cloud of sheet rock dust hovers in our house, leaving film on every visible surface, even the vertical ones.




...for the most part, I have left it to itself, except on the occasions a child, or even a few of the adults in the family have written their name in it (yes, Michael, I'm talking to you).  I realize it will be a few more weeks before this remodeling project is finished.  I'm simply enduring it right now and cleaning it, only to have it dusty again five minutes later, just doesn't make sense(at least that's the excuse I'm using).




However, my mother's room has received plenty of attention.  Living in a small bedroom has to be incredibly difficult and on top of that, having it filthy would be enough to make an OCD cleaner like my mother crazy.  I have tried to meet my mother's needs, making sure she has snacks on hand to take with her medication, washing her laundry, taking out her trash, among other things, just trying to make life as pleasant as possible for her. 




When you enter her room you immediately see that it is filled with her life.  Her rocking chair that squeaks on each back swing, her lamp for seeing better while crocheting, her end table (just the right size for great-grandchildren tea parties), even a little kitchen area, so she doesn't have to go downstairs for her morning coffee, shelves and shelves of books, her numbered Thomas Kincaid oil painting hangs above her bed and the green walls Shay and I painted as a surprise for her speak of her likes and loves....






...so while Melissa, her nurse, was here last Thursday(or was that Friday, I can't remember), I grabbed a dust rag and went after it.  I started on her dresser by moving her things out of the way, spraying, wiping and then arranging things back the way she had them.  






... as I went from area to area, I would pick up her family pictures dusting them on my hiney (a distinct advantage to not having a tiny hiny)(Yes I know I spelled hinny differently each time, but I'm not sure how it is spelled, or even if it is a word, but I'm hoping by spelling it 3 different ways, one might be correct). 






...and on the table beside her TV are two pictures, one of my nephew, Seth, his trumpet in hand, and one of my dad.    I wiped Seth off (sorry Seth, but I used my hinnie even for your picture), put him back where he came from, then picked up my dad's picture.




...and for the first time that day I touched something in my house that was not dusty....




...a picture of daddy, dressed to the nines, ready to head out to the Methodist Church for Sunday services...




...not a speck or smidgen of dirt clung there, my dad's twinkling eyes shining out from the center of the gold frame.



...I'm not saying it's a sign or anything, but I have wondered if he is close by, watching me, watching over her.  The skeptics might say it was coincidence or that my mother had already  dusted it herself, perhaps...

...but isn't it a happy thought to believe something more.


...Yep, I'm believing in the something more thing...

Ok, so I just couldn't handle the hinee thing and not knowing how to spell it, so what do you do when you don't know the answer to something?


...google it...

Hiney, a noun, is the correct spelling for the slang word that refers to buttocks. (when you say the last word it sounds much better if you say it like Forrest Gump, "B-uh-ttox")

 

(take that Mrs. Sneider(my 4th grade teacher, who had little compassion and even less personality)...good thing she's dead or I would be too scared to write that!!!

 

...but I'm not going back and correcting it, so just read phonetically and you'll get the message.