Two Weeks And Counting

This week has been a definite challenge with Mother continuing her hospital stay. She unfortunately did not qualify for acute rehab within the hospital and on Thursday evening was transferred to sub-acute rehab at Lutheran Home in Arlington Heights. Mother stayed there in a large suite for rehab after her knee replacement last year. Although I think it is a nice and clean place, Mother does not like it. We tried to send her to The Moorings but they do not offer the type of therapy she needs. Another choice is in Barrington but even though it sounded pretty good I was concerned about the distance of 40 minutes each way from my home. Things have gotten off to a rocky start at Lutheran Home with Mother hating the food and the staff not being as responsive as she would like. I am doing my best to keep her calm and to explain that the real treatment will not start until Monday because therapy is not available on the weekends. Between Saturday and Sunday her legs turned dark red, a friend was visiting and it was suggested that she go to the ER.

We went but we know from too much past experience what the ER checks for and that is exactly what happened. Blood tests and then an ultrasound to make sure there are no blood clots. After about six hours of waiting, the doctor said there was nothing to admit her to the hospital for. The leg color was due to the rapid water removal in intensive care and being on blood thinners. Mother was actually really disappointed that she was not going to be admitted! I however was so relieved that there was no necrosis, I was more concerned about a potential loss of toes or a limb. There was no choice but to have Mother go back to Lutheran Home because arranging another location was not possible late on a Sunday evening. The hope is that things will kick into gear with the start of the new week. The breathing machine and treatments are actually helping and the recovery process has been very encouraging these past two weeks.

Because of the Sunday ER stay, I was not able to post a Federico jewelry purge that evening as I had hoped. On Monday though, I was able to post the unsold items from the September 10 lot online. The cute little turquoise ring at the upper left did sell on Facebook Marketplace during the week but the multi-strand turquoise necklace and all of the cuff bracelets except the 3-stone red cuff are available for purchase.

Despite the challenges, I am doing my best to keep my word and go on with the pop-up sale. I spent some time displaying the Czech rhinestone jewelry in one of the large cabinets in the breezeway. I have had this jewelry for years - when I purchased it I was told it was made in the factories in the Czech Republic about 15 ago. Now it qualifies as vintage as it is at least 20 years old! After all this time, I finally finished tagging the rest of the bracelets and necklaces so they can be put out for sale. There is not enough room for everything so I separated out the red and green and will display those pieces with the other Christmas jewelry. The display is about 80% completed and I will get some photos for next time.

I also started photographing some of the small vintage home decor pieces which will be for sale. I tried using my medium size light box but was not liking the results so I took a few armfuls of goodies down to the basement where I could use two Replica Surfaces to create a backdrop and floor inside my large light box. So far, I have used a peach and terrazzo theme for the mid-century items and a walnut and white painted brick for newer pieces. I only have about half of my surfaces here so the choices are sort of limited.

I would like to make collages like this for the home decor items so there are not so many individual photos on the ads. As usual, I wish I had more time but at least I made some progress. Next week I will have a week off from estate paperwork and I let Mother know that I will continue to visit her but do need time to not only complete the breezeway staging but stage the garage as well. The goal is to have everything in place by Sunday October 1. The week of the sale, I will continue to price new pieces and add them to the display.

This entry will be short and sweet as there is much to do. Here is hoping for better news and great progress with preparing for the pop-up sale next time!