Blue Skies and Roller blades and a senior

 I was up on PA for a week to hang with my Dad.  The goal was to visit some assisted living places, to maybe clean out a few things, and just generally bond.  It was decent typical weather for January. A stormy Monday led to a blue sky Tuesday and I took a walk around the block.

 Big trees

Here's the home I grew up in.  That big oak sheds limbs like crazy. Talk about a thunk on the roof. Yikes. I did spend an hour or so picking up sticks - mission accomplished.

So, here's a senior story. We are cleaning out the computer room closet. We gather a ton of ancient paper for shredding and he agrees. Then I haul out his roller blades that he bought twenty five years ago after my mother passed.  He had fond memories of ice skating as a boy and thought roller blading could be fun. He took a lesson or two, had all the pads, and a helmet. This phase did not last long, but what the heck.

"Dad, are you going to be using these any time soon?"  I ask the man (age 85) who now uses a walker to shuffle along, all hunched over.

"Well...I did pay over a hundred dollars for them," he says.

"Lori can find a good home for them, " I respond (and by home I mean Goodwill).

"Can she sell them?" he asks.

I mumble as I haul them out of the closet and run them down the steps to my Lori take away pile.

We had many of these moments. If we didn't whisk stuff away fast enough, it was back in his clutches.

More tales to come........I've got a doozy of a clothes story for you.

He's a pip!