Couple big things this week. Because it was Natalie's birthday last Sunday, I texted her happy birthday and asked if she would like me to bring the couch and loveseat and her other things over to her new place (she's now living on Ohio with friends). Her answer: Yes!! So I told her I would make arrangements to get a truck and bring her things out this week. I reserved a 15' U-Haul truck for Wednesday, recruited a co-worker to help me lift some things into it, and Beth and I took that loud rattling bouncy thing over to the sticks OH. We packed up the couch and loveseat from the downstairs, her bike, the big orange dresser, her old coffee table, her I'm not sure what it's called mini-couch or whatever, end table, and several boxes of stuff. The GPS took us through some real back roads in the middle of nowhere, but we made it and unloaded/carried in/set up everything we had. She seems to be doing well, I'm not sure who of the 4 living there is working or what they are doing but she's going to try to get a job at a care facility nearby. We also got her for her birthday a bird feeder made of glass tableware cemented together that Beth found at the Wawasee show, plus some birdseed and a shepherd's crook, and she seemed to be really happy with that.

Since a lot of the downstairs is now empty, I took the opportunity to get the carpets in the house cleaned. Mostly spurred by picking up Alex's room in preparation for him being here next week, and seeing how gross the carpet was (there was cat barf and scoot marks!). Also, when we moved the couch from downstairs, I found mold in the carpet. Old mold. So I quickly rented a Rug Doctor from Kroger and spent most of Friday and Saturday cleaning carpets all throughout the house. Special attention paid to the places where there were still pet stains from Nat's dog or from Ruby (did pretty well). Everything cleaned up pretty well. 

Also on Friday Beth and I were in line at Starbucks when we saw a young woman pull out of the line with apparent car trouble. She managed to get the car into a parking space, but couldn't go anywhere further than that. We could see the right front tire of her car was turned around 45 degrees and the left was straight, and she looked like she was basically at a loss as to what to do. Beth called over to her to ask if she needed help... she didn't know what was wrong with the car, but I looked and could see a broken steering linkage. Also as it turned out, she needed to go right then to pick up her 2-year-old at day care, and then she needed a ride for both of them back to the shelter where she has been living. She didn't know who to call, the only one she could think of was an abusive ex-husband. She's been trying to get moved out of the shelter but because of the move she basically had no money right now for car repairs so she didn't know how she was going to get to a job interview she had either. Beth and I gave her the rides she needed and picked up her baby with her, then dropped her off with $100 cash to help her with a tow or repairs.