First post--What's this about anyway?

This blog will be like a diary of moving my folks out of their farm to a smaller home that they can maintain.

Here's some background:

I'm Mitch, aka Jack. I'm about 50, married, 4 grown daughters, and I work in the IT business. I have an older brother Mike and younger sister Maureen.

Mom's move is challenging in many ways. It starts with my stepfather, Jim, having alzheimer's. He doesn't want to move. Also, the farm is uninsurable due to termite damage, and it's an enormous mess of accumulated possessions with a large barn, several outbuildings, land, tractors, blah blah blah. Mom has trouble with stairs these days--she's in her 70's--and the farm house has, like most, a steep, narrow staircase to get to the bedrooms.

On the plus side, Mom and Jim have always been frugal, and that with some inheritances give them some options that many don't have. Mom can afford to buy a place without selling the old one, so she can spend an indeterminate amount of time moving. And yet, she wants to get to the new place before Jim gets to the point he needs more care than she can give, and before she falls down the stairs.

So...they gotta move. My daughter Rachel said I should start blogging on the whole thing, as lots of people go thru something like it. Maybe my experiences will help someone else, or maybe it will help me, or maybe this will just be that much more useless data floating around in cyberspace.

The farm is so full of allergens my brother Mike can only be there for short periods, and he lives 200 miles away anyway. I'm about an hour away, and my sister Maureen lives close but is a single Mom with high-schoolers and college kids. Me, I'm an empty nester, with four daughters in town but mostly grown up and independent. I figured I could spend most Saturdays over at Mom's helping her move. I hope my promise to do that helped her decide to go ahead with getting started.

Mom found a house a couple months ago. It's nice, a ranch, with a big yard, lots of trees, good plumbing. And, no termites :-) We've started moving a few things...

That should be enough background for now. Let the adventure begin!