I realized earlier this evening that tomorrow is my only free night until next week. I spent this past weekend working on Mary Anne’s apartment, and a couple of hours last night. It’s done though, now all that’s left is two garage sales to sell the stuff we’re not keeping for her, and I’m going to ebay a few things. I am utterly exhausted, and I know my mom is too. But the end is in sight, for this part at least. I need to sort through all the stuff that somehow ended up at my house.
It’s not all bad though I suppose. I did end up with a couple of cool things, and in amongst the unbelievable mass of crap were a few gems, like this one:

I heard my mom gasp from the other room, but that was nothing new. People had been gasping and exclaiming “Oh my god!” all day long, usually because they had found something frightening (like when Keegan opened a box in a closet and was greeted by a fur stole that was staring a him). But this time my mom walked in and handed me two square, white edged, black and white photos. The top one was of Mary Anne dressed as a geisha. Then there was the photo above. I looked at it for a moment and it took that long for me to realize that I was looking at.
That’s my mom. Halloween(ish) 1967, which would make her barely 24. She had already met my dad but they were not together until a year or so later. She looks so young and pretty here. It’s a real uniform that she had borrowed from one of her friends. She told me that she actually had a couple of girls flirting with her because they thought she was a boy. She said she knew this photo existed, but hadn’t seen it since before she married my dad, nearly 36 years ago. It’s the only copy. I had to beg and plead and promise before she’d let it out of her posession to be taken home and scanned so I could have a print made for myself. I haven’t ordered one yet, but I’m thinking I’ll have it framed nicely and hang it on my wall, as well as order a smaller print to put in my scrapbook.