They Got the Couches

I mentioned recently that the cleaners for my mother and brother's old apartment made good on delivering their "recoverable" items to their new location.  This saved a lot of effort on our part in organizing a move, and they did a more professional job of it than we could have hoped to achieve. For the most part, this completed their living space. They got cookwear, bookshelves, hard-surface furniture, art, and books. But they were missing soft furniture.

The cleaners had said they could "do their best" with what they deemed "non-recoverable", and deliver it. My brother had put in a request for a couch and armchair. It might have been strategic to just get reimbursed for these and purchase new versions of them, but they were from Lee-Anne's grandmother's farmhouse. They were older than my mom and so it's unlikely that they could find a suitable replacement.

Despite the cleaners initially saying they would put in the effort to deliver them, there had been a few complications since. Asbestos had been discovered, and the people brought in for that were not the same as everyone else. Tenants lost access to their units and in the meanwhile, items were bagged and categorized.

Here are some pics of the old building and apartment stripped for asbestos. 

 

It was easy to imagine that offering to move the furniture was a generosity offered before all this happened. Plus, after delivering the initially considered "recoverable" items, they might feel soured on doing a second trip. 

And yet, the offer had been made through recorded channels, so they couldn't quite say no either. One day, my brother got a message from them, saying that they were ready to move the items. And they did. Maybe they wanted to work on the rest of the unit and complying with the request was just the easiest thing that they could do.

I know that I keep saying this or that item will "complete" their unit, but they still need a TV. My brother has ordered one, arriving Monday. As well as soft furniture, lots of electronics were not considered recoverable.

Also, when I inventoried our art in a previous post, I failed to note that one of my aunts did lose a piece in the fire. A framed painting of a flower vase.

 I'm still discovering things that they recovered. For example, they now have a stuffed Eeyore that none of us remember. Maybe it got mixed in from a different unit somehow.

Also, we got this back:

 

The Zwibble Dibble! 

Talk about something that was once very important to me, that sparks a ton of memories but of which I was unlikely to ever think about again had it not shown up. This might be the oldest stuffed animal I have. I thought it might come from our place in Toronto, where I lived only until I was three, but Mom thinks it came from the place after. Still, old enough that it comes from an era when my ability to form memories was still in development.

This is the Star Touched Dinosaur Zwibble Dibble. When I told Lee-Anne its name she asked "Is that a Pokemon?" I don't blame her, because on my first attempt at Googling (I accidentally called it "Dwibble Zibble", silly of me) I only got results for the Pokemon Dwebble.

But its from an old series of children's books from the 80s about environmentalism. You can listen to a person read them to you on YouTube:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDqoobE4goo

Otherwise, both Mother's Day and my mom's birthday have passed. Those two things are very conveniently set close to each other. I gave her a physical copy of my Gryphood blog, and a curated version of the WALES cookbook.