Packing Has Begun Today

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Three doors down from my apartment lives a friend whose three grandchildren spend every day with her. One of those girls, the youngest is 15, and somewhat slow mentally. I never know the proper terminology anymore because it keeps changing, but I hope I do not offend anyone. Anyway, she is a good girl most of the time. Her family, her mom, grandma, brother and sister do not have much of life beyond jobs, school and spending the days at the apartment. So they all kind of are cramped there and get on each other's nerves, and none of them seem to do much to encourage this girl. But I want to help her and encourage her and give her a break from that environment. So she spends time with me. She likes to help me out and doesn't ask much in return. Usually she likes to get paid with my craft items, or with canned fruit, or other food things. If the things she does are more difficult, she gets money. Around the holidays she helped me a lot but would not take anything. She said she would wait for Christmas. She likes art, so I got her a bunch of art supplies. So anyway, since I am buying a house and getting ready to move, she started helping me to pack today. She has to be given simple instructions, and often repeated. She also has to be kept on tract as she gets distracted very easily. But she did a big job today and did it very well. We only had a couple of hiccups. The main was in her not seeming to understand that the packed boxes needed to be closed before putting where we are going to be stacking the packed boxes. So tomorrow she will start there to make sure all the boxes are closed. If she doesn't close them, they cannot be stacked well and take up a lot more space than I have. Together we made a lot of progress. Tomorrow we will make more. We used all my empty boxes today. I didn't have many. Tonight, another friend dropped off several boxes for us to work with tomorrow. I believe that when we are finished tomorrow, we will have made a big dent in getting everything organized and ready for final packing. Most of my things are already in drawers and totes, which helps a lot. When we are finished, she wants to paint with me. So, she will get paid the money I promised her and some art supplies. I told her that she is my "adopted" granddaughter since I so rarely get to see my grandchildren.