Rap, a tip if you're still sorting and tossing and donating and such at your MIL's home: donations are a huge benefit to the estate when you get around to the complications of doing the income tax for the dearly departed. My father had literally dozens of walking and running shoes and lots of good-condition clothes. I counted and boxed (in U-Haul medium sized boxes) and had the St. Vincent De Paul folks pick them up. Giving each pair a flat value and doing the math resulted in enough donation to different places (don't donate more than $5000 to any one place or you need an appraisal) saved our bacon as far as paying tax. He'd had a CD mature and pay into his bank account that year and it would have bitten us hard. By donating the clothes to people who can really use them we benefited ourselves also.

Back to the regular folderol.