And It's Still Going

 I left off last time with preparing to set up my new TV.  In theory, a short job.  In practice . . . .
The first thing to do was screw on the legs.  That would have been a fast job, except for the cheap-ass screws that tended to wallow out every time I put torque on them.  I sampled four Phillips screwdrivers before I found one with a profile that would work.
I also had a moral dilemma when I removed the packing.  There were some plastic spacers with an interesting design.

Bob totally would have kept those to add to his "things with interesting shapes" stash.  I held them.  I waffled.  I am trying so hard to get stuff moved out of this house.  I finally grit my teeth and tossed them - but it bothers me.  OTOH - I did cut out the large side of cardboard from the box, because I actually use sheets of cardboard for various projects.

Legs finally on, old TV pulled down (temporarily stashed in Bob's room because I don't know if the dump will accept it), new TV put into place.  Powered it up.  Tried to play YouTube.  Which played just fine - but with commercials.  YouTube is the one service where I pay for the premium, because it's the main thing that I watch.  I couldn't convince it that I had premium.  It took a three way conversation between my TV, my phone, and my laptop before it would finally let me sign in.

Then I hooked up my sound bar, and it was another hassle to get the TV to talk to it.

But it's all done, and in place, and after all that - well, honestly, except for not having those four vertical lines down the screen, it's not any different from my old TV.

Then I turned my attention to the toilet and replaced the flapper valve.  No problem - except that I noticed that apparently when we plunged the toilet (did I mention that when the kids got here Monday and used the toilet it overflowed???), we jiggled it a bit and now it was leaking from where the tank screws into the base.  There's a screw inside the tank that needs to be tightened.  An easy fix - except the it involves using a wrench to hold the nut under the base while simultaneously reaching into the bottom of the tank to tighten the screw.  As I am not an octopus, this was rather awkward.
I tightened it as much as possible, but there is still a very slow leak (that has possibly been happening for awhile but I just blamed the cats).  I need to make or buy a new gasket.  Until then - it's a slow drip, and I just have a towel under it.

Meanwhile, I had some cleaning to do.  When the kids came through on Monday, Rob was supposed to go through the gun safes and tag any that he thought he might want.  In the year after Bob died, he had come and taken some of them, but then that got put on the back burner.  The problem is that like the jeep, they're deteriorating.  More slowly - they're inside, but they still need care.  My friend Rik has a license, and he wants to sell them for me.  Every time I've mentioned this to Rob he has said he'll look at them "next visit."  The visits are maybe twice a year, and they always have other stuff they want to do.  So I had put my foot down and said "this visit."  Except that after going to Zeke's orientation, and lunch, and thrifting, and getting the TV, they just wanted to go home and Rob said he would look on Friday when they came to pick Zeke up.

I also wanted to show Amanda some of the better antiques.  She loves antiquing but has always refused to look at my stuff because she thinks it's creepy (because she'll inherit it someday).  But she was going to do it this time.  That meant I had some serious cleaning to do.

I'm rather embarrassed that I only live in a small part of the house.  I rarely even go into the living room.  Sometimes I run the vacuum down the middle of everything.  Dusting?  To quote Dracula, when the workmen first took the coffins to Carfax, they described it as "being so dusty that you could have laid on it without a'hurting of your bones."  No to mention the generous layer of cat hair over everything (apparently, unlike me, the cats do use the living room. ) So most of Thursday was spent deep cleaning.

I work Friday mornings, and they were due to pick up Zeke around noon, so the plan was to go to lunch and then to my place to look at the guns and antiques.  They called around 11:30 and said they were heading out soon.  I said I was training someone, so might not be able to join them for lunch (my thought being that I would just meet them at the house).  At 12:00 we were finished with the diets, and my co-workers said they would clean up and feed the animals so I could take off.  I called the kids - and they said that Zeke was tired and just wanted to go home so they skipped lunch and were already out of town.

I didn't express it, but I was pissed.

I did find one fun thing while I was cleaning up.  I have no idea where these tickets came from, but it sounds like my grandfather's sense of humor.

That did give me Friday afternoon free, which was good because a month ago I offered to give a talk on wool breeds and characteristics for the Weaver's Guild meeting on Saturday morning, and with everything else going on I hadn't gotten my notes written or my handouts made.  It was all very basic and I had it in my head; I just had to write it out.

Then came the seduction of Chat.  I *knew* that somewhere in my fiber library I had a diagram of the crimp structure of various classifications of sheep.  I couldn't find it, and Google was no help.  So I asked "Eric."  I described what I wanted, and 30 seconds later I had my chart.  But then, without being asked, he added a table of the characteristics of each category - which I had been planning to do.  So, in less than a minute, I had my handout.

In this case, it was OK.  I already had the knowledge; it pretty much said exactly what I was going to say, and it just saved me the typing.  But I can see the ongoing problem now of student or work reports being composed and handed in,without ever going through a human brain.

The talk went well Saturday, except for the problem that I always have with these meetings (which is why I only go to a few a year).  The part that I like is the show-and-tell, where people bring in their projects and talk about them.  And sometimes there is a mini-program, and I like those.  But those are preceded by a long-drawn-out business meeting where people go off on tangents, and it drags out for at least two hours before it gets to the fun part.  And being as I live west of Tallahassee, and the meetings are held on the east side, giving that 20 minute talk took almost 5 hours out of my day.

Meanwhile, I'm still trying to see if I can build a puppet of Rocky from Project Hail Mary for the Infinity Con in a month.  

I've noticed that RiverSong's skin condition is starting to act up again, so I need to give her a series of baths.  Bathing a cat - such fun.

I still need to resew and repair my swing.

So nothing bad, nothing disastrous, mostly annoying/time consuming  stuff.  I just wish it would quit for a few days.

Except that I've been trying to ignore the dull toothache that's developing.  I'm afraid that it's the tooth next to the empty socket where I'm still waiting on the bone graft to take.  Having gotten up once in the morning and spit out a tooth for no reason, I'm a little paranoid.  So there will be a trip to the dentist on Tuesday.

Stay tuned.

But First (and a Little Dorm Nostalgia)

 It would be more appropriate to say "butt first" because I seem to keep backtracking.

A week since the last post.  I stated my intention of working on a puppet of Rocky.  That hasn't happened much.  Things just keep happening, and then I forget what they even were.

Last post - a week ago today - I wrote that the fridge guy had come, made his diagnosis, and ordered a part.  Then I waited.  And waited.  I had a twice daily ritual of swapping ice blocks and frozen water bottles from the coolers to the freezer and vice versa.  And trying to eat everything down (my milk gave up after four days but everything else has hung in there.)  The part finally came in and got installed this morning.  The fridge has cooled off.  So next step (instead of Rocky) will be to move everything from the coolers back to the fridge and then wash and store those.

I work on Fridays and Saturdays now, and I do tend to come home, eat lunch, and crash for a bit.  So Sunday I was going to hit the cottage - and somehow didn't, and now it's gone blank.  I realized I was out of my seedy bread (the only bread I keep around) so started that - and later, had to stay in the house to bake it because I have a self-imposed rule not to leave the house with the oven or the dryer on, or anything that produces heat.  I looked outside to the swing that I rebuilt a couple of years ago and noticed an odd sagging bulge.  Apparently the waterproof fabric let water in during the rainstorms but not out.  So I had to get out the socket wrench to remove the swing, and then go to town with the seam ripper to open it up and get the batting out.  It's all spread out to dry - then I have to resew everything and put it back together.   I got a notice from Amazon that my cat food had been delivered - I get two cases of wet food a month.  Amazon doesn't deliver to the house; it gets left at the end of the driveway.  As it's about a 30 pound box, and a couple of hundred yards from the house, I have to take the car to go get it (and then drag it inside and offload it into the cabinet)
So - just little things that added up.

That brings us to yesterday - Monday.  Amanda and Robert were coming to Tally to bring Zeke to a swim camp at FSU.  Amanda wanted to hit a couple of thrift stores after we dropped him off.  So I figure - they have to drop him off at 10, we thrift, have lunch, they'll probably head home by 2:00.  Nope - they had to hang around until orientation so we didn't get out of that until after 12.

But I had a good time.  The campers are staying in Sally Hall - the dorm Bob and I used to live in (he in the boy's tower, me in the girl's tower).  I remembered that dorm as being the posh one - much better than my first dorm.  Sally had working elevators and air conditioning.  Honestly, now?  Although it looks pretty much the same (like me, maybe a little worse for wear 54 years later) - by today's standards, it's a dump.  Tiny rooms, generic student wood furniture.  But memories of happy times.  Especially when we went up to the deserted fourth floor (the kids were on the second and third floor).  No - I couldn't remember my room number.  But we looked around to find the metal plate on the brick wall where the pay phone used to be.  The phone where I called my parents to get their blessing to marry Bob.  He had the ring in his pocket (actually he held it over his head while I tried to climb him and grab it).  So I had to pose in the spot where we officially got engaged.

Then we went to lunch and thrifting.  And an extra errand. As long as we were running around, I asked Rob to take me to Best Buy to scratch something off my to-do list:  Buy a TV.  A few weeks ago a thin vertical line appeared in the middle of my screen.  I've ignored it.  Now it's four vertical lines, and a weird blip from the bottom.

With all that, it was closer to 5 when they dropped me off and headed home.

I did not mention that when they came to get me, and used the bathroom, the toilet (I never use that toilet) overflowed and flooded the bathroom but we got it plunged out and mopped up so I did have a load of wet towels to wash after they dropped off and headed back home.  Also, I was reminded that the flapper valve really needed to be replaced so I got out the universal one that I bought awhile back only to find out that it's not universal enough so another one should be delivered today.  And apparently all the rocking and plunging apparently loosened a screw because it was dripping last night.  I tightened it by hand, but there's still a slow drip happening.  After the new valve comes in I'll take care of both of those things.  But obviously I did not get out to work on Rocky yesterday.

So - on the docket today.  The repairman has already come (after waiting a week for the part, it was about a 20 minute job to replace it) and the fridge has cooled off.  So I need to refill it and put away the ice chests.  I need to take the old TV down and unbox the new one and get it going.  By then the new flapper valve should have arrived and I'll fix the toilet.  Put that big load of old towels away.

Then maybe Rocky?

This has been a lot of words, but it's how I keep a grip on my life and keep my brain from running around in circles.  Whatever works, works.

And It Kept On Going

 I left off last post - Sunday - with my power restored an all well in the world.
I didn't get into the fridge much on Sunday - after a long power outage it's best to keep the door closed as much as possible until the temperature can balance out again.  I had cleaned out the lump of ice in the freezer, and it was happily spitting out cubes again, and everything was properly frozen.

Monday I had planned to take care of a few things and then head down to the cottage - I've set myself the challenge to see if I can make a puppet of Rocky (the alien) from Project Hail Mary) from Amazon boxes and hot glue.  This seems like a fun way to spend Memorial Day and maybe push back a little on the memories when this day would have meant getting up way too early, putting on my Rosie the Riveter outfit, waving to crowds in the parade while Bob drove the jeep, and later joining all the other military vehicle people for the buffet at Golden Corral.

 But I go to get the milk for breakfast, and I realize that it's cool - but not cold.  I toss in a thermometer - it's a little over 60 degrees instead of the required less than 40.  I set the temperature to go colder and shut the door.

I check back in awhile - nothing happening.  I spend some time Googling, then I empty the freezer top and bottom to aim a hair dryer at the air flow vents to be certain there is no ice blocking them.  I have to spend a certain amount of time pulling stuff from the fridge and sorting it into a couple of ice chests.  Then I shut the door and give it some time.  Nothing.

I unplug the fridge for 15 minutes then plug it back in again (my mind playing the line from the IT crowd of "did you try turning it off and turning it back on again).  Gave it some time.  Nothing.

Not much else to do, and it's still a holiday.  So this morning I call the repair place, and I'm lucky in that the tech had a cancellation and was out there in a couple of hours, and the problem is that the little motor that controls the vent and airflow from the the freezer to the fridge has burned out.  It's not a terribly complicated fix - if they had the part in stock, which they don't.  So I'll be living out of the ice chests for a couple of days (thank goodness for the freezer - I can just keep rotating ice blocks in and out).

Now for a spot of lunch and head out to the cottage.  Except that I get a text from Suzie wondering if there is anyway I can come in this afternoon.  They didn't have any volunteers, were short on  staff, and a big donation of produce was coming in from Cosco.  So I went in, helped offload from the truck, and sorted good from needs-to-be-trashed.

The good part about helping out on a Costco day is that after we sort and stuff our fridges, and have made up boxes to donate to other animal rehabbers, there's still a lot left over that we can take.  I normally load up - for both me and the chickens.

I don't have a fridge.

So now I have my two regular sized ice chests and two smaller ice chests on the kitchen floor and a path around them.

Awkward, yes.  Inconvenient, certainly.  In the grand scheme of disasters - not so bad.

Maybe tomorrow will be quiet.

You Can't Make This Stuff Up

 It's been an "interesting" few days.

On my April 24 post - a month ago today - I had a list of stuff that was bugging me.  I've dealt with it.  The jeep has been sold and taken away (that still hurts, even though it went to the best possible home where it will get the care I didn't give it).  I did the paperwork for the trailer and handed it over to Rik.  I got the maintenance done on the car in places other than where I went for the previous 24 years.  I put on my new hubcaps.

And I got my Reclast infusion for my osteoporosis on Wednesday (4 days ago).  I was nervous - a likely side effect was flu-like symptoms, maybe with nausea and/or headache.  The infusion itself was easy - it took about an hour, but the needle they used was tiny, and I was in a comfortable recliner in a private room.  Then I beat feet home so that I wouldn't be driving if those side effects hit.

Which they didn't - at first.  I was fine that afternoon and evening.  I was fine when I went to bed. Then I woke up at 2:00 a.m. . . . . .
"Flu-like symptoms" can best be described as "run over by a bus filled with a little league team on a sugar high who all jump out to beat the crap out of you with their little baseball bats."  I was sweating, I was shivering, I hurt all over.  About all one can do at that point is get up, walk around, take Tylenol, make a cup of tea, curl up on the couch, and turn on the TV.  Up popped "You might like this movie."  It showed a guy standing in front of an ancient crumbling mansion so what the heck - I hit play.

2:30 in the morning, sick, fevered, I watched this guy check in, get lost, the hotel is a big labyrinth filled with strange people (and occasionally a marching band in the hallway), and no one knows the way out.  There is a salon with an aging grande Dame and her retinue, and he gets shoved into helping out in the kitchen where cooks have to apprentice for 7 years separating eggs before moving on to be allowed to whisk them.  No one has been outside of the hotel for years.  He notices that the hotel is shrinking - the hallways are getting narrower.  Two little old ladies are moving their furniture to the hallway because it doesn't fit in the rooms any more.  Finally the crowds are mobbing him, but he finally gets rescued by the giant squid that's living in the walls of the hotel.

I fall asleep wondering what the heck was in that infusion - or maybe how bad was that fever?  Later that afternoon, I go back and check.  The movie is real.

I was really sick (I kept telling myself that I wasn't sick, just having a reaction, but I lost that argument) Thursday (I was seriously wondering if the chickens wouldn't mind if they didn't get let out of their coop or fed - but I was able to get out there).  Thursday night was a little rough, but Friday I was feeling better and I was able to go to work on Saturday.  I figured I could get a decent night's sleep on Saturday and be all caught up.

The best laid schemes of mice and men . . . .

A storm rolled in Saturday night - not complaining, as we need the rain.  The power went off around 10:00 p.m.  It was totally black in the house (Bob used to use the phrase "darker than three feet up a bull's butt" but I'm not sure if he ever actually checked that out).  Obviously, I went to bed.  It took me awhile to get to sleep; I'm usually antsy about sleeping during a power outage because I know I'm going to be snapped awake when it comes back on.  But I finally slept for a couple of hours.  I remember the tag end of a dream - it might have been a nightmare for some people but it's a fairly ordinary occurrence for me - I was going to pick up some eggs from the nest box and saw that there was a snake in it.  I stepped back, and then I was enveloped in darkness.
It took a few minutes for me to realize that I had waken up and the power was still out.  I got up to go to the bathroom and heard/saw a flash!crack! and then a FLASH!BOOM! as a transformer blew somewhere.

I tried to go back to sleep.  I had the windows open but it was still stuffy (obviously no fans running).  The owls were being noisy outside the window.  The hooting is pleasant, but barred owls also make this wild squawking monkey noise and seriously guys, can't you take it a little farther out in the woods?  I'm starting to drift when the room is flooded with bright white light - from the outside.  First panicked thought was "FIRE!" but it was white, not orange, and while it was moving, it wasn't flickering.  Second thought was "aliens are landing."  I got up and looked out the window.  The electric company truck had come up my drive and was using a searchlight to follow and check the power lines.

By now it's after 3:00 a.m. and for some reason I'm wide awake.  Now that the searchlight is gone, I'm also in the pitch dark, which is rather boring.  I decide to read a bit.  The Kindle has a light, but having the screen as the only light is a good way to hurt your eyeballs.  I grab my headlamp with the LED strip light on it - it gives a soft general glow.  It has also decided that it needs to be charged.

Now I'm wide awake and quite annoyed.  My little electric spinning wheel has a battery pack.  I grab that, and open the drawer that has the charging cords.
Goddess as my witness, I label cords when I get a new device, because the small plugs seem to be different for each thing.  At 3:30 in the morning, nothing seems to be labeled, so I'm peering into little sockets with a flashlight, comparing it to the tiny plugs, finally find one that fits and I'm able to plug in my headlamp and read my damned book for awhile.

After that I sleep for a couple of hours and wake up to the power still off.  I check the local FB page on my phone - post to see if anyone else has power, and apparently *everybody* else has power.  Someone posted the outage made that showed that only two household were still without power (I don't know who the other one was).

But the lovely electrical people were here by 8:00 a.m.  It turned out that the initial "flash!crack!" that I had heard was my own personal transformer blowing, so they had to bring in the big cherry picker and replace it.  Nice people.

For some reason I haven't gotten much done today.  I did have to tackle the freezer a little - nothing had thawed enough to worry about, but I discovered when I tried to get some ice for lunch that all of the ice in the ice maker had fused into one lump so I had to spend some time liberating that.

So that's the last four days.  Maybe tomorrow will be a bit less interesting.

Short Jeff Visit, and New Hubcaps

 Jeff is in town for a conference.  Unfortunately the conference started on Sunday afternoon and will be going 12 hours a day (what madness is that?) and then he has to go back home immediately afterwards.  But he was able to get out for lunch on Sunday before the conference started.

He wanted to try the new Indian restaurant. I've mentioned before that the strip center is small, and rather run down, mostly dominated by a big student-oriented liquor store.  When we met there Sunday, we were the only two cars in the parking lot, which was still filled by the detritus of a Saturday night liquor store run.

I went over and put my arms around him.  He's one of the few people that I'm comfortable enough to just go hold, that lovely boneless hug, and he doesn't mind at all.  Except that after a couple of minutes I said "doing this in a rather hinky parking lot must look a little strange" and we both laughed and had an enjoyable lunch together.

The next day I went into town to get my tires rotated.  I was prepared - I had the box with my new hubcaps in the car (I've been driving around with a couple of my hubcaps held on with zip ties - when I last had the tires rotated the dealership broke the clips - which is a bit too casual even for me).  I figured that I could ask them to put the new ones on for me.
Well, no they couldn't.  I didn't know that they have to be assembled, and these days they're made of a fairly flimsy plastic and they didn't want to be responsible if one of them broke in the process.

Sigh.  This meant that I could take "get the car tires rotated" off the things-to-do list, but add "put the new hubcaps on the car."  I could, of course, try to call around and find someone who could put them on for me, but I could also consult the Oracle YouTube and do it myself.

I had a plan for today.  I want to see if I can make a puppet of Rocky from Project Hail Mary.  Rob made me a little 3D print of him so I have a point of reference.  I had two chores I wanted to get done first:  Put the hubcaps on the car, and take the bag of chicken feed I had in the car down to the barn and put it in buckets.  Then I could go play in the cottage.

The best laid schemes o' mice and men . . . . .
Putting the reinforcement rings in the hubcaps was trickier than YouTube made it look (actually I was pretty good by the time I got to the last one).  Then it was a matter of popping an old hubcap off and snapping the new one one.  If they would snap on that easily - I didn't want to use too much force and risk snapping the clips the way they had at the dealership.  It took a bit of practice to decide just how much force to use. Again, by the last one I was getting better at it.

I would have enjoyed learning something new, and feeling a bit more competent, but that was offset by the fact that getting down on the ground is awkward (I hurt the bursa in my left knee so can't kneel on it until it heals, which it is doing very slowly).  It hit 90 degrees today, so I was getting sweaty, and the yellow biting flies are out so I was getting bloody.  I was just glad to get it done.  But they look good.  As long as I had to do this, I went for black ones to look a bit more sexy (I did search for spider web ones but couldn't find any)

So all that took a lot longer than planned.  Then it was time for the chicken feed.  It comes in 50 pound bags so I usually just drive around to the barn with it.  However - a tree had fallen across the back drive that I take.  So I had to get my chainsaw and cut that into chunks and toss out of the way, and *then* I could get down to the barn and dole out the 50 pounds of feed into buckets.

By then I was quite hot and very sweaty and all I wanted was a shower, so playing in the cottage will have to be another day.

RIP Mabel

 I got the oil changed in the car today, and it made me a little sad.  It's no big deal - you pull into the oil change place, and you don't even have to get out of your car while they take care of everything.

But it also signals the end of a relationship.  From 2001 to 2025, I just went to the dealership for the oil change, tire rotation, and general checkup.  I'd go there, hand over the keys, then sit in the waiting room, drink coffee, and read while it was all taken care of.

But in 2024, they put the hubcaps on incorrectly, breaking the clips.  I talked them into replacing the two that fell off, and the other two have been held on, most elegantly, with zip ties.  I chalked that up to "everyplace can have an off day."

Last year, when they finished, they told me that they couldn't rotate the tires because of the broken hubcaps.  Also, when they put the car on the lift, they caught the underskirting, ripped it loose, and then just hoped that I wouldn't notice (uh - the sound of something scraping the ground when I drove was a giveaway).  The shop mechanic was less than gracious when I suggested that they fix it - which they didn't do very well and I had to take it to a body shop to get it done properly.  Later, when my low tire light came on, I realized that they had underinflated the tires..

Obviously I can't trust them to take care of my car properly any more.  And I think it's the loss of that trust that makes me a bit sad.  And that now it's two errands instead of one because I still have to find a place to get my tires rotated (and I just ordered new hubcaps because the zip ties are a little tacky).

Also genuine sadness because while I was getting my oil changed, I got an email from Suzie at the museum that Mabel the barred owl was found dead this morning.

I've known Mabel ever since she came to the museum 18 years ago. I handled her a lot when I was in the education department, and some even since then.  She was a bit of a diva and a very picky eater.  All of our other birds mostly get a special bird of prey diet (it looks rather like hamburger).  She would turn up her beak at it, so she mostly got mice, chicks, and fish.

She was a most contrary bird.  When someone goes in to get her, she would fly all over the place until the person could make a grab for the jesses, then she would have to hang upside down until the leash was attached and she could be lifted onto the glove.  Then came the personality change - she loved to be cuddled and scratched.

I was the one who started her on that (I was one of the first people to handle her).  For the first couple of years if I would reach over to try to touch her, she would hunker down or twist away or snap at me.  I persisted, then one day I was able to touch and scratch the back of her neck, and all of a sudden she was "OMG, is *that* what you've been trying to do?"  Sometimes she would almost fall asleep.

Of course, after I spent 2-3 years getting her to that point - she decided that she liked it and would let anybody have a good scratch.  Little slut.

She was an ideal education bird.  You could take her into a classroom full of yelling kids, and she'd just sit there with a "whatever" look on her face.  You could let her sit on a table perch at a festival, with dozens of people walking by, and she was be so calm that a lot of people thought she was taxidermied (which was really funny when she moved).  One time Jim Fowler (of Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom fame) came to the museum when I had her out, and told the crowd to watch her reaction as he gave a perfect barred owl hoot.  Her reaction?  Zip, zilch, nada.  Whatever.

18 years I've known her (and she was an adult when we got her).  I'm going to miss her.

Weird Dream; Jeep Memories

 Very bizarre dream last night.  I was down in the barn - I can't remember what I was doing, when I heard the loud freight train sound and looked out to see the sky black and swirling and the huge tornado funnel coming down.  I knew I couldn't make it to the house and was trying to crawl under a table that I knew would give no protection at all.

I woke up in a panic.

It's odd.  I certainly don't like tornadoes after I dodged the one a couple of years ago (and know many people who didn't), but they're usually not something I think about.

I eventually got back to sleep but I'm a little groggy today.  And unmotivated. I'm still trying to figure out a bit what's going on with me - my chest aches a little (more emotional than physical, a heartache), I'm aware of my breathing, I've even taken recently to just going to lie down in the middle of the day, clutching cuddle pillow.

Trying to wonder what's wrong with me.  Well, duh.  It's just grief.  I know how that feels.  I miss the jeep.   I remember that I cried for two days after giving up the old Honda (and, honestly, I still miss it).  I remember the heartache of watching Bob's truck going down the drive for the last time.  Even the sadness of realizing that the kayaks were a little too heavy for me to manage by myself and letting them go.

But that jeep.  1943 Willys.  Such a unique piece of kit.  And, after 46 years, so many memories.  Parades - lots of parades.  That strange overwhelming feeling (a burst of patriotism?) when you rounded the corner onto the main parade route and saw thousands and thousands of people waving flags and cheering.  Me in my Rosie the Riveter getup, honoring the women who kept this country going while the men were off at war, giving (and getting) the "Rosie salute."  Lots of flag waving.  Giving rides to WWII veterans (and, as time went on, and there were fewer and fewer of them, replacing them with VietNam vets).

I found myself today remembering when we took it to get restored, the way that Bob and I could turn a bad situation around.

We had it for about 15 years, Bob sort of putzing  around with it, sometimes getting it running, before we bit the bullet (and had some cash ahead) to take it to a restorer.  At the time the only one we could find was in Tampa.  We got a cat sitter (we figured on driving there, staying the night with my parents, and coming back).  We were a little over halfway, in the small town in Chiefland, when I looked behind us and said "Bob - there's smoke coming out of the truck."  Bob swore, and pulled over, and said "We're screwed."  I looked around and said "No, we're not."  Because we had pulled over - into the parking lot of a Ford dealership.  So we finished pulling in, explained our situation, and they let us know that they probably wouldn't be able to work on it until the next day.  But then they saw what was on the trailer, and everyone had to come out and look at it.  They even pulled it into the garage that night, rather than letting it sit out in the parking lot.

After we talked to them, and were thinking "now what" we noticed that there was a Hotel 8 just across the street, with a Denny's beside it.  So basically we were set.  I think most people would have been frustrated and angry; somehow after we accepted our fate, and knew things were going to work out, we just decided to enjoy the unexpected gift of each other's company, with nothing we needed to do.  The next morning after breakfast we walked back to the Ford place to get a time estimate, and were told it would be ready in a few minutes.  The mechanic said he knew we needed to get back on the road with that jeep, so  he came into work early to get our truck done before the day's schedule work.

We were told to take it easy - not go above 45 miles an hour, and don't use the air conditioning (fortunately it was early spring).  So we just moseyed our way (being nice enough to pull over for a bit now and then to let traffic through).  And going slowly, with the windows down, let us breathe in the fragrance as we drove past acres of  blossoming orange groves.

Good times.  Good memories.  And, because of those, grief when it's over.

I'm OK with that.