Something interesting happened on the way to the store

Well, I've been away for most of three weeks, and then this last week I was home, except that I didn't spend much of my time actually at home, and I was busy, and I didn't much of anything useful done around here. And after you have been away for most of three weeks, and then spend little of the fourth week at home and end up eating out, then you have to throw most of the stuff in the refrigerator away and buy groceries.

So I was on my way to do that, except that I wanted to have a look at my luffa plant, and while I was in the backyard I stopped to talk to my neighbor for a bit. And then I waved bye and was headed to my car, and I noticed one of the other neighbors with her baby. She was knocking at my neighbor's front door, and of course no one heard the knocking, because they were all in the backyard. So I said to the lady that they were in back. I don't know this neighbor as well as the one I'd just spoken to, in fact I mainly just wave at her and rarely talk to her other than at the annual meetings, and I don't even remember her name. But I've seen that this neighbor seems friendly enough with the other one, so I thought that she would just go on to the backyard. But either she didn't hear what I'd said, or going around to the backyard was too much for her to do, and she says that she has to run after her escaping dog, and could I hold the baby.

Sure.

And the lady got in her car and drove down the street, and I took the baby to my other neighbor's backyard.

Well, I don't have a dog, but if I did have a dog and she got out, this would upset me and I would immediately run after her. I don't have a baby either, but I guess if I did I would care a lot about her.

Now, if I had both a dog and a baby, and if for some reason I could only look after one of them, I'm assuming that I would favor the baby over the dog.

Not that I wasn't happy to help out and watch the baby, or at least watch the baby for a while til my other neighbor could watch the baby, as the other neighbor was the first choice for watching the baby instead of me. But I just don't think that I would have given my baby to someone who just waves at me from across the street, someone I rarely speak to, someone whose name I can't remember.

For all she knows I could eat babies for breakfast or be dating someone that Law and Order: SVU modeled one of their bad guys after.

All is well. She very quickly recovered the runaway dog and came back to the other neighbor's backyard, and then we all tried to get the baby to throw a ball to us. (She's very happy picking up the ball, but she hasn't quite got the throwing part figured out.) The lady took her baby home, the other neighbors went back to whatever they had been doing, and I went to the grocery store.

My routine is screwed up

Okay, so I am home now, after having been away for most of three weeks. And I don't quite know what to do. I don't quite remember what it is that I'm supposed to be doing. I have to think about things that I used to just get up and do. But I haven't done them in three weeks, and I don't remember what needed to be done or where things are and such.

I've forgotten to water the plants. I was away all that time, and the rain mostly took care of them, and a neighbor watered a few things, so that when I got home some of the plants were rather sad looking, but very few were dead, and those dead ones were mostly either things that I expected to die or things that I just didn't care about anymore. The second thing that I did when I got home was water the plants. I gave them lots and lots of water. But then on Monday I totally forgot to get up and water the plants, and Tuesday I didn't remember until I was doing something else and could not stop to check on the plants. So now I'm sitting here remembering that I need to water the plants, and this is the time of day that I used to water the plants, only I can't water them right now because it is dark outside.

Why is it dark outside?

Okay, so I guess that it's just that time of year that it stays dark longer, and I just didn't notice that from the motel. But here, today, it is dark, and it is a surprise. So I'm just sitting here worrying about my plants and not able to do anything about it.

So I thought that I would sit here and try to be quiet, and do things like check my email and check a few other things. And I'm sitting here, and I forgot my email address. Well, one of them anyway. I don't use it much anymore, but I have to check it once in a while, and I have to know what it is to use some other things. And I'm sitting here, and I just couldn't remember. Not that I forgot my password, but I just couldn't remember the email itself. I couldn't remember where to go to check the email. I didn't remember if it was gmail or yahoo or hotmail or fastmail. It was hotmail, but I sat here for the longest time and just could not remember that.

For a moment, it was scary. My email address was totally gone from my head, and it wasn't going to come back. And here I had thought I'd left that particular address where anyone with half a brain could find it (never thinking that I would be the person looking), but it wasn't there. I don't remember moving it, it just seems to have been removed for me during some stupid update or something.

Okay, I have the email now. But that was really annoying.

I am painting my kitchen. It seems that I've been painting my kitchen for a couple of months now. Maybe not really that long, but I started a while back, and then I was gone for weeks, and now I'm back, and I'm still not finished painting the damned kitchen.

I could paint half of the house in a day, if the house were empty. But the house isn't empty. I've never before tried to paint with all of the stuff still here. Well, maybe that isn't true, but that was a very long time ago. And I've certainly never before tried to paint such a small kitchen with all of the appliances still in place.

I shouldn't be so obsessed with painting the kitchen, especially now. But I had been thinking that I should paint. Not a different color or anything, just it is time to paint over all those little marks that do not clean off, and in order to do that I need to paint everything so that I know everything is the same color white, and I need to know exactly what color white that is. And I was thinking that I should get started on it, since I'd already go to the trouble of moving a few things for the guys to repair the wall. And then once I got started I thought that I should not halfway do things, that if I'm going to do this I should really do this, and so I am moving everything and painting behind stuff and cleaning under stuff and cleaning over stuff.

Before I left, I had done some of the work. In the day and a half I was home between trips I did enough work so that I could put the stove back where it was supposed to be. Yesterday, I moved the refrigerator and cleaned under that and painted behind it and moved it back where it was. That is what is taking so long, that I have to move one thing at a time, clean, put tape on the floor and around cabinets and electrical stuff, paint, wait about four hours, paint again, wait a couple more hours, remove tape, and then move the thing back where it was.

And also I am afraid of being on a ladder when I'm the only one in the house, cause I really don't want to fall and be stuck like that the rest of the day. So any cleaning or painting that involves being on a ladder can only be done before my husband leaves for work or on his day off. So that is annoying and takes even more time.

So I have now painted most of two walls, and that took about five sections. Now I need to paint the wall with the sink and the washing machine. I'm not sure about moving a washing machine. It might be complicated, or I might have to unhook something. And I really shouldn't bother with it, except that a.) I will know I didn't do a proper job even if no one else notices, and b.) I really need to clean behind it. There's a smell in the kitchen, and that is the only place left that I haven't looked. So the area needs to be cleaned even if it doesn't really need to be painted, and I want it painted anyway.

So am I near completing this task? No. Today is the day of the thing that my mother insisted I be here for, even though now it seems that there won't be much for me to do, except that I need to feed mother's dog while she is out doing something. Except that she forgot to have a key made for me, so this might take a while. So I'm not sure that moving the washing machine is a good idea today, as it is right near the door, and it might get moved in such a way that it would prevent me from leaving the house for several hours, and I don't really know yet when I might be needed.

Well, it is less dark outside, so I guess that I will go out and look at the plants.

I wanna go home now

Okay, so after our week in Oklahoma City, he was scheduled to work one day here, followed by four days in a not so interesting place two hours away. But I got excited and planned that we should leave day earlier and have a whole day off here before he had to work. I cancelled that extra day after I learned that he was also scheduled to work the next week here, and I figured that we would have a day or two off (and possibly more) here without having to pay for it, so why add an extra day that we did have to pay for.

It turns out that we only had that Sunday off (and we had to spend two hours of that day off driving here before we could do anything fun) and that he had to work Monday, which is usually a day off for him. And then we had a flat tire, which cost us another two hours off our fun time.

So when I heard that the schedule had been changed and he might work in another place about two hours from here, and that we might have another day or two off here, at first I was happy about it. But that would have meant that I was going to miss the thing that my mother wanted me home for, after I had already told her the schedule and that we would be home in time for that.

And really, it has been two weeks since I've been home, plus I was only home for a day and a half after spending a week in Oklahoma, and so I've been away from home for almost three weeks. So that's almost three weeks of not doing any work (other than making two and a half scarves), and three weeks of not eating spaghetti and yogurt and other such things that I am used to eating, and I missed doing the stuff I usually do with my friends this weekend, etc....

Two more days off here would have been great, but I guess that it's time to go home anyway.

So, I was not too disappointed when the schedule changes were made that did not include any time out of town next week.

It will be good to be home. It will be good to sleep in my own bed with my own pillows, and take baths in my own bathtub, and eat spaghetti and yogurt and such.

I am not sure what (if anything) we will do after work today, but we will head home tomorrow.

See you in the world.

Wednesday through Saturday was spent in the middle of nowhere. Not as middle of nowhere as some places I have been, but not anyplace particularly wonderful, and not a tourist destination. There were two things there that I would want to do, and one of them was only open to visitors after lunch on certain days, so we were not able to do that at all due to scheduling problems. The other thing we did Thursday morning. The rest of our time off was either spent eating (mostly Mexican food) or doing nothing.

The motel mostly sucked (though I have been in much worse), but we knew what we would probably be getting, just that in our budget there weren't any other options (or the other options looked worse). But at least I had Syfy on cable, and other things on cable. (Now that I am in the nice motel, there is no Syfy, and most of the rest of the cable sucks).

At some point I tried to get some help from my cell phone company. I wanted the most basic of information, and they wouldn't give it to me. I wanted to know which chargers work with which phones. I had my phone, but I'd left my charger at home. I could use a different charger from the same company, but I just wanted to make sure they were compatible, cause I had been warned earlier that using the wrong charger would damage the phone (and also I had prior experience damaging a tape recorder by leaving it charging for more than a week).

So there should be lists somewhere of all the chargers that go with which phones, and which phones that can use what chargers, and there should be a master list of all the phones and all the chargers and which ones work together. But they refused to send me the list, because I could not give them some number off of my phone, which I could not read because my phone had no power.

My phone had no power. That was the whole reason for asking about the chargers.

There were suggestions of which buttons to push on the phone to get the number, or that I should call and talk to a real person, etc.... It took many exchanges before they seemed to understand the words NO POWER. Eventually, they called my home, but I'm pretty sure that in my first message I told them that I was out of town, and that was why I couldn't use my own charger.

Eventually a friend talked me through the process of Googling enough things that I found the information without their help. The charger I had worked with eight phones, and after Googling some images of phones I found that mine was one of the eight. At least, I hoped that was right, as Googling images is not always the best way of finding the name of something.

Three hours after I charged my phone, I got yet another email from them, that they were still trying to help me. Except that they still didn't send me the list, so they weren't trying very hard. I wrote back that someone else had already done their job for them, and that I would file a complaint when I got home.

They still didn't get it. They finally answered my first question, that not all chargers work with all phones, and that I might be able to get some of the numbers that they need to help me by removing the phone's battery....

I guess they missed the whole part that I didn't need their help anymore because someone else did their job for them. I haven't emailed them back. And they still didn't send me a list. This is just the most basic thing to know when you have a cell phone, and the company is telling me that they can't send me a list of all the phones that work with all the chargers because I didn't give them the number of my phone. They don't need my number to send me a master list, they're just lazy or something.

It's hard to believe that anyone is this stupid.

I'm really mad. I'm thinking about making a lot of trouble for them. I'm even wondering if I should find a really annoying lawyer.

It's sad, because right before this happened, I was thinking that I should start using this phone more. I originally got it as an emergency phone, but there really aren't a lot of emergencies, and over time I collected over a thousand minutes that I wasn't using. And my phone at home doesn't get much use either, mainly bill collectors leave messages. By the time anyone that I know wants to leave me a message, the machine is full. If not for the possibility that I might need to call 911, I probably could just get rid of it.

So now I don't know what to do. I was going to spend about a hundred and fifty dollars on new minutes for next year, but since they were less than helpful, maybe this isn't even the best for an emergency phone.

And we did have an emergency of a sort, though I ended up not needing the phone. We had a flat tire Sunday morning, but my husband managed to change it himself, even though we were on the freeway at the time and had to pull over onto the grass and work with other cars speeding past us.

If we had been stuck there with the flat tire and no phone, I'd definitely be getting a lawyer.

So we lost about two hours of our only full day off while we waited at the tire place. But now we are all worn out from our one day off and our attempts at squeezing in tourist stuff before lunch. Unfortunately, we will not have Sunday or Monday here like I thought. We have to drive back Sunday, and while my husband usually has Monday off, this time he has to work in Oklahoma again. So there will be this rush to get me home before he has to head out again.

Anyway, this morning was nice. A bit rushed, but nice.

Is it September 11th already?

From the TV you would think that it was the 10th anniversary, but I counted on my fingers and it's the 9th.

I have already blogged about my 9-11 experience, so I don't think that I'll do that again.

In case you were wondering where I was last week, we went to Oklahoma City. Oklahoma City is not that far away, and over the years we have been there many times. But I was watching the series Saving Grace, and I realized that I'd never been to the memorial, where the Murrah Federal Building had been. My husband had been outside it, but never to the museum inside, and I had never been there at all.

My husband was scheduled to work in Oklahoma City for a couple of weeks, and then another week, and then another. But during this time I had to be home because of the termites or because of the kitchen wall being fixed, or maybe just that I didn't want to leave the plants that long without water. I said that if he went back again I wanted to go, and I wanted to go to the museum.

I got to do a few other things. We went to a couple of restaurants that we like, and it was nice to have access to a pool for a while, and we had other things that we would have liked to do if we had stayed a day later (which we didn't do when we found out about this trip), but the main thing I had planned was going to the memorial.

There's a room with pictures of all the victims. And there's a space for the family to put an item that might tell you something about the person in the picture. A golf ball, a baseball, another picture, a poem, a figurine, a Christmas ornament, a service pin, etc.... Two of the victims were Trekkies, cause they had little Starfleet ships next to their pictures. A few pictures had really odd things, like one girl had a credit card, and another girl had hairspray. And a few pictures didn't have anything with them, but most of those were adults, and I thought maybe they just didn't have family, or that they were not close with their family anymore, and so there was either no one to pick what should go with the picture, or no one knew what should go there.

But one lone picture was of a baby. Surely the baby had a family. Surely someone cared about the baby. How else did the baby get to the daycare (or elsewhere in the building) if he didn't have someone? But no one left a teddy bear, or a figurine, or a poem, just the picture.

There's a calender with the birthdays of all the victims. There were 168 victims, so that takes up about half of the dates.

There were many newspaper articles, some about people suspected of being responsible. I knew when it happened that it wasn't them, that it was one of us. I didn't get the whole Waco connection, I just thought it was someone who didn't like paying taxes. I was really surprised when 9-11 turned out to be foreigners, but as my husband pointed out, our nut jobs mainly like to kill other people, but their nut jobs will also commit to killing themselves.

The outside is pretty, sort of like the reflecting pool in Washington DC. And there are things that look like chairs, one for each victim, each with a name. And then there's a big tree that survived the bomb.

You could spend all day in there reading stuff and watching videos, but my husband had to work, and we only paid for two hours of parking.

Enough of that. I'm going back to knitting and watching cable TV.

The trip of things not working

I have just started my second scarf. I've asked for help from my friends to find out if people I plan to give the scarves to actually want the scarves, but so far they haven't responded. Most of them were having too much fun in Atlanta to bother with checking their email and such. I guess I'll send another email out before I start the third scarf, and having an extra scarf won't kill me.

So at the motel before this one we changed rooms because we were supposed to get a whirlpool tub, but the jets didn't work. They gave us an upgrade, and we ended up in a room made for handicapped guests, so we had the extra large whirlpool tub for two. So that was nice. But the water wasn't very hot, and the cable sucked, and the frig didn't really work. It never got really cold, and it had old frig smell. Not really sure how to do describe it, sort of chemical, sort of just bad, and it just comes from refrigerators that are either old or haven't been used in a while. And everything in it picked up this smell, so I had to throw out anything that we put in there. But we were lucky that we hadn't done any major grocery shopping, and that we only had to throw out a few things that we brought from home and a couple of half empty sodas.

So, in spite of having a really helpful front desk girl and an owner who did try to make up for the inconvenience, we will probably not go back to that motel when we head back to that area Sunday.

The place we are staying at now isn't that great, and we knew that going in, but this was the only place here that we found in our budget on Priceline.com. And I thought that would be better than just roaming around town asking for a room under fifty dollars. At least this place has better cable, and there is plenty of hot water.

Sometimes the Internet here is weird. Sometimes it is just slow or something doesn't load images or whatever. It is annoying. And this is the new computer, so I know that it is them and not me.

The remote control didn't work the first day.

Okay, as it turns out, I was using the wrong remote. But I don't know why there are two remotes here, as the one doesn't seem to do anything other than turn the TV on and off. Using the other remote now, so that is better.

Again, I am having trouble with the frig, though it doesn't have the nasty smell of the other one. First, they just forgot that we were supposed to have a frig and microwave, so they had to move one in. And then the frig just never seems to get very cold. Found out that the plug was loose, and I switched outlets with the microwave, so that is better, except that no I have to hold the microwave plug to the wall when I use the microwave or it will slip out and not work. So the frig has power all the time now, but it still doesn't seem to be as cold as it should be. Again, since I was suspicious we did not fill the frig full of groceries. And we will be leaving here Sunday, and I hope that at our last stop we'll get a good room with a properly working frig and such.

Sometimes I think that I am tired and ready to go home already, even though we really haven't done anything yet. I guess it just seems like a long trip already, because I was gone the week before and only home for a day and a half before we left again.

But I am ready to leave here, because there were only two things that I really wanted to do here, and we've already done the one, and we can't do the other because of the schedule. My husband has to be at work at the only time the other place allows visitors, so that just isn't going to happen.

Time to go and be a tourist, at least for a day.

My mother isn't happy with me

Big surprise. But it's just the reason for her being unhappy.

Okay, she's been telling me that something is going to happen in October. She told me months ago that something is going to happen in October. She repeats this several times. Okay, got it, something is happening in October. The something isn't happening to me, and it isn't happening to her, it's happening to someone else in the family. It doesn't really have anything to do with me, it is going to happen regardless of what is going on with me at the time, I don't need to be there, etc....

Okay, so now apparently, the thing is not going to happen in October, it is going to happen later this month, and I'm going on a trip, and then another trip, and for all I know after that week I'll go on another trip. I have no way of knowing that stuff very far in advance. My husband's schedule gets posted on Wednesdays, so that you know what you are doing that week and the next week, but you don't know what you are doing the week after next until the schedule is posted on Wednesday, and even then there are changes which sometimes happens at the last minute. So I might know where I am headed for the next day, I know where I plan to spend that week. Right now I know where we plan to spend the rest of this week and the next week and we would have to think about coming home probably a week from Sunday. And now it is Thursday, so I've seen the schedule, but at the time I talked to my mother I hadn't seen it yet, and there was a possibility that schedule posted on Wednesday would have meant another week in the same area or a week that is someplace closer to where we are now, and then there would have been no point in going home.

Anyway, I'm planning to be gone for about two weeks. That is the plan. Plans change. I have no way of knowing.

Before I left and I talked to my mother (and she was already not very happy with me), the plan was that I would only be gone this time for one week. See? Plans change. The plan at the time was to leave on Sunday and come back a week from either Sunday or Monday. But now he's working on that Monday, and we'll be doing tourist stuff on that Sunday, cause there just isn't any reason to come home for half a day and then turn around and head back the same way.

So I'm telling her the plans (at least, the plans as I know them at the time), and she's asking aren't I going to be home for the thing? And I'm like, I don't know, and anyway, the thing is in October. No, it is in September. Well, I don't know, maybe. Why? Cause we might need you to help out. Other people aren't going to be here.

Okay.

Well, I can't help that other people aren't going to be here. Last time anything like this was going on, I offered to help, though I couldn't really think of anything I could do. And there wasn't anything for me to do, and everyone was like thanks anyway. So I hadn't really thought about offering to help this time, cause I know from last time there really isn't anything for me to do except hang around and say, I'm here if you need me. But it was obvious that I was just in the way, and when I wasn't given something to do, I left.

So now my mother is upset with me cause I'm not promising to come home to hang around and say that I'm here if someone needs me. Someone does not really need me, just my mother wants someone to be here just in case, and other people have travel plans and aren't going to be here.

The other people who have travel plans are people with money who can travel any time that they want to. They picked now. I don't know why they picked now, but they did. I don't get to pick my travel time. Travel is offered, and it is rarely any place that I want to go, and I either go when it is offered or I don't. I can't turn it down and then expect it to be offered again at a more convenient time.

Not that later would be a convenient time for me. October is too late for some of the stuff that I want to do, and besides that I am usually a very busy person in October.

Oh, speaking of being busy in October, everyone seems to think that I'm co-hosting a children's Halloween party. I'm not, but that was announced. I just said that I was donating some stuff to the party, which I did, and I thought that was the end of it. I can't even say for sure that I'd be in town during the week of the children's party. At this point I'm not even that sure about helping out with the adult party, and I can't even say that I'm that excited about going to the adult party, which is something I look forward to all year. I'm just not having any good ideas this year, and it's all starting to seem boring on the one hand (if I don't do much) or a lot of work (if I end up doing a lot in spite of not having any good ideas or maybe having a good idea at the last minute). In fact, if there was really something interesting offered to me, I might go out of town instead of the party, which is something I would never do. But my husband was briefly talking about Orlando, but that wouldn't have been work travel and we would have had to pay for that all ourselves. But work travel is different (it doesn't cost near as much), and if something really interesting were offered right now I think that I'd do that instead.

Back to my mother's problem. I am supposed to give up my travel plans to hang around just in case someone needs me, even though I know from the last time that no one will need me and if someone did need something it would probably be something that I can't do and so they would still not need me, and the main reason for my giving up my travel plans is that someone else has made other travel plans and won't be here.

I don't think so.

So I'm sure that everyone thinks I'm a heartless bitch or something. But I don't see that I should give up something that I want to do just to be here for moral support. It is unlikely that I would actually be doing anything useful. And the person that might be needing the help didn't ask for help, just my mother is upset that I'm not going to be around to offer help. And the other person with travel plans apparently is not a heartless bitch for making travel plans and spending a lot of money to go out of town even when she knew that she had made the plans during this time that was not convenient, but apparently no one expects her to change her plans, maybe because she spent all this money.

I don't get it.

Now I can feel guilty some more

Okay, so we were home, and now we are not. The original plan was to go home and get some sleep and immediately head out again, so that we would have a day to be a tourist before the work week started on Tuesday. Except this trip is now two weeks, so we will have at least Sunday to be tourists, and maybe the Sunday and Monday the following week, so we didn't need this Sunday too. Besides, this Sunday's motel room wouldn't have been paid for, and I thought a day at home would be better.

And I imagined doing all this work and cleaning and such. I'm not sure if I've mentioned this, but I'm trying to paint the kitchen. I wouldn't have started this particular project now, except that since I've already pushed the cabinet out of the kitchen and moved the stove away from the wall, I thought that it would be better to get that area painted before I had to put everything back the way it was. Still everything else is still there, so I'm having to paint this tiny kitchen in four sections. Section one I painted half of a wall under a cabinet where the stove normally is and most of the wall next to it. That went well enough. Section two involved painting an even smaller area, up near the ceiling, and mostly above a couple of cabinets. And that involved standing on a ladder, and though it was a small ladder I decided to put that off until someone else was in the house with me, just in case there was an accident.

So I did section two on Sunday, when we were both home. Only before I started painting I had to take everything down from on top of the cabinets, and found that to be a bit of a mess. I'd never been up there to look before, but in addition to the dust and such that I expected I also found bits of wood and nails and other things that I'm not sure what they were, but that must have been left there by the maintenance guys before we moved in. I don't even know why this stuff was there, much less why it was left there. I don't think much of some of the maintenance guys, but at least they usually clean up after themselves.

I didn't have the energy for that sort of thing, but I did eventually get most of it cleaned. Ten minutes of cleaning, and then ten minutes of rest. I really didn't care to be standing on that ladder for long.

So that ended up being most of what got done that day, cleaning above the cabinets, painting above the cabinets, waiting four hours for the paint to dry, and then painting the second coat. Other than that I finished the laundry that I didn't get done with the day before, and I went out to lunch and cooked dinner. And that was about it. Oh, we cut the grass, and that was about it.

So I still hadn't cleaned the bathroom, or finished packing, or a couple of other things. So after watering the plants I still had to do all of that. And then my husband had a few errands to run, so we didn't leave as early as I had imagined, and it was about four in the afternoon before we got here. Not much time to do anything. But it was raining off and on, so I guess we wouldn't have done much of anything anyway.

Anyway, while I imagined leaving a cleaner house this time, it looks about the same as it did before, except that it has been painted just a little bit more, the bathroom has been cleaned up a bit, and the stove has been pushed back into it's usual place. The rest of the junk is still where it was.

I meant to take a few more things with me. Like, I miss my pillow. Taking your whole bed with you when you travel is impractical, but taking a pillow is easy, and if that isn't enough you can even bring your own sheets. So I missed my pillow all week and meant to bring it with me this time, but somehow I left the house without it, and the extra clothes I meant to pack, and a few other things. Mostly I have the same things that I had last week, except that I've washed them.

And I meant to put something on the bed before I left, just to get it off of the floor, just in case my house floods while I'm away. Flooding in general is horrible, but as far as missing individual things I don't think that there's much I would miss, except for this one thing, and I forgot and left it on the floor, the worst possible place for it.

So of course it is raining here, which means that it will probably rain at home later, which is normally a good thing, but now I'm a bit worried about flooding.

We have to change motels Wednesday, but we were looking forward to staying here for a bit. It has an indoor pool, and we managed to get a whirlpool tub at no extra cost. Except that once we got all of our stuff into the room and planned to take a bath, the jets didn't work. So, to be nice, they said that they would move us into another room.

You wouldn't think that you could make such a mess in only a few hours. Our stuff was all over the room and we had stuff in the fridge, but I really wanted that hottub, so we moved.

The new room is designed for handicapped people. I didn't know that hottubs were part of the handicapped rooms, but there's one here. In fact, there's a real big hottub here. I've never had a private tub big enough for two. I like it. Still, I shouldn't be in a room meant for a handicapped person. But there are more of those rooms here, so I guess that it is okay to use the one, unless a convention comes to town before we check out tomorrow.

Wednesday I will get another room that isn't as nice in a town that isn't as interesting. But Thursday or Friday there will be ice cream, possibly lots of ice cream.

I am at home

But not for long. Mostly, we have come home to pack and plan for our next trip.

I have just had the strangest dream. I had given up and moved back in with my mom. For a time, my sister had also spent some time at my mom's, but that was very temporary. So temporary that I'm not sure we were ever there at the same time in the dream, just that I was aware that she had been there.

And then there was someone at the door, some government agency there on official business, and people came in and started going through all of our stuff. (I've spent a week watching cable, where there is not only a show about hoarders, but also a few shows about animal hoarders, which I did not even know was a term now, or that it ever applied to anyone other than old ladies with cats.) In real life, my mother does not have a lot of stuff to go through, so I guess in the dream I had brought over a lot of my stuff, or maybe my mom was trying to empty the attic or something. But still, even in this dream, there was not as much stuff at my mom's house as there is at my house, and what stuff there was wasn't particularly bad stuff or trash or nasty smelling stuff. Not like the hoarders show or anything like that. But these people are just going through the stuff and saying how bad it is, and I'm like whatever and why is it any of your business. And then they do find something unpleasant, like a few plastic bags that have bad stuff in them. Like the stuff got wet and then started going moldy or something. And that is bad, but for me it was worrying how the stuff got wet and moldy to start with, like did my mom have a leak in the roof or some other problem with the house that we were not aware of. But the people didn't care about that, they just found something on their list of reasons to throw people out on the street.

And my mom just sort of nods, and she isn't happy but just doesn't seem to want to fight about it, and I'll have to find some other place to stay. I'm the one who seems to be angry, that people can't just come in and do stuff like that. And then it turns out that these people have something to do with child welfare, and they are quite used to doing stuff like that.

Except that I'm not a child, and my mother is not a child, and even my youngest sibling is not a child. And we were not children in this dream either. In real life, the only child is the one grandchild, who did not seem to be in the dream, and in real life has never spent the night at my mom's place. So it did not make sense that these people were going through our stuff with the intention of protecting some children. And at that point I start laughing at them, saying that they are probably at the wrong house, and that they have no business being here at all. But they don't listen and keep going through the stuff and taking pictures of the moldy stuff in the bags.

Well, that is what I get for spending a week watching cable TV.

Last day here

I won't say where here is, or at least, I won't say til I get home. There are weirdos out there. I could run into some jerk at the pool, and he'd tell me he'd just read my blog. So I never say where I am at, only where I've been or where I hope to go later.

So we are here, and this is our last day here, and we have no big plans. Of all the stuff that we said we might do (other than go to restaurants) we have only done the one thing. I didn't feel well that first day, and that was probably the only morning that it would have been good to swim, so we haven't done much of that either. (I have been in the pool three times, but he has only been once, and it was cooler than I would have liked then. It tends to warm up later in the day, after he goes to work, which either leaves me in the pool by myself or with possibly weird guys.) There will be no swimming today, as it will only get to a high of 84, and not even that high before lunch.

The original plan involved going to another museum and/or the zoo. But the original plan also involved us staying an extra day to do that, which we have decided not to do now, because we will soon be spending at least two weeks in an area that we like even better, and I need to spend at least the one day at home before we leave for the next trip.

Anyway, I think that we might be able to squeeze in some of a museum today, but neither one of us felt up to the idea when we discussed it yesterday, so we will probably just stay here until lunch.

So that makes the big plan for today...lunch.

Anyway, I did manage to get the right yarn, after going to three stores to find it. So I plan to knit a scarf (hopefully two or three scarves) over the next few weeks, and they will be Christmas presents later. And this gives me something to do while I sit here watching cable, and makes me less upset that I am not spending more time in the pool. I got a fifth of one done yesterday, which takes about six hours.

And I have a computer to play with, which I haven't had much on many of my earlier trips.

Now I feel guilty

Okay, so I had a week with mostly valid reasons for being lazy, followed by another week of mostly being lazy with no real excuse for it. Saturday I cut the grass and did the laundry and washed dishes. I even started painting the kitchen.

But the rest of the house was a mess. I debated about going on this trip. It wasn't anything really special, just that my husband was saying how if I went with him we would go to this restaurant or go do this and that, but without me he didn't much bother with such things. So I could have stayed home another week. We have bigger plans for next week's trip, but this week was no big deal.

But I really wanted to get out of the house, and sometimes there are last minute changes to the schedule. Sometimes he doesn't go where was planned, sometimes a job is cancelled and he works near home instead, or sometimes he just doesn't have any work. And if that had happened, I'd have been kicking myself that I gave up my last chance to get out of town for the summer.

But that isn't what happened.

The only thing that I cleaned Saturday was the kitchen, and then that got messy again with the painting. The rest of the house was still a mess, and then it was an even bigger mess once I actually started packing, as it had been a while and I tossed things around while looking for missing items I wanted to take with me.

But I was thinking that I would clean that up later, not the next week, but the week after, when I got home from the second trip.

Well now the second trip has been extended to two weeks. And of course, I have no idea what is planned after that. For all I know there will be a third week, or another trip to someplace even more interesting.

It is my fault entirely for being lazy last week. Not that I would have had a spotless house, but I could have cleaned the bathroom before I left, or gotten an earlier start on the painting and cleaned up afterward, or straightened the backroom a bit more, or a number of other things. But no, I didn't start the painting earlier, cause I didn't want to make yet a third trip to the store to return the paint, unless it was on a day that I was going to be right near there anyway, which didn't happen until Friday, so I didn't paint anything until Saturday.

Not that any of this guilt makes me reconsider next week's trip. I haven't been to that place in like four years. I'm really looking forward to it. Just not so looking forward to being away from home so much all at once.

I guess this will be yet another year when I don't fully decorate for Halloween because I'm too busy to get out the rest of the decorations.