Plant problems

My husband went out of town yesterday. I didn't go with him. It would have been nice, but I'm probably stuck here until further notice, because of the plants.

This week (and probably some of next week too) in particular I am stuck here because I'm waiting on another package of live plants. I worry even about going to the grocery store, that I'm going to be gone too long and I'll miss the package, and that extra time being in a box without enough water will damage or kill the plants. Being gone for two or three days is obviously out of the question.

And it's not like I really needed to go out of town, but originally it was just for the one day, and it would have been nice, just to get away for a bit.

And then some really annoying things happened.

He'd thought that he was going to a suburb of Oklahoma City. Suburbs of Oklahoma City were hit by tornadoes, so we wondered if the job would be cancelled. Turns out that the job wasn't where he thought it was, and he had to leave the day before. So we went to lunch, and he left right after that.

Turns out that we'd been to this place before, but I don't remember it. After a while, you forget a lot of places. But I guess when we were there before, we'd noticed a few things that we wanted to do if we were ever in the area again and had more time. Like, now would have been a good time, if I weren't stuck at home, mostly because of waiting on this package.

Well, he probably won't want to do any of that stuff without me, so he'll be coming home tomorrow.

And now about the battles with tree limbs.

Well, it would have been nice to finish up with the garden and such for the year. It just gets too hot, and I don't like to work on it much after April, and so I had planned to stop all of the major work the first week of May. And then the weather changed, so that it seemed very cool again, even though it wasn't raining as much as I had expected. So, I thought, as long as the weather permits, I should do more work.

After having tried a couple of times to cut down two trees growing too close to the back fence, the trees grew back at odd angles, and some branches grew through the fence and did some minor damage. That is one of the reasons I bought a reciprocating saw last year, so that I could cut the limbs that start growing too close to the fence. So I had some work to do just for that, and a few weeks ago I decided to get started on it.

I had tried the saw last year, but I didn't really use it much. It's not bad. I just have trouble with physical work in general, and after using tools I need a rest. My hands ache. I have to shake it off, literally. So after sawing off the small limbs that would have caused us trouble later, I gave the saw and myself a rest.

After going back into the house and putting the saw away, I noticed that my right hand was swelling up. I did not quite look like young Captain Kirk having an allergic reaction to a vaccination, but one hand was noticeably larger than the other for a bit. Odd. I don't remember having that reaction using the saw last year, but I didn't use it much last year.

Anyway, the problem went away, and I decided to try it again the next day. Again my hands and arms hurt, but more what I had expected, and I didn't notice that much swelling.

After getting done with what absolutely had to be done I cut down some dead branches. And after that went well, I decided to keep going and just cut down the whole tree. I was planning on doing that at some point anyway, so I might as well get started now. And then at a certain point, it does seem like a lot of work, but it's better to keep going that to stop and have half a tree.

So I've cut all the branches off of the first tree, leaving the main trunk, which is really going to be a lot of work with my little saw. But, it will have to be my little saw, or combination of the saw and a small axe, because I'm afraid of chain saws. Or else, I will just have to leave it the way it is, checking once in a while to remove new growth.

I tied up some of the smaller pieces for trash removal, and then I went on to cut down the second tree. This mostly went well, until the last of the main branches, which was too big to get in one cut, and also slightly leaning in the wrong direction, and would possibly get caught in power lines or phone lines or whatever they are.

It took a while, but I got a lot of the second tree cut down, until there was just the main branch left. And it was leaning slightly in the direction of a power line, or a phone line, or cable or something. Anyway, instead of making a straight cut, I made this sort of V cut pointing away from the direction I would rather the branch fell, thinking that if that works with trunks that are straight, maybe a really big V cut would still work on this branch that wasn't quite straight.

But after a lot of work making cuts on the branch, I figure out that my plan isn't going to work. So I'm thinking if I make an even bigger V and get some rope or something and pull in the direction I want the thing to fall, maybe that would work. I've cut almost halfway through, but it doesn't want to budge, so I go back in the house to look for the some rope and get my husband to help. He says he's about to take a shower and will help right after that.

I hear a noise.

I go back outside, and that branch that would budge earlier is now starting to lean over, and not in a good direction.

I yell for my husband to skip the shower.

My husband comes out and looks at the branch which is breaking and now leaning on the line of whatever it is. Other branches I cut did the same thing, but they were much smaller and came loose without too much trouble. This branch is heavy, even though I cut it far away from the rest of the tree, about level with my head. My husband climbs a bit of the tree to get a better look, and tells me to cut where the branch splits off into smaller branches.

Like, if I could have reached that high, I would have done that to start with.

So he's telling me to hand him the saw and he'll do it.

He's never used this saw at all, and just doesn't get how that's a bad idea. The thing shakes a lot, even with both your feet planted firmly on the ground. You can't use the thing at an odd angle while you're trying to balance on a tree.

If I had to do this over again, I would get the step ladder and stand on top of that while I had someone holding onto my legs and I would cut the smaller branches first. But at the time that looked like a silly thing to do and it would have taken a long time.

So I tell him to get off of the tree, and I'll just keep cutting the branch the way it is. Maybe he can stand under it and push it away as it falls?

So that's what we do, and it sort of works the way I pictured it in my head. Only when the branch comes loose it just seems to fall really fast, and I'm thinking, that was dumb, I just told my husband to stand under a falling tree. But he says he isn't hurt, and the branch is free and we get it off of the line pretty quick.

So I didn't quite get that last one right, and into the lines it went, but nothing broke, and I can't tell that anything is wrong because of it. I don't know what the line is for, but the power is still on, the phone still works, and the Internet still works. After getting the branches off of the lines, that one line hangs very low. It might cause me problems later.

Working on another outdoor project now. Since I don't have money for a storage shed, but I do have this cement slab where one used to be, I built this thing to hold up an 8x4 piece of plastic lattice. To one side of that is a fence that used to have plants that blocked view, behind it is the original wall of the house, and to the other side a bit farther away is a wall to the added on room of the house. So the junk on the slab used to mostly be blocked from view, because of the vines on the fence, which aren't thick enough now for that. So I'm building another thing to which I will add lattice next week when I get more money. So that's what I was building today. Forgot about the low line, didn't see it, and while hammering some boards together got caught on it. Again, didn't seem to do any damage to anything, and the power is still on, phone still works, etc....

Anyway, when I get that done, the junk will be mostly blocked from view except on one side, and you can only see that from a certain angle if you are in my yard or my next door neighbor's yard, or in the alley just behind them. In other words, after I put the lattice up and put all the junk back on the cement slab, most people won't see the majority of the junk unless they are out looking for it.

And I suppose that I could spend another thirty or forty dollars and build a third wall. But that is not planned for now.

Anyway, the backyard is full of branches, as I have now cut down most of two trees. My hands hurt from using the saw, so I am mostly resting now. But I will have to cut the branches into smaller pieces, and then I will put them out a little at a time for the trash collection. I would rather do something else, as it seems a waste, but I haven't had any better ideas. I would think that some people who do ren faires would maybe like walking sticks or wizard staffs, but I don't have any way of getting the branches to them, and I can't have an open invitation for them to come here either. So I think that it will be a month or so of slowly getting rid of these branches by putting a few at a time out for regular trash collection.

Glad most of the hard part is over.

Still can't do anything interesting. I'm still waiting on that package of live plants.

Home now

Well, we almost went to El Paso for a few days. The trip that was only supposed to be for one week was extended for a few days because another photographer was called for jury duty. We thought that was going to be on Tuesday, and that someone would tell us Tuesday either that we could go home or that we would be heading to El Paso. Only the photographer wasn't called on Tuesday, she was called on Wednesday. What she was saying was that she needed someone to cover for her on Tuesday because she couldn't work in north New Mexico (almost Colorado) Tuesday afternoon and evening if she had to be in a courthouse in Albuquerque on Wednesday morning. And then she might still get on a jury, but isn't less likely that you'll get picked for a jury on Wednesday than on Monday or Tuesday. So, pretty early on Wednesday she was told that they didn't need her. Not early enough that we could be told at eight in the morning when we called, so we headed to Albuquerque and called again when we stopped for lunch. We absolutely had to know then, as from Albuquerque we would either head south to El Paso or west to go home.

I suppose if it still wasn't decided, we could have maybe headed south to Socorro, called from there a couple hours later, and then either kept going to El Paso, or traveled home with a detour through Roswell. And Roswell can be fun when you are in the mood, but really we weren't, and by the time we got there we wouldn't have had time to do anything anyway. Really we just wanted to go home, though if they had told us early enough El Paso would have been okay for a few days.

Anyway, before noon we were told the jury duty was over, and we could go home. We were about ten miles away from Albuquerque, and according to Mapquest the drive home from Albuquerque is ten hours. But we know that Mapquest rarely tells us how long the trip really is. The drive is usually a bit longer than that, and then you have to stop to eat and to get gas and sometimes just stop to get out of the damned car for a bit. The trip from home to Albuquerque was well planned and we got an early start, but the trip took twelve and a half hours. The same twelve and a half hours, from when and where we started Wednesday, would have ended near Wichita Falls at about 10 pm. But my husband was already tired, so we only got as far as Amarillo. As originally scheduled, we would have had to drive at least to Wichita Falls, as my husband had been scheduled to work in Dallas Thursday. But the boss agreed to change it a bit so that he didn't have to work til Friday. He'd just done too much driving.

We'd stayed at the Fifth Season, or something like that. That's one of those older hotels that isn't the new cool place to be and isn't anywhere old enough to have historic interest. Someone is trying to fix up the lobby and the pool and the rooms near the front of the place. The rooms in the back are not too good, do not have microfridge or ironing boards or any of that stuff. My husband stayed there before, at my suggestion, cause I found a coupon and it had nice pictures and came with sausage and eggs for breakfast. He didn't like it, the air conditioner didn't work very well, and he couldn't get an Internet connection. It did have a hot tub, and it did have a nice pool, but he really isn't into pools that much and doesn't use the hot tub that much either when I'm not there. So he didn't like being stuck there for a week.

But on the way home I found the coupon again, and he didn't think that staying there just the one night would be a bad idea, especially since it wasn't warm enough to need the air conditioner and for just the one night we could live without the Internet and the microfridge and ironing board, etc....

I thought that it was okay. I really liked the pool area. The breakfast was nice, but I'd get tired of having the same thing all week. It isn't the usual stuff with sausage and eggs included, it is pretty much just the sausage and eggs, and toast, and oatmeal. No other cereal, no waffles, no bagels, no donuts, no muffins, no fruit. So I'm glad I got to stay there, but I probably won't stay there again (unless again it is just the one night when we don't need the air conditioner), unless maybe the amount we are allowed to spend on motels increases a bit and we can stay in one of the front rooms.

The next day we packed everything up, or I thought we did. I guess that I left my pillow. On the first day we lost one of my swimsuits, and sometime after that we lost one of his. And now my pillow is missing. Probably other things will turn up missing, but so far nothing really important.

I thought we would stop in Wichita Falls for lunch, but we didn't get that far. We stopped in Vernon, and I guess he was really hungry, cause he stopped at the first thing he saw, a McDonald's. Really, Vernon is a small town, but it isn't that small. It does have restaurants. Half an hour later, after we had eaten, we pasted what he really wanted, a catfish restaurant. Oh, well.

We saw a lot of stuff this trip, and I will have to blog about it all later. Just for now I thought I'd mention that we were home.

It's been a nice trip, but...

I should be going home tomorrow. I'm not. My husband has to at least work in New Mexico again on Tuesday. And then, we will either have a long trip home Wednesday (and probably some of Thursday), or, he will be working a few more days in a part of Texas that we rarely go to. We won't know which until Tuesday night, and I'm not really sure which I would prefer.

I am getting tired of the long drives. If we go home on Wednesday, that would be the longest drive yet, and the least interesting.

The drive home next weekend would be slightly shorter, we would probably have two days to do it, and a detour would allow us to do something silly we've never done before. Also, we could think about going to another place we've never been before.

But, driving next weekend would mean that I'd be getting home a couple of days later than I should. This could cause me some problems later. And four days already in motel rooms without knitting have been a bit boring, so I can imagine how I'm going to feel after four more.

We've totally thrown out the diets. I'm sure that the little bit of weight loss that I've had will have disappeared by the time I get back home. I think that we've had Mexican food five or six times already, usually with Cokes, chips and salsa, and sopapillas.

Saturdays are usually the worst for me, with little to do other than watching whatever odd thing is on SyFy, usually movies they made with plots that make little sense. My husband gets home earlier on Saturdays, but usually he doesn't feel up to doing much if anything.

Tomorrow we will spend most of the day being tourists. Since we've already taken the direct route to where we are going Monday (and will be taking it again on Wednesday) we will take a detour and do whatever looks interesting between here and probably Gallup, and then drive the rest of the way the day after. So that will be probably be a rather dull day, with little or nothing to do after lunch, but it is probably a good idea to take it easy since either way will mean a lot of driving on Wednesday.

And there will probably be more Mexican food.

...and technically Utah

Saturday, I was supposed to move things around in the living room and scrub the floor and get everything ready so that the thing could be moved out of the back room and the living room floor could be painted. As it turned out, I wasn't going to get everything done that I wanted, so I decided to not do much of anything. It would have been nice to have it all done and have the final bit of paint drying while we were both out of the house, but I was nowhere near that. If I had known sooner that I was going out of town, maybe I would have done some of the other stuff faster, but I didn't. It can wait.

So, other than wash dishes and try to get things packed, I went to run an errand, and then I didn't do much of anything. I thought about what knitting project I could take with me, and then I decided that I wouldn't take any knitting. I was going to spend one day in a motel in Colorado, and then three more in New Mexico, but then we were told that one of the days in New Mexico was probably going to be cancelled. So that was only going to be three days in motel rooms, and it didn't seem worth the effort of going to get yarn and such.

Anyway, the almost cancelled day in New Mexico got uncancelled, and the schedule might change even more after that, leaving me alone in motel rooms for even more days without much to do, so I'm really wishing that I had packed some yarn, or at least a loom or something so that I might go buy some yarn later.

Anyway, tomorrow I was planning to spend the whole day in Durango. Now it looks like we're maybe planning to have lunch in Durango before we have to be somewhere else.

Sunday was a very long drive to Albuquerque, but we left at 6 in the morning as planned and it really didn't seem all that bad.

The next morning we took some pictures and went to ride the Sandia Peak tram. Seemed like a good idea at the time, but that meant that we had a late start on everything else. Scenic drives and lunch and a slight detour to look at some ruins and then another slight detour to go to the Four Corners Monument.

Only we got there at 5:30, about an hour too late to do anything, and about half an hour too late to even get in. So we drove past some more really interesting views and checked into our motel, which did not have an indoor hot tub as advertised. But dinner was great. Didn't really want yet another Mexican restaurant (third already this trip), but we really didn't want to go looking for something more interesting, and this place was practically in the motel parking lot.

This morning we woke up early, and we went back to Four Corners. I didn't know that Four Corners was a flea market, or I would have brought more money. But we had enough money for fry bread, and we bought a few things, mostly a couple of necklaces from a woman who agreed to take a check.

I have eaten too much. Might be just as well that I don't have a hot tub. It probably isn't a good idea to get in the tub after eating too much.

So I've now added Colorado and technically Utah to the list of states I've been in. So that makes 42 of the lower 48.

It's been a busy few days.

A catch up post

I am home, while my husband is off in middle of nowhere Oklahoma. I was briefly very excited about nowhere Oklahoma and wanted to go too, as I wanted to go back to the Castle of Muskogee for their Halloween stuff. But as I looked more closely at the schedule, I saw that a trip to the Castle could not work, because the Castle is not open on Sunday night, and that would have been the best opportunity to go, as he is scheduled an hour and a half away on Friday and Saturday, the only nights that they are open.

So I quit trying to figure out how I might get to the place and just stayed home to work.

Of course I am not working, as my back still hurts. Maybe not as much as it did. Sometimes I think that whatever it is maybe getting better. Other times I just think that I am having a few good days, and then I'll have a few bad ones. It is best to sit just a certain way in this chair (so there has been a lot of Hulu and Youtube and such), or to stand up straight (which does not happen very often cause how boring is it to just stand still somewhere), or to maybe walk around a bit at a mall or something, or to stay in bed in a certain positions. Those positions in bed are not good for watching TV or reading, so I'm trying to stay out of bed, but eventually I am there watching TV or using the heating pad anyway. And of course I am trying to sleep some, which does not seem to want to happen at the right times.

The first thing that happened after I decided to stay here is that I seem to have lost my marbles and forgot to pay rent. I could have sworn that was done before I left, but there was no money taken out of the account for it. And I thought that I had given it to the "temporary manager", but as I got out of there fast and did not ask for a receipt, that might have been an earlier month. Anyway, paying that late means a lot of late fees, and I ended up paying eighty dollars for my mistake. She at first said a hundred, and I know that she could have even said a hundred and twenty, but "temporary manager" wasn't around, so she didn't charge me for the first day and she didn't charge me for the day that I wrote the check. (I later heard that "temporary manager" had quit, but as that was after I went to the office I did not get that confirmed.) I just can't imagine having forgotten to pay that check, as I went so far as to make sure that my brother had an emergency check before I went out of town. So how did I remember the emergency check but not the regular rent check?

The next odd thing was I learned that mail delivery for our street had stopped. There was an incident with a dog and some man at the beginning of the street (technically his address is on the cross street), and so everyone else would have to go get their mail from the Post Office until further notice. That started Friday afternoon while I was away. The mail service just stopped, and you only heard about it through the rumour mill, not buy a note on the door or phone call or anything official from either the Post Office or the office here. I didn't hear about it until Tuesday. Wednesday, the man who lives in the apartment in question came around to apologize in person to everyone on the street, saying that it was not him and not his dog, but his daughter's boyfriend and his dog. The boyfriend and dog have left, and the man has apologized and made arrangements to have a box at the post office, and the mail service was restored on Thursday.

Tuesday I got my TDaP shot. I don't know the difference between the TDaP and the DTaP (maybe one is for adults and one for children?), but I ended up getting it from the Kroger's pharmacy for $50. That is considerably less that the prices I'd been told at other places ($80 and $129), so I wonder if they made a mistake. I got the shot before they could change their minds. So now I won't infect the baby with whooping cough, and I'll remember that my tetanus shots are due on years ending in 0. So that's all good, and I'm glad to get that over with.

The bug guy is coming next next Wednesday. I suspected that, and that is the main reason I asked to come home instead of going straight on to Oklahoma with my husband, but now I have that confirmed. So I should be doing a lot of cleaning, which I am not, because of my back. But I should at least try to clear him a path through the junk.

Tomorrow I should have my picture taken, but I really don't want to. I don't know what to wear. I don't feel like getting dressed up anyway. Maybe I'll wear Harry Potter stuff.

The baby is in the hospital

First let me say that the baby formally known as the baby will now be known as Buddy. He is perhaps a little bit big to be called the baby, and as he now has a baby sister, calling him the baby would be confusing.

Anyway, just as Buddy was getting used to his baby sister, she got a temperature of 101, and apparently babies with temperatures above 100.4 get a trip to the hospital, even if there does not appear to be anything else wrong. And there does not appear to be anything else wrong, but they are not done looking.

The baby's temperature has gone back down, and if there is nothing else wrong she'll get to go back home tomorrow or the next day.

I will not say who the babies are or who their parents are. There are just too many weirdos out on the Internet, and I don't intend to help them find their next targets.

It just so happens that these are the only babies I've had in my life since I've been married. Not that most of my friends and family haven't had babies, just somehow they haven't had any when I was around. There are a few couples I am friends with who don't want children, but most have either had them when I wasn't around, or else they had babies and then somehow ended up not being friends anymore. It just seems to happen that way. Like people in the club who start families tend to stop being in the club. Family stuff is more important, and they just don't have time for some of the social stuff they did before.

So somehow there are these two babies who have come along at a time when I was not away on a long trip, and their parents didn't up and move, and while they don't have as much free time as they used to they haven't completely disappeared.

Now I have to be more careful about things. I've had a flu shot. Not that I shouldn't have a flu shot anyway, but in years past the decision to get one was made mostly on factors like whether or not I had the cash in my pocket when someone was given vaccinations at school or maybe Walmart. Anyway, I made a point of getting it this year, and now I'm thinking about the dtap. There's like an outbreak of whooping cough in California or something, and they are afraid it might come here. Besides, I should have gotten a tetanus shot a couple of years ago anyway.

The dtap is eighty dollars in Dallas (I hate Dallas) or a hundred and twenty-nine if I can get it at a certain Walgreens. I don't have either amount, so I haven't gotten it yet. I wish I had thought about it earlier. There's a place about a mile away from where I'm staying that probably has them here (though I don't know for how much), and I wish I'd have heard about it earlier. Maybe I could have gotten the shot instead of going to that restaurant.

Anyway, I will be heading home tomorrow, and Sunday I'll have to decide if I should see the baby, since I haven't had this shot.

I will be glad to go home. I had fun yesterday, but it will be good to sleep in my own bed again.

Out of town again

I look forward to going out of town. Then I stress about going out of town, about the schedule, about how I didn't get something done before I left, or about how I need to get back before a certain time.

And then I get here and wonder what made me do this?

As much as I dislike being stuck at home all day, being stuck in a motel room all day usually isn't any better. I brought projects with me, my Halloween costume and stuff that goes with it, but once I started working on it I realized that I didn't have everything that I need with me, so that might not get done this week like I planned. Without my little projects to keep me distracted, I usually have a very boring day of watching TV.

Not that the whole trip is boring. Monday I went to a certain restaurant. I'd never been there before, and I'll probably go there again, but now whenever the subject comes up, I can say that I've been there. Probably Wednesday I will go to a state park, and probably Thursday I will go to someplace we once went to when I was a child. Then I can say how everything looks smaller. I'll spend some time in the hot tub, and once in a while I'll even have my husband with me.

Saturday will be a bit of a hassle, but I didn't want to go to on next week's trip, so we have get home in time for him to get going again. Anyway, the plan is for me to spend most of Saturday at a mall so that we don't have to spend money on this room, and then we'll end up spending the night somewhere between here and home.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Here I am in

a motel. I'm not telling where.

Anyway, I gave up thinking about traveling to the ideal place and just got in the car and went to the place that was available for free. Sort of free. Nothing is really free, but hanging out on a trip that my husband has to go on anyway is a lot cheaper than taking a trip on our own. Most of the gas is paid for, the room is paid for, etc....

What is not paid for is the food and any tourist stuff we might do. And, of course, we would have to eat something anyway, even if we weren't out of town, so eating shouldn't be that much of an expense.

Except that we aren't eating the cheapest food. We spent two or three times as much on yesterday's lunch than I thought we would. And then for dinner we went out again. And we spent an extra eight dollars to get weird sodas. Okay, one of the sodas will be a gift for someone when we get back home, but the other three were just us being tourists.

I am sleepy. To be expected I suppose, but it's been a while since this was part of my regular routine, and I forget what to do if I don't want to spend the week being sick and tired.

Today we went to lunch at a Chinese buffet, which we should not have done, as we plan to go to a special buffet later in the week. We didn't need two buffets in the same week, it was just the only thing that I could think of to feel better.

And of course after the buffet, there is sleeping, or at least really wanting to sleep.

Trying not to sleep, or I won't sleep enough tonight.

Anyway, I have a pool, which is outdoor and not that great, but at least there is a pool and I'm going to get in it for a bit after a feel better.

Busy day

Well, I finally know when the exterminator is coming. He's coming tomorrow. And of course, I am not ready. And of course, now that I know when he is coming and should ask my husband for help moving things away from the walls and such, he is going out of town.

And while I am not ready with the cleaning and such, my husband has made no attempt at cleaning and making things neat at all. So this room hasn't had anything done to it at all. There's just stuff piled on top of more stuff. So I guess if the exterminator comes in the house he'll just have to spray the stuff instead of spraying around the stuff.

I can't do anything about this room, because I have other rooms to straighten, and there is major work to be done in the kitchen. I had given up on the exterminator coming, or thought maybe he had already sprayed outside the house and that would be the end of it. So Sunday I had started a little project, which involved pulling out everything from under the sink. And so today I must finish up with that project (or, finish up enough of it so that I'm at a good place to stop for a bit) and then put everything back where it was. And this of course is in addition to having to wash a rather large stack of dishes and do laundry and the usual stuff. So I will have a very busy day today.

And I'm still just not sure that the exterminator is coming in the house. They never have in the past ten years that I've lived here and in the apartment (or else they came on a day that I was out of town and I just didn't know about it). So the plan for Wednesday is to go outside every ten minutes or so to look for him, and if he is not going inside houses that I should have to stop him and ask him to come in for a moment.

And of course all of this is going to happen when my husband is out of town, and there will be no one here except for me, and I'll be the only one asking questions. And so probably I will forget what to ask when the guy gets here. Hopefully he will just see the problem and tell me what to do about it.

So I am a nervous wreck, but at least it is going to be over soon and I will know one way or another what is going to happen.

Trip to Tulsa and The Oklahoma Renaissance Festival

We went to the Oklahoma Renaissance Festival on Saturday. I was a bit worried about spending the money and where we were going to stay and all that. This is something that I've wanted to do for a long time, but after being a bit disappointed by The Four Winds in Tyler, I wasn't sure that I should do this. Besides the money for the tickets, we would need money for food and for tipping the people on stage and for a motel room Saturday night. Friday night's motel room in Tulsa was already paid for, or we wouldn't be doing this at all. And then I was worried about getting a room at all on a Saturday night. It is a bit of a hassle sometimes, if you don't already have a reservation (or better yet, have already checked into a room), and we didn't have either of those cause we weren't really sure if we wanted to stay in Muskogee or try to get part of the way home and maybe stay in McAlester.

And then there is my usual apprehension I have now if I go anywhere. If I leave the house overnight for any reason, I worry. The house wasn't as much of a mess as when I left last time, but still, it does make me nervous. But now I suppose it would make me nervous even if the house was perfect. There's always something that might go wrong while I'm away. Someone might break in or the plants might die or something. I just never feel comfortable anymore.

So, Thursday at about noon we left for Tulsa. We hadn't had lunch yet, and it started to rain about half an hour later. That's good for the plants (although I'd already tried to give them a good soak before I left), and there hadn't already been so much rain that I'd worry about flooding. We stopped for lunch when we had almost cleared the DFW area. We ate at Genghis Grill, which we had never tried before, though I've been to other Mongolian grills. I think that I might like this one a bit better than most, but on the other hand, it costs a bit more than I'm used to.

We were a bit worried that we weren't going to stay at our favorite place. We almost always stay there, because there's almost always a coupon. But we didn't see one right away. In fact, I started to panic that I didn't even remember the name of the place or which exit it was on. Without the instructions on the coupon, how were we going to find the place. But after stopping at the tourist info place we found more coupons books, and one had the place that we wanted for about fifty-five dollars (or about five dollars more than the company will pay, but the extra five bucks is well spent there). And we asked for coupons for the ren fest, and the lady all but laughed in our faces, cause she said that they didn't give out coupons for things that a lot of people will go to without coupons. I thought that was a stupid thing to say. Other ren faires have coupons and Six Flags has coupons, and it seems to me that even Disneyland sometimes has coupons. Anyway, we picked up a few things and left.

After we drove away, I noticed that one of the booklets did contain a $2 off coupon, but since I didn't notice that at the info center, I only had the one. I looked at other places for another coupon but did not find one. Still, two dollars off is better than no dollars off.

We got our room at the discounted rate for Thursday and Friday night. As it turns out, the jets on the hot tub weren't working, but I spent some time in the tub anyway. And they still have bacon or sausage and eggs for breakfast. This was a minor disappointment for what was mostly a good trip.

Friday he went to work, and I mostly stayed in bed and read a book. After packing all that yarn, I didn't knit anything. I was just too tired and aching, for no real reason that I could think of, as the drive was not that bad until maybe the last hour or so. Maybe it was the late start (not my fault, just necessary because of my husband's work schedule), or maybe it was the fact that I tried to get real work done in the six hours or so before we left. But I felt really bad and worried that it would continue and that I wouldn't even feel up to going to the faire.

After sitting in the hot tub twice on Friday and using some muscle rub, I felt much better on Saturday morning. Still, not quite a wake, I went down to breakfast and managed to burn a waffle. So I had half of a waffle and then spent some time cleaning the machine so that other people could have waffles. I thought I was awake, but it was early, and I forgot to spray the top of the waffle maker.

A couple of hours later, all was well, and we had the car packed and were on our way to Muskogee. We tried a few more times to get a second coupon, but we didn't find any. We got to the place at just the right time, got the best parking space you can have without paying an extra five bucks, and went to buy our tickets. Without even asking, the lady let us use the one coupon for both tickets. So four dollars off of about thirty. Thank you. And then there was a bit of a wait, and various people tried to entertain us. There's even a stage, but unless you are right in front of the stage, you can't hear whatever is going on there. But just other people walking through the crowd are funny. Some of them work there. Others are just funny people.

There's usually this opening bit about the royal family that I don't care much about. The king or the queen or somebody welcomes everyone to the faire and then they open the gates. After we went in we wandered around for a bit and debated about buying tickets to the Queen's Tea. By the time we'd made up our minds it was too late and they were sold out. If you really want to do that sort of thing you need to buy advance tickets online.

Okay, so when we were first trying to decide whether or not to go to the faire, we were wondering if the stage acts were any good and such, and then we noticed that The Jolly Rogers were going to be there. So that settled that, we were going. So first stop, the pirate stage, where we watched Cut, Thrust, And Run. Seems like they also shared the stage with The Jolly Rogers in Kansas City. This is an act with four guys pretending to sword fight. It isn't our favorite act, not that it is a bad act, just that we like Don Juan and Miguel better. (Don Juan and Miguel were not there, they were at Scarborough.) So after Cut, Thrust, And Run left the stage, most of the audience left with them. We thought that was odd, though a lot of people will leave at the end of a show and not watch the next one, in Kansas City it is usually the other way around, with most of the audience leaving when The Jolly Rogers stop singing and not stay to watch Cut, Thrust, And Run. Additional people came to watch, though not near as many as had been there for the earlier act, and that seemed to hinder their performance a bit. We were glad to see them, but it was all a bit quiet for them. At the end of everyone's show there is this bit of trying to ask for money and not have it be totally awkward. The Jolly Rogers solve that problem by singing this song about "pay me, you owe me, pay me my money now." This is usually a very loud song, but Saturday it was not, and one of the guys is just sort of leaning against the stage and didn't try to collect any money at all.

Weird.

Okay, time for lunch, since we did not get tickets for the Queen's Tea. For future reference, the fish and chips weren't that great (more cornmeal breaded southern type fish than English style fish and chips) and I did not care for the hummus either. And I don't remember either place having plastic forks, so when you run out of bread you can't finish your hummus unless you brought your own fork (or unless you like hummus so much that you'll lick the plate).

Then we went to see Bob the Juggler or Bob the Incredible Juggler, or something like that. We thought that might be one of the acts from Kansas City, either the bald guy with the bowling balls, or the skinny guy with the ladder. It was the skinny guy with the ladder, and he had also been one of the guys entertaining us at the front gate. Bob's a nice guy. We love you Bob.

The act following Bob's was an escape artist. We like him too.

There was a costume contest, but we just missed it. We would usually go and see the show with the birds of prey, but somehow we missed that too. And we didn't watch a joust either. I usually don't bother with that. The first joust I watched was great, not because of the show itself, but because of our section's cheer leader. You're supposed to say stuff like God save the king and God save the queen, which we did, but then this guy also had us saying stuff like the bishop is a ninny. Without that guy (or someone very much like him), I've mostly don't care for the jousts, so I rarely watch them anymore.

Next, we looked for someone else we had seen before the opening ceremony, and we found her. She one of Willie's Wenches. (Sometimes I'm a bit slow, and it didn't occur to me who Willie was until the next day.) So she directed us to the correct stage, and then we got lost because we went off to buy a drink (possibly at Bud's Root Beer, where you at first buy an expensive bottle and then get refills all day for a dollar or two), and then we somehow still managed to end up back at the right stage in time to see the show. And then after the show we stayed to watch Captain Thom Bedlam, who we had seen at The Four Winds in Tyler.

So after the show, I asked Thom if he was the same guy from Tyler, cause I suppose that I might not remember correctly, and that maybe one drunk pirate pretty much looks like another. But it was the guy from Tyler, and we said something like he was the best act at The Four Winds, and he encouraged us to say that louder, so that someone with him might hear us. At that point we insult this guy, who turns out to be the new part owner of The Four Winds, and he's sorry that we didn't enjoy our time there and gives us free tickets if we want to try it again next year.

For the record, I was mistaken when I said that I did not enjoy The Four Winds last year, cause it was 2008 when we were there, and probably that guy we were talking to wasn't involved that year. I am debating on sending the guy an email explaining why we didn't care for The Four Winds, which for us got off to a bad start when they didn't take credit cards.

Okay, so that was about the last show of the day, and we can't do much else but get more root beer and look at the shops. Not that I buy a lot from the shops, even when I have money. But there are a few things that I will always buy if I can find them, and there's the odd impulse buy here and there, and we always buy a few small things like incense and scented oil. And we hadn't bought anything yet (other than food and soda), and we found some incense and bought that, and then I had to look at Dragon Pets one more time. I think that I'd stopped to look three times. I wanted something that was twenty dollars, which I decided was too much, and there were even really cool glow-in-the dark dragons for thirty dollars, but I just could not see spending more than ten or fifteen dollars for a toy that I would just have on a shelf most of the year and only actually carry around with me maybe at another ren fest. But I took one last look, decided that the twenty and thirty dollar options were definitely out, but maybe the ten dollar ones were not so bad. There was a glitter blue one for ten, and a purple for fifteen. I bought the blue one.

On the way out I find the scented oil place. But I've just spent ten dollars on a dragon and I decide I don't really need to spend more money. Besides, selecting an oil takes time, unless you already know exactly what you want and are just buying a refill. So I skip the oil.

On the way out, a bunch of people sing to us. That was nice. I had already filled out a survey (and was given a ticket for one of the Halloween things in October). I doubt that I'll be there in October to use it, but just in case, we stopped to fill out another survey so that we would have two tickets.

Then we had to find a motel. That can be a hassle on a weekend, especially during a special event. I was all for driving down the road a bit, but I wasn't the one driving. He was tired. We stopped at a place he had stayed before and asked if they would take coupons (when we already assumed that they would not but you cannot get a discount if you don't ask for one). We were told no discounts, and that there was only one room left, and it was a whirlpool room, which made it $56. With the whirlpool (and the driver being very tired and not wanting to look elsewhere) that seemed reasonable and we took the room. Then we walked a few stores down the street and ate at the steakhouse, even though we mostly do not care for steak and ended up eating the chicken. And then it was back to the room to use the tub. This time, the jets were working.

On the drive home Sunday, we stopped and bought some peaches and some really tall pepper seedlings.

I think that there is one weekend left of Scarborough, but I don't think that I'll go. I am quite tired from the trip.

Size 8 Jeans

Okay, so I'm in Oklahoma in a motel with a hot tub and a nice breakfast. It is a short trip, but I usually go here if I can, mostly cause of the hot tub and the nice breakfast. I was debating whether or not to go, cause it is a bit of a drive just to use the hot tub for the one day, but then we realized that we'd be able to go to the ren fest if we added an extra day.

So, I am here.

Anyway, we tend to stop at a certain Walmart, because it is a good place to stop, and we usually need something anyway. I misplaced my belt and my black yarn, so I knew that we needed something. And while we were there, I decided that I'd about had it with the jeans, so I tried on some new ones. And I bought them. They are a bit snug, but they look much better, and I suspect that except during long drives they will usually feel better. So I'm hoping to break them in and be comfortable wearing them tomorrow.

Size 8 jeans. It just isn't right. In regular jeans I shouldn't wear size 8 until I got down to 120 pounds or so. And here I am close to 160 pounds wearing size 8 jeans. That's just wrong.

I'm a bit concerned about where we will spend the night after the ren fest tomorrow. Looking for a motel room on a Saturday night usually isn't a lot of fun. But we have decided not to come back here. It is in the wrong direction, and the hot tub jets aren't working anyway.

Mystery Meat

So, my husband is going here there and everywhere, but no place particularly interesting is scheduled, just middle-of-nowhere Texas and Oklahoma. I have been to middle-of-nowhere Texas and Oklahoma many, many times. While I maybe have not gone to some of these particular places before, there doesn't seem to be anything in them that I need to see, and we don't have tons of money to make it into anything really fun anyway.

And there's still tons of stuff to do here, and I usually get more done while he's away, so, I should stay here and try to get something done. And I couldn't leave for very long anyway, unless I make arrangements for someone else to water the plants, and most times the someone else doesn't do a good job with that anyway. But, depending on the weather, I can sometimes leave for a day or two without anything bad happening, and I did think that just one night away might do some good. And the schedule was written just so that he was going away for one night and then coming back for one night before heading out again for a couple more nights.

And this particular place that he was going for the one night was not that exciting and not that far away, but it did have a motel with a hot tub that we like, so one night there would probably be a nice thing, as I could really use a hot tub right about now.

Still, whenever we get ready to go anywhere, I start to get nervous, and I sometimes get so nervous that I even change my mind and stay home, or else I stay nervous during the whole trip and might as well have stayed home. So I was starting to get nervous and wanting to stay home, cause the whole getting nervous thing is worse when the house is really messy, which it was, and I have this fear of people coming in the house when it is like that. Not that I have any real reason to believe that someone would come in the house, as the stuff that needs to be repaired has been neglected for about two years now, and I don't think that they will suddenly decide to fix it anytime soon. But still, I worry about it so much that I cancel trips and stay home and do nothing.

Okay, so I decided that I needed to go out, even if it was just for one day, even if the house did look like a tornado hit it, because we needed to do the whole bug fogger thing. And I know that we had bought stuff to do that, just in case an opportunity like this presented itself, only the night before we are ready to go I cannot find the things. So, I decided that I would go if we either found the things or had time in the morning to go out and buy some more, or else if we didn't I would just stay home.

So we didn't find the things, but we did get up in time to buy more. So we put stuff in the car and began the process of fogging the house, and then I have no choice but to get in the car, cause no matter what you think you might have forgotten, you can't go back into the house.

Having gone to this particular place several times before, and having gone out in the general direction many times, we have this place that we like to stop that is a bakery, and we usually get jalapeno and sausage in a roll for breakfast, and then either kolaches or cookies, and then we look for discounted focaccia or beer bread. So off we went, and we got our traditional breakfast thing, though I'm trying to be good and not load up on cookies and kolaches. And we looked for the focaccia and beer bread, but there was none on the discount rack, and I did not want to spend four dollars each getting them at regular price. And then we noticed the four dollar bags of what looked like a six-pack of the sausage and jalapeno things, and six-packs of other similar things, probably roast beef. And while these are a good discount, somehow I didn't think it was a good idea to buy something that contained meat off of the discount rack. But we decided to get just one bag, and off we went.

And then there was the problem of where to eat for lunch. It was too early by the time we reached a certain bbq place, so we went on to the motel and got our room. And I thought that we would just get something cheap at KFC, only that one didn't have either the Monday special or the value menu, so we ended up at Whataburger instead. If we were going to spend that much money on lunch, we should at least go someplace one of us really wanted to go, and that is one of his favorite places. We bought him something for lunch (half of it went to waste cause he thought he was supposed to leave half for me, and I was just planning to eat one of the jalapeno sausage things), and then he went to work, and I stayed in the room and knitted for a bit. I also tried reading a certain book, but this part of the book maybe is going over my head a bit, and while I'm getting the general idea, right at the moment it isn't a real page turner.

But of course there was the hot tub bath in the room, and you can sit in it all day if you want to. In fact, you can turn the tv just a bit so that you can watch while sitting in the tub, so that you only have to get out of the tub to eat and such. Not that I stayed in that long, but when I got out I found that I had somehow managed to burn myself, and I have these two perfect circles on my back from all the time I spent in the tub.

The burns are not that bad, and I would be back in that tub right now if we were still there. I love hot tubs.

Okay, so then I was on the computer a bit, trying to decide what we would do on the way home the next day. I am always wanting to go to the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center, but we never seem to be in the area at the right time of year when we have time to be tourists. So this is the right time of year (not perfect, as the bluebonnets in my yard have flowers, but those south of us are mostly at the stage of making seeds), but about an hour and a half in the wrong direction. So that would cost gas and three hours of drive time in addition to the time and money actually spent at the place, and we decided against it. In Waco there is an exhibit of a wooly mammoth, and it opened to the public a few months ago, so we thought that we might do that. Only on Tuesdays it doesn't open til eleven, which would have left us just waiting around in Waco for an extra hour or two looking for something to do (and probably spending money for it) and also that would mean that we would need to eat lunch there (and the particular place that I wanted to eat lunch was more money that we should spend right now). Anyway, we were both rather tired already, which didn't make any sense as it was early and we hadn't yet done anything to get tired, but we decided to skip the whole thing and just head home (except for stopping at that bakery again). The wooly mammoth has been there a long time, and Waco is not that far away, and we can see him another time.

So, on to the bakery, where we bought sodas and again looked for focaccia and beer bread on the discount rack, and again did not find them, but found more six-packs of meat in a bun, though they were not marked and this time we could not tell just by looking which meat was in which bag. We made a guess and bought two bags anyway, so we now have about a dozen left, and he will take most of them to have for breakfast.

Anyway, we tried some that we were guessing to be roast beef, but they turned out to be pepperoni, and I rarely turn down pepperoni, so that was good.

So that was it. I guess it was a bit of a dull trip, but it was really good to get out so that we could deal with the bugs. So I will spend much of the day dealing with dead bugs, which I am much happier to do than deal with unwanted live bugs.

A few words about the knitting

I am getting a cold now. I suppose it was unavoidable since my husband has a cold and I spent the last few days with him and ate with him and spent all that time in the car with him, etc... So now I am getting a cold, and I have all this stuff to do and would rather not do some of it. I would rather stay in bed watching DVDs and eating soup. But it isn't that bad yet, so I should keep doing stuff until I really feel so bad that I can't.

So the plan is to go shopping today, and pick up my sister's gift and my brother's gift card and some stuff from the craft store, etc.... Hopefully I will be done with that and can stay home the rest of the time until I have a party to go to.

Okay, so I have said a few things about the knitting and about knitting machines that confused someone, so I am going to try to explain.

One thing that is a problem is the word "new." I use the word sometimes in ways that it isn't meant to be used. Like there is new as in "new to me." I would refer to something that I just got as new, even if it is not new, maybe someone gave it to me or I bought it used. But then I sometimes say "new" when I mean the newer model, and again this could be something used. And then there is "new in the box" which might be an older model.

So that could confuse someone.

The first knitting machine that I bought was the Innovations knitting machine. I have recently said that this is a piece of crap. It is one of those round machines that you turn with a handle. Smaller things like this are sold as toys, and while they look easy enough on the commercials, I have never gotten them to work very well. Still I keep trying to get them to work. I had recently found a video on YouTube showing how to fix a slipped stitch. This is a wonderful video, as it explains the procedure correctly, and the instructions that come with the machine are incorrect and result in making a "rib."

Unfortunately, the machine just has too many slipped stitches and other such things, and even with the correct instructions on how to fix them, it just isn't worth it. But, I had it in my head that after watching the video I would be able to get the thing to work properly, and that it would only take me five hours or so to make a scarf. The machine makes a tube (which if I could get it to work would eliminate the extra step of having to sew the ends of the panel together) and is small and easy to transport, even if you are already working on something. So I had this idea that I would buy a bunch of yarn and take the Innovations knitting machine with me on the trip and make a couple of scarves for gift exchanges while I was in the motel room.

I practiced fixing slipped stitches while we were in the car driving to San Antonio. So I knew how to do it, and I imagined that once I was at the motel and able to work properly at a table, the scarf making would just zip right along. But, it takes time to fix the stitches, and as soon as you fix one another problem happens, and you just spend all day trying to fix things. I spent all day on a scarf that should have taken five hours to finish, and I only got done 120 rows of the planned 450. At that point, I gave up and decided to just make fringe and other finishing touches to some scarves I had worked on earlier.

Okay, so after wasting my money on the Innovations knitting machine (which runs about forty to fifty dollars, and I bought it new, new in the box from a regular retail store, but I had a coupon and probably spent about twenty-five or thirty), I went out and spent more money on The Ultimate Sweater Machine. This machine runs about a hundred and fifty dollars or more, but again I had a coupon, and I think I got mine for about eighty. This is a flat machine that needs a four foot long rectangular table to set up on. Since you don't always have that, I have bought a four foot long board to clamp to tables that either aren't quite four foot long or aren't rectangular, and then I can clamp the machine to the board and then clamp the board to the table. So this machine is not as easily transported, though I do often take it with me, but I can't take it with me when it already has a project on the machine, unless I want to go to the trouble of taking it off and then putting it back on, which is difficult and takes a long time, especially when you do not have a garter bar, and I don't have one.

So, I was already working on a project on that machine, and so I did not attempt to take it with me. Besides, I thought that after watching the YouTube video that the Innovations knitting machine would work just fine, and be much easier to pack.

Okay, then I have this other machine. This is where the word "new" becomes a problem. Last year we were at a place called Thrift Town, which mostly sells used clothing and other used things, but occasionally you find a few things "new in the box" or "new with tags" cause whoever donated the things just never got around to using them. We found a box marked "knitting machine" and decided that it was worth forty bucks. It was another 8mm flat knitting machine, also about four foot long, though it just said sweater machine instead of Ultimate Sweater Machine. Still, I would think that it was made by the same company (Bond). I didn't really need another machine, but for forty dollars I decided to take it, so that I would have extra parts. There are a couple of tools that I am always losing, and it is a hassle to get new ones. So now I had a whole second set of everything, though this machine was an older model.

So the forty dollar machine was "new to me" and "new in the box" but it was not the "new model." See?

The main difference in the older model is that the newer model carriage is plastic, and there is a piece of plastic that covers over the needles as they work, and the older model carriage is mostly plastic but does not have that piece of plastic that covers over the needles, and instead has this metal bar going across, but you can see the needles moving underneath. And the older model has one-sided key plates while the new model plates have two sided plates, so that the new model has sizes two and a half and three and a half in addition to the old one two three and four.

Some of the really older models have the machine all in one piece, which this was not. This was two pieces that snap together, same as the other one, though I have not yet tried to unsnap one once I've put it together. I suppose that having the machine broken down into two pieces would make it easier to transport, but I'm afraid to try it, as I might actually break the thing. And other older models used to come with two and three prong tools, but unfortunately this one did not, but I was still glad to get a second set of one prong tools, as I keep misplacing them.

So, I could have taken the sweater machine with me and I would have taken me about seven hours to complete the scarf that I was trying to make, but I didn't think of that, and I took the stupid Innovations machine instead.

Okay, so now I am home, and there is a not even a third of a complicated scarf on the Ultimate Sweater Machine. So I very carefully take the whole machine and move it a few feet away (with the scarf in progress still on it), so that I could use the space (which is the only space I currently have to work on such things), and then I set up the other sweater machine, and I started knitting the new scarf. It took an hour or a bit more to knit 120 rows, which had taken me all day fussing with the Innovations thing. I knitted a bit more, and then I tried something new with the weights (which I was afraid to try on the other more complicated project, but was now willing to risk on something that had only taken me about an hour or two to make), and then I knitted some more and ran out of yarn. So I have about three hundred rows on it, after working less than three hours. If I hadn't have run out of yarn I would have finished the part of the knitting that is done on the machine, and I would now either be joining the panel ends together or maybe even be working on the fringe.

Anyway, as rushed as I am for time, I still think that using this machine I will have a finished scarf in plenty of time for Sunday's gift exchange. And I have another scarf that I did another time, just a different color, so as soon as I finish the fringe on that I will have a second scarf, and again I don't see any problem getting them both done by Sunday, even with this cold, and even with having to spend a lot of time out shopping today.

It's just that if I had taken this machine to San Antonio instead of the Innovations thing, I would have finished both of them by now. And then I could go to bed and watch DVDs, right after I do this bit of shopping.

A few days in San Antonio

Okay, so I have been to San Antonio many times before, and while it used to be a very special place, well, I've done most of that and usually don't feel the need to spend a lot of money doing it again. I am sure that there are things in the area that I would like to do and haven't done, the main thing that I would like to do there and have never done is go to Fiesta Texas. (I never went to Houston's Astro World, and I regret that.) So while it is nice to go to San Antonio if I have the money and the time, I just don't make a special effort to do that anymore.

But there are a few things that are still very nice if you don't have to spend too much money. Like, if you are going to be in the area anyway, you might as well go to the Riverwalk. Except that they place that we would like to park the car costs ten dollars. But that isn't too bad. And we would like to eat lunch or dinner while we are there, though most of those places can get expensive. But we do like a certain place that is no more expensive than most of the places we would eat at here, so that's alright if we have the money. So that's a not too expensive dinner plus ten dollars to park.

And then there are the little boat tours. Tickets are about nine dollars. We took a tour the first time we were there, but we have skipped it most of the times since then.

So, I have been to the Riverwalk many times, though rarely at night. And I can't remember being there in December. So on Sunday we went there and had dinner and took the boat tour at night, when they had all the Christmas lights. So that was a very pleasant evening, and we spent a little over fifty dollars. The motel room didn't count, as it was a business expense, and he'll get paid back for that.

I guess I skipped over the drive there. It was pleasant enough. We stopped at a bakery in West, and then my husband pointed out another bakery in Waco. The new bakery in Waco is the third (that I know of) Collin Street Bakery. But Collin Street isn't in Waco, it is in Corsicana, which is not even on that same interstate.

If you do not know, Corsicana is the Fruitcake Capital of the World.

Anyway, we did not stop that time. On down the road we went, til we were nearly there, and we stopped at The Snake Farm. I do not believe that I have ever been to the place before, though the husband says that we have. Maybe we have, once, but mainly I remember trying to go there and being there too early or too late or at the wrong time of year, etc.... So we had made good time, and it was a bit after lunch, and it was a Sunday, so they were open. Tickets are about ten dollars each, which is a bit much for such a small zoo, since you could go to a much bigger zoo for the same price or even less. But I was spending the day being a tourist, and I wanted to go anyway. It is a big room with a lot of snakes, and some animals outside behind the building. Mostly average stuff in small cages, but there were a couple of wolves and a couple of hyenas. I tend to go to a lot of zoos, but I don't think that I've been up close to a hyena before. So that was cool.

There was this odd bit with the rats. There were rats outside everywhere, getting into the cages and stealing lunch. But these weren't your average wild rats, they were white with spots, like you would get at a pet store. I am wondering if a couple of them were meant to be someone's lunch, and they escaped, and now there are rats everywhere.

We didn't spend much time there. I found something at the gift shop that I will give my brother for Christmas. Then we got back on the road.

The room was nice enough, but nothing special. The cable sucked. Not even the SyFy channel. And I forgot my pillows. You can't take your bed with you, but you would be more comfortable in the motel room if you remember to bring your own pillows, but I forgot. Lucky for me, this motel decided to go with many smaller pillows instead of a few giant ones. So I did not break my neck on the strange pillows.

One thing with the room was a disappointment, no micro-fridge. I have gotten so used to that being standard that I forgot to ask, so we didn't get one. But it turned out okay, since we weren't going to be there but for a few days. There were plenty of restaurants to eat lunch, and after he went to work I had a dollar hamburger at a McDonald's two doors over. So we ended up not really needing the micro-fridge anyway.

There was one other thing that my husband wanted to do, but he wasn't feeling well one day, and it was rather wet and unpleasant the other day. So that left the day that we were leaving, which was a bit windy, and we decided that we didn't want to walk around in the wind anyway. But since the many point of going to the place was to take pictures of buildings and houses, we were going to drive over anyway and just get out of the car for the occasional photo. Only he didn't make any notes on how to get to the place, and he got lost, and almost an hour later we had to give up and head home.

We stopped at one of those giant sports stores, cause I had heard that they sometimes have glow in the dark paint and small amounts of glow in the dark yarn. That seems a strange place to find such things, but it is sometimes used to catch fish. They were out of the yarn, and I didn't buy any paint. This kind of paint has to be heated, and so it wasn't going to help me in any of my current projects. Still, it is good to know for future reference. We looked at the aquarium and the taxidermy stuff, and then we got back on the road.

I had no special plans for lunch, but with the husband not feeling well we thought Chinese food would be nice if we could find one, and we did. It was a really good one, so unfortunately I ate too much and got sleepy. He got sleepy too, and we had to stop and get him a Red Bull. From there it wasn't long before we were in Waco, were we stopped at the bakery. My husband is one of those people who actually likes fruitcake, but we don't buy any of these, because even the tiny ones are fifteen dollars. Regular and large cakes are in the thirty to fifty dollars range. Anyway, we bought a few cookies and got back on the road. Twenty minutes later we stopped in West and bought some focaccia bread.

So we got home just in time to deal with five o'clock traffic, but it wasn't bad. And while there are all kinds of things that we might have done then, we were tired and decided to stay in and watch TV and such. So that was pretty much it, except for the knitting, which I will write about later.

Odessa and Abilene

Okay, so I mentioned going out of town for a few days. I almost didn't go. I kept getting the dates wrong and getting the places confused. I couldn't be out of town last weekend because of the party, and I can't be out of town this weekend because I'm supposed to go to a friend's birthday dinner on Sunday, etc...so I didn't think that I would be going out of town for a long time, even if he did get scheduled to go anyplace interesting.

Not that these places were particularly interesting. Just that I hadn't been out that way in a while.

I was thinking that a change of scenery would be nice. Literally. I wanted to look at the trees as we drove by them. I thought I might see some leaves that had turned color. I'm not sure why I thought that there would be more of that west of here than there is here, but I hoped for something interesting to look at.

We just don't have a lot of fall color like that. We have some trees that turn yellow, and we have some trees that turn orange, but not so much an attractive all over orange. Actual red trees are rare. Mostly, we seem to have trees that stay mostly green until frost, and then they just look dead overnight. And we have trees that stay green all year.

If you want the fall color thing, you have to plan for it and specially plant some maples or something. So we did see a patch or two here and there, but nothing really awesome.

What we do see out west, between about Abilene and Odessa, are giant wind turbines. Big white windmills, like they have in California, I think near Palm Springs. I think that there might be that many, though they aren't arranged so that you can see that many all at once. But there are a lot of them, and there are a lot more of them than whenever I was out that way last time.

So that was interesting.

My husband had to work in Westbrook on Tuesday. This is a place that I got the name mixed up with some other place that he had to work last week. Anyway, it is between Abilene and Odessa. It is a wide spot in the road. He wasn't sure that we could get a motel room there, so we stayed about ten miles away, at a slightly wider spot in the road. It took more than four hours to get there, so after getting the room and eating some pizza, he had to go to work. In fact, he had to leave before I finished eating.

I spent a couple of hours finishing up a green scarf, and then I worked on another scarf for a bit. And that was all. That was my day. I think I feel asleep soon after watching V.

The next morning we had to pack everything up and drive a couple more hours to Odessa. We passed more wind turbines.

Now, we got to Odessa with more time to spare and had time to think about where we wanted to go to lunch and if we wanted to look at anything else. We found a nice Mexican restaurant, where we probably spent too much money, since we had eaten pizza the day before. Then we went looking for giant rabbit statue. Well, it turns out that there is more than one giant rabbit in Odessa. Just as Kansas City had statues of steers and Fort Worth had statues of horses (and having no wildlife to speak of London invented the Superlambanana), Odessa has a lot of statues of rabbits. But there was once just the one rabbit before the others, and that was the one we went looking for, not knowing about the others. If we had known about the others, maybe we should have gotten a map to look for them all.

Or not. There are a lot of rabbits, and we wouldn't have had time to go looking for all of them. As it was we found the first one and drove by five or six of the others.

Anyway, on the way to getting a picture of the first giant rabbit, we stopped at a historical building and took pictures of that. What is funny to me is that while at the time this was a large spacious home, to me it isn't that big. In fact, it is so compact that there wasn't quite room for the staircase, so there's this little triangular thing in the ceiling under the stairs. Even with the odd steep stairs that the once used, the house needed to be a few feet longer for the stairs to fit without being seen in the ceiling of the room below. And while I think that the two of us might be happy with the space, or maybe a couple with a child or two, at some point the second owner of this house rented the upstairs as five apartments. The upstairs only has three rooms now, but at some point two of them were divided in half so that two more people would have a place to live, and six or more people lived in the house.

Anyway, we took some pictures of this and that and headed back to the motel. At some point a few years ago, my husband had stayed at a really nice motel with a hot tub and all of that. That motel now wants seventy dollars or more per night, so we couldn't stay there. Anyway, it was just for the one day. So no indoor pool or anything. Just the cable TV and the knitting.

As it turns out I felt too tired to even get much of that done.

The next morning we packed up everything again. The continental breakfast was this little pecan pie thing. I don't think that I have ever seen that before as a breakfast item, but I hadn't had one in a while so it was okay. After that we went to Target's and bought a lot of candy for 75% off. They had plenty of costumes left. Too bad I didn't know any kids who like Star Wars. I looked for a pirate costume but didn't find one, so I didn't buy anything else except for a wolf's head.

Then we went to take pictures of a Stonehenge replica. I wish we had thought to go and look at it the night before, maybe he could have gotten some better pictures of it dark and lit up, but we were very tired and didn't think of that. Maybe next time.

Then there was what seemed like a long drive to Abilene, though I don't suppose it was really that long. We stopped at Big Spring to find something for lunch, but there was a long stretch of road construction in front of everything that looked interesting. We got back on the freeway and stopped at a Diary Queen.

There was this whole list of stuff that I wanted to do in Abilene when I thought we were going to be there a couple of days a while back, but I'd forgotten about most of it. And really, we don't want to stay that long. I thought maybe the zoo and one historic building, but then since it was already after lunch, we decided just the zoo.

You might wonder why we thought taking the time to walk around a zoo was a good idea.

Well, for one thing I don't really like the long straight thru drives. I like to get out and walk around some. I like to have something to look forward to.

And, I look forward to zoos and animal parks in general. This one in particular lets you feed the giraffes (which is something I have rarely been allowed to do, even though I have visited zoos all over the country), and there is a bridge which allows you to be at eye level with the giraffes for a bit and then walk over their heads (which is something that I have seen nowhere else, even after visiting zoos all over the country). So, though small, the Abilene zoo is interesting just for that, and this is only the second time I have been in the area long enough to visit the zoo.

After that we drove towards home, stopped someplace for sodas, and then stopped at a Target in Fort Worth (which did not have anything on clearance that I wanted to buy, but I needed a place to stop and we needed to pick up a few things before we got home anyway). We got home around six, just in time to eat and unload the car before watching Flashfoward and Fringe and then going to bed.

I got a few things done yesterday, in between catching up on TV. I should be doing something now, but I've suddenly had a fit of coughing and sneezing after slicing and cooking some peppers. So I feel awful. Of course, I would feel awful today, the day before I'm supposed to go to a friend's house. I just always seem to not feel well any time the guy plans to have some of us over. Or, I feel fine and go, and then I feel bad when I am get there. They think that I am allergic to their cat, but I'm not allergic to anyone else's cat, so I don't see how that could be.

Anyway, I hope I stop coughing soon and tomorrow goes as planned.