DAY ONE AWAY FROM HOME

Well, last night was the beginning of our crazy joyride while repairs to our home start today. I spent yesterday doing laundry and packing, Hubs packed the pickup and we headed out – the night was warm, but not sticky warm like it had been earlier in the week and the sky was actually BLUE instead of hazy with heavy smoke and ash clouds; things appeared promising:

Clear skies ... looks like the smoke and ash is being blown away.

So far the ride is anything but joyful. We arrived at the local Hotel to find the desk clerk arguing with lodgers because several rooms had been double-booked – Bob & I looked at each other with a look that said, ‘Let’s hope we have a room tonight and that our room has not been double-booked’: it wasn’t and we sighed a sigh of relief because we were all tired and Hubs and I just wanted to get our stuff unloaded and hauled to our room as soon as possible, get baby boy settled comfortably, and veg out before bedtime. The relief was short-lived … our room was on the 2^nd floor – up 2 flights of 8 stairs each. Now, this may be okay for younger folks who have younger knees; for old folks like us, it wasn’t so great. We had a home 6 years ago that had 12 stairs out front & 12 stairs out back – we sold it because our knees couldn’t take that ups and downs several times a day anymore: I miss the huge garden I had and the chickens I enjoyed … but I do not miss the stairs!

And here we were faced with 2 flights of 8 stairs each with just as many trips to the pickup and back before we could even think of resting for the night. We did it in shifts, managing a climb of 64 steps a piece between the 2 of us PLUS the original 16: we were POOPED by the time we got everything shifted from pickup to room and called it a night. 

Our knees are on fire this morning. And people keep knocking on our door looking for their friends! It’s like, ‘If they are your friends, you should KNOW the door you are looking for – stop knocking on ours! Our knees H.U.R.T. and every time you knock we have to shuffle over there to tell you that you have the wrong door” >:-P Hub’s bad knee is swollen to twice its size, mine just ache. Hubs and I do go on vacations, but they are carefully planned and we know we can call off the vaca and go home whenever we feel like it (as in gone too long from the home base). The longest we have EVER been away from home base was recently when we took the trip across America from Washington State to Vermont for a 14 day round trip rescue mission – the situation is a bit different here today. This Hotel hiatus was not our idea, and someone else (a rotten Insurance Agent who does not have our best interests at heart) is in temporary control of our lives – we don’t like it … any of it. This is NOT ‘a vaca’, it’s an invasion and entrapment.

We have no choice but to {make the best of it}, but I gotta tell you, it’s gonna be hard. We all want to be back home where we can do our thing in our own space as noisy as we please and in familiar surroundings. I suppose you could say we are lobos hopelessly out of place with little desire to conform to the jungle we find ourselves in.

 This is gonna be a loooooong 31 days.