In Our Own Way

When you've gotta go, you've gotta go.

Archives for July 2021

Prepping for Release

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Souvenir of a recent neighborhood walk. (Details provided in the post itself.)

I’m kidding, of course: at a certain level, The Missus and I both feel we could probably hang out here for a few weeks more. But aside from the (surely considerable) inconvenience which our presence offers to The Stepdaughter and The Stepson-in-Law we ourselves are chomping at the bit to be in motion — for our separate as well as shared reasons.

I at least have been lucky enough to get out and about a bit: nearly daily shopping forays (“I can’t believe I forgot to get the milk for my tea when I went shopping yesterday!” etc.); walking to the end of the block and back…

On one of the latter excursions around the neighborhood, I took along my “good” camera. Most of what there is to see (and photograph) here is a uniform green-and-tan: palm trees, sago palms, bamboo, numerous tall pines, the sudden shock of a riot of tropical flowers… The individual plots of land are large enough (maybe 5-10 acres?), and so well shielded by vegetation, that a lot of the houses are completely invisible from the street. What you can see tells you there’s probably no neighborhood “design code” or anything; the architecture is all over the map — Spanish-style haciendas, traditional Colonial, ranch-style, etc. (Haven’t seen any doublewides but, like I say, who knows?)

Anyway, I’d taken my camera out for a neighborhood walk. Lots of plant-and-flower photos, a handful of “wildlife” shots: couple turtles, a short-and-skinny black snake, that sort of thing. Mostly, I was just walking. And sweating like a sonofagun after 45 minutes or so in the heat and humidity, in a branch of the network of streets I’d never driven on…

And that’s when a couple — probably in their 60s, so a young couple (LOL) — pulled up in a Jeep beside me.

Now, in case I haven’t told you before: I am determined on this road trip that I’ll be better than I ever have been before about talking with people: not ducking my head and looking away, practicing a guileless smile, etc. So maybe I was on a bit of a hair trigger, too eager to talk… and also a bit nervous about the fact (as I imagined it) of being accosted in rural Florida while walking the streets of a neighborhood with a camera — and clearly otherwise Not Fitting In. I started, in short, to babble:

“Hi, I don’t live here. We’re just staying with my stepdaughter over on the other side” — *waving vaguely towards the other side* — “just admiring the lovely foliage, it’s all so photogenic…!”

I’m not even sure they’d rolled down a window yet, let along gotten a word in edgewise. (You can probably imagine The Missus’s eyerolls at this part of the narrative.) But they just smiled, waved, said something reassuring and drove on.

Five minutes later, there they were again: still in the Jeep, headed in the other direction. As they drew up alongside, the guy rolled down his window and handed me a can of “Pibb Xtra,” an “artificially flavored spicy cherry soda” that I didn’t even know existed. (Plain old Mr. Pibb, sure: I knew that one okay. Just not this tarted-up variety.) “You looked like you could use this,” he said, “but I’m sorry, it’s not very cold!”

“It’s colder than I am!” I said, laughing.

The guy kind of saluted me, and they drove on.

It’s not a kind of soda I’d select for myself. But, y’know, even after I’d gotten back to the house and gotten nice and comfortable, I couldn’t bring myself to just discard it…

…and as of this afternoon, I can report: it goes well with cheddar-filled-pretzel Combos.

__________________

P.S. For what it’s worth, we will probably — probably — be on our way to the next destination sometime this week.

Pausing the Road Trip, Not the “Vacation”

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Found this appropriate photo (which I did not take) over at Flickr, and doctored it up a bit until it felt right. The photographer says he was unable to proceed while out driving a few years ago, in Northern Ireland; his path was blocked by this big old lumbering — and unexpected — beast. After the guy on the ground had wandered around the behemoth a bit, without explanation — “Inspectin’ ‘er, Gov,” you know how quaint the folk there are — he just returned to the locomotive and then the train was on its way. I don’t actually have to explain the metaphor here, do I???

Admin Note: please be careful how you respond to this post — at least, here on the site. As this is, for now, publicly visible, I’ve intentionally omitted many details of the “pause.” If a comment crosses the line into territory that I’ve avoided, I’ll delete the comment without asking for permission. (I will, though, let you know via email that I’ve done so.) Naturally, all comments about the “pause” — or anything else — are always welcomed with gratitude, from any of you… via email, text message, etc.!

As it happens, we’re staying put for a while more, here at the House o’ Canines. Not of course what we planned, especially in the wake of the earlier pause *shakes fist in Elsa’s direction*. But I don’t really want to talk about that stuff, because we are, after all, still Taking It Easy — and who wants to ruin things when you’re in a soft-rock frame of mind?

Besides, there’s so much more, well, important stuff to consider while we’re cooling our heels. Stuff like:

But the pictures? What about the pictures?

Since The Missus got me the “real” camera three years ago, amplified especially by the pandemic lockdown, I’ve spent a lot of time taking what might be politely called “still lifes”: photos of everyday household objects and such. So yes, I think I’ll have plenty of opportunity to continue and expand on that practice.

Taking deeeep breaths; trying (?) to develop some good, healthy habits

Without many of the comforts and conveniences we’ve gotten used to, we’l be forced to improvise new (preferably better) habits and patterns in our daily lives. I speak of comforts and conveniences like:

  • Doing whatever the hell we want to, within decent limits, without worrying about other folks’ schedules and needs of the moment.
  • Waking up in the middle of the night and staggering down dim-lit, familiar hallways to the darkened kitchen “just for a snack,” knocking over empty plastic containers and other noisy objects on the counter… In The House o’ Canines, even if you yourself drift like the wind, you might as well be leading a brass band at 3 AM in the morning.
  • Watching hours of fitness videos instead of actually, y’know, getting fit. (“But the fourth or fifth rewatch of the original Star Trek series is even better than the third or fourth!”)

…while solidifying some bad (but at least trivial) ones

You cannot even imagine how many TV series and films I’ve been wanting to watch for the first time… you cannot imagine how many TV series and films I started but lost track of in the flurry of all the other stuff… and how many of those long-open pop-culture chapters of my life I can now close.

Marking Time (But Not Uncomfortably)

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When the weight of doing-nothing caught up with me yesterday, The Stepson-in-Law took this group selfie (he and The Stepdaughter at left and right, and a couple of the House o’ Canines staff members thrown in for good measure). I hear, belatedly, that it’s a mistake to fall asleep in his presence, because he shows no mercy with the selfie-cam. I told him it looks like I’m surrounded by people enjoying themselves at my funeral.

You may be wondering what’s going on with us. Understandable: we ourselves don’t really know! I can tell you we still are at The Stepdaughter’s House o’ Canines, and will be here at least through tomorrow night. We still have two unanswered questions in the short term:

  • The Missus’s health: she had a slight fever over the last few days — I mean, really slight: about one degree higher than normal. But it worried her enough that she considered getting a COVID test. And by the time she woke up this morning, it had fallen back down into her normal range. There’s also something like a general malaise going on; she’s been spending the last couple days in bed until dinnertime, something to do with a scratchy throat. We think it might be related to the time spent around big, shedding dogs.
  • We still haven’t confirmed our arrival date with The Jacksonville Sister-in-Law. It’s only about a four-hour drive, but even so, we need to be sure she’s ready for us! 🤩

At this point, all I know for sure is that we have reservations to take The Stepdaughter and Stepson-in-Law to dinner tomorrow night. On the other hand, we had reservations tonight, at a different restaurant, but have chosen to order dinner in, instead.

So, as the magic 8-Ball says: Answer hazy; try again later!

Postscript, the next day: Took The Missus today to a local “urgent care” facility. (There was no “urgency,” as such; it’s just the way to go for someone from out-of-town, these days, when experiencing some kind of respiratory problem. A good clinic, like the one we visited, even does its own X-rays and such right then and there.) They gave her a COVID-19 swab test, and we’ll know the results within another couple days. But the medical staff were not terribly worried by what they could find then and there, especially since her symptoms have abated quite a bit — but also because there’s something of a cold epidemic going on around here. Huge sigh of relief. She’ll stay more or less confined upstairs until the test results prove conclusive. And then we’ll try to make sense of the schedule, minus a week’s progress.

Erring on the Side of Relaxing

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Just briefly:

We’ve decided to postpone leaving the House o’ Canines until Thursday, and skip the side trip to Tallahassee. This may or may not complicate the medical appointment issue. (Our physician offers telemedicine appointments, but we have no idea if they’ll do that for what is essentially our “exit interview” from their care. Unfortunately, we won’t know the answer to that question for another couple hours.)

So, bottom line: we’ll head out from here on Thursday, going straight to The Jacksonville Sis-in-Law’s place. Then we’ll just proceed as planned: a few nights with her, then a brief jaunt south to The Keystone Sis-in-Law’s home for a few nights. And then, finally, we will proceed to view Florida in the rear-view mirror!

Elsa? [P.S. Who Are We, Anyhow?]

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We’re nowhere near ready to get moving tomorrow, as nominally planned. Our muscles and bones probably need another good several days’ recovery time — and, of course, The Stepdaughter’s House o’ Canines can’t be beat as a place to decompress.

Unfortunately, we have our last doctor’s appointments in Tallahassee on Wednesday afternoon, around 3:00 pm. So we have two choices, given the approximately six-hour drive in perfect conditions:

  • Leave tomorrow and stay overnight at a friend’s house in Tallahassee. (This has been the current plan for a while now.)
  • Leave Wednesday morning and drive straight through to the doc’s office.

But then there’s the small matter of Tropical Storm Elsa… C\

The tracking map as of a couple hours ago is shown at the right. Here at The House o’ Canines, we’re located midway between Port St. Lucie and Palm Beach. We’d probably be leaving around noon tomorrow, July 6; as you can see — note the time stamps for each of the forecast tracks — we should have a pretty clear shot back to Tallahassee over the succeeding six hours. On the other hand, by the time of our appointments Wednesday, Tallahassee may or may not be affected…

…and the medical facility may or may not be open, even if just out of simple caution.

[Aside: another little wrinkle, nothing to do with the weather: we arranged to change our mailing address down here, back in the middle of June. This automatically covered not just our mail delivery but also our drivers’ licenses, car registration, and voter registration. In the meantime, we also had new checks printed with the new address. However, as of today, we have still not received the new DMV papers, or the checks… but we have our updated voter IDs, by God! I went over to the DMV office first thing this morning to see what could be done about the problem from their end… but of course, they’re closed today for the “July 4th Monday” holiday. Argh.]

Well, nobody ever said this had to be easy!

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