Places We Connected To

Pausing the Road Trip, Not the “Vacation”

July 13, 2021 by John Leave a Comment

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)

July 8, 2021 by John 3 Comments

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.

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

July 5, 2021 by John Leave a Comment

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!