In Our Own Way

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

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!

ADMIN: Documenting the Trip in Progress

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As some of you know, I’ve been using a route-planning site called Furkot to help me visualize the itinerary we might be taking for the trip. This turned out to be confusing, because other than our starting point and our planned “next destination,” we don’t yet know for sure where we’ll be, when, and for how long. So I emailed the people at Furkot to ask: how do I “plan” a trip only in retrospect — showing the places we’ve been to, but not all the succeeding ones?

I was impressed; they got back to me literally within minutes with several very specific steps to take. At any rate, here (shown in Google Maps) is the trip so far (assuming no itinerary changes over the next few days [*cough* Elsa *cough*])… If you click on the link, it looks like this:

USA Road Trip 2021 (thru 2021-07-06)

It’s not much so far, of course. But this is generally the sort of thing I’ll be experimenting with until I’m satisfied with the “look,” or until the trip is over. Whichever comes first, ha.

Gone

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…and no, I still haven’t memorized our new “home” address. It’s a good thing my computer has!

We pulled out of the hotel parking lot in Tallahassee yesterday at around 2:00 pm. It felt not very much like a triumphant departure — we were (are) both too tired to celebrate, what with a six-plus-hours drive still ahead of us. But we did bump fists, so that counts, right?

(Well, technically we bumped fists twice. I’ve never mastered the art of the cool-guy fist bump. When The Missus first raised her fist, her eyebrows raised and face all expectant, I got the right idea — but with poor brain/fist coordination, all I managed was a weak, upside-down response. “Damn it,” I thought, flipped the fist around, and successfully pulled off Try #2.)

Instead of the faster –but higher-pressure — highway route, we opted for “the back way,’ at least to start out. (I’d even mapped out an entirely “back way” to South(ish) Florida… but to follow through on that alternative, we’d have to have left by noon. No way!) It drizzled a bit, but by the time we stopped for a fast-food mid-afternoon bite to eat, it was obvious we’d have to switch to the all-highways option…

This being Central Florida, the serious rain started a few minutes later. And continued, almost whiting-out the way forward, until we finally pulled off at the Stuart exit of the Florida Turnpike, seven-and-a-half hours after departure.

Whew!

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