Monday, 2 December 2019
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| today's route |
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| detail of Huntsville and Decatur routes |
Day care
That was my first clue things weren't going to go well today: the day care wasn't yet operational. A big sign out front said "coming soon." It's called The Dog Stop, and I guess it's part of a chain of such places because online it certainly looked fully operational. Just not here in Huntsville.
Recycling
I went from there to the one recycling center I'd been able to find online that said it'd take glass. Nope. A big sign out front said it had lost its contract with the city and had closed in August. I called the phone number on the sign for some state office and asked if there were anywhere in Alabama that accepted glass bottles. The woman told me the closest place she knew of was Atlanta. I said Atlanta, Georgia? Because I'm getting used to many states having the same names for towns. And she said yes, Georgia.
The last recycling place I'd found in Tennessee hadn't accepted glass either, so I've now accumulated bottles for the last 3 weeks or so. It's not easy finding a way to store them in this little RV, but I just can't bring myself to put them in the trash.
Banfield
Beginning to see an unfortunate pattern, I almost dreaded going to the Banfield. And sure enough, they hadn't been able to pull up Lily's file in their computer. I'd gotten there early, so I explained to the person at the desk the problems I've been having for the last several months with the various Banfields not being able to gain access to her records.
In fact, we discovered she couldn't pull up the files for Dexter or Gracie either - probably because they're attached to Lily's. During the hour I waited for our appointment time, the woman spent most of it arguing with the national IT folks about pulling up those files, and hadn't gotten anywhere. In the meantime, I'd called them and gotten hung up on. Which I'm sure was an accident, but my phone's battery ran out before I could call again.
So by 11:30, three good things had happened: Lily had voluntarily hopped into her carrier at exactly the moment I was ready to close up the zippers on her; I found a penny lying in the parking lot (it's money, after all); and Lily got her claws clipped and her flea medication applied. Things were looking up.
On the way back to the Decatur area I saw a sign for the Huntsville Quarter Midget Association, and with a name like that I had to look it up. Turns out there are midget racing cars for adults and these are the even farther scaled-down versions for children. The association accepts kids ages 4½ to 16; the racing cars are one-quarter the size of those for adults; they average 30 mph and have a top speed of 50 mph. The information on their website horrified me because of the idea of basic babies going 50 mph on a track with other kids of different ages. And this is not a cheap sport because the cars cost $400 to several thousands and then there's the transporting the cars and the safety gear and the annual dues. The whole idea has almost stunned my mind into immobility.
Day care redux
I was heading in search of another day care I'd found online that didn't answer their phone and only accepted texts or Facebook, neither of which I do - I don't want to pay for texting (which allows more unwanted advertising than robocalls) and I don't trust Mark Zuckerburg for a second). But unlike all the other local day cares and boarding places that had their home pages on Facebook, which I can't access, this place had a normal website so I could see it looked like the kind of place I wanted. So I went to find them.
The business is called Brammer Farms: The Shaggy Hound Pet Hotel, and it's outside a tiny town south of Decatur called Hartselle - City of Southern Hospitality, according to their sign. It did seem to be a quiet pleasant little place, set in the middle of cotton fields which mostly still had the cotton on the plants.
When we turned into the gates and Dexter saw the other dogs playing in a fenced yard, he was almost beside himself. The woman in charge was surprised to see me just appear, especially to appear in an RV, but she didn't seem to be surprised about what I was telling her about Dexter needing small groups but doing okay in general, and about how we were all driving each other nuts cooped up in that little RV for so many months, and about how they were just not getting enough exercise or time with other dogs.
She told me she'd charge $40 per 24 hours for the 2 of them together - which is half the price I'd expected to have to pay. And she offered to take them right away if I wanted to just leave them. I'd intended to wait till tomorrow, but she said it wasn't by the day but by the 24-hour period, and anyway Dexter was desperately in need of fresh air and exercise and Gracie wasn't too far behind him on that, and at the price she was charging I just couldn't say no.
So that was the fourth good thing to happen today - Lily and I drove off just the two of us and my dogs were wrestling around in their own fenced-in yard while the staff evaluated them. What a relief.
Groceries
That place being out in the country, I had a little drive back up to Decatur and the traffic was getting thicker when we got to areas with shopping centers. But I'd found a Publix online that was actually in the place I'd expected and was also open (that first day care place made me not want to take it for granted). Got most of what I wanted, and Lily and I headed back to the campground, just the 2 of us.
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