Wednesday, 27 through Saturday, 30 January 2021
This was a fairly action-packed period, in a low-key way.
Campground
Here at the campground, I hired a man to clean my poor little RV of months of accumulated bugs and other crud. Its last serious bath was in Grand Junction, CO, so it was way overdue.
I did 3 loads of laundry, more than half of which was the dog bed covers. Luckily for me, I didn't see the sign in the laundry room that said absolutely no pet bedding until I'd already started my washers. But since I'd thrown my own clothes in the washers with them, I figured that made them more like regular laundry, and I cleaned up the hair that appeared on the machines.
I took a shower and cleaned the RV's bathroom and cleaned the microwave and defrosted the freezer (how can dog hair get in the freezer?) - just the general chores I find it harder to do when the dogs are taking up so much room and energy.
It took most of one day but I got reservations made for where we'll go when we leave here, up until February 10th. I've still got a lot of Texas I want to see, but the area where I'm going - the coast and the Valley - have very few state parks and even fewer KOAs. In addition, the coast is where folks from up north want to go, so the state parks are mostly full. And in addition in addition, the Valley is reported to be a serious hot spot for the virus. Laredo, for instance, has one of the highest rates of illness in the state. I'll just have to play it by ear and try not to feel like I need to rush this because I have a deadline.
One evening I ordered a pizza and ate half of it while I watched Knives Out, which is becoming one of my favorite dopey movies. It's too cleverly constructed to be really dopey, but it still ranks up there.
I spent a morning realizing I'd made a serious mistake by neglecting my financial situation. I've got enough money, but I haven't been sending that money to places like the RV insurance company. As a result, my vehicle insurance has lapsed. Never mind that I've been driving for several weeks without it, that was when I didn't know. I couldn't possibly move an inch, now that I knew, until I got coverage reinstated. That took a while, but my great brokers got it set up eventually, so I was back in business.
I got several blog posts done and am now caught up, except for some very old posts that I still haven't finished - like the one about the Birmingham Civil Rights Museum.
Not campground
I drove into Austin one morning, to get the crown measured and made and attached. That took almost 3½ hours and half my mouth was still under the influence of anesthesia by suppertime, which was weird.
It's been a month since I got that root canal job done and, though Dr. RC (Root Canal) said the infection in my mouth would drain away by now, it hadn't. The dentist told me to call Dr. RC, which I did, and he told me to take an antibiotic, which I hate to do. I know some people think the more the merrier with antibiotics, but I figure we've got a lot of important and good biotics in our bodies that I don't want to disrupt unless I absolutely have to. But infection in my mouth ranks up there in the absolutely-have-to category.
On the plus side, I was pleased to note that with Amoxicillin, which is what he'd prescribed for me, I didn't have to give up alcohol, like I've had to do with antibiotics in the past. A pandemic and an uncertain future is not my idea of a good time to give up alcohol unless said alcohol is causing more problems than it's easing.
I stopped on the way back at an oil change place, because that was something else I hadn't gotten done on time. My poor little RV got drained of your basic sludge, and I hope it'll be much happier now that it's got nice fresh fluids in it. It's also got a new air filter and more brake fluid, and God's in his heaven, all's right with the world. (Or something like that.)
When I picked up my mail, I got my $600 stimulus check, so I stopped at a Chase bank and deposited that and traded a thick stack of $1 bills for larger denominations (and that was a mind trick, trying to remind myself that I had just as much money after as before, that the thick stack of $1s weren't worth more than the thin stack of $20s).
And in general
I've missed having the dogs here, but it's almost like the kind of missing when a headache goes away. Thank goodness I never had kids - so much harder than with dogs to dump them someplace when you need a break for a few days. I love both my dogs and wouldn't want to do this trip without them, but they do make me tired sometimes, and lately lots of things seem to make me tired.
I really do wish our country could start governing itself like there were grown-ups in charge again, like we've had at times in our past. On the other hand, we somehow made it through the madness of the McCarthy Red Scare, and the insanity of a Civil War, and the inhumanity of the Japanese-American internment camps, and I believe - I really believe - that George Floyd's horrific death changed things in this country in a way that nothing else has managed to do and that we're finally finally taking our first halting steps toward a brighter day. There's much to cause feelings of despair, and I have those feelings. But I see many signs of hope, too, and I'm clinging to those.
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