Saturday, 27 through Wednesday, 31 May 2023
I was here for 5 days and had a series of incidents that, cumulatively, were downright bizarre.
First I had a stroke of good luck: I'd gotten filled up with propane when we first checked in yesterday, and today it was chilly much of the day so we all wanted the heater. But that was about the end of my luck.
Saturday night about 7:15, it started raining and kept raining overnight and then off and on, increasingly heavy until about 4:30 PM Sunday.
Sunday morning I finally decided to go next door to ask the people in the next campsite to turn the sound down: for a really long time they had a sermon playing over the radio (or TV) and the sound was broadcast on their outside speakers, so it was impossible for me to ignore. I tried to wait it out but the guy wouldn't stop sermonizing. So I asked the guy next door to either turn down the volume or turn off the outside speakers (no one had been outside for hours), and for a minute I thought he was going to refuse. But he did. Weird.
I'd had a tough night anyway because first I couldn't fall asleep, and when I finally did I woke up at 10:30 in absolute fear because of a dream. I dreamed I had Dexter on a leash and then suddenly, as if I'd been gassed asleep, I woke up in a foot of snow in the dark and I was holding a pair of 12' leashes with 2 big white dogs on them, running around in the snow. A young guy told me he'd let people he pet-sat for to take Dext temporarily because they said they needed him. I insisted he tell me where they lived so I could check on this and he said he didn't know their address or phone number. (It was a dream so no logic required.) I couldn't find the owner of the white dogs and was very worried about Dext. The guy finally took me to a building with a very high chain link fence around a small yard with lots of dogs, including Dext who didn't have his collar. When I called, the people didn't come so I climbed over the fence (it was a dream) but I couldn't lift Dext high enough to get him back over (even in dreams I'm not that divorced from reality).
I woke up very worried, knowing it was just a dream but still in the dream when I first woke up, and resisting getting up to check on Dext because it would wake everybody up and I knew he was fine. But it was an awful feeling and, when I finally got back to sleep, I overslept to 4:15 and felt awful all day.
On Monday, Memorial Day, both Bucky and Jimmy got out - I guess the screen door wasn't completely latched and they fell against it when they were playing on the steps. Anyway, instead of screaming I managed to speak very nicely and Jimmy jumped back inside right away. But not Bucky. He was out for an hour or an hour and a half. I just couldn't go through everything I went through the first time he did this - kneeling on the ground (gravel instead of grass like the first time) and coaxing and so forth. Fortunately, he got out close to dinner time and he got hungry. I sat in the bench seat by the door, kept the screen door closed but left the outside door open, and called his name every few minutes. Over and over. Finally I saw him looking through the screen, though of course he ran off when I opened it. But I set his filled dish down near the door and left the screen door open (and kept an eagle eye on Jimmy), and sure enough Bucky came in to eat and I closed the screen while he was busy.
Earlier in the day during lunch I bit the inside of my upper lip twice, and now it's hard to avoid - almost like a sore thumb sticks out in the way.
That same day the drawer with the broken latch that I thought I'd fixed showed it wasn't really fixed because every time I pulled the drawer all the way out to get something in the back of it, the drawer refused to close again. Each time it did this I had to pull the drawer completely off its track and reposition it (and it was really heavy because of still having stuff in it) and then it would work again. Until the next time. So I had to fix it again, and this time I hope it stays fixed.
Also that same day, a full glass of wine tipped all over everything on the table, so I was not only out the drink but also had a big mess to clean up.
The full moon isn't until the end of the week so I don't know what's wrong. Except Mercury might be transiting over some significant part of my chart - it does every year about now. A friend who taught me astrology used to warn me about safety when I'd leave to go salmon fishing this time of year. So maybe that's what it is. Lucky nothing's actually been unsafe, just major nuisances.
The next day, Tuesday, I went into Anderson to the recycling center. I got rid of everything except the plastic containers called clamshells, that strawberries and such come in. So that was a good thing.
Then I took Dext to the local dog park, where there happened to be a lot of dust, some of which I got in my eye and it hurt so bad I left Dext in the park to go wash my eye out in the RV. (The other dog owners told me I had a really loyal dog because he stayed waiting for me at the gate till I got back.) It took longer than I intended because I managed to lose my contact. It's hard to hunt for something intended to be unnoticeable (mine are gray) when you've only got vision in one eye - and I couldn't find it. I never did figure out where it went. So I took out the other one and wore my glasses and don't think I have a 2nd pair of contacts. The problem is that I always wear them when I drive because I think better when I have them in.
Then I stopped at a laundromat and found that their signs never said how much the machines cost. The different sized washers, for instance, said to put in "14" coins or "20" coins (which comes out to a lot more money than most machines ask). Nothing said how long they run for, and same for the dryers. The machines all worked okay but I was a little frustrated here.
Back at the campground I dumped the waste tanks and filled the water tank and swept the floors (a useless chore, with the kittens shedding every second and dirt/dust from the gravel outside). Still, I managed to get a lot done despite the continuing string of semi-disasters.
On Wednesday things started out a bit rough: Jimmy pooped in the crate overnight yet again, and I had to do an extra load of laundry to get it all cleaned up.
But then my luck finally began to turn. I found 2 more pairs of contacts. They may not be very close to my current prescription, but beggars are definitely not going to be choosey right now.
The guy in the space across from me had a sign up saying he did RV repairs and this month he offered an AC tuneup for $99. Since I haven't had anybody look at my AC unit in the 5+ years I've been using it, and since summer's coming when warm weather might be expected, I figured I should go ahead and do it. This guy seemed to know what he was doing and said, while it definitely needed to be cleaned, it seemed in good shape.
I also agreed to pay them to wash the RV, because the last time I remember getting that done was in Las Vegas, which I think was in April, maybe, of last year. Way too long ago, in other words. These folks were a young couple who were full-time RVers with their 3 kids, and the whole family got involved with cleaning my RV. I gave the kids $5 each for helping with the cleanup (with mom's permission, of course). And here's the result:
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You may not be able to see the difference, but before the wash, the front - especially the overhang - and the sides that stick out by the front doors were caked with bugs. It was that horde of bugs I kept running into in Montana last year. I was afraid they'd never come out after being stuck on for so long through so many changes of weather. But they managed to get all of that off and turn what had become beige into white again. Nice folks.
I saw the young mom spray herself with something unlabeled and asked, and she told me it was brown Listerine plus a bit of rosemary oil. Both parents said it was an excellent mosquito repellant and they didn't have to worry about spraying it on their kids, afraid they'd get some in their mouths through their hands.
Thanks to the emotional stress, this was a tough time, but I still got a lot done and, anyway, things all started to work out in the end. Things always do for me.
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