Friday, October 14, 2011

So, anyone see what happened to September?

How does the time get away from me. Here it is the middle of October and only a few weeks before we are due to leave for a Texas winter. Let me see… where did I put all that time… oh yeah!  I remember…..  I used it all up enjoying myself! 

We are here partly due to family illness which is progressing positively. Spirits and comfort levels are high and we all can get together every few days to have some more fun. That helps everyone.

The Stagecoach RV Park,

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here in St. Augustine has been very pleasant. Some heavy storms (they call it a nor’easter, down here) was really stirring up the beach scene with 12-15 foot waves and so much wind that it was carrying the foam up onto the beaches and even into the parking lots and roads near the beach.  Looked like soap suds everywhere.

 

Katie-the-Poo

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continues to improve and is back to normal from her ear infection and we continue to be healthy which is a bit unusual for us this time of year.

I just finished upgrading my Samsung EPIC 4g phone’s operating system from Android 2.2 (Froyo) to 2.3 (Gingerbread) after waiting too long for Sprint to provide an update.  It is wonderful!  I liked it before but I love it now.

I seem to stay either too busy or too relaxed to get on with some of the little work I need to do around here to get ready for traveling.  I still have not even fixed the  air line to the driver’s side seat in the truck. It popped off coming into town and I had to pinch it off with one hand til we could get stopped. Maybe this week…. or maybe not.

Our eating habits are still forming but we have gotten considerably better at managing portion sizes and often just split a meal when we eat out. Between senior menus and senior portions we are doing better and I hope that translates to healthier, too.

The Max Burton 6000 Induction Hotplate

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2011-10-14 10.22.47.jpg
we got before we left Raleigh, has been great.  It quickly heats/cooks anything we have tried without heating up the RV and does it faster than the gas range.  I don’t think that we have even opened the range top for at least 3 weeks.

Crockpot cooking has also been ramped up a few notches and we have been crocking it one or twice a week.  We need a new crock pot, though. This one is an all in one piece and I really think we would use it a lot more if it had a removable crock for cleaning.  We are contemplating a few choices in the context of our regular needs and available cabinet storage. This one is a small 4qt unit and we don’t really need much bigger than this for the two of us.

Our plans are to head west the beginning of November, if the holiday home time pangs don’t get to us, first.  We can already feel them tugging at us so plans may change… again.

ttfn

Budd

Sunday, October 2, 2011

Some Medical Stress and a Realization!

Katie the Poo has an ear infection that has had us quite worried (we did not know it was her ears). More details are in her blog, http://katie-poo.blogspot.com but this scare has brought some fears to the surface for us.

Being “out here” and not in our usual place with the usual familiar resources, like doctors, Vets, hospitals, etc. available to us, has been an unspoken “what-if” concern from the beginning of our planning.  We just did not really think much about how it would make us feel because we had worked through plans for how to deal with any such situations that might arise.  Trust me! It made us feel pretty helpless and exposed!

Simple things, like finding a Veterinarian for our little girl was not as simple as we had planned.  Mer had to call 4 vets offices before we found one that could even see her.  Fortunately, St Augustine has a Regional Emergency Veterinary Hospital just for nights and weekends and once we were referred to them, it became much easier to make headway.

But time goes so slow when you are in pain.  When one you love is in pain, it seems to be stationary! Worse than that is not knowing exactly where help will come from or how to get there.  When we got settled into this campground we kept an eye open for nearby vets “just in case” we should need one for Katie.  It turned out that when we did actually  NEED one, none of these were available and that was scary.  Suppose it had been one of us rather than Katie?  How hard would it have been to have been seen by a doctor in a strange town?

This whole area needs more work for the future. In the past 24 hours, I have gone through all sorts of scenarios involving one of both of us needing immediate medical care and in light of yesterday’s events, I can no longer just assume that going to a nearby hospital or ER or Urgent care is going to work. I think we really need to figure out a way to get the care we might need in a strange place on a moment’s notice.

One thing that we became aware of is the natural tendency to deny the possible severity of a problem because of the apparent logistical difficulty in getting appropriate help right away. I mean that it’s easier to say “it is not THAT bad” than to say “take me to the hospital” when one does not know exactly where that hospital is, how to get care there, how to pay for it and how to endure all the assumed delays and indifference that will surely be a part of making that choice. It feels better to hope it will get better than to fear it will get worse so action must be taken, now!

There will be more to come on this topic. This is a really big hole in being prepared no matter where we might be.  But, being out on the road with nothing familiar around makes this lack of adequate preparation potentially lethal.

ttfn

Budd