On the road again.... typos and all...

Well, this is quite the novel ex perience…. typing as my sister pilots a 26 foot bright yellow rental truck down the interstate.

The journey begins.

Mom and Dad finally decided to settle down. They have been ‘homeless’ for about 7 years now. Sold the house in the Quad Cities and became snowbirds. Summers in a little 400 sq. ft mini-moble home in northeast Illinois and winters in the motorhome going hither, thither and yon. But, times change and they are not so interested in driving all the time anymore.

For a while I thought they might settle in Arizona to be near Mom’s brother. But the dry air was more than they wanted to put up with. Something about their skin molting off like a snake every few days… and the nosebleeds. Can’t forget the nosebleeds.

(I remember when I was a kid and the family was on the Great Western Tour… we came over the mountains into the desert southwest and my nose started bleeding profusely. It was so bad that Mom asked if I wanted to pull into an Emergency Room to get looked at. We didn’t because it was just the air and I kknew it would be fine once we crossed the mountains again into California. But, I digress.

So this summer they packed all their worldly goods into a 10x20 ft storage unit (well, all their goods except for the ton of stuff at Kay’s house and the odd lamp or chair at my house), sold the mini-moble home, and took off for Florida.

The found their very own double-wide version of heaven on the outskirts of Ocala in December and closed the deal between Christmas and New Year’s. Which brings us to the big yellow truck. Kay rented a truck in Michigan, hired movers to load it, drove it to my house where we loaded more. Today we are driving to the storage unit where we will meet more movers and load all the rest of the stuff and then it’s off to Paducah!

Will sign off now as we are near our destination and the gas tank is on my sidel.

The Illinois State Police are out in force today. But, the weigh station was closed. YIPPEE!

On the down side, my sister’s dog is sick…. It appears Lily ate some yarn which is now trying to exit and it’s horking up the works. Kay is dealing with her petsitter and the vet over the phone…. L

The truck is loaded, the bellies are full and the bladders are not. We are on the road officially (sort-of) at 11:43 central time, milage 47870 and I have already made the first don’t-follow-the-map decision. Driving vaguely southwest to Bloomington and then back east to Shampoo-Banana to catch I-57 just didn’t fit with me. So we went east on I-80 to 57. 20 miles up here or 40 down there.. I liked the 20 better.

Lilly is at the emergency vet clinic. She is scheduled for surgery after 3pm today to remove the yarn. The good news – no fever and no rectal bleeding (no intestine necrosis) so we caught it early. The better news – the vet says she has only lost one dog to this problem (ingestion of long stringy things) and that dog had stuff in the gut for a month. The bad news…. Kay feels guilty for giving the dogs a ball of yarn to play with and Lily is over 9 years old. It’s going to be a long afternoon.

Another cop… unmarked red in the median. We are seeing cops everywhere and Chuck, who drives 80 miles an hour at all times never sees them and never gets pulled over. Sheesh. We should be so lucky.

This truck cab is much more cramped than the one Jayne and I had when I moved from California to Chicago. Bench seat (bleck!) that is 6 inches too short for our long legs. Not a lot of floor space for all the junk I carry around (and on which I am typing as we speak). But we will do fine… if we can survive today, we will be fine. This is absolutely the most boring part of the drive.. Chicago to Paducah. Flat, straight and BORING!! It’s gray, overcast and spitting rain or slush depending on the temp. I think Kay said its sitting right around 32 degrees now.

Executive rule number one has been established… the driver is not allowed to do anything but drive. Kay was getting her sunglasses out and dropped them on the floor and couldn’t reach them. So I unbuckled (bad, I know) and went to look for them. I couldn’t find them either. So. Rule number one. Drivers drive. Passengers do everything else. If the driver has to do something the passenger can’t do… we pull over.

‘Diesel Fuel Only’ the customer will be sent a bill if they use gas’ says the sign. I don’t like diesel fuel. It’s slimy. And it doesn’t come off with soap and water. And the smell stays on your hand. Yuck.

I bought another inverter to use with the computer (120 v from the cigarette lighter). Am not sure what the issue is… am thinking the lighter hole may be a little loose as the power keeps switching between battery and AC. Oh, well. It’s a rental, what can I say?

Time to sign off and do some reading. Or not. It’s a little bumpy in here and reading may be a little difficult. Kinda like typing…. You should see the typos before spellchecker gets a hold of them or I backspace over them. ;-) It’s an experience. Later, Gators!

It’s later… we are in Paducah. I took over driving in Effingham and it started to rain and rain and rain. And then the sun went down. And it rained and rained and rained. I am not liking this very much. More rain is scheduled for tomorrow. But at least we are not in St. Louis. It’s covered with ice, as is Tulsa, according to the man on the Weather Channel.

At least it’s not ice. Chuck says it’s a good time NOT to be in Chicago. Ice on Monday and snow on Tuesday.

Lily came thru surgery okay. The next 48 hours will be watch and wait. There was lots of inflammation of the intestines, but no necrosis. The vet says the ‘best case scenario’ she could have hoped for was what she found. Multiple little cuts in the intestine to get the yarn out, big cut in the stomach to get the yarn ball out. Vet says was the largest amount of she’s ever seen inside a dog. But things are going okay.

We are pooped. It’s time for bed. More talk tomorrow.