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What are you up to today? This week?


heidiiiii

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I've been planning a couple of upcoming trips. The short trip to Houston in December is about 12 weeks away and not too challenging, but the drive to Chicago in April is taking a bit more mapping out.

Plotting a route around the larger, poorly paved cities has resulted in some great eye candy! On the detour around Louisville, we will not only go through my birthplace (Fort Knox), but on highway 135 we get to drive through Salem, Indiana. If you haven't Google mapped it, it has a Gothic courthouse in the center of the town square with a church like tower on one side, and buildings surrounding it that look like they were transplanted from Main Street, Disney World in Orlando! There are so many little towns like this that people miss when they travel on the Interstate highways. Helen, Georgia is another little town I want to visit someday. It looks like a medieval Alpine village! Even the store signs are in German.

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Jeremy, Try for Columbus, IN; there is some outstanding architecture in this little town; and if you want Victorian inspiration, US 84 between Bainbridge and Quitman will knock your socks off. DH & I are NOT interstate drivers if we can help it!

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WAVE practice for Lawson started tonight. Back to the once a week running him around. Not too bad, could be worse. As much as I dread the thought of him driving (he's already 16 but not driving yet), sometimes it will be nice.

I do love WAVE time though, performances will start soon. Yay! :)

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I'm recuperating at the moment. I had a cataract removed yesterday and I'm typing with one eye closed but all is good here. I can hardly wait until Nov. 13th to have the other eye done and I can toss my prescription glasses in the recycle bin at Wally world.

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Good for you, Gayle! :hug: DH & I caught some kind of "bug" whilst at the beach (probably the mob scene at the Destin Good Will!) and while slowly drying out we still have energy levels somewhere between wrungout dishrag & newborn kitten.

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Jeremy, Try for Columbus, IN; there is some outstanding architecture in this little town; and if you want Victorian inspiration, US 84 between Bainbridge and Quitman will knock your socks off. DH & I are NOT interstate drivers if we can help it!

My mom went to trucking school in Columbus.

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  • 2 weeks later...

It looks like DH will be coming home next Wed after spending two weeks in a local rehab facility with additional therapy to follow. He now has eight screws (we finally got to see the latest x-rays) in his spine and must wear a huge turtle shell brace with no bending or twisting for the next couple of months. He is getting around with the help of a walker and progress seems good. He is very tired all the time and says he needs a good nights sleep. (He's tired, humph!!! So am I!!!!!)

(Now, forgive me while I vent please.)

While I will be very glad to finally have him home, I dread the next few weeks with having to deal with him while he is essentially still so dependent on assistance though the intense period will only last another month or so. It looks like the follow on therapy means having to get him up and down a major stair case here at homeeach time we have to get there and that is a major worry. I have been running back and forth daily to the rehab place and while I am grateful we got in the door as it is suppose to be the best in the area I am continuously tried with all the tooing and froing.

Sigh! No real time for miniing as I only have short periods unoccupied with chores or running.

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@Beverly - is it possible for him to live on the ground floor for a month to avoid the stairs? The thought of him falling sends chills down my spine. While you probably wouldn't want a bed in the living room for the long haul, for a few weeks it ought to be tolerable.

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@Beverly - is it possible for him to live on the ground floor for a month to avoid the stairs? The thought of him falling sends chills down my spine. While you probably wouldn't want a bed in the living room for the long haul, for a few weeks it ought to be tolerable.

Also does the rehab center do a home evaluation for safety issues prior to his discharge?

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Hi Kathie, No, We live in a house built against a hill and the entry and garage is on the basement level. Our main living area is on the "second" level. Life would be a lot easier if he could but even then he would tempted to work out in his shop and I would be terrified for him with all his "Man"tools beckoning to him before he is ready. He is so stubborn and can become focused on a project to the detriment of everything else.

Janet, I do not know about this. It would seem to be a smart thing but any thing to do with possible problems out side of the facilities does not seem to be of interest to the medical or rehab folks. While in the hospital the staff was attentive and on top of his care, once his release date to the rehab facility a couple of days later was determined they seem to disappear. The same with the rehab ward place. Rehab therapists are wonderful but the ward people are more concerned with paperwork or conversations with one another and do not pay much attention to patients. It can take up to an hour to respond to a patient's call. I realize there is a lot to handle on a ward but to ignore a call that long is criminal. And this is considered the best in the area!

Thanks, I will cope, just needed to express my worries elsewhere so family won't panic. (After all I am woman, here me roar! LOL) I will have to lay down the law to DH and and make sure he gets them. The main thing that worries me is that I will have to leave him alone in the house for short periods of time to run occasional errands. He will be OK on our main floor as he can get from bedroom to chair to bathroom OK but he must not attempt the stairs without me or DD there. We have subscribed to a medic alert call center and he will have to carry this with him at all times just in case. He is getting better with time but he tends to over estimate his progress and ability.

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I rode my motorcycle to Biketoberfest in Daytona Beach yesterday. My main reason for riding to bike rallies is to shop for items I normally wouldn't find anywhere else or for the lower prices. This trip was for riding leathers.

I replaced my black leather riding duster, vest and neck guard for the cold riding months coming up. The old ones I have are worn out from years of riding.

One thing I see more and more of yet am unable to understand is the number of people who show up in their gas guzzling cars, with family in-hand, at biker bars. These things aren't for people who don't ride motorcycles, and definitely not suitable for kids. One guy actually asked the bar tender at the Iron Horse Saloon to "cover up" and for the rest of us to watch our language around his kid! I won't quote myself word-for-word, but I asked him if his kid wasn't old enough to order a beer or throw a leg over a motorcycle, then what was he doing in a biker bar?

Rant over, back to making mini doors!

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Jeremy, sometimes a biker bar is what's available when your blood sugar bottoms out, and a hot sandwich and some frenchfries will make a world of difference! Whilst I'm not wild about staring at the bartender's beer belly, there's sometimes some nice eye candy in a biker bar; that said, I agree it's no place for little children; but bikers are really nice people who seem to enjoy it when old granny folks show up. OK, MY rant over.

We finished up the All Florida Paddler's Rendezvous yesterday with me finally ignoring my lingering congestion to bundle up and hit the water to paddle "sweep" (following behind all the other boats to make sure we finish up with the same number we started with) on the last day of DH's leading a paddle down Spring Creek and the Chipola River to the landing at the Magnolia bridge. Lightning rained out all of Thursday's trips, so a lot of people switched to longer paddles Friday and Saturday. Because Spring Creek is both narrow and GORGEOUS and ecologically sensitive, we linited the number of boats to 15 at a time and ran two trips a day, with ours the first one. We had several people from one club who really ought to have done their own paddle, not ours, since they didn't want to go along with the trip guidelines the American Canoe Association set and w=most of the clubs follow. All the trip leaders who had these folks in their groups voiced the same complaints.

Today we're headed to Havana & Tallahassee to tend to business with the other house and the youngest kid, and tomorrow paddle the millpond the campground sits at. Weds we're headed to the State Park at Opp, AL, to see their Hallowe'en "Scarecrows in the Park" display and then Friday head on to Adventures Unlimited near Milton, FL, for the Florida Trail Association's regional conference next weekend; then we're headed HOME.

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Holly, the bars at Iron Horse are strictly bars, not bar and grills. Same at the other saloons (food vendors are well outside of the bars). In fact, there's a convenience store right next to the Iron Horse and a number of fast food places about a mile away at the interstate.

The guy with the kid was upset about the "eye candy" and their electrical tape tops. We certainly welcome grannys and old bikers, (they're a lot of fun to hang out with) but minors are not allowed in bars for not only the obvious reasons, but because its against the law. That wasn't the only guy with kids either. There were many of them and the saloons can be shut down by law enforcement if they catch a minor at one.

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Oh, yuck! Why do people assume they can drag their poor kids with them wherever thay want? And we only hit biker places that also serve food for the aforementioned reason. When we had our bookstore in Jacksonville our customers were close to 10% bikers until one of the 5% law enforcement customers advised us they were instructed to crack down on certain kinds of magazines which most of our bikers bought, so we apologized to the guys, removed the magazines and a few of the Outlaw bikers stopped coming in(but the Hell's Angels and others surprisingly still came in to buy motorcycle magazines and repair manuals).

We had a successful day at the other house and then s[pent the afternoon with DS#3. We're back in the camper now.

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Witnessed a car accident today, involving a school bus. frown.gif I was right behind the bus, and thankfully I saw it coming and was able to slow down and pull off a little, or I would have been hit too. Thank goodness everyone was okay. It was caused by a teenage driver on the phone.

One driver stopped right in front of me, sideways, so I was able to make eye contact with him and knew he was okay. Other drivers pulled up and called 911 and ran to help the 2 car drivers. I work for the school system, so I called my office and had them call Transportation with the bus #, then I ran to the bus. I got on the bus, told the driver I had already contacted Transportation, then proceeded to try to calm the children and check for injuries. The bus driver had other things she needed to deal with. It's times like this that makes me remember why I don't work with children. I don't have the patience/personality to deal with that.

Very stressful afternoon.

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Everybody sounds so busy! So sorry about the car/bus accident, Tracy. So many of these accidents are so preventable!

I just finished working another Trade Show - this one was a Holiday Food and Gift Show for 5 days. I work for a home-improvement company, so we're always the "country cousins" at these shows, but I still met, and surpassed, our company's goal for the show. That always makes me feel good! AND I found some wonderful birthday gifts for two of my granddaughters :banana:

It was kind of fun to see the holiday decorations and all the glitter, kind of a sneak preview of Christmas.

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Ow, Tracy! Teenagers are immortal & bulletproof and anything they do not know isn't worth knowing, and unfortunately I still see too many adults using their phones whilst driving! I hope someone gets through to that youngster what a totally useless tragedy they almost caused!

CJ, it sounds like you have one of those dream jobs!

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What was really bad, Holly, was that the girl's mother was of course defending her daughter and saying it wasn't her fault, that I didn't see well enough to know. I didn't even mention the phone to her, I was getting out of that situation as fast as I could!

I found out this morning that the girl goes to school here at the school I work at. Parking attendant told me it was a new car, and that the girl had just got her license and parking permit.

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How does anyone justify their teenage child crashing into 40 ft. of bright yellow school bus? Obviously she wasn't watching the road if she crashed into it. Sounds like her mother thinks its OK to endanger everyone on the road just to answer a phone call.

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Stories like this make me cringe. We are in a town with a university that attracts a lot of foreign students. One just put his car up on a lawn in my development today! I think it's interesting that you couldn't see well enough to know what happened; was she in the car? OH, maybe she was on the bus...or maybe she has x-ray vision.

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CJ, it sounds like you have one of those dream jobs!

Actually, it is a bit of a dream job! I've been doing it for 12 years now, it's part time (seasonal) so it leaves me time to mini and pursue other projects. And speaking of dumb, excuse me - inexperienced, teenagers ... in August I was working at a County Fair, it was about 25 minutes till closing time, and I was slowly getting my stuff gathered up so I could walk out right at closing. We're all in this big barn with 2 aisles of commercial products and suddenly all the lights went out in the fairgrounds! Turns out that a 16 year old girl with a brand new license was driving with two teen boys who were in a hurry because they were almost past their curfew to get home. They egged her on to hurry, so she did - and slammed into a light pole! Fortunately they were not seriously hurt, but it sure left a lot of people scrambling around in the dark at 10 pm! (The next day I downloaded a flashlight app for my cellphone!!)

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I am on line tracking Lufthansa flights from Lyon, France, to Munich, Germany, to Charlotte, NC, to New Orleans -- planes carrying Lloyd's French cousins. Hard to believe they are nearly here! Today we'll get some fresh fruit and other foodstuffs and some flowers to put in the typical New Orleans house that they are renting for their visit. We have a busy two weeks ahead of us!

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