Steve agreed that should I wake up at, say, 4:00 and want to head out for home, he wouldn’t mind, no matter what his back said. I did, and he didn’t argue. Again those valet carts come in handy. He’d sent me down the hall the night before for ice for his insulated mug, and it didn’t clink any more. Thinking the cubes melted, taking off the lid revealed instead it was now a solid chunk. Great to pour Coke, and later tea, over for his entire trip and longer. We ate more of the cinnamon loaf, did all the usual things to get out of there. Except for one thing. Walking the dog waited until the car was filled, the key cards dropped off, and I drove over next to the doggy area and let her out. It turned into a challenge because they water the area thoroughly overnight, and she hates wet feet almost as much as a wet belly from tickley grass. I was just more stubborn than she was.
It took a full two hours plus for sunrise, so most of our starting view was black. Looking out the car windows one could see lots of stars, just nothing as spectacular as our previous visit when we saw the center of the galaxy from up in Arches. I might have looked closer but that's a bit difficult to do while driving on a highway! The down side was every third driver - I kid you not! - had their high beams on and seemingly had forgotten how to change them, even when I turned mine down first. Hint hint. At least the road was well striped so I could tell where not to drive. Once it hinted at lightening up, all the lovely scenery was mostly known by being a darker border to the road than where the black sky was.
Eventually we could pick out the eastern horizon, then cliff walls on the opposite side of the car, even determined that a long row of red flashing lights must be a wind farm, not that we could see any blades. Other vehicles finally got less obnoxious even while keeping their brights on. Colors returned to the landscape we drove through, buildings appeared, and we were again tourists, just without stopping. However, there was this one little town where I pulled over and Steve and I finished off the cinnamon loaf. Still too tired to do any real food prep, never too tired to enjoy cousin Joanie’s.
The major part of the rest of the trip was increasing heat. Territory was more and more familiar, and we just kept on going. A couple of dog stops yielded very little. The conversation shifted to what we would find once we arrived. A mess? Was Rich sick again? Was he even home to help unload?
"Yes," "Yes," and "Not exactly" to that last question. He was cleaning the bathroom for us. He thought he’d get a start on it before we got home, like a couple days ahead of our arrival. Oops. Wrong timing. Everything else was total chaos. Other people’s stuff filled the living room and the lanai, plus the walkway into the front door. Steve’s chair wasn’t working because the chair ate the power cord in its mechanism, something that it started just before we left. No blame there. No clue whom to blame for the burn hole in the upholstery either. But Steve needed a comfy place to sit and right now. He accepted my offer of using my recliner: not a lift chair, but has a good footrest to ease his legs. He also loves that he can lie almost flat when it's stretched out.
That was just the start. The AC had already been turned on for us, but he hadn’t taken out the No Pest Strips first and opened windows to air out. While I was doing that, fuming all the while, I noticed my bath towel was in a heap on the floor under its bar. Not how I left it! Closer exam showed two cuts in the screen of the window above the towel bar right where fingers could reach in and release the clamps holding the screen in place, the window left open an inch, and heat blowing in to cancel any effects of the AC. So our cleaning up had to account both for his messes and a break-in, badly hidden. I looked around, and while I haven’t completed that yet with everything else, I noted my older cameras not taken on the trip were scattered around the bedroom floor. Must have been too old for the wannabe thief. No charged batteries either.
The kitchen floor was a maze to try to navigate, including the dishwasher door open with lots of - presumably clean - dishes inside to put away. All Rich’s, of course, with more unwashed ones all over every counter and stove surface, plus in the sinks.
I took about four hours to unload the car, and unpack the little that I found energy for. At that time I just figured the heat was wearing me out, not that that had happened before to that extent. Steve turned on the TV and had a nice long chat with the DISH representative to find out what happened to our broadcast channels. By next morning things with the TV seem back to normal and Steve caught a bass fishing contest.
His chair still isn’t fixed, but now there is a story about why. A “friend” I refer to as “Tall Paul” to distinguish him in conversation from both my other son and another Paul who stops by here occasionally, looking to help out for a handout, had been "apparently friendly" again with Rich over the summer. (We'd had to chase him off along with his thieving girlfriend last year at threat of Steve holding a gun while also on call with the sheriff's office) “Friendly” included borrowing Rich's soldering iron as well as using most of Rich’s supply of solder. Once he’d returned the iron it kept shorting out so Rich couldn’t fix the broken wiring for Steve’s chair. Considering it's a holiday weekend, we can't get other assistance with it so Steve's keeping the use of my recliner.
We’re still not done with the story, however. Apparently the borrowed iron was just a test run for Tall Paul burning his parents’ house in Sun City down. The Feds are now looking for him, per Rich, a good thing for us to know should he stop by again. Rich’s returned iron didn't short out enough and for long enough to start a fire either there nor here either, though it came pretty close while he was using it. The chair task is interrupted indefinitely in order for Rich to try to fix the soldering iron, at least enough to make it safe for use. Like I said, Tall Paul's abuse of Rich's iron was a trial run for the real thing using a different iron, which did short out for long enough to destroy that house. Rich believes the one Tall Paul returned in bad shape was meant to start a fire here as well when Rich used it. Rich is being very careful with using it inside so it doesn’t short out our wiring or whatever, so he mostly goes outside to work on it in the 111 degree heat or whatever it is at any particular moment. (That developed into another saga for another day.)
I had a few phone calls of my own to make. I’d gotten a gas bill for the time we were gone, even though I’d called ahead for it to be shut off the day we left. $65.00 and change! They never shut it off and the water heater kept heating, along with who knows what else over the summer. I found out over the phone how the system works on a shutdown request. It's supposed to start with a "soft shut down", where any use the first month is billed back to the company until they come out to shut gas off at the meter. No billing is done with the gas shut down, and once we return they send a technician to the house, turning it back on and checking out every single appliance which uses gas before they leave the premises. Any problems, and they don't fix it but yellow tag it until the appliance has been fixed or replaced. That's why we had to replace our wall oven last year. Problem now was the guy who was supposed to disconnect the gas hadn't actually done it, but sent the paperwork through. I had ordered the turn on weeks ago for next week, and now told the guy on the phone that he could cancel that as not necessary anymore. I wasn't in the mood to pay for an unnecessary service call.
DUH!
Then we got to discussing whether the tech who didn’t do his job but claimed he did was doing that to other customers, was still employed by the gas company, and finally, just how much of that undesired bill was I going to have to be responsible for paying? Phone guy went away for several minutes, then said it was "to be determined." By that I suppose the person authorized to decided those things has already started his/her Labor Day weekend or is just too busy trying to get out of there to do so, and will put this issue in a stack to come back to. However, the bill alerting me to the problem is asking to be paid by the 19th. I like keeping a good relationship with our utility companies. I hate them collecting late fees if they do not in fact get back to me before that final date. We decided I’d call the company on the 18th, see what was happening now that their error on this account has been recorded, and find out what, if anything, I actually owe.
One call down. Now my pharmacy. I’m supposed to be able to fill prescriptions in other branches of this national company while I’m traveling, especially since the insurance companies won’t pay for refills until a certain date past the last one. They also won’t let me fill one in advance to hold me through the summer while traveling: they're national, right? Fill them up north. One of them never did get filled, my blood sugar test strips. So I quit testing quite so regularly. The Wisconsin pharmacy’s excuse was that the store was being audited (by Medicare?) at the moment, a moment which lasted at least through the summer, and it was very very difficult to fill that particular scrip. Naughty people fill their prescriptions and don’t test themselves, instead sell those very pricey strips ($80+) to others. Now I’m one of those people who doesn’t test every day, stretching the remaining ones out. Good thing my levels have been pretty good. My AZ pharmacy person went away, looked stuff up, and said I could stop by in a couple hours to pick them up.
I very politely explained I had just driven 2060 miles this week and I was in no way adding the ten or so to go to their pharmacy that night. It was bed time! No arguments! Oh wait: where did I place my bedtime pills at? And Steve’s?
Next day, of course, my covid started, though I didn't recognize it as that. That's for the next post. I didn't get out to the pharmacy, of course, just to the ER for a different, more important scrip.
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