Preparing to Leave...

Monday, July 25th, was the first day of a week of getting ready for our trip. We purchased five days at Harbor Lights in Myrtle Beach. Claude's brother, Cordell, and his wife, Kris, would fly out to join us. I would have Monday through Friday to get things ready for company when we returned. Sunday, I compared my calendar to my to do list and made a little to do list for each day of the week. This gave me hope of doing all I wanted to do.

On Monday, I received a text message from a dear friend, Velvett. She was letting me know and asking for prayers for herself, her daughter and son-in-law and granddaughter. Velvett lives with this daughter. They all came down with Covid. I replied asking if Claude and I could prepare some soup and bread that they could each heat a cup as they felt ready to eat. She agreed. Claude and I quickly thawed some stew meat and made a nice pot of vegetable beef stew. We would leave this on their front porch with rolls at 5:30 that evening. 

Claude and I read Esther is the Old Testament this day. Such a good story. My big chore was cleaning all three bathrooms in our home. I did laundry and the ironing this day as well. Lots of other little things, but these were the biggys. 

The Marx family received their 'new to them' car. With Hayden getting his driver's license and also planning on taking classes at University of Louisville, he will need a car to get him there and back. Michael found a great deal on a car at a dealership in Lexington. He and Andie checked it out Sunday afternoon. The dealership delivered it to them Monday evening. A very happy family. They are really moving along with the kids growing up. 

Tuesday, July 26th, I had a Primary presidency meeting at 10am. It was a very rainy day. I returned home and dusted the house really well. You know, one of those dusting where you actually use a cloth and spray that polished the furniture. 

I did come home from our presidency meeting with a need to get things together to create a program for the Primary children in sacrament meeting in October. I spent all afternoon creating a big grid with a columned page containing our Come, Follow Me lessons through the year, scriptures that might be good to use, songs that fit with the reading block and key words and phrases from the primary children's talks throughout the year. Nice grid and it should really help us to be ready to prepare a program. 

 

Received a text message from Neffie, my sister. Her hubby, Mike, tested positive for Covid. Ugh. She was supposed to see the radiologist/oncologist Thursday. Now that is moved to August 4th. The good thing is it gives her a little more time to heal from her lumpectomy. In the "when it rains, it pours" category, they came home to a tree in their yard that had fallen over. It was leaning against the little house on their property and the shed that covers their camper. Fortunately, their son was there and he helped cut up that tree and clear the area. 

Wednesday, July 27th, Tuesday was to have been sweep, mop, vacuum, etc. That was moved to Wednesday because things filled the day on Tuesday. One must learn to roll with the waves sometimes. However, when we got up, Claude's computer was not recognizing the Internet in our home. Claude asked me if I was on the Internet. I was finishing up my grid for Primary and was, indeed, using the Internet. His laptop was on the Internet on Tuesday. But it would not connect at all on Wednesday. I worked with him a bit so we had two brains trying to understand the problem. Bottom line, the Internet was good on my laptop, our phones and my Kindle. It was not our Internet. It had to be a problem with his laptop. It is an old one. It is a Toshiba and they are not supported in any way any more. 

In the morning, Claude called to see if he could get some tech help to see if he should drive to the Geek Squad in Lexington. The sweet girl tried several things, some of which we had already tried. We ended up taking the laptop to Lexington to Best Buy so the Geek Squad could see what they could do. 

Upon arrival, we were amused that the appointment the tech on the telephone set up for Claude was his first name spelled incorrectly. With his Thor experience being Four last week. I found this amusing. 

He tried uninstalling and then reinstalling the software to make the Internet work. The laptop recognized the Wifi possibilities there but we still weren't sure it would work when we got home. Claude has a new calling at church that will be computer intensive. We decided we should look at new computers for him. When we left Best Buy, we had purchased him a laptop like mine but with more USB ports and left it with the Geek Squad to take his files off the old laptop and put them and the software needed on his new laptop.

We returned home and I decided to go out and scrub down all the white chairs in our backyard. This was on my to do list for Wednesday. With all the rain we were getting, my hope was I would get them scrubbed and we would get another rain shower and that would rinse them off really well. Guess what? That is exactly how it worked. I came inside after scrubbing down two rocking chairs, two Adirondack chairs, an end table and one bench totally exhausted and sweaty. I also told my husband I did not understand why all outside chores for me require me to be bent over all the time. I am getting way to old to be folded in have and facing the ground when I work for long periods of time. Geez!!

The old laptop did not acknowledge our AT&T Wifi when we got it home. It was a good thing we went ahead and purchased Claude a new laptop.

They didn't finish with Claude's new laptop until almost 5pm. We decided to go Thursday morning to pick it up. We opted to bake a frozen pizza for lunch and call it a day. 

Thursday, July 28th, we got up and read. Then we drove to Lexington to pick up Claude's laptop. This time I took my information about a crochet project I wanted to have for our trip. I found a very simple scarf for winter. I wanted to try this new stitch with really soft, nice yarn. So, while Claude got his laptop, I walked down to Michael's and found me some yarn. I also found a cross-stitch kit that looked fun with a beach theme. That theme fits working on it at Myrtle Beach. And, I found a Christmas present for Bailey. Good shopping trip for me. 

We returned home and I set to work with the sweeping, mopping, vacuuming, cleaning the kitchen cabinets with Scott's Liquid Gold and wiping out the refrigerator and microwave. Whew! Good days work for this Old Girl. 

Friday, July 29th, our final day of preparation for our trip began with my piano finally being tuned. It has been on my to do list forever. Finally got it scheduled and Ben Griffith came from Frankfort this morning and tuned it. It still sounds good after all these years. When one thinks that we bought this piano in California when Andie was born. She is now 49 years old. It was moved from the apartment in California to our base house in California. Then we moved it across the country to Maryland where it resided for 20 years. Next we moved it to Sadieville where they rolled it down the hill to the basement. Last year we moved it to Georgetown. The man who came to Sadieville to tune my piano passed away several years ago. It has not been tuned since he passed away. Happy to get it back in tune.

Claude's new laptop would not play sound through his internal speakers yesterday. He realized this last night when he plugged in his external speakers to be sure they worked. Ironically, they did but the laptop's internal speakers did not. Again, we couldn't find anything in settings to correct this. This morning, Claude packed up his laptop and headed back into Lexington to Best Buy and the Geek Squad reinstalled his updates and now the internal speakers work fine. 

This day was an easy day in that we didn't have to rush to do anything. I did final laundry and ironing. We packed after that was finished. Put a hold on our mail. Watered plants. Did my nails. Those little things that one does just before a trip. We went out to dinner so the kitchen would stay clean. 

When we got in the car, we had a warning indicator that the driver side back tire was at 24 lbs. It should be at 35 lbs. Since Papa's, passing, I really don't drive a lot. This week, I drove to my presidency meeting at the church in the rain. When it was over, I drove home and parked my car. Last week, I drove to get my mammogram at the hospital. Then I drove home. That was it. I really hadn't been much of anywhere. After dinner, we got ice cream and grocery shopped for a few things. When we came out of the grocery store, Claude checked the tire and found a screw in the tire. Ugh. We drove right to the place that we bought the tires from. They quickly fixed the tire and we are now ready to go. So happy this happened before we were on the road and then traveling for a week.

Then we had a quiet evening watching television before heading for a 'final sleep' as Raelyn says, before we hit the road on Saturday morning. We did get an eMail about a trip to New Zealand with two days in Fiji. While caring for Mimi and then Papa, Claude and I always said, when that was finished, we would book a trip to Australia and New Zealand. I really wanted to see where they filmed the Hobbits and Lord of the Rings. This eMail was like a nudge saying, "Remember, you wanted to do this." Claude and I looked at it and talked about it. Then I booked the trip. This will be a 2023 trip for us. 

Andie did let us know that Hayden had Covid. Ugh!! So far he has a low grade fever and a cough. He missed his last day of band camp.