Tuesday, September 22nd, we returned home for our 6,998.9 mile Drive about 3:30pm. We unpacked and then crashed in our recliners. Frozen pizza was for dinner. The recliners and watching our television with things we wanted readily available was a real treat.
Wednesday, September 23rd, I was most pleased when I stepped on my scales in the morning that I had not gained one pound while on this trip. One tries to behave while traveling but staying strictly to an intermittent fasting diet is not really possible. I had yogurt for breakfast every time we had breakfast at the hotel we stayed in. Claude and I both watch how much we eat. But when one is driving for miles and miles, a treat to stay alert is often needed. Claude purchased white cheddar cheese Cheez-its and we would nibble off that box throughout most of the trip. We only had one big meal a day, just like at home. That was a help. Now I will try to maintain that weight loss and slowly but surely lose a little bit more.
I had a LOT of laundry to do. This day I would wade through that. I got down to a load of colored clothes in the dryer with the final load, which was whites, in the washer. I opened the dryer and pulled out my little rain jacket. There was a large black streak on the back. The day before Claude parked close to the storage shelves. I slid between them and the Jeep to get inside. I assumed I had rubbed up again something in my favorite little jacket. I pulled that prewash stuff off the shelf, sprayed the streak down really well and started to scrub it between my hands and fingers. It took a look of rubbing but I finally got it out and a few other spots on the sleeves. I opened the dryer to get the next item of clothing out and noticed that the entire back of my dryer was covered in this black stuff. It was on some other items of clothing. I pulled another item of clothing out, sprayed it down and proceeded to rub it between my hands and fingers. I decided I should check the other clothes in the dryer. Some had black on them and some didn't. I separated the stained items from those not stained so I knew what needed to have prewash sprayed on them. It was at this point, I felt concern that the problems really was my dryer was spitting out something black. That feeling was gone when I pulled a broken ball point pen out of the dryer. It was Claude's favorite pen and it had been left in his pants pocket. It was cleaning black ink. I had an old towel and two old washcloths. I put the folded towel on the floor to kneel on and tried to get this 76 year old body to bend inside the dryer with the door lowered. It was not easy but the spray for cleaning the bathrooms was working wonders on cleaning off the inside of my dryer. Ugh. When the inside of the dryer was clean, I put more water on the old town and put it in the dryer by itself. I would run it through a drying cycle to see if my dryer was really clean. When the towel came out of the dryer clean, I felt comfortable putting the final washer full of whites in the dryer. While it was drying, I called Claude to help me try and get the ink out of the shirts now on top of the washer. We did our best but at least five articles of clothing we unsalvageable. What an experience. My fingers were bleeding by the time I gave up with hand rubbing that prewash into clothes. I will cut the buttons off the shirts and toss the fabric.
The other exciting thing was no mail delivered for while we were gone. I had set up for USPS to hold our mail for 26 days and deliver it on Wednesday. When we got home Tuesday, there was Tuesday's mail in the mailbox but no mail for 26 days we were gone. We waited until Wednesday's mail arrived. It was clearly for Wednesday only. I get USPS Informed Delivery everyday. That is an eMail that tells me what to expect in that day's mail. I had these eMail's in my trash. I went back through them and noted any items we might really want from that days mail. We stopped at the post office. I explained my concern. The clerk checked the back thoroughly and returned to tell me there was nothing in the back. It was like there was nothing they could or would do. We decided to wait till Thursday mail came, then I would go back to the post office and ask them to consult with whoever delivered mail to our home on Tuesday and Wednesday. Maybe they had it on their truck. We went to Burger King for dinner. When we returned home, there was a white basket/box from the post office by our front door. It had our mail from the last 26 days. Hallelujah.
Thursday, September 24th, Claude purchased a few groceries on Wednesday. He got me chocolate milk and dates. This was a pure delight for my lunch for the rest of the week.
The interesting thing this day was organizing the receipts from our trip. I put a manila envelope in each of our suitcases. These were for Claude to collect receipts in as we traveled. He puts them in his wallet during the day and moves them to the manilla envelope in the evening. I needed to know what hotel receipts I needed to print for him. Some had given me a receipt. Some had eMailed me a receipt. Some where Choice Privilege hotels and I told them I would print their receipt when I returned home. I spent a good bit of time going through each receipt. I made a stack each for hotels, gasoline, restaurants and food, entry into places and parking, and it seems like there was a fifth area, can't remember it. I put those receipts in dates order. Then I made sure I had a printed receipt for each of the hotels. This allowed me to delete in The Drive folder on my cellphone. Felt good to have that in order and feel comfortable deleting those things off my cellphone. Claude was happy to get the receipts back in some kind of order.
The other problem I incurred was getting my pictures off my cellphone and onto my picture files on my laptop. I needed to do that to begin the blogging of the trip. Ideally, this should be an easy task. I have an app on my laptop and reads what is on my cellphone. I should be able to open that app, open file explorer with that app, then find all my pictures there. I can then cut or copy and paste them to my laptop. My app would open but none of my travel pictures where showing in file explorer. I had labeled my pictures each day of our trip. I could see them on my phone but not on the app. I decided I would have to eMail the pictures to my laptop from my cellphone. I started trying to that. My phone and laptop decided they were not going to play that game after doing two and a part of a day. So, here I sat with hundreds of pictures I needed on my laptop to begin my blog of the trip. After spending hours trying to get this to work, I determined to stop, let my phone and the laptop rest, and try again the next day.
Claude made is delicious grill cheese and soup for dinner. Very comforting after a frustrating day with the pictures.
Friday, September 25th, we were happy to get home and find the grass not knee deep in our yard. Claude cut it the day before we left. It had now been a month and the grass was longer than we normally left it but not over-the-top tall. That is a testament to not getting lots of water in Kentucky while we were gone. Claude would cut the front yard and edge it. It went fairly easy for him. I need to weed but we will wait for some rain to make that process a little easier.
I went to work on my picture project. Amazingly, the picture showed up on the file explorer with my cellphone app on the laptop. I quickly copied and pasted all pictures into daily files under The Drive on my laptop. Hallelujah!! Then I set to work posting our travel pictures to Facebook. I did the first 16 days of our trip when we were travel the Lewis and Clark Trail and visiting interesting places. The last week of the trip was driving home and stopping to see family. I did not post that.
Saturday, September 26th, Claude set to work cutting the back yard. Boy the grass needs water. Praying for rain.
I started my day by being sure the lesson I was to teach in Relief Society was ready. I had prepared it before we left on our trip. I read through Elder Stevenson's talk about "Lost Luggage, Redeemed Souls" again. Then I opened my PowerPoint I had already created to use for this lesson and reviewed it. I made a few tweaks. If felt good to have this lesson so firmly in my heart and mind. We are on a new schedule at church now. Instead of 40 minutes for Relief Society, we now have 25 minutes. This leaves the teacher very little time to present the lesson. I would set up my lesson by comparing a personal experience with our luggage in Israel our first time abroad, with Elder Stevenson's personal example. Once the setting was firmly in place with a quote by Elder Stevenson about his purpose in sharing that example, I then used two of his bullet points about how to accomplish this helping of others as the Savior would. I prepared a slide for each of these points and then shared the first slide and let the sisters fill in with personal examples of how they have ministered to other adults or how other adults have ministered to them. The second point was ministering to youth. Again, after viewing the slide, the sisters shared examples. We ended right on time. Whew. It felt like the lessons went well. The hardest thing about teaching is all the personal feeling I gain from these General Conference talks. The lesson is to facilitate the sisters each finding their own personal testimony about the talks. It takes a lot of prayer and listening to the Spirit prompting me as to which pieces to use to teach a lesson that reaches all the sisters. This one felt particularly good.
The rest of Saturday I spent getting my Blog going for the trip. I determined I would do a Blog entry for each individual day as some days had lots of pictures. I was able to get through 7 days with the time I had Saturday.
Sunday, September 27th, Claude and I got to church at 10am. He put the hymn numbers up. I sat quietly grateful to be back in our home ward on the bench we always sit in. The second counselor showed up at the end of our pew just before the meeting started. He said Bishop wanted me to lead the singing. Elizabeth, Christensen, the organist, told Claude and me that Mark Thomas Watson was to lead the singing this day. We had not worried about it further. I assured him I could do that and left Claude to sit on the stand. My arm held out okay. Claude told me he can tell when it is getting tired but he doesn't think others can. I do enjoyed leading the singing. Wish my arm was stronger but at least it works well enough to be of help.
I taught the Relief Society lesson and it was well received.
We went to Panera to pick up lunch. They no longer have my Asian Sesame Chicken Salad. Ugh. I found a veggie bowl and ordered that. When we got home and I ate it, I found it to be delicious. They line the bottom of the bowl with phoofy lettuce in the bottom. I would order the salad again but I would ask them not to put lettuce in the bottom. And, I would order a half-size. Very good dressing to mix in with the veggies.
I cleared the DVR while Claude slept. When he woke up we watched all the Music & the Spoke Word that were DVR'd from while we were gone. Then we found Pretty Woman and watched that. We each enjoyed a white peach while watching television. Yum!
Monday, September 28th, was my bi-annual dental cleaning. All went well for me.
Claude would go to Dr. Hollen in the afternoon. He had a tooth fall out after we got home from the trip. He will now need and implant for that tooth. He starts the process in October. Claude would take back the mail basket and get a few grocery items while he was out and about.
I finished the Relief Society newsletter for October and sent it to Jenessa Dymock, our president, for review. She approved it. Yeah!!
I was able to get Day 8 Blogged.
In the evening, Katelyn and Drew called and asked Claude to say a prayer with them. Drew's mother, Denise, is not doing well at all in the hospital. They were going to talk with her about end of life care. Denise is only in her 50's so this is young for this needed conversation and decision. Claude gave a beautiful prayer.
Tuesday, September 29th, was a good day. I received the final flyer to be added to the newsletter. I was able to get it printed, scanned, sent via Facebook and eMail. Then I created the eMail to get the Relief Society announcements for October to Jennifer Barber for the bulletin with the flyer for the October Relief Society activity.
I set to Blogging again and got through our walk in the rainforest at Quinault, Washington.
I called Junie, my sister, for her birthday. She was in great spirits and have a wonderful birthday. We had talked about rodeos. Junie and Steve had never been to a rodeo. She really wanted to experience that. Steve found one near enough to them to make a quick day trip out of it. They both loved the rodeo. They plan to go every year.
In the evening. Claude made a baked halibut dinner with corn on the cob and a little salad. Mike and Neffie gave us the halibut. I sent them a quick text to thank them for this wonderful meal.
Wednesday, September 30th, was a goofy day. Claude and I had both been diligent in trying to get back up to speed after returning from our trip. This was a week later and we had been very busy every day. I think we were ready for some down time. We both got up and accomplished something. I got two more days Blogged. Then we climbed into our recliners, Claude made us hot dogs and potato salad, and we watched Psych for the remainder of the day.
Thursday, October 1st, we started a new month. We were officially in the last quarter of 2026. Yike!!
Claude tried to start his Jeep to back it out on Wednesday evening to get the garbage can to the street from the garage. The Jeep would not start. He back my car out and moved the garbage can. Then he found his trickle charger and put it on the Jeep. Thursday morning, the Jeep turned over but wouldn't keep going. He called Tire Discounters and told them he probably needed a battery and asked if they could look at the Jeep. They told him to bring it right in. I heard all of this happening and quickly went in and asked Claude how I could help. He wanted me to follow him to Tire Discounters in case he had any issues. He let the Jeep roll into the driveway. Then he backed my car out and pulled it around to the passenger side of the Jeep to give the Jeep a charge. Then we were off to Tire Discounters. The Jeep got there okay and we left it and drove to Chick-filA to get Claude some mini-chicken biscuits for breakfast.
We did a couple of errands and then came home. Tire Discounters had called to say it was the battery and they would replace it, they had one in stock, and then run diagnostics to be sure nothing else was going on.
Claude got a nap and I continued to work on my trip Blog. I really wanted to finish the trip Blog this day.
Tire Discounters called. We drove over and Claude picked up his Jeep. He would go grocery shopping after. I would hurry home to complete the Blog of our trip. I did finish the Blog about 6:30pm. Whew!
Katelyn sent us and update about Denise. They are moving her to hospice car and changing her health care directive to Do Not Resuscitate. That is a big decision. It will be hard for Drew. That is where my concern lies.
While watching Psych, Claude received a notice on his phone that his package was at the front door. He ordered new cookware and new wooden cooking utensils. The cookware had arrived. These will presents he purchased for himself for his birthday. Look...he had a grin!!
Catching up with Family Pictures:
Satuday, August 29th, Raelyn and Emelia were treated to little motorcycle rides by a dear friend of Drew, their father. These guys have been friends since they were children. The girls were very happy to get to do this.
Tuesday, September 8th, Raelyn started piano lessons. Some new teaching method.
