Getting Back To Normal

I think things are finally starting to get back to normal here. Or at least as close to normal as anything ever is for me. I think the worst of our colds are gone, though Terry and I both have coughs that seem to want to hang on forever.

And I finally think we are catching up on our sleep. Even though we stayed in nice hotels during our four week trip, I don’t think anyone can sleep as well in a hotel as they do in their own bed at home. I know that for the first few days we were home we both felt exhausted, and I sat down in my recliner and took naps on two or three days.

Apparently at least one of our vehicles decided it was tired, too. Or maybe it was just pouting since we had left it at home and ignored it for so long.

If my dad were still alive, he’d say that we are car poor. We have four vehicles, which is probably too much, but I have a use for each one of them. Terry’s Chrysler Pacifica van is our official “company car,” which we take on road trips and when we are doing research for the blog or my books, and things like that. We’ve put around 29,000 miles on it since we bought it in June of 2017. I bought my Mustang in November of 2018 and it still only has 860 miles on it. I know, that’s ridiculous, but I don’t care. It’s my toy and I’ll play with it when I want to.

Then we have our 1999 Ford pickup, which we bought for just one reason; when we first bought our house and were trying to furnish it, we were appalled at how much the stores wanted to deliver anything. If you bought three items at some of them, they wanted to charge a $50 delivery charge per item. Others were $75 apiece. Instead, we bought the truck for somewhere around $4,000 as I recall, with only 90,000 miles on it. It had belonged to an elderly gentleman who bought it new and did not drive it a lot, and the odometer still hasn’t hit 100,000. But that’s okay, there are times when you need a truck, and it comes in handy for getting my pontoon boat down to the water and back.

And then there’s our trusty old 2005 Ford Explorer, which has somewhere close to 150,000 miles on the odometer, not counting another 75,000 miles or so that we towed it behind our motorhome. It’s our daily driver, and if broke in half tomorrow, I wouldn’t lose any money. Except for routine maintenance items like oil changes, tires and batteries, we have not had to put much money in it, except for a new air conditioning compressor two years ago.

But when I went out couple of days ago and turned the key, the battery was dead. Stone cold dead. I put it on a charger for about five hours and got nothing, then the next day charged another five or six hours, and it still wouldn’t turn over. So I jumped it with the pickup and drove down to O’Reilly auto parts to have a new battery put in. As it turned out, I had bought the battery from O’Reilly’s back in August, 2018, and had a three-year warranty. So the nice people there swapped it out and didn’t charge me a penny! I do like that kind of service, and O’Reillys has always treated us very well.

Because of our trip to Arizona, it’s been over a month since I’ve done any writing except on my daily blog, which usually runs from 500 to 1,000 words, sometimes a bit more. And I have really missed it. Yesterday I sat down with my trusty Sony digital recorder and knocked out 5,300 words in my new John Lee book. It sure feels good to be back at it!

And finally, this happened just before midnight last night. We have lived here for over three years now, but I still get a thrill from standing in my yard watching rockets launch from Cape Canaveral.

Be sure to enter our latest Free Drawing. This week’s prize is an audiobook of Man on the Stair by Stacy Bender. It’s the story of a man whose whole being ceases to exist when he is erased from the system, his digital identity gone. He can’t hold a job, have a bank account, or own a house. He doesn’t exist. So he spends his days wandering the park, keeping street gangs from shooting up the neighborhood, until a good friend is nearly killed while investigating an accident that should not have been possible, and the evidence points to a serial killer who uses technology as a weapon. To enter, click on this Free Drawing link or the tab at the top of this page and enter your name (first and last) in the comments section at the bottom of that page (not this one). Only one entry per person per drawing please, and you must enter with your real name. To prevent spam or multiple entries, the names of cartoon or movie characters are not allowed. The winner will be drawn Sunday evening.

Thought For The Day – Life is like a game of chess. I don’t know how to play chess.