Preparing for Departure

Our time here at Palmdale is coming to an end, for now. We will be pulling up our jacks and heading west next Sunday, March 1. Brothers Ludwig and Dick are making the trip to Texas in the next couple of days and they will follow us around for a while. That should be fun. We have a deep sea fishing experience lined up for them on Thursday. Our anti-nausea prescription patches are waiting for us at Walgreens. According to our friends who have experience with this kind of thing, this will improve our chances of having an enjoyable day. They put it this way…. “we will have more time fishing and less time chumming the waters.” We are arriving early so that we can get a place at the back of the boat which is a better place for either activity.

After we return from the fishing trip, we have Irish night in the rec room. The same entertainer who was here for New Year’s Eve will provide some good dancing. Line dancers are planning to add to the show during his intermission. Hopefully we will return home in enough time and I will have the energy to participate in that. We have a full week ahead of us.

In preparation for our departure we have decided to get this rig ship-shape. For this reason, we have had to recover some of our former industriousness… not without some griping and whining, however. We paid someone to wash the thing but took on the task of hand waxing which took 2 days and 4 whine bottles of water, but it’s done. We loved all of the solid wood cabinetry until we decided that it too needs maintenance and started wiping on Liquid Gold. We are mostly done with that task. We’ve cleaned out half of the basement bays and still have some cleaning and rearranging of storage to get done. Don changed the oil on the generator and we’ll take it in for service on the way out of town. According to Don the lube and oil job will be the cost of a small car. Speaking of small cars, ours got its 10,000 mile preventive maintenance at Toyota last week. That should do it for a year or so.

Even with all of that, we still find time for regular Winter Texan activities. On Wednesday we went to Mexico with friends Peter and Peggy (known as Wisconsin to us) who are also full timers. We went to the dentist to get our teeth cleaned while they did some shopping. Amazingly, the dentist found that we each needed 3 little fillings. Neither of us has had new fillings in 5 or 6 years of routine dental care. We decided to forego having our teeth drilled on and paid for the cleaning which seemed pretty good. We had a good lunch and came back with a new drum for Edie which I plan to have Ludwig deliver to her since it would cost more to ship than it is worth.

Thursday was the annual hog roast here at Palmdale. This is a benefit for a local charity that is put on by the resident’s association. They packed 200 people into the rec room and fed us some really good beans and pulled pork with coleslaw and homemade desserts. It continues to amaze me to look around a room and see such a homogeneous group of people (of European descent, over 60, married, remarried or shacking up, from the Midwest or Canada). Now I can stop commenting on that… it just goes without saying.

Also on Thursday, I finally took my bike off of the back of the camper, put some oil on the chain, inflated the tires and went for a bike ride with friends Karen and Sharon. We started at the Palo Alto Battle field and rode about 15 miles around the Resaca in Brownsville. Don was out golfing that day. Karen made one of the desserts for the hog roast, Pumpkin Bars with Cream Cheese Icing. Don wants me to get the recipe. I think I need to add a tab on this blog for recipes once I learn how to add a tab.

On Friday, friends Cindy, Max and I went with the Red Hat ladies for a tour of the Basilica of Our Lady of San Juan del Valle - National Shrine (www.olsjbasilica.org). I had not read the brochure very well and had expected to be touring a historical relic of some kind. I was pleasantly surprised to come to a place with historical significance but still very much alive and serving the RGV community as a parish church as well as being a pilgrimage destination for Catholics all over the world. While we were on our tour, a priest started the Holy Rosary with a few worshipers in the pews while young and old people came just to say prayers in front of the statues of various saints or the statue of the Virgin. One thing that impressed me the most is the ministry the Basilica provides for blessing Migrant workers as they set out on their rounds and the fiesta they give at the end of the growing season.

I am taking a break from reading for a few days. Since I left Minnesota I’ve lost count of the books that I’ve read. I think I’ve averaged 2 or 3 a week. Most have been mystery or suspense novels though occasionally I take a break and read something from Rosamund Pilcher. The best books I’ve read include one recommended by Dick, Morgan’s Run by Colleen McCoulough, The Sheen on the Silk by Anne Perry, Elaine’s recommendations, The Hawk and the Dove by Penelope Wilcox, and The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morgan while I was in Minnesota. I tend to avoid non-fiction.

I designed some cards to share with friends and had our picture taken to put on it. I've added the picture to the blog.