The last two weeks we have been lucky enough to spend lots of time with Cori and Greg, and they have been the perfect friends.  They understand we need a lot of space right now because of the diet/nicotine withdrawal crankiness, but are also around if we want to hang out.  Plus Hobie has been great for Jack to have company although Jack is becoming quite the teenage punk.  Hobie loses patience with Jack’s shenanigans, and occasionally puts the smack-down on him, which is actually pretty funny to see.

I bought them this rope toy. Jack is faster but Hobie outweighs him!

Jack has also learned how to climb up on the back of couches (Aunt Cori taught him) and now he spends lots of time looking out our windows.  It doesn’t bother me, but I will say I am glad I decided to go with the cloth couch rather than the ultra leather because I am not sure how well that would have held up.

He learned this new trick at Aunt Cori’s!! I worry about him puncturing her leather. I tried to trim his toenails but it only went OK.

I was also able to go to Cori’s Dad’s 80th birthday party which was really fun.  Lee didn’t feel up to it, but it was good for me to get out and I really like Don who I have seen several times over the last few years. He is in a really nice independent living facility and we all really liked it.  The food was terrific and there are lots of activities which keep him busy.  About a week later, the four of us went up and had dinner with him and Lee really liked it.  The nice thing about eating there is portions are very reasonable and all of the food is reasonably good for you.  Plus the catfish was Dee-licious!

More mundane life still goes on, despite whatever else is happening, and of course that was the same for us.  In the midst of everything,  I was able to finish our taxes and was thrilled that we this year we should actually get around $1700 back.  Partly that was the new tax laws, but mainly it was that we found a new tax preparer who specializes in gate guards.  She pointed us to some deductions we were leaving on the table, which definitely helped.

What else?  Well, I also remembered Kyrston’s monthly baby present and this time I got a deer blankie. Reasonably priced and super cute.  Speaking of that I wanted to personally thank whoever bought their RV hitch through our site.  That purchase earned us $41, which was amazing.  Next month I will be able to get her a Woodland Friends wall decal for the nursery and some super cute rattle socks!  These are small things, but she loves getting the little presents and it was a really bright spot in a stressful time.

Speaking of money, Lee went and got the 100,000 mile Truck Service and finally our pre-paid maintenance package was expired.  It cost $300 for an oil change and coolant flush, but it really needed to be done.  Going forward, Lee is going to be doing those maintenance items himself, but before he started he wanted to make sure it had a professional checkout.  They did discover a tiny leak in the transmission, but this is still covered under our extgended warranty.  Unfortunately they couldn’t fit us in so I will need to take care of this when we are in Phoenix.  They also told us we needed tires, but we were aware of that.  Our plan was to cover the cost of both truck and trailer tires with our work this summer in Portland.  It’s unfortunate they all need replaced at the same time, but what can we do??  Definitely need them replaced prior to heading east in October.

Finally I need to mention a problem with our RV that I have held off talking about.  For a while, Lee has felt there might be a break in a weld in the front of our RV, and we were finally able to confirm that.  Our plan is to go get it worked on as soon as Lee’s work is finished in Phoenix because we have an entire month free, just in case it takes that long. The good news is after much research Lee found a welding shop that he feels comfortable with.  The bad news is they said they have problems getting extended warranty companies to pay for their work and we cannot stay in it while they work on it.  That means we will need to pay for a hotel or other option along with the repair possibly.  There is even a very small chance the entire rig will need to be totaled.  Obviously none of this was great news on top of everything else, but for once in my life I am not going to borrow trouble.  Whatever happens, happens and we will just deal with it.

In some respects, it is the perfect storm of events, but this is not an uncommon theme in my life.  Even before we went on the road, issues tended to pile up.  Remember when I quit my job and lost our truck engine all in the same week?  At this point, I am feeling pretty zen about everything because here’s the thing:  Lee’s alive.  If he wasn’t I would be dealing with all of this by myself.  That would be a true disaster.  As long as we are together, we will face whatever comes and figure it out.

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