Remodeling and memories.

Well, I was late getting to bed again, well past six in the morning and more than a little miffed at myself for dawdling that long. I’d hurried through everything so much, and there I was, still not in bed until the hour of six arrived.

The skies cleared throughout the night, leaving the air above wide open for sun to shine when morning arrived. Pretty as ever, stars bright white dots in the vast blackness of space, but still, it was cold as heck.
The dogs shared my opinion of the night for sure, seeing as they all literally lay plastered against, and over, me throughout the night, which left me toasty warm when I woke up somewhere around ten with my arm swollen and tingly from where Chaos had lain splayed over it.

Sleepy limbs. Yuck. Nothing feels worse when you’re sleep drugged and barely capable of forming a single comprehensive thought, while you’re trying to get some life back into the appendage.
No matter though, I drifted right back to sleep until half an hour before waking time the phone rang. There was a dream where I got a rather wonderful letter from some smart publisher who wanted my book…even though I hadn’t even send anything. Hah. But regretfully that was just a dream, and I noticed it while trying to read the letters that I couldn’t make out.
It’s always something I test in dreams, actually. If I can’t read what is written down comprehensively, then I know it’s a dream. Still, in the dream I was thrilled.

The phone call turns out to be nothing of interest–wrong number–making me growl and flop onto my stomach in hopes that the dogs, by some miracle, haven’t noticed. They have, of course, so I get up and start on the morning rituals just five and a half measly hours after bedtime.

I’m not feeling too bad, rolling kinks from my joints and smile into the bright sunlight that shines through my front door for a full minute. Still cold, but at least the sun gives the illusion of warmth as I gather my things and head down to the house.

Exercise day has arrived, and with a mixture of pleasure and dislike I get-to-it the moment I arrive at the house, where big brother’s just finishing up his own session.
What with the chilly temperatures, but the heaters blasting full force, it takes about fifteen minutes to warm up and discard the long sleeved T I put on at the start, for a serious workout.

Perspiration breaks out about half an hour after commencing the day’s routine, which surprises me somewhat, all things considered, but proves that the movements are still having an effect. The punches are getting harder, all muscles working together. Kicks higher and more powerful and jumping is becoming much less of an effort. They hardly make me loose my breath now. The only exercise that still does are the five jab sequence, which really take it out of a person, but even those don’t make me double over now. Progress, I love it!

What with the chill, I take a long HOT shower after an hour’s exercise, my shoulder blades protesting a little after ferociously attacking the bag–pounded out a lot of the past few days’ frustrations, I think–and continuing to do so even after I re-dress and head back to the living area.

Though I didn’t plan to, today, I do write half a page or so, going over the past two days’ progress with big brother as we do some more fine tuning on the general story line of the Bayou vampire story. It’s nicely taking shape now, the plot line’s becoming more solid, reasons and explanations for events getting set “for the record” and details being finalized.

Rather than spend the majority of the day at the computers there are quite a few chores waiting for us, so about an hour before sunset we head on up to the bungalow to make the final arrangements for our tenant, who’ll be returning from the revalidation home tomorrow.

Furniture gets moved around, making everything easily accessible for the wheelchair. Floors and walls swept after a month of disuse. And the bed is freshly made, making everything ready and comfortable for her return tomorrow.

Since we’re up there already we decide to hang up grandpa’s new door, too, ending up being pretty satisfied with the end result that fits an old solid door exactly into the doorway where a ragged one had first hung.
While big brother does a final check of the moped, just to see if it’ll run after at least two weeks of disuse, I head to the house where little sister’s dinner is waiting.

Though my stomach is much better today, I prudently only take a small portion and am happy to find out that I have no trouble keeping the food down today as I settle in a chair to watch a House rerun. Mortified to find myself dozing off near the end, I jump up and start gathering the things we’ll need to hang the last triplet of drawers for the new kitchen.

One of the slides for them, we find, has somehow ended up out of its packet and is lying in a dusty corner. It appears to be all right, but when we start fitting it into the casing, it becomes apparent that something has been damaged, allowing us to hang only two of the drawers now that we’ll have to go to town to get a new slide.

No matter, though: The other two roll in and out smoothly, and the slight inconsistency–the second during this project–of the case being just a few mm too big for the drawers, is rapidly corrected by thin strips of wood wedged along the sides of the slides.

I am pretty pleased to notice that through the hours of the gymnastics necessary for this particular endeavor, I have re-developed an appetite, so, while poring over measurements and tools, big brother and I devour a pizza together, which doesn’t even make my stomach twitch once, while we hang the last drawer and bring everything we used back to the courtyard storage.
By then the eve has drawn to the end, and while we watch an episode of “Frasier” to call in the final hour of the day I find myself thinking back of one of our travels through France.

It is a rather funny memory, really, even though at the time it was somewhat stressful.
It was in France, this particular memory. We had departed from home the day before, and crossed three country borders when we reached the capital city around noon.
We’d just had a short night by the side of the road, after many of hours of driving, so we were all a bit tensed.
Seven people and four dogs were piled into an old converted Mercedes ambulance–turned RV–as we drove into Paris. There were no new sights to see during this particular journey. We’d seen it all before, so the major city was just one of many through which we had to pass in order to get to our destination in Southern Spain. An uncle was behind the wheel, the way he usually did whenever we traveled.

It was a busy day on the roads of Paris–the way they always seemed to be in this particular city–and somehow, while passing the Eiffel tower at a slight distance we ended up on a road without any turn offs. Now this on itself wouldn’t have been much of a problem, had it not been for the fact that we were going in the wrong direction with no sign of being able to turn of anywhere in the near future.

Now one has to know my uncle to understand our dilemma. You see, uncle was a marvelous driver for long distances, somehow when he got behind a wheel he could drive on for days without any trouble whatsoever…as long as there were no surprises on the roads he had to navigate. Now, seeing as he had taken a wrong turn due to a construction sight, and had ended up on a road he was unfamiliar with, we were pretty much stuck on it, for no other reason than the fact that when in doubt, uncle had a tendency to just press the pedal down and keep on driving, no matter what.

So, there we were, wanting to go west, while the road was heading straight north instead, and no matter what was said or done, uncle kept going that way. We pointed out narrow streets in which he could turn off, suggested that he’d make a U turn when the traffic allowed, or just stopped so that we could examine the maps, or ask for directions. Nope. He kept on driving for miles, us kids and teens giggling on the front bench and in the back, joking about how we were going to end up right where we started, right until mom came to the front of the RV and actually had to grab his shoulder for a quick shake, “ordering” him to stop the car right that instant.

At long last he did, looking a little harried as mom and he exchanged places, so she could just make a U turn and head on back the way we came and retrace our trip to the point where we’d turned off the wrong way, calm as you please.

I don’t know why this memory surfaced today, but it was funny thinking back of this event that was one of many much the same: So many travels, each of them having their own funny, scary, exciting, and horrific moments.
In that respect memories are great. What at some point was annoying, or thrilling, now is just a recollection, much like a movie would be. Something to laugh about, or reminisce over, without tensions taking a major role in them.

With this particular memory the evening is officially over and I head to my cabin with the dogs in tow, hurrying their way back inside now that the temperatures have miraculously dropped below ten degrees Celsius. This never happens around this time of year. In the past decade or so that we’ve lived here, such temperatures only arrive nearing the end of January or even February. Global warming at work, I’m thinking.

As is usually the case during winter, my fingers are stiff with cold pretty much all day long, so the first thing I do upon arriving in my quarters is plug in the heater and blissfully stand in front of it, soaking the heat radiating into the bedroom.
It takes me more than half an hour to get my stereo started, but by the time I do, I can settle down with my latest read and slouch back to allow my body to wind down. Once I feel relaxed enough, I boot up my computer and start on the day’s blog.

All things considered it was good day–or at least better then I had expected when I first woke up this morning.