November 30th, 2015...a date which will live with the other three.
On October 3rd, 2011, I had my right knee replaced. It had been hurting with varying degrees of agony since the early 1970s. After surgery it hurt less, but never really stopped hurting until the summer of 2014.
On December 16th and 30th, 2013, I had my cataract-slimed lenses replaced with Bausch and Lomb implants. That was amazingly cool, to wake up and see better than I had in years.
On June 6th, 2014, I had a minimally invasive right hip replacement, and within a couple of months my right leg was nearly pain free. But!
In the fall, I was still using my cane on dog walks, just for extra stability. I had to stop, however, because my left shoulder was beginning to hurt so horribly. I figured the pain would subside after a while of not using the cane. It didn't. In the spring of '15 I told my doctor about it. She gave me a steroid shot. No effect. We moved to Tennessee, we bought a condo, I was remodeling the kitchen, and my shoulder started getting rushes of pins and needles that continued down my left arm to my wrist, leaving me breathless with pain. I told my Tennessee doctor the whole story. He sent me to physical therapy. I learned to stop the pins and needles thing (yay) but I also learned that now I couldn't lift my left arm above chest level - very counter-productive for kitchen remodeling. Three weeks of physical therapy showed us that a) the pain was getting worse and b) the mobility was not getting any better. My doctor called me back in and sent me to a neurosurgeon, who sent me to get an MRI, which showed that the C5 nerve coming out of my neck was being pinched by a bone spur. That's the nerve that tells my muscles to lift my arm above chest level. Surgery was the only hope. No big deal. They would simply slash open my neck in the front, move my throat parts out of the way, and go into my neck vertebrae with shovels and rakes and implements of destruction. Ten days later, I was scrubbed and shaved and prepped for surgery. They removed an assortment of bone fragments, fused together four levels, installed some screws, and closed me up again.
When I awoke on November 30th, my shoulder pain was gone. I had a sore throat, some difficulty swallowing, and some constipation, but that was a good trade for the blinding pain I'd had in my shoulder. By Wednesday, I was able to raise my arm all the way in front of me. Today, I raised it all the way out to the side. My sore throat and other issues are gone. My neck pain is gone. The only way I know that all that was real and not a bad dream is the big bandage on my neck, and the hard plastic cervical collar I wear at all times. The bandage comes off tomorrow, leaving Steri-Strips to keep me together until they come loose on their own.
I spent a long long lifetime whining about doctors and how I didn't trust them and refused to have anything to do with them. It took getting old and running out of other choices to admit that there are many doctors that really can and will help me feel better.
Damn it!
Saturday, December 5, 2015
Thursday, September 3, 2015
Thinking Inside, Outside, All About The Box. Turtles, That Is.
During the 60s my summertime activities included collecting box turtles. One summer I had seventeen of them wandering around our screened patio, looking for a way out. Did you know that box turtles can climb screens? I didn't either, but they can and did, sometimes several feet off the floor. Anyhoo, we named them all and got to know their various personalities, fed them fruit, vegetables and meat scraps, had turtle races, traded turtles between us, and at the end of summer, we let them go. Often we found the same individuals again the following summer. It was, you can tell, a major part of my childhood, finding and keeping box turtles. Once I had a snapping turtle, and several times I kept snakes, but summer after summer - box turtles.
Then in '68 we moved to Vero Beach, Florida, and my focus shifted to fishing. After high school graduation in 1971, I returned to Maryland, but had neither the time, the space nor the inclination to look for box turtles. The next time I saw one was in Ocoee, Florida in 1998, thirty years and many thousands of miles later. It was walking calmly across the driveway of F/X Scenery and Display, where I worked as a carpenter. No longer having any desire to keep wild critters captive, I watched it crawl into the scrub beside the driveway, and walked away. It did spark these same memories, but having no blog, they got away from me. Did anyone have a blog in 1998? Probably.
In 2009, nearly twenty years and many thousands more miles later, we were living in Albuquerque for Carmen's ministerial internship. One of the things we kept hearing people there complain about was the problem of snails in the garden. There was a pretty nice garden behind the house we were renting, so I looked up snails and remedies for same. Lo and behold, one of the best ways to control snails is to keep box turtles in your garden. Some garden supply stores had box turtles for sale. Carmen mentioned this to her peeps at the First Unitarian Church of Albuquerque, and it turned out that one of them had a bunch of box turtles, and would be happy to give two of them to us. We got them on our 23rd wedding anniversary. So 23 years is the Turtle Anniversary. Very soon after they arrived, the weather started cooling off, and Buckbeak and Fluffy disappeared until the following June! We gave them to Amy and Colby Landers for their garden when we moved to Pennsylvania in July.
In Meadville, PA, especially after the acquisition and marathon walking of the dog, I was always on the lookout for box turtles. The only one I ever saw was half the size of a teaspoon.
A month and a half after moving to Nashville, on our way to walk Grace in Edwin Warner Park early one morning, there was a full grown box turtle crossing Hicks Road. Carmen stopped the car, and I ran to pick it up before someone smushed it accidentally or intentionally. We let it go in the park. I hope it is thriving there! And I hope there will be more of them in my future. I like box turtles!
Then in '68 we moved to Vero Beach, Florida, and my focus shifted to fishing. After high school graduation in 1971, I returned to Maryland, but had neither the time, the space nor the inclination to look for box turtles. The next time I saw one was in Ocoee, Florida in 1998, thirty years and many thousands of miles later. It was walking calmly across the driveway of F/X Scenery and Display, where I worked as a carpenter. No longer having any desire to keep wild critters captive, I watched it crawl into the scrub beside the driveway, and walked away. It did spark these same memories, but having no blog, they got away from me. Did anyone have a blog in 1998? Probably.
In 2009, nearly twenty years and many thousands more miles later, we were living in Albuquerque for Carmen's ministerial internship. One of the things we kept hearing people there complain about was the problem of snails in the garden. There was a pretty nice garden behind the house we were renting, so I looked up snails and remedies for same. Lo and behold, one of the best ways to control snails is to keep box turtles in your garden. Some garden supply stores had box turtles for sale. Carmen mentioned this to her peeps at the First Unitarian Church of Albuquerque, and it turned out that one of them had a bunch of box turtles, and would be happy to give two of them to us. We got them on our 23rd wedding anniversary. So 23 years is the Turtle Anniversary. Very soon after they arrived, the weather started cooling off, and Buckbeak and Fluffy disappeared until the following June! We gave them to Amy and Colby Landers for their garden when we moved to Pennsylvania in July.
In Meadville, PA, especially after the acquisition and marathon walking of the dog, I was always on the lookout for box turtles. The only one I ever saw was half the size of a teaspoon.
A month and a half after moving to Nashville, on our way to walk Grace in Edwin Warner Park early one morning, there was a full grown box turtle crossing Hicks Road. Carmen stopped the car, and I ran to pick it up before someone smushed it accidentally or intentionally. We let it go in the park. I hope it is thriving there! And I hope there will be more of them in my future. I like box turtles!
Sunday, August 9, 2015
Nashville Cats, Dog and Humans
Three weeks. That's how long we've lived in Greater Nashville. We're renting a 3 bedroom 2 bath apartment in a pet-friendly complex three minutes from the church, next door to a Shell gas station/ convenience store/ Dunkin' Donuts. The gas station also has several pallets of mulch for sale, if gasoline isn't enough for you. Bellevue is southwest of downtown Nashville, but the address is still Nashville 37221.
The apartment is pretty nice, as apartments go. One bedroom we use as a bedroom, one bedroom is Carmen's office. The third is the storage unit, with my chrome shelving, completely filled with boxes, around the perimeter, the floor space inhabited by several large items of furniture and more boxes, and the closet also full of what we politely refer to as stuff. Along one wall of the living room we have a four-high, three-deep stack of boxes of books - about 100 boxes - most of which will go into Carmen's office at the church as soon as the remodeling of office space is finished.
Dog walking has been excellent. There are many dogs here, as one might expect of a pet-friendly complex, and there are a lot of green and brown and shady spaces for dog walking purposes. Rabbits and squirrels are plentiful as well, providing hours of entertainment. And yes, our hound dog indeed caught a rabbit right here in Nashville, Tennessee. In addition, less than three miles away is Edwin Warner Park, with miles of shady paved trails through the woods, and a fenced dog park, where we have never been without dogs for Grace to play with.
Down the road a short piece one way is a Publix grocery store. They have Geezer Day - 5% off your total order every Wednesday if you're 62 or older. They don't call it that, of course, but they should. Also there is Staples, the post office, Home Depot and a cluster of restaurants. A short distance down the same road the other direction are two great Mexican restaurants, the Thai restaurant mentioned in the previous post, a bunch of nice stores and Yogurt Mountain, a hard place to stay away from on a hot day.
Carmen officially starts her job as minister to the Greater Nashville Unitarian Universalist Congregation on the fifteenth. She has been using this between time to get settled, get herself prepared to begin work, get our life here in gear, and yes, even to relax some. Right now she's at the pool. Good for her. But she's already had several meetings and phone calls with church folks. And she's been asked to do the blessing at the Mayoral Run-off Candidates' forum next week. Toto, we're not in Meadville any more.
We love it here. Yes, it's hot outside during the middle of the day. We do our major dog walks early in the morning before traffic builds, and run our errands in the evening if we can. And it's dollars to Dunkin' Donuts (only 99 cents each) that it won't be 23 below zero in February.
The apartment is pretty nice, as apartments go. One bedroom we use as a bedroom, one bedroom is Carmen's office. The third is the storage unit, with my chrome shelving, completely filled with boxes, around the perimeter, the floor space inhabited by several large items of furniture and more boxes, and the closet also full of what we politely refer to as stuff. Along one wall of the living room we have a four-high, three-deep stack of boxes of books - about 100 boxes - most of which will go into Carmen's office at the church as soon as the remodeling of office space is finished.
Dog walking has been excellent. There are many dogs here, as one might expect of a pet-friendly complex, and there are a lot of green and brown and shady spaces for dog walking purposes. Rabbits and squirrels are plentiful as well, providing hours of entertainment. And yes, our hound dog indeed caught a rabbit right here in Nashville, Tennessee. In addition, less than three miles away is Edwin Warner Park, with miles of shady paved trails through the woods, and a fenced dog park, where we have never been without dogs for Grace to play with.
Down the road a short piece one way is a Publix grocery store. They have Geezer Day - 5% off your total order every Wednesday if you're 62 or older. They don't call it that, of course, but they should. Also there is Staples, the post office, Home Depot and a cluster of restaurants. A short distance down the same road the other direction are two great Mexican restaurants, the Thai restaurant mentioned in the previous post, a bunch of nice stores and Yogurt Mountain, a hard place to stay away from on a hot day.
Carmen officially starts her job as minister to the Greater Nashville Unitarian Universalist Congregation on the fifteenth. She has been using this between time to get settled, get herself prepared to begin work, get our life here in gear, and yes, even to relax some. Right now she's at the pool. Good for her. But she's already had several meetings and phone calls with church folks. And she's been asked to do the blessing at the Mayoral Run-off Candidates' forum next week. Toto, we're not in Meadville any more.
We love it here. Yes, it's hot outside during the middle of the day. We do our major dog walks early in the morning before traffic builds, and run our errands in the evening if we can. And it's dollars to Dunkin' Donuts (only 99 cents each) that it won't be 23 below zero in February.
Monday, June 15, 2015
Going South
We left Florida ten years ago. Upon departure I declared that I never wanted to set foot in Florida again. Of course, three months ago, when temperatures in Meadville dipped into the double digits below zero, that decision seemed hasty. It was not an unwelcome thing, therefore, when the dice were thrown in the ministerial search game, and came up Nashville.
The next step in the process is a ten-day candidating week, to meet the whole congregation, have meetings with various groups and committees, preach on two Sundays and be voted in by the congregation as their next minister. The normal routine is that the minister and significant other fly to the host city. We, however can usually be counted upon to eschew the normal and carve our own groove. We were not comfortable leaving Grace with "strangers" (Grace knows no strangers - all humans are her close personal friends) so we planned to drive to Nashville, a ten-hour drive according to Google Maps.
My parents live in Blairsville, in the mountains of north Georgia - a four hour drive from Nashville, according to Google Maps. We figured that if I were going to get a visit with them this year, now would be the best time. If I accompanied her to the first three events - dinner with the Search Committee on Friday evening (to which Grace was pointedly invited,) dinner with the Board of Trustees at a Thai restaurant (A THAI RESTAURANT!!!) on Saturday evening, and church on Sunday morning - I could be excused to go to Georgia for the rest of the week. We contacted my sister-in-law Rachel, a Blairsville resident, and asked if she would be willing to drive to Nashville, babysit Grace on Saturday evening and Sunday morning, then haul Grace and me to Blairsville on Sunday afternoon. Lo and behold, she said she'd love to.
On Wednesday. the lace on my right Keens waterproof dog walking boot began to fray. It looked as though it could snap at any time, but time to figure out what length of laces I needed was something I did not have. I tied them gingerly, and vowed to rectify the situation as soon as the opportunity presented itself.
On a snowy Thursday morning (April showers bring snow plowers) we loaded the Subaru with Carmen's ten days' worth of interview clothes, my much smaller volume of stuff and Grace's big bag of necessary items. Hermione, our GPS, declared our arrival time to be 8:30pm. She sent us down south on Interstate 79, and off we went. Looking at my new 2015 Rand McNally Road Atlas, I thought that the best route would take us down I-79 all the way to Charleston, WV and I-64 over to Lexington, KY. The Bluegrass Parkway would take us to Elizabethtown, where we would pick up I-65 south to Tennessee and on to Nashville. Evidently, Hermione wanted us to go through Columbus and Cincinnati. She added a half hour to our arrival time when we ignored her orders to take I-80 west. When we ignored her again and refused to take I-70 west, she added an additional hour. She must be pretty well connected, because we hadn't been on I-64 more than ten minutes when we hit a wall of stopped traffic in western West Virginia. Three more hours were added by the time we cleared whatever it was at mile marker 11, but we had a lovely drive through downtown Huntington, WV to cap it off. By now the estimated time of arrival had jumped to 1:00am Eastern daylight savings time.
The late night drive around Lexington was the next pain in the ass. I thought going around the south side looked best, but my track record hadn't been very good up to now, so we followed Hermione's directions. Off the Interstate we went, traversing about five miles of suburban surface streets north of the city to reach the Bluegrass Parkway. Once we did, however, it was smooth sailing all the way to Nashville. As advertised, we arrived at Extended Stay America right at midnight Central time.
Room 325 was, as one might guess, on the third floor. What we did not guess was that our little girl Grace is afraid of elevators. This was her first encounter with one, as far as we know, but she did not want to go in there. Carmen took her up the stairs while I maneuvered the fully loaded baggage cart into the elevator and from there to the room. It was a pretty nice room, with a kitchen sink, a two burner stove, cabinets and counter top. We were perplexed because there were no dishes, utensils, pans or even a coffee maker (!!!) until Carmen found a notice about calling the front desk and requesting items from a list of possibilities. First thing Friday morning she called, and within ten minutes we were up and running.
Carmen was busy with her preparations for meetings and Sunday's sermon. After walking the dog around the block and back, I slipped quietly out the door and set out to find boot laces. The first place I tried was a running and walking shoe store two doors down from the hotel. They recommended Cumberland Transit, a hiking and camping clothing store. On the way there was a shoe repair shop. They recommended Cumberland Transit. I went to Cumberland Transit. What they had was a twelve foot long lace with four shrink wrap ends, All I needed was a knife or scissors and a lighter, and I was in business. Yippee.
Even more exciting: between the hotel and the store I passed a Panera, Chipotle, an Indian restaurant, a Chinese restaurant, a steak house and an ice cream shop. "I could live here," I said.
Soon after I returned to the room, we saddled up the pup and drove about five blocks to Centennial Park, where there was reputed to be a dog park within the park. We didn't find it, but had a lovely couple of hours walking Grace around the pond and the Parthenon. It was warm (to us, anyway) and sunny. Grace was her usual big hit with park goers, and we were struck by how alive and vibrant the atmosphere was. "We could live here," we said.
On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at Walgreens. I stayed in the car while Carmen went in and bought a lighter, a roll of paper towels, two gallon jugs of water and a few more items. The rest of the afternoon was spent (by me) unlacing my boots and installing my newly cut and tipped laces. It turned out, however, that the hard rubber top grommet had a very small hole, and the shrink-wrapped nibs on the new laces were not going to slide through. After 2 1/2 hours of trying, I managed to poke two of them through with the help of a fork. The other two nibs came off in the struggle. After much weeping and gnashing of teeth, I peeled the label off of a prescription bottle and used strips of it to tape up the two fraying ends. They went through the grommet pretty easily! So I had laces - not pretty, but not fixin' to break, either. I measured the old laces before throwing them away. They were 48".
At 6:00, a search committee person picked us up and drove us to the beautiful home of another search committee person and his significant other. Grace was warmly welcomed and so were we. Grace was the belle of the ball. She greeted every guest without being a pest. When the hamburgers came off the grill, she curled up beside me and went to sleep for an hour or so. Dave, our host, fell in love with her. He said he'd be happy to dog-sit anytime. About an hour after we ate, Grace woke up and lobbied me for a walk. I took her out to explore this new territory and mark it for canine posterity. When it was time to return to the party, we encountered some difficulty trying to figure out which of the nearly identical condos was the right one. When we finally did, folks were stirring, getting ready to depart. We loaded Grace into the car and went back to the hotel.
Saturday morning at about 9:30 Rachel called to say she was downstairs. I went down and helped bring her stuff up to the room. After a bit of relaxation and conversation, we loaded the four of us into the Subaru and drove to the Greater Nashville Unitarian Universalist Congregation's beautiful building, where we were met by Pam the realtor, thick southern drawl and all. We put towels on the back seat of her Lexus, loaded all five mammals and set out to look at the possibilities for places to live on the west side of the Nashville metropolitan area. The one she was most anxious to show us was "near the church," and would likely become available about the time we would be ready for it. She drove and drove, describing all the while how nice the place was, how convenient to the church, how the coyotes would make it unwise to leave Grace outside unsupervised. And still we drove. The whole way I was thinking about how much I love to walk to the store, and how many hours it would take to walk from way out here. Long before we arrived, Carmen and I both knew this was not the place for us, but we kept quiet. Then Pam drove us around and around the vicinity, describing subdivisions and neighborhoods as we rode through them. The ones we liked the best had no homes available, but Pam said she would keep watch for them to come up for sale. After about two hours, we returned to the church, said bye to Pam and headed back to the hotel.
Dinner at the Thai restaurant was very yummy, as Thai food is wont to be. (I hadn't had Thai since "Tasty Thai" in Orlando) The Board of Trustees was a nice group of humans, and they seemed to like us as well. We didn't want to take up the ten-person table for very long, so it was still pretty early when we broke up the meeting. Back again to the hotel, where Carmen worked on her sermon, Rachel watched TV and I took Grace for a long walk.
Sunday morning was a joyful thing. The congregation had been hearing updates from the Search Committee for two years, and here at last was the minister and her wife. We hid out in the minister's office until time to go on. When the time came, I took a seat between two Search Committee members, and Carmen went to the front. A Search Committee person introduced her, to tumultuous applause - yes, they are an applauding bunch - and on with the show. Her interaction with the kids was a hit, her sermon was a home run, and then came coffee hour. Obviously, someone had spilled the beans about me and my long love affair with show business, because several congregants sought me out to tell me about their theatre group or operatic organization. It appears that I will have no trouble finding fun and rewarding things to do in Nashville. The problem will probably be choosing what to do and what to say no to. Luckily, I learned to say no many decades ago.
We peeled ourselves away at about 1:30, picked up lunch for us and Rachel, and returned "home." It was after 3 by the time we had eaten, loaded Rachel's, Grace's and my stuff in her Rav4, piled in and hit the road. We ran into a one hour construction delay just east of Nashville, but one stop for gas and one more for all three of us to "rest'" put us at my parents' house a little after 9:00. Rachel high-tailed it home to her kitty, and Grace and I visited for a little while before going to bed.
I fell easily into the routine at my mommy and daddy's house. Up early, eat breakfast, lounge around a while discussing what to do and not do today, eat lunch, lounge around sleepily for a while, eat supper, watch the 8:00 movie on TCM and go to bed. I, of course, included hour or so dog walks after breakfast and before supper. On Monday afternoon we went to the grocery store, where I found 42" boot laces. The 48s were really too long, so I bought the 42s. They work excellently to this day. At last the bootlace saga came to a happy ending! On Tuesday morning, my dad and I took Grace to a big wooded park where people walk their dogs. The (nearly) 92 year old man kept up with us all the way around, and Grace got to sniff some dog butt - a good day! On Wednesday, Grace and I wandered onto the property of a geezer wearing a pistol in a holster. "Oh, this is for snakes," he said. Thursday we were back at the grocery store primarily because of ice cream issues. They eat ice cream after lunch and supper pretty much every day - I like that. I don't remember any fun facts about Friday or Saturday. On Sunday early afternoon, I got a text message from Carmen that the vote was unanimous to call her as the new minister at the Greater Nashville Unitarian Universalist Congregation!
It was early evening when Carmen rolled into White Oak Drive. She was exhausted after ten days of meetings and church services, not to mention the drive from the west side of Nashville. We all visited for a little while, then went to bed. Monday morning we got up, ate breakfast, I walked the dog while Carmen got everything packed up for transport, and by 10:00 we were on the road. We stopped by Rachel's apartment to see her new digs and thank her again, then lit out for Summersville, WV, with one stop for gas and another at Tamarack, the artsy fartsy "Best of West Virginia" place near Beckley. After a fairly peaceful night's sleep, we pushed on for home with one stop for gas and another at the Fiesta Ware Outlet at the other end of West Virginia. We arrived home in late afternoon, ready to go full bore into the process of fixing up the house to sell and deciding what to move and what to let go.
By early June, the whole house was repainted inside and out, the realtor had put it on the market and we had let go of a whole lot of stuff. Every room was staged to look roomy and cute. The landscaping was beautiful, a far cry from the ugly it had been. Today, June 15th, we accepted a strong offer and signed a contract to sell. A month from now we rent a 26 foot truck, bring in the loaders Carmen hired, and off we go, new boot laces and all!
The next step in the process is a ten-day candidating week, to meet the whole congregation, have meetings with various groups and committees, preach on two Sundays and be voted in by the congregation as their next minister. The normal routine is that the minister and significant other fly to the host city. We, however can usually be counted upon to eschew the normal and carve our own groove. We were not comfortable leaving Grace with "strangers" (Grace knows no strangers - all humans are her close personal friends) so we planned to drive to Nashville, a ten-hour drive according to Google Maps.
My parents live in Blairsville, in the mountains of north Georgia - a four hour drive from Nashville, according to Google Maps. We figured that if I were going to get a visit with them this year, now would be the best time. If I accompanied her to the first three events - dinner with the Search Committee on Friday evening (to which Grace was pointedly invited,) dinner with the Board of Trustees at a Thai restaurant (A THAI RESTAURANT!!!) on Saturday evening, and church on Sunday morning - I could be excused to go to Georgia for the rest of the week. We contacted my sister-in-law Rachel, a Blairsville resident, and asked if she would be willing to drive to Nashville, babysit Grace on Saturday evening and Sunday morning, then haul Grace and me to Blairsville on Sunday afternoon. Lo and behold, she said she'd love to.
On Wednesday. the lace on my right Keens waterproof dog walking boot began to fray. It looked as though it could snap at any time, but time to figure out what length of laces I needed was something I did not have. I tied them gingerly, and vowed to rectify the situation as soon as the opportunity presented itself.
On a snowy Thursday morning (April showers bring snow plowers) we loaded the Subaru with Carmen's ten days' worth of interview clothes, my much smaller volume of stuff and Grace's big bag of necessary items. Hermione, our GPS, declared our arrival time to be 8:30pm. She sent us down south on Interstate 79, and off we went. Looking at my new 2015 Rand McNally Road Atlas, I thought that the best route would take us down I-79 all the way to Charleston, WV and I-64 over to Lexington, KY. The Bluegrass Parkway would take us to Elizabethtown, where we would pick up I-65 south to Tennessee and on to Nashville. Evidently, Hermione wanted us to go through Columbus and Cincinnati. She added a half hour to our arrival time when we ignored her orders to take I-80 west. When we ignored her again and refused to take I-70 west, she added an additional hour. She must be pretty well connected, because we hadn't been on I-64 more than ten minutes when we hit a wall of stopped traffic in western West Virginia. Three more hours were added by the time we cleared whatever it was at mile marker 11, but we had a lovely drive through downtown Huntington, WV to cap it off. By now the estimated time of arrival had jumped to 1:00am Eastern daylight savings time.
The late night drive around Lexington was the next pain in the ass. I thought going around the south side looked best, but my track record hadn't been very good up to now, so we followed Hermione's directions. Off the Interstate we went, traversing about five miles of suburban surface streets north of the city to reach the Bluegrass Parkway. Once we did, however, it was smooth sailing all the way to Nashville. As advertised, we arrived at Extended Stay America right at midnight Central time.
Room 325 was, as one might guess, on the third floor. What we did not guess was that our little girl Grace is afraid of elevators. This was her first encounter with one, as far as we know, but she did not want to go in there. Carmen took her up the stairs while I maneuvered the fully loaded baggage cart into the elevator and from there to the room. It was a pretty nice room, with a kitchen sink, a two burner stove, cabinets and counter top. We were perplexed because there were no dishes, utensils, pans or even a coffee maker (!!!) until Carmen found a notice about calling the front desk and requesting items from a list of possibilities. First thing Friday morning she called, and within ten minutes we were up and running.
Carmen was busy with her preparations for meetings and Sunday's sermon. After walking the dog around the block and back, I slipped quietly out the door and set out to find boot laces. The first place I tried was a running and walking shoe store two doors down from the hotel. They recommended Cumberland Transit, a hiking and camping clothing store. On the way there was a shoe repair shop. They recommended Cumberland Transit. I went to Cumberland Transit. What they had was a twelve foot long lace with four shrink wrap ends, All I needed was a knife or scissors and a lighter, and I was in business. Yippee.
Even more exciting: between the hotel and the store I passed a Panera, Chipotle, an Indian restaurant, a Chinese restaurant, a steak house and an ice cream shop. "I could live here," I said.
Soon after I returned to the room, we saddled up the pup and drove about five blocks to Centennial Park, where there was reputed to be a dog park within the park. We didn't find it, but had a lovely couple of hours walking Grace around the pond and the Parthenon. It was warm (to us, anyway) and sunny. Grace was her usual big hit with park goers, and we were struck by how alive and vibrant the atmosphere was. "We could live here," we said.
On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at Walgreens. I stayed in the car while Carmen went in and bought a lighter, a roll of paper towels, two gallon jugs of water and a few more items. The rest of the afternoon was spent (by me) unlacing my boots and installing my newly cut and tipped laces. It turned out, however, that the hard rubber top grommet had a very small hole, and the shrink-wrapped nibs on the new laces were not going to slide through. After 2 1/2 hours of trying, I managed to poke two of them through with the help of a fork. The other two nibs came off in the struggle. After much weeping and gnashing of teeth, I peeled the label off of a prescription bottle and used strips of it to tape up the two fraying ends. They went through the grommet pretty easily! So I had laces - not pretty, but not fixin' to break, either. I measured the old laces before throwing them away. They were 48".
At 6:00, a search committee person picked us up and drove us to the beautiful home of another search committee person and his significant other. Grace was warmly welcomed and so were we. Grace was the belle of the ball. She greeted every guest without being a pest. When the hamburgers came off the grill, she curled up beside me and went to sleep for an hour or so. Dave, our host, fell in love with her. He said he'd be happy to dog-sit anytime. About an hour after we ate, Grace woke up and lobbied me for a walk. I took her out to explore this new territory and mark it for canine posterity. When it was time to return to the party, we encountered some difficulty trying to figure out which of the nearly identical condos was the right one. When we finally did, folks were stirring, getting ready to depart. We loaded Grace into the car and went back to the hotel.
Saturday morning at about 9:30 Rachel called to say she was downstairs. I went down and helped bring her stuff up to the room. After a bit of relaxation and conversation, we loaded the four of us into the Subaru and drove to the Greater Nashville Unitarian Universalist Congregation's beautiful building, where we were met by Pam the realtor, thick southern drawl and all. We put towels on the back seat of her Lexus, loaded all five mammals and set out to look at the possibilities for places to live on the west side of the Nashville metropolitan area. The one she was most anxious to show us was "near the church," and would likely become available about the time we would be ready for it. She drove and drove, describing all the while how nice the place was, how convenient to the church, how the coyotes would make it unwise to leave Grace outside unsupervised. And still we drove. The whole way I was thinking about how much I love to walk to the store, and how many hours it would take to walk from way out here. Long before we arrived, Carmen and I both knew this was not the place for us, but we kept quiet. Then Pam drove us around and around the vicinity, describing subdivisions and neighborhoods as we rode through them. The ones we liked the best had no homes available, but Pam said she would keep watch for them to come up for sale. After about two hours, we returned to the church, said bye to Pam and headed back to the hotel.
Dinner at the Thai restaurant was very yummy, as Thai food is wont to be. (I hadn't had Thai since "Tasty Thai" in Orlando) The Board of Trustees was a nice group of humans, and they seemed to like us as well. We didn't want to take up the ten-person table for very long, so it was still pretty early when we broke up the meeting. Back again to the hotel, where Carmen worked on her sermon, Rachel watched TV and I took Grace for a long walk.
Sunday morning was a joyful thing. The congregation had been hearing updates from the Search Committee for two years, and here at last was the minister and her wife. We hid out in the minister's office until time to go on. When the time came, I took a seat between two Search Committee members, and Carmen went to the front. A Search Committee person introduced her, to tumultuous applause - yes, they are an applauding bunch - and on with the show. Her interaction with the kids was a hit, her sermon was a home run, and then came coffee hour. Obviously, someone had spilled the beans about me and my long love affair with show business, because several congregants sought me out to tell me about their theatre group or operatic organization. It appears that I will have no trouble finding fun and rewarding things to do in Nashville. The problem will probably be choosing what to do and what to say no to. Luckily, I learned to say no many decades ago.
We peeled ourselves away at about 1:30, picked up lunch for us and Rachel, and returned "home." It was after 3 by the time we had eaten, loaded Rachel's, Grace's and my stuff in her Rav4, piled in and hit the road. We ran into a one hour construction delay just east of Nashville, but one stop for gas and one more for all three of us to "rest'" put us at my parents' house a little after 9:00. Rachel high-tailed it home to her kitty, and Grace and I visited for a little while before going to bed.
I fell easily into the routine at my mommy and daddy's house. Up early, eat breakfast, lounge around a while discussing what to do and not do today, eat lunch, lounge around sleepily for a while, eat supper, watch the 8:00 movie on TCM and go to bed. I, of course, included hour or so dog walks after breakfast and before supper. On Monday afternoon we went to the grocery store, where I found 42" boot laces. The 48s were really too long, so I bought the 42s. They work excellently to this day. At last the bootlace saga came to a happy ending! On Tuesday morning, my dad and I took Grace to a big wooded park where people walk their dogs. The (nearly) 92 year old man kept up with us all the way around, and Grace got to sniff some dog butt - a good day! On Wednesday, Grace and I wandered onto the property of a geezer wearing a pistol in a holster. "Oh, this is for snakes," he said. Thursday we were back at the grocery store primarily because of ice cream issues. They eat ice cream after lunch and supper pretty much every day - I like that. I don't remember any fun facts about Friday or Saturday. On Sunday early afternoon, I got a text message from Carmen that the vote was unanimous to call her as the new minister at the Greater Nashville Unitarian Universalist Congregation!
It was early evening when Carmen rolled into White Oak Drive. She was exhausted after ten days of meetings and church services, not to mention the drive from the west side of Nashville. We all visited for a little while, then went to bed. Monday morning we got up, ate breakfast, I walked the dog while Carmen got everything packed up for transport, and by 10:00 we were on the road. We stopped by Rachel's apartment to see her new digs and thank her again, then lit out for Summersville, WV, with one stop for gas and another at Tamarack, the artsy fartsy "Best of West Virginia" place near Beckley. After a fairly peaceful night's sleep, we pushed on for home with one stop for gas and another at the Fiesta Ware Outlet at the other end of West Virginia. We arrived home in late afternoon, ready to go full bore into the process of fixing up the house to sell and deciding what to move and what to let go.
By early June, the whole house was repainted inside and out, the realtor had put it on the market and we had let go of a whole lot of stuff. Every room was staged to look roomy and cute. The landscaping was beautiful, a far cry from the ugly it had been. Today, June 15th, we accepted a strong offer and signed a contract to sell. A month from now we rent a 26 foot truck, bring in the loaders Carmen hired, and off we go, new boot laces and all!
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