Inhale, Cough, Cough

 

Smoky Haze

We have been experiencing poor air quality over the past few days, due to Canadian wildfire smoke moving slowly across Wisconsin.  Julia was all excited to see that the Northern Lights were going to appear recently in the Upper Midwest.  Not in southern Wisconsin, I'm afraid.  Those aren't clouds.  Just smoke.

Last week, Julia and I helped move my Mom to her new apartment in a Continuing Care Residential facility.  The multi-building campus has independent living, assisted living, memory care, and a nursing home.  She qualified for independent living and was "allowed" to pay an entrance fee that guarantees a lifetime rate that includes all higher-level services, except for inflationary adjustments.   

My mom is downsizing, moving from a two bedroom condo to a one bedroom apartment, but it is a much nicer space with freshly painted walls, newer appliances, a walk-in shower and great natural light.  Breakfast and dinner are included, although she does have a full kitchen if she doesn't feel like going to the restaurant-styled dining room.  She is already enjoying her new community.  

We are back at the campground.  Julia just came from the showerhouse, reporting that the showers are now working, but the stalls are out of toilet paper.  We are living at the Ritz, for sure.  At least it's quiet mid-week. 

 

Life by the River or If Momma Ain't Happy

Originally, we thought we might stay at this campground for at least a couple of months, as we tied up some loose family ends in Wisconsin and Iowa. However, there have been a few potholes on that road.

When we signed on for the month, the owner of the campground warned me that "he's only one guy", and things can take awhile to get some attention.  That only raised a little red flag. On the other hand, we might have thought twice if he had said: "The toilets may go ten days without getting cleaned, and the showers don't really work."

Now, you may be thinking, "what about the bathroom and shower in the Scamp?"   It's true that there is a small wet bath, but Julia doesn't like to use it, especially if there's a full showerhouse and toilets less than 100' away.

The showers here are coin-operated.  Two minutes for a quarter.  In theory.  Thinking that she needed a good six minute shower, Julia plugged 3 quarters in, and nothing happened.  I advised going to the other shower, and trying just one quarter.  The guys' shower starts up right away (with cold water).  After a minute, the water turns lukewarm, and I add more quarters, if needed.  The women's shower started right up, but sprayed sideways, soaking all of Julia's clothes and backpack.  After moving her stuff, she managed to get a decent shower in with additional quarters.

On the next day, Julia went back to the shower that "kinda worked" and stepped in when the shower warmed up.  She added two more quarters for a six minute shower.  As soon as she got wet and lathered up, the shower abruptly stopped without warning.  Julia was not a happy camper and has been taking showers at the school swimming pool since that time.  

Yes, she did tell the owner.  And he said, "I'm only one guy, you know.  But I'll look at it."  

He hasn't, so we took a road trip to another campground between Wisconsin Dells and Portage and signed up to switch over there in mid-June.   It's much nicer with lots of amenities and many guys making sure everything is clean and working. More expensive, but if Momma ain't happy, no one else is happy.  

The downside to all of this is we love this area.  We can walk to one of Wisconsin's best breweries. 

Scaredy Cat Oatmeal Stout

We see eagles and pelicans on the river walk nearly every morning.  It's a close enough drive that I've been able to play lots of advanced pickleball.  

And Callie gets a four mile walk in the morning and a couple of miles in the evening.

Kennel?

In other news, I made another trip to Iowa last week to further prepare my mom for a move to senior housing.  Julia and I will both go this week for the actual move, which will also involve Two Men and a Truck. Once she is settled, we can turn our attention to relaxing for awhile in Wisconsin.  There's a family reunion in mid June (Julia's side of the family), and then we're flying to Tucson for a week to look for a house.  Callie will stay behind at the kennel.

 

 

 

Exhale

 In retrospect, the last year was a tough one without a lot of joy in our lives. Besides adjusting to life without Justin and my dad, the process of de-accumulating and selling the house was an emotional one. Now that we are back in the Scamp, we can literally feel all of that stress begin to melt away.

We are not traveling yet. We have some family stuff to take care of on both sides of our families. And once that’s done, we may still stay at our current spot, enjoying the Wisconsin summer. Eventually, I think, we will find a house in the Tucson area and move by fall.  But with temperatures already nearing 100 in southern Arizona, there doesn’t seem to be any particular urgency.

So we will spend our days along the Wisconsin River, taking long walks with Callie and hanging out with friends. We live in interesting times and control very little on the national or global scale. Hope for the best, plan for the worst. And everything tastes better on a tortilla. 

Homeless

 And feeling fine. More later.

Tick Tock

A glorious Wisconsin sunrise turned to wind and rain and then back to sun again.  

We are twenty days from closing on our house sale.  Julia's brother Scott is arriving later today to manage our moving sale, which starts on Thursday.  His take is 25% of the proceeds.  Whatever he can convince people to take will be one less thing to donate, throw away or store.  The moving sale will take place over the course of three days, which coincides with our community's garage sale weekend.

We are pretty much done sorting and deciding what we will put into storage.  It's been an interesting and liberating process.  Once the decision is made to let go, it becomes pretty easy to let go and let go and let go.  

One of the easy choices for disposition is my book collection.  We have bookcases and bookcases of books:  fiction, non-fiction, law school textbooks.  Most of these, I haven't touched in ten years. To be honest, almost all of the books that I read are ebooks checked out from the library.  Yesterday, I started to reacquaint myself with Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey.  Once I started reading, it was like sitting down with an old friend.  

More Steps Forward

The house is under contract.  My mother has decided upon a continuing care facility in Iowa, where she will start out independently and move to higher levels of care, as needed.   Time to start packing to move stuff into storage for the summer.  We have to be out May 19th.