5am: Boyfriend is in town and his dogs are here as well. They woke us up TOO EARLY, but we got up and let everyone out and started pet routine. Potties, then food, then meds, then some back out for poopies. Back to bed after all that rigmarole. I drank coffee and worked some crossword puzzles and he played on his cell phone until we fell back asleep before 7am.
11am: Still lazy in bed, awake and listening to “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” on IPR for an hour. I turn on weekend Indiana Public radio and listen until bedtime every Saturday and Sunday. “Wait, Wait.” and “This American Life” are my favorites.
12pm: Finally up and out of bed for good. Dogs back out, he showered while I cooked breakfast (Eggs, sausage, toast) since he is taking mom and my sister to the grocery store, which I absolutely HATE doing. I just shop at Aldi to spend as little time as possible on this necessary life chore. Aldi offers fewer options, letting you get in and out quickly.
1pm: We had a little car maintenance to do on one of the cars that has sat for a while not being driven while we took too long to replace the radiator in it. That is done now and it can be driven now. Sun roof has tracks that fill up and can leak into the car, so we needed to clear out that tubing and put the ceiling panel back up. Completed that, then he picked up my mom and sister to go to the store.
2pm: My kindle reader, which I’ve never used to actually read a book on, just use it for internet… has gone poop and will no longer charge. I needed to look up a customer service # online to call and complain. It is only 7 months old. Started having issues at month 5. So, online on my desktop to do that and read the newspaper and enter various contests that we do.
I won a major travel package once from the Travel Channel years ago with a trip to Yosemite for 4 people, plane tickets, rental car, hotel at the inn near the park along with a digital camera, and some gift cards. “Somebody’s gotta win” is now our motto, because we KNOW it to be true; WE were the SOMEBODY who got to win once! So, we still enter contests in hopes we can win again. It was a fun trip. It was too difficult a decision to decide what other 2 people to take along, so he talked the motel into one room for 4 nights instead of 2 rooms for 2 nights. Surprisingly, they agreed and allowed us to do that and we didn’t have to hurt anyone’s feelings. Also, the air travel was in the form of frequent flier miles, so we used only half of the 100K miles for the 2 of us and I still retain the other 50K miles in my account which has grown from various other frequent flier earning activities. Someday we’re going to use them to go to Hawaii, which happens to be the prize for a contest I enter regularly. “SOMEbody’s gotta win!”
3pm: Spoke with a customer service rep from Amazon’s Kindle dept. They will have me return the device to see if it is fixable and mail it back or replace it. I am glad to hear the shipping will be taken care of by them and all I have to do is take it to the UPS office to send back. I am not excited to still own a faulty device, though, even if they do fix it.
4pm: Boyfriend came home from errands and we needed to go to see how my Dad is doing with his upper respiratory virus at his supported living home. I had taken him to MedExpress on Thursday to make sure he did not have strep. They found no strep or flu, so his meds were just palliative. He was not very precautious with his germs, so I warned the building staff to please have him eat in his apartment or all the other residents would catch his illness. Tonight, I needed to go fix him some chicken soup and see how he was doing. We pay for an additional aide of of his monthly income that comes for meal times each day except Saturday and Sunday dinners. I called Dad to let him know we were coming and he still sounded very hoarse and reported that his glasses lens popped out.
This American Life is playing, but I can’t focus on the story b/c of tasks and discussion at home
4:45pm: We attempt to run to dad’s apt. in the newly repaired wagon, yet after it initially started, the car died before I backed out of the driveway. We were both devastated! Earlier, we were so happy that this car would finally be able to be driven, but NOPE. That was fake news. The car is still broken. We drove another car to dad’s.
5pm: Arrive at Dad’s supported living facility. It was newly opened in February and is a real blessing for him to live in. He initially took himself for a few “walks” in the warmer weather of spring and summer, but will most assuredly not do that during colder months. He’ll stay put there until spring at least as far as the family can surmise. When we got inside, his glasses were BENT all to hell and the lens was popped out. He could not explain what happened, but it seemed like he sat on them. Boyfriend got the glasses put back into workable condition while I helped him get his dinner soup served up. He did not have a good sense of humor, so I knew he feels really horrible, still. We left to go find dinner for ourselves.
5:30pm: Arby’s so BF can use a coupon. He loves couponing and clearance deals. We also planned to go to Noodles and Co. to redeem another coupon deal there which would expire soon. We shared a sandwich at Arby’s, then headed across town to look for an item in Payless that he saw on clearance, yet wasn’t as good of a deal as we initially thought. Then we went to Noodles for that particular deal. My wrist was burning from driving after having carpal tunnel surgery last week, so I asked him to drive when we left. After a great deal of internet issues trying to download the coupon, we were successful at acquiring the BOGO entree dinners and ate a bit there (we weren’t too hungry after sharing the gyro at Arby’s).
6:30pm: We head back home to do the evening pet feeding routine.
7pm: Dogs out, in, feeding, meds, clean ups, back out for more potties, then relax.
7:30pm: Discussion about what to do with the dead car, which is blocking my garage where there is parked a perfectly reliably running vehicle. We decided to try to get it out of the way tomorrow, by possibly pushing it if it won’t start tomorrow. He tried it again tonight, but no dice.
8pm: American Routes is on, another nice IPR program. Calm, quiet background music to relax to. BF is on his laptop while I attend to household chores. Litter boxes, laundry that I hung up to dry last night in the basement, etc. Evening rum cocktail and several pets on my lap. Lots of lower back pain d/t needing to stretch out.
9pm: To bed to watch a documentary on Roku channel Pluto about Shackleton’s expedition to the Antarctic. I fell asleep many times, while he kept at it and finally was all the way out by 11pm.