Columbus OH

A bleek summer. But now it is time to inform others of where we are at, and why.

After g'ma's death we really needed to get away from Columbus and all it's stress. We had hoped to tow the Airstream to g'ma's house, first so that Bobbi could be with her continually during the last days, and after the funeral, so she could stay close by to help with settling the estate.

None of that happened. The van remained in the shop the entire time, waiting, waiting, waiting for a little part. It seems GM had stopped making that part because of defects, replacements were being made overseas somewhere, and at best were on a boat in the middle of the ocean. Finally the dealer got NAPA to handmake a replacement, and installed it late last week. In the meantime, since the van was out of commission for so long, we decided to use the down time to replace the driver's seat.

Today the dealer's service advisor phoned to say the repaired van would be ready tomorrow! So hopefully we now will have our precious mobility, with our house on wheels once again under power.

While we waited in frustration, Bobbi had made weekly trips with her younger sister down to Jackson to work on the estate. Each trip was traumatic, opening the wound once again. But the intensity of her reactions abated progressively, and she now is able to deal with things without losing control.

When g'ma died, she had left a 16 pound coal black cat. Since neither of the other two children would take it, it went to Bobbi and Paul, adding to our menagerie. So this was one more responsibility for immobilized Lew the pet sitter. Initially g'ma's cat was very afraid of its new surroundings and it's new family (it had lived four years alone with g'ma), jumpy and defensive, but over the summer it gradually has became more sociable.

Forced to sit impatiently waiting in Columbus, Lew whiled away time surfing the internet. Daily he read religious news publications and paged through multiple blogs, adding comments that probably were far to cynical and sarcastic for the other readers. But it kept him out of trouble. That and last week's power outage. We were less affected than most people, since there was no damage to trees on our property, and we had the Airstream. We moved our most critical perishables from the household refrigerator into the Airstream's fridge, but still lost several sacks of food. And of course it was during this outage that the Airstream's fridge chose to act up -- this particular model is infamous for a defective PC card.

So now that we can tow, it is time to take the Airstream over to the factory in Jackson Center for it's semi-annual checkup. We also need the fridge's PC board replaced, and a new set of tires. At that point we will be able to travel with confidence -- and are we looking forward to it.