We arrived at our destination in northern California a few days ago, frazzled by two days and a night of steady driving — me with complaining back and numb leg, questions as to why I was doing this buzzing ever louder within my grasshopper brain.
Sleep was something that occurred in brief snatches for days on end. When we got here we functioned like zombies. The condition has not worn off quite yet. In the photo I am hallucinating about having a box bonfire right here in my living room. Which has a lovely fireplace not quite large enough for the conflagration I have in mind for my now unwanted possessions.
Jericha muddled along in her normal state of cheerful serenity, rescuing me any number of times when I had difficulty getting in and out of the Ford Taurus we’d rented, even public restrooms and other stops along the way. My daughter, however, has evolved into a back seat driver. This I discovered whenever it was my turn to drive. She notifies me that I drive too far to the right. Frequently.
Oy! Reminds me of her paternal grandparents, who were dreaded by all the family whenever they shared a car. And to think that Jericha never went anywhere with those grandparents perched in a back seat.
Do you suppose the back-seat driver gene passes silently from one generation to the second one down?
Then began the real exhausting part — unloading belongings from a tightly packed twenty foot U-Haul into a small apartment, which I share with my daughter and another woman. Lugging that impedimenta up to the second floor took the efforts of five people one day, three the next. This all caused a certain horror at how proud I had been — in some former life time — of how much I had reduced my stuff!
So here I be, in a small area of sanity set up for my computer in the midst of a large living room that is packed so full of my boxes that there’s not room for anybody but me — in my wheelchair — to sit down. Friendly arrangement, eh?
How do you do a sudden yard sale in a city?
The roomies work and have evening activities, and hence are gone more often than not. That’s their opportunity to sit down. As often as the preschoolers they work with let them, that is.
The dogs and I nap and moan, munch, unpack, nap and moan some more.
In the midst of this striving to compress the matter of the universe into something the size of a pea, my power wheelchair’s batteries got damaged when I failed to observe that they desperately needed charging. Medicare won’t get me new ones till I’ve seen a California doctor and gotten pre authorizations. A leg brace picked this particular time to pop a rivet, and also needs to meet up with a specialist!
How further lovely that the doctor assigned to me by Medicare is on vacation for the next three weeks, and nobody else can see me since she didn’t get me in ahead of time. Not her fault — I was too tired to call for an appointment first thing Monday. Oh — she was already gone before I arrived, anyhow. A fact that a Humana representative of my Medicare Advantage plan told me some twenty times meant that I’d just have to wait a month.
“You wait a month to get yourself a set of new legs to get you around when your current ones cease operating early one morning, lady,” I muttered to myself during her infinite loop.
Eventually I got a new doctor. The process took a whole day.
As for getting anywhere as important as that initial doctor visit — I postponed buying a vehicle in favor of taking some time to explore less costly alternatives to wheelchair minivans. Now I am at the mercy of ride services in order to get to my new doctor’s office.
The ride-finding process has already taken a whole day and is not done yet.
All is not bone weariness and heaps of cardboard, though. Here are a few photos from the trip. Taking shots from the car proved unprofitable, so I didn’t get many on the road.
Rising Over the Smoke 