It rained again overnight a little, but the real test was the cold wind and temps this morning. Slept like a log, though, best night sleep in a LONG, LONG time. I had put my earplugs in because someone yesterday mentioned something about mules in the campground (best alarm clock ever if you want to get up before the crack of dawn), and there were a lot of kids I thought might get noisy early. It paid off, as I slept more than ten hours! That’s unheard of for me, but I was glad of it! I finally got up after 9:00 and fed the horses their grain, then I moved their high-line to a different tree as they were now standing is six inches of mud from all the raid. I got them re-settled with hay, watched the neighbor’s kids play with Lola for a while (and some adults, too.) I joked with one guy, who had picked up Lola’s proffered chucker and thrown a ball for her, “That’s my Lola, she trains humans very well,” and he smiled and couldn’t help but agree. Horses were in various stages of being saddled throughout the camp, with people bundled up pretty well, understandably. I told Hubby, “If I was riding today, I’d be in long underwear and a parka,” but, of course, I’m not riding today, too cold and the trails will be too crowded for me. Besides, the forecast for tomorrow is sunny and in the low 70’s, which is much more to my liking! I admit, I’m a fair weather rider, which is why we always endeavor to follow 70 degrees. So far, so good! We had a nice quiet day, with dialysis, of course, and lots of reading and writing as I attempt to update my diary!

Well, the rain came in overnight in the form of thunderstorms, lots of lightning, lots of rain, lots of Lola whining and scratching trying to get into the bedroom. I had to get up half a dozen times to try to quiet her down, wishing I had put her in the truck overnight. That may sound mean but honestly, she loves her bed in the truck so much, and for some reason feels so much safer out there, it would have been a kindness. In any event, we didn’t get as much sleep through the storm as I would have liked, but it is what it is, right? It stayed raining off and on all day, but by mid-afternoon, other horse campers started arriving and setting up. Looks like we’ll have lots of company for this Easter weekend! Just sorry they didn’t have better weather coming in! The temperature has dropped significantly, and it’s supposed to get down into the 40’s tonight, and a lot of these folks are setting up tents. Lots of kids and dogs and horses, so it’s going to be busy. I had no intention of riding today, nor probably tomorrow as it’s going to stay cool, but it is supposed to clear up. Sunday will be another gorgeous day, so I guess I’ll wait until then. What can I say, I’m a fair weather rider! Otherwise, we had a quiet day, reading, dialyzing, catching up on my diary, and watching TV in the evening.

Although we had originally planned to leave here today, there was a terrible storm screaming across the country, and we arranged to stay another day to avoid it. Sure enough, it came tearing through in the afternoon, causing a lot of damage in nearby areas. We came through it unscathed, fortunately, and didn’t even lose electricity, thanks goodness. We dialysed uneventfully in the afternoon, taking the opportunity to relax before our trip tomorrow.

With all of the essential chores and preparation and running around done, I finally had a chance to finish off as much packing as possible in our effort to leave tomorrow. I had the whole morning to do stuff, which positively seems like a luxury after all the activity we’ve been plagued by recently. We moved the RV away from the stable to up in front of the house, because we wanted to test the rest of the system without electricity. For some reason, the generator wouldn’t start because it was sensing that the batteries were too low, which isn’t right, but once I plugged into power, it started up just fine and ran just fine for the evening, so we’ll have to figure that out later. Finally, in the afternoon, we settled into doing his dialysis, and it went brilliantly, not a single alarm or hitch the entire session. So glad! Back to three hour sessions seems like a luxury now, having mornings to ourselves where I can get caught up on things, quiet sessions in the comfort of my own home during the dialysis. Now this is a routine I can get used to! Now all we need is a new back yard, and that starts tomorrow, yeah!

Well, after a night of rumination, I decided that I wasn’t about to let my Open Range go for half price just so the RV dealer could make $2000, figuring that even though the value will drop a bit next year, it won’t be a 50% drop, so I should still be able to make some money next year. Anyway, it seemed we wouldn’t be getting our digital dialysis machine, so we ran up to Stuart and picked up the analog one, then headed down to Hobe Sound to pick up the trailer and bring it back to Jeff’s. He and his girlfriend had just gotten back from their mini-vacation, and was just as surprised to see the trailer come back as he had seen that it was gone earlier when they arrived! With his help, we got the dialysis machine in the Trailrider, got it set up, and had our first dialysis with new machine. Everything went well until the last half hour, when we had a venous error that cut it short (which I think I caused when I accidentally knelt on a line trying to get something out of a top cupboard), but otherwise everything went well, except I realized there was some kind of settings that weren’t right, so I turned on the old machine, wrote down all the settings, and reset the new machine exactly according to old machine’s settings. So tomorrow, it should all match up with what I’m used to, and we can get back to Home Hemo Normal!

Today is our last day of Home Hemo remedial training, but our machine still didn’t come in. It seems that instead of the new digital machine that we’re supposed to get, they could only let us have a new (old technology) analog machine. No one seemed to know exactly when the new machine was due, and our nurse Rita was having fits with the company that was supposed to be sending it, no one could tell them where it was and when we could expect it. We decided to give them one more day before accepting the analog machine, as the digital ones are so much nicer, and much quieter, too, it seemed to me. After we left there, we ran home and hooked up the Open Range in order to take it to a nearby dealer. I had had a conversation with them and confirmed that they took consignments, but when we got there, he looked it over and offered us LESS THAN THE WHOLESALE PRICE for it, then he was going to skim $2000 off the top of whatever price they got for it! Are you kidding me??? If I wanted to sell it for half it’s value, I could do that one my own without giving him two grand! Ridiculous! We had already unhooked it, and it was getting really late, so I told him I had to think about it (frankly, I was so astonished I was speechless, which is saying something!) He agreed to let us leave it overnight and let him know in the morning. I just didn’t even know how to respond to that. We headed home in a state of shock, but I was too tired to worry about it. We got home and settled down for the evening, but I suspect I won’t be getting much sleep tonight!