A day off from dialysis, which is always welcome, and time spent with the family. Karl loves to keep busy, so we worked on a couple of minor projects on the trailer, knocking off a few items on my “to do” list, for which I’m very grateful! Hubby and I ended up going to bed by around 10:00, too tired to stay up for the ball drop. I think that’s the first time ever we didn’t stay up to see it, but we were just too tired this time, and frankly, most of the time the network coverage is so tediously boring, and the music so incomprehensible, we didn’t figure we were missing much. Yawn!

Dialyzed Hubby in the morning so that we could spend the rest of the day lounging by the pool, which we thought was the plan for my brother and his company, but they all ended up sitting by my brother’s homemade smoker next to the garage so they could keep an eye on things. Brother stuffed it full of a big turkey, a couple of chickens, several racks of ribs and some fish for Hubby as well. I made up some stuffing, mashed some potatoes and helped set up the buffet, which we soon pigged out on. Frost also came home in the afternoon, with quite a positive prognosis. Evidently, if he had to have his teeth knocked in, his was the perfect way to do it. They managed to wire it all up with no problem, but his recovery is going to take 2 or 3 months, no grazing, just grain and loose hay. Jeff’s got a little grass-free run-out space outside Frost’s stall, so at least he’ll be able to stretch his legs a bit. Sorry it happened, but fortunately, his boarder doesn’t seem to be holding it against us, probably because Frost has a history of not getting along with other horses, which they neglected to mention, I guess. Anyway, he’s back, and in Jeff’s care again, so it will be fine for now. Had a relaxing evening, with Hubby and I retiring to the trailer and watching “It’s a Wonderful Life” on Amazon Prime, the first time we’ve used that service, and the first time I’ve seen it without commercials in a VERY long time, so it was utterly enjoyable. A great way to top off our Christmas!

Quiet morning, then dialyzed Hubby in the afternoon while I baked sugar cookies and pumpkin pie for tomorrow.

FINALLY had a good night sleep! It feels like ages since that’s happened! I guess it was because I was back in my own bed, we were back out in the quiet of the country instead of ear-plug imposed silence, and it was cool enough to open the windows for some fresh air! Just too darned tired to much of anything today!

Well, a better night sleep, but it still took me a long time to get to sleep, despite my tiredness. We slept a bit later, then went down to Hampton’s fabulous breakfast (as always) and we hit the road content. The rest of the trip was uneventful and we even got back early enough to stop at brother Jeff’s and unload the rental car. Hubby decided to stay at home while I ran down and turned the car in. It was an exhausting trip, and we hadn’t planned on dialyzing today, but he started to feel poorly, so we decided we had to, even though we were both tired. Fortunately, it was fairly uneventful, and we were really ready for bed by the time we got done, which was the latest ever!

Had a lousy night sleep at the Red Roof, could barely breathe from the mustiness in the room, and their breakfast was pathetic: a couple of muffin choices, dried bread, and the waffle maker batter was practically empty, so we left without having much. Good thing we packed some fruit! We munched on that on our way to the clinic, arrived early, finished in about 90 minutes, then hit the road south again. We had a couple of quick stops to make, but managed to get to Valdosta by about 8:00, where we stayed at the slightly more expensive but infinitely better quality Hampton Inn. We ordered Chinese delivery, I had a nice hot bath, enjoyed our dinner when it arrived, and, exhausted, went to be as early as possible.

After a week of getting settled in, doing some odd repairs here and there on the trailer and the car and the truck, we finally had to honor our agreement to return to Nashville for Hubby’s monthly dialysis clinic at Vanderbilt. We rented a car because I didn’t want to put a lot more mileage on the truck, and because we wanted something that got good gas mileage and would be reliable, and picked up our Chevy Malibu near the airport last night. We got up before the sun did, and were on the road an hour before sunrise. We managed to make it to the house in Tennessee about an hour before dark, picked up some things we had forgotten (I had made a list every since we left), and headed down to Manchester to stay in a hotel. We didn’t want to go through the trouble of putting the water back on, or the heater or uncover the furniture and all that nonsense, so we had made a reservation at the Red Roof, because we had Lola with us and they took dogs. NEVER AGAIN! The room was musty, there were bugs in the bathroom, lots of other problems, enough said! Grabbed some dinner at the Waffle House across the street and went to bed early.

Got up bright and early for our departure today, getting everything all packed up and ready to go before winding our way through the fences to pick up the horses and head on out of town! It was a VERY hot day, with temps increasing to over 90 degrees. I had checked the air in our tires on the trailer and found all but one in the 90 psi range, though technically with the weight of our trailer, we really needed to be at the max of 123 or so. These are 16-ply, load range H tires, all in very good condition, but one was down to about 85 pounds. I had tried to fill it up with air with our little compressor, but it quit before it got to that tire, so that one was still down when we left, unfortunately. Naturally, that tire exploded just north of Okeechobee, about an hour from brother Jeff’s house, along the narrow, two-lane section of 441. Fortunately, there was some construction that was holding traffic down to one lane, so there were long time periods of no traffic coming our way, which simplified the job. Unfortunately, the 4-prong tire wrench I had didn’t have the right size wrench, and while I was looking for the torque wrench and a socket that would fit, a nice man from the ranch across the road stopped to help. He had the right wheel wrench size, and he had the tires changed in just a few minutes. Of course, I offered to pay him, but he refused, only saying he hoped if his wife was in trouble, someone would help her. PASS IT FORWARD! Love country folks, honored to call myself one! Anyway, once everything was put away and thanks were exchanged, we headed back down the road, hoping the rest of the tires hold up till we got to Jeff’s, and fortunately they did. We arrived later than we hoped, of course, so we parked in front of the house until we could finish work on the area he had cleared for us back by the barn over the next few days. He made us some dinner, which I really appreciated because we were so tired, and went to bed, looking forward to a cold front that was supposed to be arrived the next day, it was just too dang hot here for this time of year!