After almost a year at home, remodeling the house, dealing with Hubby's health issues, saying good-bye to little Billy, our poor blind little dog that traveled with us to every state, having to put down Hubby's mare Clio (my Apollo's mama) in February, acquiring a new puppy rescued from a nearby ledge where she was trapped (a Blue tick coon dog we named Dottie, partly because she has dotted ticking all over her belly, and also because the country music legend Dottie West was from a nearby town, and we thought a Tennessee state dog should have a country music name!) Hubby has had to start kidney dialysis in December, and then they trained me up to be able to do it at home, so now we have a machine that we can carry with us on the road. Since Hubby no longer feels confident driving and towing the little horse trailer while I tow the big Open Range, we've had to change our travel configuration to a living quarters horse trailer, the first one we've ever had! We had to find one with a cupboard big enough for the dialysis machine, which was harder than you'd think, and it had to be affordable so we didn't have to sell our Open Range beforehand, and we managed to find a used American Spirit that fit the bill! It's a three horse (though when we bought it we had two horses, and hopefully, when Hubby is feeling well enough again, we'll get back to two horses), with enough space to have a full bath and dining table which drops down into the perfect dialysis bed, right next to the big cupboard where the machine will live. It's about the same 36' length as the Open Range, but of course it's a gooseneck instead of a bumper pull, and half of it is dedicated to the horses' space, so it's definitely going to take some getting used to this much smaller space! After a hectic couple of weeks of getting everything all loaded (and compounded by the fact that Hubby's dialysis graft clotted on Sunday, for the second time in the past three weeks, requiring a day long trip to Vanderbilt so they could put in a temporary catheter in his neck until we come back from our trip and they can reschedule surgery to completely remove and reconfigure the graft so that it won't clog up again... Whew!), I was exhausted by the end of the night last night, too tired to sleep, actually, even though it was midnight. I tossed and turned, getting only about 4 hours or so of sleep before running around for another two hours packing all the rest of the stuff. Frankly, it's easier to just stay on the road than to keep packing and unpacking! Finally managed to get it all done and was out the gate by about 9:20, halfway between my desired departure time (9:00) and my drop dead departure time (9:30). It was unseasonably warm traveling today, and we were supposed to get some rain along the way, but didn't as we were driving. Just after we arrived at our overnight stop at Deam Lake State Recreation Area in Indiana, when I was just getting ready to get Apollo out of the trailer and walk him up to the barn, it started to sprinkle. I got him to the barn, then walked back down for hay and feed, and about the time I reached the barn again, there was a tremendous downpour. It was actually a silver lining though, because they hadn't turned the water on here yet, and the spigots by the barn didn't work, which meant I would have had to carry water all the way from the trailer, up a hill to the barn. Instead, I just put the bucket under the eaves of the roof, and the bucket was full in just a few minutes! Gotta make the best of things, no matter what! It started to slack off at last, and I headed back down to the trailer, only to get drenched again in a second downpour. Sigh. Half an hour later the sun was coming out, and I took the dogs for a walk down to the lake, which is right by the campground, and Lola went swimming after the ball while Dottie did her best to explore while on a very long leash. I've been so busy with Hubby I haven't had time to train her in the niceties of dog responsibilities, like coming when she's called, and because she's a hound, she's prone not to listen too well anyway, but I'm hoping to have more time once things settle down a bit, to get her a little more familiar with the custom. Anyway, we had a quick dinner and settled down early, determined to get a good night sleep to make up for the many hours I've missed lately. Lousy cell phone signal here, so Netflix wasn't an option, at least not after 8:00, when I'm convinced Verizon reduces their bandwidth or something, slowing it down from 4G to 1x, not enough for digital video. Trying to live without dragging the satellite dish around this trip, see how it goes. This whole trip is an experiment to see if we can still travel while dialyzing, though I'm the only one that will be going riding for a while, at least until Hubby can prove to me he's strong enough to get on a horse. But that's a discussion for another day. Well, I've gone on long enough for one post, but there was so much to catch up on!
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