October 14, 2003 - Annville, PA - 2
Barb took some time out to visit her daddy's grave with sister Carol. And there's Carol leaning on her headstone! She's part of the Demers there.
Yup. "Carol J (Langlois)" that's her. Only she isn't really there yet. Talk about a close family. Know anybody else who would go together like this? Jennie and Carol are 3 years and 5 months apart in age, and they'll be closer than that when they get planted here, eh? Good thing, Don and Guy are good friends. Matter of fact, Guy blames Don for Carol anyway. He introduced them! And then Barb and Carol left the cemetery and went to the nursery to find a birdbath for ma's birthday present. Pumpkin time about here you think?
Guess who lives at the nursery? Yup, they call him Kermit. In the flesh--pretty green too. No ceramic frog, this guy. Big enough to eat, he is by golly. No, I wasn't particularly interested in the "bottoms" shot, but was wanting to note ma's hand position as she surveys the new birdbath that Carol and Barb set up with her. See those hands on the hips? Well, you'll see her daughter, my Bride, doing the exact same thing here a bit later.
See those hands on the hips? And that's just the first time I've pointed it out. You'll see it again. And there's Chloe. The mostly male cat with the female name. I guess the gender hadn't been accurately defined until it was too late for a new name. Anyway, he may have been stalking critters, not to mention birds, just behind the birdbath. Maybe bad place for a birdbath, eh!
OK. Now for some real guy stuff. Yeah, Guy had been helping me with the Jeep while our wives were out gallivanting around. The "...ATOR" up there under the dash of the Jeep is the "REGULATOR" that is the brain of the supplemental braking system we're installing on the Jeep so its brakes will come on with the same force and timing as the motorhome. It's the system sold by U.S. Gear and is proportional as well as progressive, and the shiny new black gadget in the engine compartment is the air pump that will provide vacuum for the power brakes when they're needed. A solenoid under the back seat will pull the cable through the pulley attached to the floorboard and connected to the brake pedal. There's nothing showing anyplace unless you go looking for it, and nothing to connect or disconnect when hooking up or unhooking the Jeep for towing. I'll include some more pictures of it in a future journal. Anyway, U.S. Gear supplies a good installation manual as well as a CD video on the process, and, while time consuming, is pretty easy. Would be even easier if the installers were 40 years younger! It was fun working with Guy as he is quick and has a machinist background and excelled in electronic maintenance in the shrink wrap industry before he retired. Whenever a modification was needed, he's quick to come up with options.
And the fuse with the red wires completes the under-the-hood installation. The Blue Ox baseplate leaves nothing sticking out to rip my knee cap off, and unless you know what you're looking at, even the breakaway switch is pretty well hidden. Guy came up with a unique way to get that breakaway switch rascal to swivel and still be solid.
AHA! Decisions, decisions, decisions. What to pitch, what to give away, what to sell and for how much. Glad she got stuck with that job. I wasn't born with an excess of patience, and long ago lost what little bit I had for that kind of duty. I'm blessed that Barb can do those kind of things for us. And there's the 90-year-old mother with her 6 daughters, youngest on the left (Donna), with 17 years between her and Barb. Then Carol, and Ma, then Jennie, Connie and Lorraine. Great bunch of women.
Happy 90th! And then my share of the cake. Yup, we drove the 1800 miles back here from Nacogdoches just for that. Right. The cake was a gift from the restaurant, and we had fun trying to split it up between the 14 or so of us. Matter of fact, we had fun in a way that I'd never seen with my own family as a kid. There were six sisters, a couple of their kids, and most of the husbands. And they all enjoyed each other. I didn't get the impression that anybody was on their good behavior because it was ma's birthday and they had to be there and they had to behave themselves. The good natured teasing was non-stop. The noisy laughter was constant. The real conversations were natural. There was nothing but natural, comfortable love. And I was in awe. It was one of those times that I hope I never forget.
There's the "stuff" for the garage sale. Yeah, we included the Porta Boat. And it rained off and on both days. And we didn't have much traffic. But we sold a bunch of stuff (not the boat), and Guy and Carol hauled some of the leftovers to a flea market owner up near their camp for us, and that helped a lot. In the end, we're happy with the results of hauling the stuff up from Texas after we couldn't get it all into the motorhome. And then it was off to Don and Jennie's for a great dinner and some Mexican Train. Since we weren't there during the cooking, I can't verify it, but Don took credit for fixing dinner, and then there he is doing dishes. Gee, that sounds just like home--Barb fixes the meals and does the dishes too. For the most part anyway. Some of us are real spoiled. There, Don's getting some help from Carol and Barb.
While Don was doing the dishes, Guy and I stayed out of his way. Didn't want to be a nuisance, don't you know. Now that basket was a gift from Foretravel that was given to us just before we left. Full of Texas things. Barb was insistent that we share it with family. I was a bit more selfish, but agreed that it would be fun to share.....some of it.
Not sure what the joke was about, but I don't think it had anything to do with putting the cork in the bottle... or pulling it out, but Barb sure was enjoying it. And in the meantime, Carol was agitating to get the gift basket opened, and the dang thing was wired up pretty good, frustrating everybody.
TAA DAA! It's open! And the first "goodie" we kept for ourselves was a cookbook. Another one! This one is comprised of favorites from the Foretravel Motorcade Club members.
And Don is still doing dishes. I could hardly believe it! Deciding who got what of the goodies left over after Barb and I grabbed "ours" was taken care of by Jennie. She wrote numbers on little slips of paper, and everybody got to pick two numbers, and then choose in order, according to their numbers. And as luck would have it, Carol and Guy drew the first numbers and Jennie and Don both got the last numbers. We howled.
We had fun with the contents of the basket, I can tell you! Carol is breaking up bits of one of her "goodies" to share it with everybody. It was the "Armadillo droppings." Some kind of chewy Carmel candy that tasted better than it sounded. And there we are letting the women soundly whip the guys in a game of Mexican Train. And we even had Guy keeping score! From the looks of Barb's train, it's a good thing the Mexican was working overtime.
Later, Don and Jennie came over to visit us, and Don, not unlike the rest of us, tends to begin fading around 9 p.m., but did manage to stay awake. Barely. He'd had a busy day--up early working hard on one of their son's places. Once a builder/developer always a builder/developer. Only now he doesn't make any money doing it--it's just for the fun of it, right Don? Next day, we got a neat surprise. Bill and Carol Nelson showed up. We're in their motorhome, celebrating our reunion, their new lifestyle, and, even my birthday. They're newbies at motorhoming full time. They've had lots of experience in camping and boating, but this is only the third month they've had a motorhome, and their second month of full time living in it. They're friends of ours from church back in Federal Way, Washington. They parked next to us for a few nights at Wyman's Beach campground in Westford, MA; since then, we've spent some time chasing each other around New England, but more on that later. It was wonderful to finally have them catch up with us after many phone calls and e-mails as they went through the process of selecting a motorhome, getting all the details of a major life change accomplished, visiting relatives while crossing the country, etc. They're flexible and fun, and we look forward to seeing them this winter as we both hope to spend much of it in Florida.