Ten Things of Thankful, Vacation Edition: Getting Ready

(Because some people like Blogger and some like WordPress, i am putting the same content at both.  If you would prefer to read this on the other site, it is linked here.)

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This Ten Things of Thankful is very special, for a lot of reasons.

Long before i'd ever heard of it, this blog hop was in full swing, and if you check out this week's Ten Things of Thankful link-up, you will be able to read the reminiscences of a lot of people who have a longer history with this than i do.

Another reason it's special is because, for me, vacation starts today.

Which requires a note.  Over the past two weeks, i've been clocking in some very, very long days.  There's nothing packed (the night before when i am writing this), and so many things have happened that could have derailed it all that i can hardly count them.  So i am catching up on everyone's posts as i can, and it may take me a couple of days.  It's not my intent to leave out anyone for any reason.

What is it about making plans that means monkey wrenches have to get thrown around willy-nilly?  This year especially, as we've never had this many things happen right before vacation.

Two weeks before our vacation, Mr. BA and Ms. GA went on vacation, and i agreed to cat sit and garden tend to earn some extra money.  The garden tending ended up being two hours a day of watering because we had no rain.  Even so, and even though those days ended up being about 14 hours of work total for nine days straight, i am very thankful.  It not only earned some money, it gave some of Ms. GA's more feral cats the courage to actually approach me and showed me just how deeply dependent on rain farmers are.

It also wore me to a frazzle and by the day before vacation, i was having trouble remembering what i was doing from one minute to the next.  That's another reason i am thankful for vacation.

This past Monday, Little Girl left for her summer military duty (she's a medic with the Army reserves).  She let me drive her out to the base in her car, and is lending me her car until she gets back at the end of June.  Since we are down to one car for three people, i would say i am over the moon thankful for this blessing.

On Thursday, the rains came.  And came.  And came.  Our area got seven inches in about two hours.

Sweetie owns a couple of guitars he values very highly, and we don't have central air in our house, we use window units.  While on vacation, it's possible there could be times when the A/C in the area with his guitars could be forgotten (we don't run the units all of the time, just when we are in that room or those rooms).  The heat in our area can ruin a guitar, so he got permission to store them at the church, and the original plan was to take them Friday.

Wednesday night, he changed his mind, so Thursday morning, as it began to drizzle, we packed them in Lunceford the Land Yacht so he could take Brother-in-Law to work, then go drop off the guitars, then meet me at the first job.

We both made it to our first job that day, very thankful, as the rain was going in earnest by that time.

Ms. K, the secretary who lets us in to clean the office, actually showed up early for the first time ever.  That turned out to be critical to the rest of the day, as she is usually much later and we end up shaving things close by the end of a regular day, and this wasn't going to be a regular day.

Sometimes our phones worked (this whole area can be crippled with no phone service for certain carriers during a severe dumping like that), even more thankful.

Sweetie called Mel the rental car guy while we were working to confirm our pick up of the rental for Friday (using the landline at work), and was told, get over here and get this car right now or Hertz is going to take it away and give it to another person.  The rain and flooding (and did i mention a tornado in a hospital parking lot?) was causing a panic as people scrambled to get rental cars to replace their stalled out or ruined vehicles.  He could hold it until we got done with our first job and got over there, but couldn't guarantee it past that.

Thank heaven he had called, or we would have shown up Friday and had no way to go on vacation.

We put it into overdrive and got the office clean faster than we'd ever done, and Ms. K's boss called and told her to shut the office and get out of there before the street became impassible.  Thankfully we were done about the time she got that call.

It was time to try to make it to Mel's.  The rain had stopped, Sweetie was in Lunceford the Land Yacht and i was in Little Girl's Honda, Talulah.  Lunceford has an alarm that tells you when you are in water that is too high, that you should turn around.  The last thing i wanted to do was flood Talulah after Little Girl had trusted me with her.

Many streets, even the ones that are on the highest ground, were flooded.  We turned around more times than i can count.  By instinct, i finally told Sweetie to try a back way, and that reminded him of another one, and almost an hour-an-a-half after we left, we got to the place that was normally a 20 minute drive from where we had been.

Never before have i been so thankful to see Mel and the car he had for us.  We were thankful he let us leave Lunceford there and go on to our second job of the day.

Taking those same back routes, we actually got to the second job, in a subdivision that often floods but this time only had one side of the boulevard impassible.

The work was not overwhelming (sometimes she leaves me about double the amount of laundry to fold) so even with a late start, we were done just in time for Sweetie to pick up Brother-in-Law so he could drive them back to Mel's and get Lunceford.

How thankful i am that Brother-in-Law can drive, and that while we are gone he can use Lunceford to take himself to work every day.

In all the excitement, Little Girl called from her duty station.  She was handed her phone and told to call home and make sure we were okay.  The call came through, thankfully, and i was able to tell her that we were just fine, only water-logged.

Also during this whole thing, our house has only taken on minimal water, i am not at all sure how, but i'm thankful, and also grateful to #2 Son for keeping an eye on the pumps.

Oh, and did i mention that on Wednesday the power went off and the generator kicked on but didn't power anything?  Calls to Generator Mike resulted in a new protocol whereby any time the power goes out, we have to flip the transfer switch ourselves.  How thankful i am that he answers my calls and always knows just what to do.

Then came Friday.  Are we ready for the Friday thankful?  How about, Sweetie's old life insurance company, that he has cancelled because he has a new policy, went ahead and debited our account for a new policy at a new premium of over $300 more than the previous premium.

Money we needed, a lot, for vacation.

A call to his insurance agent, who is a very good friend, resulted in both the insurance company getting informed that they needed to correct this right away, and the agent lending us the money until it actually does get recredited to our account.

Also Sweetie had already dropped the guitars on Thursday, so Friday was made that much easier, with its three jobs, by us not having to work that in or pick up Brother-In-Law, or try to get the rental as we already had it.  Anything that makes a Friday easier is a thankful thing.

Finally, i am thankful that Bigger Girl will be coming by every day to take care of the cats.  

At this point, i'm well over ten things, and every one of them added up to us getting on our way today.

Please join us and our gracious and wonderful hostess Kristi from ThankfulMe, write up your own list and link up to Ten Things of Thankful.  

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

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Today is:

Belmont Stakes -- Belmont, NY, US (150th Annual, the third jewel of the Triple Crown)

Best Friends Day -- as declared by the ecard people

Betty Picnic -- the Betty Club, founded by Betty Wilder and Betty Patterson of Grant's Pass, Oregon; they began hosting a picnic for all with their name in 1987, and want Bettys all over the world to have a Betty Picnic on the second Saturday of June each year

Bounty Anniversary Day -- Norfolk Island (celebrates the arrival of the Bounty descendents from Pitcairn Island)

Do-Dah Parade -- Kalamazoo, MI, US (a "Salute to Silliness" that is worth seeing)

Feast of Bona Mens -- Ancient Roman Calendar (goddess of right thinking, the personification of the mind)

GRABAAWR / GReat Annual Bicycle Adventure Along the Wisconsin River -- WI, US (fun bicycle adventures for all ages, levels, and abilities; through next Saturday)

International Young Eagles Day -- Experimental Aircraft Association members and chapters focus on providing introductory flights to children 8-17 

Judgement Day -- Fairy Calendar (The Good and Evil are given their just rewards)

Lindisfarne Day -- Asatru/Slavic Pagan (commemorating the Viking raid on Lindisfarne in 793)

Name Your Poison Day -- just another wacky holiday with no explanations

National Caribbean-American Health and Aids Awareness Day -- with events all over the US    

National Jelly-Filled Doughnut Day

Primoz Trubar Day -- Slovenia (birth anniversary of the author of the first Slovene language books and consolidated the Slovene language)

Queen's Birthday -- Tuvalu

Sovereign's Day/Queen's Birthday -- Pitcairn Island

Shavuot -- Judaism (Feast of Weeks; begins at sundown, through sundown on June 10)

St. Medard's Day (Patron of brewers, captives, imprisoned people, mentally ill people, peasants, prisoners, vineyards; for good harvests, good weather, and rain; against bad weather, imprisonment, sterility, and toothache) related event:

    Festival of the Rose -- Salency, France (on St. Medard's Day, and supposedly begun by that saint before the year 545)

Torigoe Matsuri -- Torigoe Jinja Shrine, Tokyo, Japan (festival and highlighting of Tokyo's largest Mikoshi[portable Shinto shrine]; through tomorrow)

Trooping the Colour -- UK (military celebration of the monarch's birthday, one of London's biggest and most colorful celebrations) 

Upsy Daisy Day -- the day to remind people to get up joyfully and gratefully each morning (tell that to my sleep-til-noon family!)

Vacuum Cleaner Day -- Ives W. McGaffee obtained a patent on this day in 1869 for the first carpet cleaner that worked on a vaccuum priciple

Watch Day -- the sign that you are over 30, you still wear a watch!

World Brain Tumor Day -- International

World Oceans Day   

World Wide Knit in Public Day -- better living through stitching together! 

Anniversary Today:

Christopher O'Neill marries Princess Madeleine of Sweden, 2013

Birthdays Today:

Kim Clijsters, 1983

Kayne West, 1977

Julianna Margulies, 1966

Keenen Ivory Wayans, 1958

Scott Adams, 1957

Tim Berners-Lee, 1955

Griffin Dunne, 1955

Kathy Baker, 1950

Sara Paretsky, 1947

Boz Scaggs, 1944

Don Grady, 1944

Andrew Weil, MD, 1942

Nancy Sinatra, 1940

Bernie Casie, 1939

James Darren, 1936

Joan Rivers, 1933

Jerry Stiller, 1927

Barbara Bush, 1925

Robert Preston, 1918

Byron Raymond White, 1917

Francis Crick, 1916

Frank Lloyd Wright, 1867

Debuting/Premiering Today:

Trading Places(Film), 1983

Malaeska; The Indian Wife of the White Hunter(First "dime novel", Publication date), 1860

Today in History:

Vikings raid the abbey at Lindisfarne in Northumbria, commonly accepted as the beginning of the Scandinavian invasion of England, 793

Richard the Lionheart's Crusade begins with his arrival at Acre, 1191

American attackers are driven back at Trois-Rivières, Quebec, 1776

The volcano Laki, in Iceland, begins an eight-month eruption which kills over 9,000 people and starts a seven-year famine, 1783

Mr. Hall of NYC advertises the first commercially made ice cream, 1786

Ives W McGaffey of Chicago patents the first vacuum cleaner, 1869

Herman Hollerith receives a patent for his punched card calculator, 1887

Theodore Roosevelt signs the Antiquities Act into law, authorizing the President to restrict the use of certain parcels of public land with historical or conservation value, 1906

Carl Laemmle incorporates Universal Pictures, 1912

Milton Berle hosts the debut of Texaco Star Theater, 1948

The United States Supreme Court rules that Washington, D.C. restaurants could not refuse to serve black patrons, 1953

The first World Ocean Day is celebrated, coinciding with the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1992

The first Transit of Venus since 1882 takes place, 2004

Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia, is hit by the State's worst storms and flooding in 30 years, 2007

Australia bans live cattle exports to Indonesia for up to six months in response to reports of cruel treatment at Indonesian slaughterhouse, 2011

The world's most powerful supercomputer, Summit, which can process 200,000 trillion calculations per second, is launched at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee, by IBM and NVidia, 2018