Open her eyes, predicitive mowing, Joan, trip time

So this morning I dropped off Nicki at the vet that is going to perform the eyelid surgery.  Nicki gets very scared when she is in a foreign environment without someone she knows to offer comfort.  It was very tough for me to try to coax her into the back room as she kept trying to go the other direction.  In addition to getting her folded eyelids surgically corrected she also will be getting her teeth cleaned.  Ali is nervous because Nicki has not been under anesthesia her entire adult life, the only time she was under when she was fixed as a puppy.  I am confident everything will be fine.

Offering Nicki relief from what had to be a maddening irritation of her eyes is what I am focused on.  Post op she will be required to wear a cone for around two weeks to allow the eyelids to heal.  I am sure she will hate the cone for those two weeks but it’s better than feeling like you have something in your eyes 24/7.

Last night I did some predictive mowing.  What is predictive mowing you ask?  In my case it is mowing areas that I predict will once again be under water if we get another downpour.  By mowing these areas, even if it does rain, I will be able to still finish up the mowing on Saturday without issue. It’s a brilliant plan.

Yesterday Joan Rivers passed away after having some sort of complication during vocal chord surgery.  If you are younger you may know Joan primarily for her self admitted odd physical appearance from extensive plastic surgery backed up by a steady drip of botox.  However if you are my age you have more appreciation for her comedy brilliance.  For 50 years she has harvested endless laughs from audiences around the world.

Her work ethic, energy and non-stop drive at her age was truly amazing.  The only other famous person I can recall that was her age with that sort of energy was Jack Lalanne.  Much like Jack, I just sort of thought Joan would live forever.   To have her pass away is just the latest pinch of reality I have felt.

So tomorrow Cindy and I will be working on a very long checklist I made last night of pre-trip to do’s.  We need to make sure we dot all of our I’s and cross every T.  The main pushpins of the trip will be visiting the arch in St Louis, Maintou Springs, Durango and White Sands.  Of course the beauty of a road trip is the random events that happen in between during 4500 miles of driving.

Although I am looking forward to the trip, Cindy is REALLY excited.  She never had a chance to do much  traveling most of her life.  She has discovered she loves road trips as much as I do.

As I did last year I will be trying to document while I am on the road, both from hotel rooms and highway courtesy of my wi-fi hotspot.  The wildcard is just how difficult this will be in the much smaller confines of the Prius.

Day one will be brutal, with us hopefully pulling out around 4AM Sunday to get a head start on the roughly 875 miles of road we want to digest on Sunday.