No time

Yes I have been gone for a week in California and no I don’t have time to go into great lengths so you get a cliff notes version.

Dawn, who I have mentioned here several times and I recently decided to explore a relationship. We have been friends for a couple years. She has been in the midst of moving to a new house and there are a mountain of things that need to be done connected to it. I wanted to help.

The week was filled with nearly non stop projects and tasks, far too many for me to even remember. Some of the highlights were removing a 40 year old one piece oven/top oven, dealing with a rotted tire blow out on a trailer while rolling down the highway, redoing a bunch of wooden tables, multiple light/door lock replacements and much, much more.

We did get to do a couple social things although riding a wheel was not one of them. The Sunday I arrived we went to a pool party hosted by one of our EUC friends. On Thursday evening we met up with Marty, Roger, and Larry for a nice dinner as well. Other than that it was nose to the grindstone mode, mostly.

I rented a full size Dodge Ram for the trip and we really got our money’s worth. It was used hard and performed it’s duties flawlessly. I got unexpected practice at backing up with a trailer. I was awful the first couple times but became much better by the end of the week. The entire week forced me to dust off some handyman skills that I already had as well as discover some new ones that I had not.

For almost half of my time there it was brutally hot with daytime temperatures exceeding 110 degrees. I found myself in a constant state of thirst despite drinking as much as I could. Although my body is quite accustomed to working in hot and humid conditions it apparently is not so efficient with working in dry sauna-like temperatures. I survived nonetheless.

By the time the week was done her new place was in significantly better condition than when I arrived which was what I hoped for. With as much as we did I still found myself wishing we could get her to the point where everything that needs to be done is completed, but only more time is going to be able to accomplish that.

I took my first ever red eye from California Saturday night. My hope was to be able to sleep on the plane but I was unsuccessful in doing so. I flew into Charlotte, had a two hour layover and then arrived in Fort Myers mid-morning Sunday. Flying overnight makes flights much more reasonable but I would need to find a way to be able to sleep effectively. I struggled getting through the rest of Sunday as I felt like I was in zombie mode. Once I fell asleep last night I was out like a rock.

It’s going to feel strange sliding back into my normal routine here as my time out there has no structure or routine. Each day we were just tackling whatever obstacles were in the way. Dawn and I work together well which is an important thing for me. It was an exhausting but fulfilling week at the same time.