Our goal is to spend some time in Fort Dodge helping Lug with his house. He’s 90 years old and lives alone. Anyone living alone has to do triple duty: all of the outside chores and all of the inside chores along with all the maintenance involved in home ownership. It’s so much easier with two. Lug’s always taken very good care of his home, his castle, but, these days, he has other priorities: he has a girlfriend named Barb and he’d rather spend his days with her. And, who can blame him?
Here they are standing by the falgpole that Lug has erected in his front yard. Aren’t they a cute couple?
In the meantime, two back doors are stuck and won’t fully open, a 10’ x 13’ section of his roof need to be reshingled, several faucets are dripping and his home needs a general cleaning. We’re leaving fairly soon for the Southwest and we’d like to ensure that Lug is set until Spring when we return. Driving up to and back from Fort Dodge wastes a lot of time so we decided that our motorhome was the perfect solution.
And, here we are. I’ll have to admit that I’ve got lots of respect for those who use their RV for weekends. There’s lots of planning and packing for just a few days. I wanted to make simple meals because I thought I’d not have to drag lots of stuff up there. Well, even simple meals require lots of things. For example, I planned to have some Morningstar Black Bean burgers which then means I need to take mustard, ketchup (which I forgot), pickles, buns. No meal is simple. A salad means lettuce, tomatoes, cranberries, walnuts, spinach, dressings, carrots, whatever. I think it’s easier to pack for the season which we usually do.
We have extensive lists of things we need to take with us and tasks we need to get done before we leave. It takes us a while to get ready. Because we were going for only a week, we didn’t pack as much and - didn’t use our lists. Did we forget some things? Yeah, hand soap for one. But, we’re in a town of 30,000 and they actually have stores where we can buy whatever we might have missed. So, it’s no big deal.
Lug knows that we’re coming but does he know that we have our RV and plan to stay for a while? Nope. We know he’s not going to be happy having anyone aroung his house for too long. Firstly, all this activity will increase his anxiety level and secondly, our presence will imply that he’s not taking care of house. However, we plan to do most of our work while he is gone at Barb’s. We’re not going to sneak into his house, we’ll check in with him in the mornings but then he can leave and do everything he normally does. We plan to be cleaned up when he returns - and, have will have Barb call us when he leaves her house to return to his own home about 4:00.
Another goal is to spend some quality time with my brother who also lives in Fort Dodge. Usually when we make it a day trip we’ve got 3 1/2 hours of driving which cuts into our visiting time.
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