Pit Sweet Pit

We are in the house. In the basement with no blinds or curtains on the windows, no shower curtain in place, all of our kitchen stuff still in boxes and bags on the counters or floor, but in the house none the less. I am completely exhausted.

I am sitting on my “bed” which is a mattress on the floor of what would be the living room at a more civilized time. My son has the bedroom (as promised) and is safe behind his closed door doing whatever teenage boys do at 10:30 on a Sunday night.

We started the day early about 150 miles south of here when we rose from our beds in our “other” home and hopped in the car for a teen driving clinic put on by the local Audi club. This is a wonderful event that teaches young drivers some of the things that driver’s education does not dwell on, such as emergency braking, unexpected lane changes at speed, how to recover from a wheel slipping off the pavement at speed, wet and dry slalom events, and the dreaded (and loved) skid pad exercise.

This is the second teen clinic that I have attended as a parent and a course assistant. The first was two plus years ago with my daughter and it was one of those hot summer days when you had to be careful to drink enough water. Today, on the other hand, saw temps dipping down close to the freezing zone with high winds, sleet and snow. My job was to stand out in that mess and pick up all of the rubber cones the drivers smashed and mangled on their way around the course.

After eight hours of that, we got to drive home, release the Dawg from prison, switch cars and drive another two and a half hours north in the dark and wind to our new home.

When we left here on Friday, there was no electric, heat, or hot water in the apartment. When we arrived here tonight, we had all three. Thanks to all who put in an extra effort to make that happen. We have plenty of work to do to make this a little bit of home for the next six to eight weeks (hey, I’m an incurable optimist) while the rest of the house gets finished off. At least we are not paying through the nose by the week for an additional place to live.

I am going to sign off now. This will get posted sometime tomorrow when I get within internet range. That’s another thing that we haven’t got here yet. Hopefully that will change in the coming week.

Ta ta all.

Delinquent Again

It's been brought to my attention that I have not been posting very frequent - and it's true. Not because of anything wrong, just a run of the mill life I guess. I can run through the gist of it in a couple of sentences.

I still have the remnants of the cold my son gave to me four weeks ago. I have been doing some grouse hunting (more like grouse "looking for" and walking amongst the brilliant fall colors in the woods with the Wonder Dawg) when I have a few hours on the odd week day. The Duluth house is coming along but never as fast as we want. We hope to move into the apartment there someday next week. The house in the Cities had it's first showing in over six months last week. No word on whether the prospects want to buy. I refuse to look at my financial statements. I will see my daughter in a few days as she is coming back to the Cities for the weekend. I will stay down there to make and appointment at the Mayo on Tuesday where I will have a CT-scan to see how the experimental drug is doing. I go in for student conferences on Thursday morning where I will hear from my son's teachers how he is getting along in his new high school.

There, now you are all caught up. That wasn't so hard now was it? I hope that once we actually make the complete transition to the new house that I will feel the urge to wax more lirical (is that proper language usage?). Everything seems so temporary right now - life chopped into short bits - that my writing has suffered.

It could be worse though. I might have too much of the wrong kind of thing to write about and I would prefer we keep the current arrangement, thank you very much. So, I wish I could entertain you with more, but that's all she wrote.