Getting Back to the Chores

I spent an exciting day cleaning the house.  It didn't get a good cleaning before we left on our trip, so it needed to be cleaned.  Now we get to enjoy the fruits of my labor until it gets messed up again.  That is one nice thing about the motorhome, it still needs to be cleaned, but it only takes about 10 minutes to clean it, the inside anyway--the outside is another story. 

One nice thing about being home is being able to park in the garage which is attached to the house.  Since it has been raining ever since we got home, it's nice not to get wet getting to the car.  Another thing that is nice is getting back to my full-sized washer and dryer.  I absolutely loved have the Splendide unit in the motorhome as we never had to go out to do laundry during our trip.  But we kept that little machine going!  I still haven't quite figured out how to get the clothes to come out unwrinkled, especially jeans and slacks.  I've tried everything from different settings to washing just one pair at a time, but it seems that some fabrics wrinkle more than others.  Yet I can wash those same fabrics at home and they don't come out wrinkled.  What am I doing wrong?

One of the things I had to do when I got home was go to the Kaiser lab and get a Pro-Time test.  Ever since my heart valve replacement surgery last year, I have been on Coumadin blood thinner medication and will have to take it the rest of my life because they don't want to take a chance that blood clots will develop.  It's not a problem to take the medication, and it's one of the Walmart $4 drugs, so it's not expensive.  But I have to have my levels checked every 4 weeks or so to make sure that I'm taking the correct amount to keep my blood thin enough.  I was able to put off the lab work for 6 weeks in order to take the trip.  I could have had it checked along the way, but that means filling out paperwork, finding a different lab, paying for the lab work, etc.  No thanks!  But it does mean that we will be limited to trips of six weeks or less unless I get the lab work thing all figured out.  I don't want to drive to Alaska unless we can take three months or so and do it right, so we'll have to put that trip off for now. 

Dave is going to try and figure out his sleeping at high altitude problem.  Jerry suggested trying a CPAP machine and mask, someone else suggested using oxygen at night.  He will talk to his VA doctor and try to figure something out.  In the meantime, we'll stay at lower elevations. 

The Grand Circle trip that we just completed was originally planned to be a trip to Yellowstone and Mount Rushmore.  Somehow it morphed into a trip to St. George, Las Vegas, and the Grand Circle.  That turned out to be providential, because Dave might have had a very hard time enduring the high elevation of Yellowstone National Park and the surrounding area.  Things always work out for a reason, we just don't always know the reason!

      Wildflowers at Capitol Reef National Park