Joan on the Road...of Life

I had the pleasure of baby sitting my great grandson Evan today. What a fun day! Thanks Naomi and Brad for inviting me to do this. Evan and I laughed and played all day except for the 1.5 hour nap we took in the recliner chair. He's just learned to pull himself up at 6.5 months so I spent most of the day protecting him from falls and chasing him when he crawled into forbidden corners. His Mom and Dad have a real challenge ahead with this energetic kid. Here's the proud guy.

When he got a bit fussy he reached over on the table and got his book, Goodnight Moon, and I read it to him. I was amazed that at his age he sat back and listened, helped me turn pages and pointed to stuff on the pages. Ahhh...he's probably a genius :).

I wished that I could just wrap him up and take him with me tomorrow because I'm flying from CA to IL to see my parents, Evan's great-great-grandparents. Hopefully we'll be able to collect the 5 generations this year for a historical photo.

I don't know what my computer access will be in Illinois so I may not be writing for a couple of weeks. Please stay tuned ;).

Posted by Joan at 08:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I've never agreed with the media and maybe medical assumption that growing older means you have to be on a drug to take care of everything. The only drug I take is a combo to control high blood pressure. The better thing to do would be to eliminate the cause of the problem so with my doctor's approval I weaned myself off the drug, first cutting down, then stopping. That was three weeks ago.

I started walking or biking everyday for 20 mintues and could see that exercise drops BP by 20 or so points for a short period of time. But without weight loss any little stress caused my BP to head upwards to 180/110. It seems to be a vicious circle that higher BP causes higher BP :). This week I could never find a time when my readings were comfortably low. So i put my experiment on hiatus today and went back on the medication with a goal to loose 20 pounds, then try again.

I now know that it won't kill me to stop the meds, but it's probably not healthy. I'm also convinced that a combo of weight loss, more exercise and deep breathing can help me over come this. So onward to weight loss...smaller portions is my motto! George Burns, who lived to be 100, said, "If I knew I'd live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself."

Posted by Joan at 06:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We had planned to head out for Northern CA this week but for a couple of family reasons decided to stay put for a month more in Hemet. I'm going to take a two week trip to visit my parents in Gurnee, IL, famous for Gurnee Mills and Six Flags. I grew up there so this is my time to visit with friends and help out Mom and Dad for awhile.

This required getting my rolling suitcase out of storage (what good does it do me there?) so we spent the day driving to Irvine where we lived for 27 years. I must admit to feeling a bit nostalgic today. It was a beautiful, balmy spring day and I recalled so many happy days in this lovely town. But I didn't reach the point of thinking I'd like to live there in a house again. Just...nice place to visit.

We exchanged my electronic keyboard and stand (that I haven't played for 3 years) for the suitcase which we'll store under the bed on top of the watertank. In our 32' there really has to be a special place for everything. To keep the suitcase with us, something had to go. We also took our old TV (remember the remodel) and donated it to Goodwill. Our remodel looks so good we figure nobody would want to go back to the TV over the dash.

Lunch time took us to one of the many outdoor foodcourts in Irvine. This one in the Jamboree Center had Indian, Mexican, Persian and Japanese restaurants. The outdoor seating was very crowded so after getting our tacos we asked to share a table with a young man. We introduced ourselves and spent an hour talking about the RV life. Turns out he just bought a popup camper and looks forward to someday being on the road. We had a great conversation and enjoyed recalling a few of our adventures. We topped off our lunch with some Moose Crunch from the Harry and David store.

Here's our lunch setting. The outdoor eating area is behind the the waterfountains.

Last stop was our accountant to finish the tax package. (Usually we do it all by mail, but we were in the area.) That took us to south Irvine and the construction going on just blew us away. Houses, shopping centers, business parks...I didn't think there was still space for so much building. Randy, our accountant, told us about a new development out in the eastern hills where the cheapest house is 3 million. We're reluctant to check out what our house would sell for now...probably a couple of hundred thousand more than we got in 2003. Well we don't regret that as we've had 3 great years on the road.

Posted by Joan at 09:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

We do enjoy grocery shopping so usually we check out all the grocery stores in the area. Here in Hemet there's a Vons under construction, an Albertson's that is nice but very empty (what do they know that we don't) and a Stater Brothers which is close and usually very busy. Our fave is the Vons but it's a mess right now. We recalled that we didn't care for Stater Bros but it seemed the best alternative for stocking the frig.

So we go in with list in hand and immediately remembered why we didn't like the store. Poor lighting, narrow aisles, screwy arrangement of food, poor signage....however we were there so we started shopping. We got about half way though our list, with several added "gee we need that" items. Then we started looking for the deli to buy cold cuts for sub sandwiches. NO DELI :(.

By that time we'd made so many negative comments about the store and bumped into so many people...we decided to flee. So we parked the cart in a far aisle and escaped from the store :). I just hope they didn't capture our faces on camera.

So we started over again at Albertson's where the aisles are wide but nobody was there. Go figure. We got everything on the list and more, as usual. Can't wait until Vons reopens.

Posted by Joan at 07:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Finally a sunshiny day so we headed out to see the big dam on Diamond Valley Lake. If you look closely at this picture you can see why this reservoir is fascinating. We are standing on a viewpoint above the large dam on the west side. In the distance you can see another dam and beyond that the town of Hemet.

As we walked down from the viewpoint we had a great view of the 2 mile long west dam. It is 2000 ft. wide at the base. I think there are 3 dams holding in all this water. It's kind of scary to me. Imagine the power held behind these dams.

At the base of the dam you can see a strip of land that is called a wildlife coridor. The animals are supposed to use this to move from one preserve to another. Wonder how they train the wild animals to do that? :)

This is all part of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern CA which brings this water to us courtesy of the Colorado River and Northern CA. It's fascinating. You could drive right by this on a couple of local roads and never know the lake is there because it's all held in about 400 feet above your head tucked in the foothills.

Posted by Joan at 10:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

OK. So I was a little bent out of shape over $24. It was the principle of the thing. And I'd been operating under false information. Here I am trying to manage my blood pressure without drugs (another story) and I allow this little bump to become a mountain.

So yesterday I called Verizon to increase my peak minutes and found that I can triple my daytime minutes, get unlimited evening, weekend and mobile to mobile for nearly the same price..I just sacrifice coverage in remote areas. So I changed plans. Jim will keep the old plan and we'll compare coverage for a few months. Maybe he'll switch too. So all's well that ends well. And as a fellow blogger said, "He who is flexible, won't get bent ot of shape." Too true.

Actually, I think I'm a little tense because it's been raining for two days (I'm a sunshine girl) and we're starting to plan our next moves to take us into northern CA. We've been in SoCal and AZ for 10 months and feel comfortable knowing the weather patterns, geography and campgrounds. Now we'll be moving to unexplored areas so the adventure begins again.

"It's a fine line between chaos and creation,"...says Paul McCartney...and that's what I try to do in planning. Have enough of a plan with enough options so that whatever might develop, we're covered. This being spring break time I'm just checking out several possible campgrounds to see what availability looks like and if needed, make reservations. (Note: always check the cancellation policy when making reservations.) So next week, first stop Acton where we'll go visit the Reagan Library, maybe see the Basset Hound Ranch or go take pictures at the Lancaster Poppy Reserve.

Posted by Joan at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I hardly ever get REALLY mad. Today I did! We downloaded our Verizon cell phone bill and I had a $24 call that nearly doubled my normal charge. So I called. This must be wrong I said. Nope, she said. The call was made during Peak hours. WRONG, I said. My evening hours (free) start at 8 PM wherever I am and this call purposefully came in at 8:01. WRONG, she says.

I've had Verizon forever (well almost) and I've always had evening hours starting at 8 PM. We have a plan that doesn't exist anymore so when we buy a new phone we always have to assure that our contract includes all our former features including various free minutes and no roaming. I got a new phone a year ago and was assured that all aspects of the new contract remained the same. Looks like I neglected to assure my evening hour time so they GOT ME. No way out, got to pay the $24.

I told the Verizon gal (probably hollered) that nowhere can I see what the evening hour limits are. Oh, she said, that's listed in the contract we sent you after you got your new phone. Yeah, right! You know what that print looks like....verrrry fine.

Lesson learned? Read the fine print, verify everything, trust nothing. Maybe go to a different service provider :) OK...I've "blogged" this out! Thanks for listening!

Posted by Joan at 05:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Back in the old "work-world" days we lived pretty much on a schedule. You know...sleep, eat, work, drive, then start over again. Once we spent a long weekend with our daughter Laura and she introduced us to the concept of "doing what you want, when you want to." The real eye-opener was watching a movie on a Sunday morning. Whoa! That seemed like a real guilty pleasure. And baking cinnamon buns at 10 PM because we were hungry and that sounded good.

Somehow I never really got the hang of "living like Laura" even in retirement. I think I'm still too traditional, conservative, whatever. So yesterday, on a cold, rainy, Friday afternoon, I watched a movie and still felt that guilty pleasure. Aren't you just supposed to watch movies in the evening after all your work is done? It takes a looooong time to break some of the habits of the working life. Like TGIF. I still get a "time to kick back" feeling about 4 PM on Fridays. Geez! I can kick back anytime.

I just received a box of movies from Amazon (gift certificates- thank you Jim) so maybe I'll watch one at breakfast and enjoy "living like Laura."

Posted by Joan at 03:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)