April 23, 2018

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

Duffey's mother, Jewel, turns 98 today. Up until a month ago she was still driving her car to dance class and the store. The state of AZ decided Jewel was to old to drive so they took her drivers license. Jewel is not at all happy about this turn of events. She still lives in her duplex in Sun City, AZ.
We spent the winter in AZ so we could help Jewel and found that she was having some memory issues. Duf's sister Fran and her husband Bob decided they would move into Jewel's condo  with her and assist with her care. They make sure she gets to dance, luncheons and wherever she needs to go, personal chauffeurs!

Ankle

We are home now and I have been to the orthopedist here in town. Dr. Wong from AZ gave me a dvd with my x-rays and copies of all of my paperwork to give Dr. Carlisle and Dr Bush. Natalie dropped off all the paperwork on Friday and I received a call on Monday that both DR had reviewed everything and wanted to see me on Wednesday. 
Upon our arrival we were interviewed by a nurse that informed us that if the DR did not like what they saw I might have to have more surgery. UG She sent me to have more x-rays, because they like to have their person take them a specific way. After she got all of my information updated she exited and both DR with their assistants entered the room. YIKES both of them at once. They both sat down facing me and instructed one assistant to remove my boot and the other to bring up the x-rays.
To our amazement both DR were highly impressed with what Dr. J Wong had done and how I had heeled! They both said it was an excellent job and they could not have done any better. They said prior to seeing me they had called Dr Wong and told him that he had done a great job and they said that Dr Wong said I was a good patient because I had followed all instructions. They all agreed that they would take the boot, put on a small brace and I could begin to walk and exercise at home. They said that since I followed instructions I could save my money and not go to therapy. I have now been walking, as instructed, with and without the brace. My ankle is extremely stiff and it hurts when I walk, but it should get better daily. They said it will take more than a year to walk without stiffness and pain but it should happen. I return to the DR in three weeks!
PS the scars on both sides of my ankle are visible but not that bad!

Karma strikes at Montgomery Bell

Karma

Today Duf gathered some wood and made a fire. It smelled devine because most of the wood was cedar. Some walkers stopped to comment about the great smelling fire but they stayed for the show!

Two campers were about to pull out when one had a hitch problem that had him stopped, blocking the camping lane. An RV came up the blocked lane where a  campers was also still in his spot because he was blocked in and trying to assist his friend. The RV guy got out of his RV all huffed up because he was ready to park and the road was blocked. He rushed up to the guys trying to fix the hitch and told them to hurry. On his way back he kicked rocks and threw a fit because the road was blocked. I have never seen this type of behavior from an RVer before.

It took about 20 minutes for the guys to fix the hitch and be on their way. Mr Huffy quickly had his wife pull their RV up to their spot, he took the car off the dolly and backed the car up the road. Mr Huffy unhooked the dolly and pushed it into an occupied camp site, the residents were gone ,and slammed it down. He stepped over the dolly to return to his RV and caught his foot and tripped and fell flat. The spectators next to our fire just looked away and kept fake talking, no one wanted to approach him. Next he moved his car into another occupied site blocking in the residents. 

Mr Huffy and his wife have walkie talkies and he instructs her to begin to back in. She begins the process with extreme speed and almost hits a tree. Instead of telling he to stop using the walkie talkie he starts flailing his arms and screaming at her, but she can’t hear him over the diesel engine or see him standing behind the RV. Luckily she stops before contact with the tree. This comedy of errors continues for quite some time because she is going to fast and he keeps throwing down the walkie talkie and yelling. Finally she is successful with parking. Mr Huffy  immediately begins to hook things up and has a few tantrums while he is in the process. The campfire crew begins to disperse but they are leaving before the show is over.

Mr Huffy gets hooked up and goes inside but returns shortly and yells at Duf, “Hey Buddy, does your dish work?” Duf says yes and Huffy storms back inside. He has a dome and I see a huge leaf on it so it will not be able to find a satellite. Huffy returns and rudely says, “ Our ice maker is leaking. No one needs an ice maker. I’m going to get comfy. Dam TV, don’t think a TV works in these woods. “

Karma is about to continue. Huffy was very rude to the guy having problems and holding him up. Now the guy that is blocked by Huffy’s car wants to leave but he is blocked in his own site. He asks us if the car is ours and we point next door and he goes to ask them to move. Mr Huffy storms out and moves his car but acts like he is being bothered and does not apologize for blocking the guy in. About an hour later the people where the dolly is parked return and they can’t get into their site. The wife gets out of the car and comes over by our fire and very politely asks us if the dolly is ours. We tell her it belongs to the RV on the site next to us. She walks over and asks him to move his dolly. Mr Huffy slams out of his RV and walks over to the dolly and picks up the tongue. He slams it down and yells at the driver to move his car so he can drag the dolly down the road and have a better angle to park it. The driver backs up a bit and Mr Huffy yells at him again instructing him to back up more. The driver backs up more and finally Huffy moves his dolly, slams it down and returns to his RV. On his way back to the RV he turns and yells, “Neighbor, you are wrong, TV does not work here.”

We did not answer him but felt a sad joy that he had not turned the water to his ice maker off correctly and we could see it still leaking. If he had been a nice guy Duf would have gone over and helped him fix it but he was so rude we kept to ourselves. Later that night we saw him out taking everything out of his bays and it was all wet. Karma

Gone but not forgotten

April 1, 2018

We left The Ranch in Happy Trails of Surprise, AZ around 6 AM on our trip to Nashville to see our Grandson Boone. Since I have a bad ankle Duf did not want me to exit the RV as we pulled out. We started to pull out of our site and then Duf changed his mind and went the other direction so he would not shine our lights in our neighbors window. Mistake we learned later! He had taken one rod out of the ground and laid it next to the second one but when he turned out he brushed the second rod. It bent the rod a bit but we were lucky because it only scratched our tire. We did not even know this happened until Sandy texted us about it.  Dang!!  We are lucky that the new owners are not going to charge us for this error!

We traveled the winding roads through the scenic mountains of the Tonto Forest. The Apache Indians inhabit this area and we were shocked to see the amount of trash along the road and in their yards.

Around noon we passed the Continental Divide on Highway 10. There was a gift shop advertised but we did not stop. A bit later in Las Cruas we crossed the Rio Grande River and it was full of people swimming. This section has both sides in New Mexico!

We came out of a section of the mountains to a beautiful valley with a Casino and many police cars. They had just rescued a man that had jumped off the bridge because he was drunk and lost his money in the Casino. Just past the Casino was a large horse race track. A river meandered along the remainder of this valley and it was dotted with horse ranches and lush green fields, not what we had seen all winter in the desert! The road was above the valley and gave us a great view of these beautiful farms.

We drove through White Sands but nothing was open for tours. The sand was pure white and blew around like powder! We spent the night in Roswell, NM and did not see any Martians.