December 1 to 7, 2019

Sunday ; Sunny and mild. Joanne cooked an Irish Stew in the Sun Oven today.

Joanne went grocery shopping this afternoon. I did some maintenance work on the fifth wheel trailer and the truck camper. I did some essential gardening. 

I removed a large Prickly Pear cactus in the dog park behind our rear fence that had fallen over during the summer. Probably from wind. I had planted it about eight years ago. And it had grown about a vertical foot each year. SHEESH ! As did a Cow’s Tongue Prickly Pear I planted in our front yard at about the same time. I had to trim that one quite a bit today. It was growing over our sidewalk. While I was working on that, one of our neighbours … whose summer home is in Summerland, a bit north of us in the Okanagan Valley ... came by just to tease me a bit about the folly of cactus gardening. Yeah … live and learn ! HA HA HA !

Ozzie continues to suffer. We have such mixed feelings about ending his life tomorrow ! Our minds and our hearts are at odds !

Monday ; High overcast, cool.

Around noon today the headlights that I ordered for the Chrysler minivan arrived by FedEx. I installed them.

At 3:30 PM today … Ozzie’s suffering ended. Farewell and Godspeed, sweet little fellow. When you were “dumped” on us twenty-six months ago we made a commitment to you ; to give you good quality of life for your remaining time, and more importantly, to ensure that you had a good end of life. We achieved that !

My tears are flowing and my heart is broken !

Tuesday ; Cloudy and cool.

It’s a relief that Ozzie’s suffering has ended. Last night was the first night in about three weeks that we were not awakened multiple times during the night by Ozzie’s illness.

Our new ( to us ) GPS unit arrived today. It’s similar to our previous GPS, but newer and a bit more complex and complicated. Joanne and I both played around with it a bit this afternoon. Joanne helped me do some maintenance on the camper this afternoon. She did some gardening. I did some maintenance on the new minivan.

Late in the afternoon we went to the swimming pool to do an exercise session. Because of the weather we had the pool all to ourselves. In the evening I worked on annual budget planning.

Wednesday ; Cloudy and mild.

This morning we ran some errands on our way to the Yuma Civic Center to attend the Welcome Back Winter Visitor Bash. We spent an hour there wandering around the many vendor booths, collecting information ( and swag ).

This afternoon Joanne went shopping by herself at Wal-Mart. On her way home she encountered a stray dog not too far from home. She was unsuccessful in catching it, so she rushed home to recruit me to help. By the time we returned just a few minutes after she had been there, the stray dog was gone. < shrug > BUT … as we drove the short distance back home we found a pile of “Yuma roadkill”. HA HA HA ! About a dozen or so full boxes of bags of salad mix, straight off the farm fields, fallen off a truck. We picked up six boxes of six bags each and took it back to our RV park to be placed in the clubhouse. Help yourselves, folks, first come, first served ! HA HA HA ! That’s a regular occurrence around here ! HA HA HA !

Thursday ; Sunny and warm.

This afternoon we did an exercise session in the swimming pool. In the evening we went downtown to attend the monthly foreign art film at Historic Yuma Theater. On the way home afterwards we stopped at Wal-Mart to buy a few automotive items I need for our new to us minivan.

Friday ; Mostly sunny and warm.

This morning we headed east on Interstate 8 to Yuma Foothills, to shop at the Helping Hands Yard Sale. We usually buy an item or two at this semi-annual, huge “yard sale” done by a large church in the Foothills. But today we bought more than just a few items. And some very odd items, for a “yard sale”. Like … a breast prosthesis ! HA HA HA ! Joanne’s brand … and size ! ! ! < blink blink > 

I don’t know how a new breast prosthesis ends up at a church yard sale, but … can’t argue with buying a $300 item for five bucks ! And a $70 electronic TENS massager for three bucks ! And a $65 blood pressure machine for five bucks ! And a $200 pair of women’s SAS shoes for three bucks ! ! !

We went to Pioneer Shopping Mall and had lunch at Subway. Then while I walked over to O’Reilly Auto Parts to buy some automotive bulbs Joanne went shopping at the 99¢ Only Store. Before leaving the foothills we stopped at Southwest Exchange to get some keys cut for the minivan, and to buy a couple of flag holders for the Arizona room eaves. We stopped at the Humane Society of Yuma to donate a near full ( $92 ! ) bag of Ozzie’s dog food. We stopped at Arizona MarketPlace to pick up our minivan’s dash cover, but it wasn’t ready yet. Sure enough, when we arrived back home there was an e-mail advising us that it wasn’t yet ready, as it was supposed to be. Last stop before we returned home was Habitat For Humanity where we dropped off / donated a few items, for the second time this week.

Back at home, Joanne did laundry. I installed a signal light bulb and a headlight bulb in the minivan. I did some inside and outside maintenance on the fifth wheel trailer. Might be a new plumbing leak in the trailer. < sigh >

Saturday ; Cloudy and mild, heavy rain in the evening. Heavy rain ? In Yuma ? ?

Late this morning we headed out to pick up the second payment on the Oldsmobile Bravada. After accepting a deposit on the car last weekend I had agreed to pick up the second payment today, and the final payment next weekend. After picking up the payment we ran errands. We went grocery shopping at Food City, the “Mexican” supermarket in Yuma with two outlets. Today we shopped at the outlet we’ve only been to once before. I think we’ll be shopping at this location more often. Their panaderia is better than at the location we usually go to, and … they have an excellent cocina / lunch counter in the store. We had lunch there today. MMMMM !

After Food City we went to Dollar Tree. Then while Joanne shopped at the 99¢ Only Store I shopped next door at Harbor Freight. WOO-HOO … new location, bigger store ! Next was AutoZone who did not have what I was looking for. Then Fry’s Fuel Bar to refill the minivan. Final stop was Pep Boys, who also did not have what I needed.

I just spent an inordinate amount of time, late in the evening, trying to overcome a word processing document problem I created with sloppy fingers on the computer keyboard ! HMPH !

DSK