Exercise in Patience

12:30 PM

Wow! What a day yesterday...Eldy took the motorhome to Freightliner while I followed in the car. He said that it started and beeping and dinging at him with the low voltage meter the minute he started it up and started driving. It beeped and dinged all the way over to the truck shop until he crossed the bridge close to the shop and as he pulled into the lot, the beeping and dinging stopped and the RV voltage meter read normal. He was ready to tear out what little hair he has until he parked the RV. At that point, as he put it into neutral, the voltage dipped once again. "AHA! Got you now, you little, er, big Phaeton!" That's what I imagined him saying...he left the engine running and ran into to get a tech to read the error message. If they don't see it, it doesn't exist unless they can get diagnostics to find the error. The tech confirmed, "Yes, you do have a problem." Four hours into having the RV in the shop, they couldn't find the problem!...it's still in the shop and it's 9:30 PM right now. We are staying in a motel so they can keep working on it this evening...sigh! But, let's look at the good side, I get to take a really hot bath instead of a shower! No interesting photos today. The yarn photos are what occupied my time at the Freightliner waiting room. Ever try to wind your own ball of yarn ladies and end up with a bigger mess than what you started with? That's the ball of yarn I had on my lap for about two hours. I worked on it at Freightliner, and I worked on it while getting my oil changed at Honda. That is a very good test of patience, in my opinion!

2:30PM

What else happened to test our patience?I lost my checkbook over the weekend. After checking carefully everywhere I could think of, I came to the conclusion that I dropped it somewhere...then I started to hit panic mode, throwing the entire contents of my purse out on the bed (which is a surprisingly amount of stuff!), going back and forth from the car to the RV, dumping storage containers, ransacking the car, and Eldy is looking at a crazy woman running back and forth and throwing things around. The only thing missing was a hissy fit! (I'm pretty quiet most of the time when I'm upset.) I finally had to tell Eldy I lost my checkbook. Now this is not news to Eldo, as I lose my keys, my camera, my purse, my debit card--one or all of these things at least once or twice a day and most of the time they are right under my nose, in a pocket, in the car, etc. But it WAS news that I really did lose it this time and I got THE LOOK--("Oh, CRAP! She really did lose it this time!" ) All he said was, "That doesn't surprise me"....He had the patience of Job as he drove me from one bank branch to another while I transferred my account to a new one, ordered new checks, then we ran errands again on top of all this bank business. Back and forth to Freightliner to check on the progress of the voltage problem (none) and back out on the streets again to do a little Christmas shopping. About the only good thing that happened Monday was a really wonderful surprise dinner of sorts with some friends Eldy has known for over 35 years. We thought we were having dinner with one or two couples, but all of Eldy's friends that regularly get together several times a year wanted to see him so much they all drove to a central location in Elkhart to see him and catch up on the news with  him and each other. There were 12 of us all together.....We ate at Heinie's Back Barn in Elkhart...wonderful steak dinners, wonderful company, wonderful time with friends.....we sure hope tomorrow brings some relief to this voltage problem so we can get going south...they are expecting some snow to stick here in the next day or so....yay! (says Jeannie very softly)

good friends of 35 years and more, wow!