Well, here we are ensconced in our new home in The Isles at Palmer Ranch in Sarasota, Fla. We said our sad good-byes to the empty nest on Golden Pond on Saturday, Jan. 19, and schlepped for three days and two nights through the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and then Florida to get here. Whew! What a trip! It seems like Annie the Cat withstood the trip much better than The Little Woman and yours truly.
My poor old legs are just now getting back to functioning and it is now Feb. 7. I really did dread the drive, but even more so, I dreaded the thought of TLW taking over the controls for a few hundred miles. The brake and gas pedals on the passenger side just don’t’ seem to work for me.
I did break the law a couple of times during the trip. I definitely did not speed (well, may be a little) but I did sneak Annie the Cat into a couple motels that did not allow pets. How about this? We drover the first day until about dusk and stopped at a Days Inn in Clinton, Miss. There was a sign on the door which read “NO PETS! $250 FINE.” Don’t you think I was extra careful about sneaking Annie and her bathroom into the room. The carrier was a breeze because it looked like a piece of soft luggage but how can you disguise a big old litter box? It is a clear case of discrimination when you stay in a place where you don’t dare walk barefoot on the carpet and they wont’ allow a resident as fastidious as Annie. It kind of makes me wish she had left them a hairball under the vanity.
The second night we upgraded to a Best Western Executive Inn in Cairo, Ga. I’m sure most of you have been to Cairo before so you probably know they fold up the streets around 3 p.m. on Sunday. There was a nice Mexican restaurant attached to the inn but it was slammed shot as were all the other eating establishments except a couple of fast-food joints. We ended up watching football in the room and ordering pizza from number on our room key.
We arrived in Sarasota on the afternoon of the third day and made it through town to our son’s house with only two, “Oops, you missed that turn!” They were gracious enough to close off the master bedroom suite for us to stay in and then the fun began. First of all, they have a new puppy who was just a little too playful in his greeting of Annie so we shut her in our area while we got caught up on things with our son, our daughter-in-law, and our grandson.
Little did we know that my son’s huge Maine coon cat “Hollywood,” had previously holed up in that area. When the hissing and growling started up, we realized our error and we rushed into break up the standoff between the upstart newcomer and the 17-year King of the Roost. Hollywood was removed from our suite for the rest of our stay and, since our son’s room has a myriad of hiding places, we did not see our cat for two days. When we left to move into our new home, I had to dig her out of a nest behind a surfboard.
Now to the part about “first” being “bad.” We are the only house occupied on a brand new street, in a brand new part of this development. Nobody knows we are here! Nobody! Not the Postal Service, not the Waste Management folks, not the Saratoga Times Herald, and not the folks who are trying to deliver our new furnishings. Worst of all, we have no phone line, no television and no Internet service because Comcast Cable (which provides these services here) doesn’t even have the cable down our street yet. There are little people digging great big holes and dragging the coaxial sleeve from lot to lot, but nothing is connected and we have no idea when it will be.
I have said many times that I hat computers, I tolerate the phone and I am addicted to television. We have been without these services for over two weeks and I feel like we just moved into the Betty Ford Clinic. Oh, yes, we do have TLW’s old-timey cell phone from Corsicana upon which she is running up a humongous long-distance bill calling local Sarasota numbers. I can see it now — if we had a “911” emergency, the 287 Richland Chambers Fire and Rescue folks would be dispatched. Hah!
Things are so bad, I am actually going to haul this rant over to our central mail area in the “Community Center” and snail-mail it to Editor Bob. I wonder if the U.S. Postal Service will deliver to dailysun@corsicanadailysun.com?
The building development here did comp us for a weekend at a local hotel over Super Bowl weekend so that gave us some relief from the bare windows with crepe-paper blinds, the constant unpacking of stuff we didn’t know we brought, and the constant hammering, sawing, and unloading of new home lots on all sides. Also, TLW and I have probably had a lot more “quality time” together in the last few weeks than we can abide. Only kidding, Dear!
To be continued... see ya.
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Dick Platt is a Daily Sun columnist. Want to “Soundoff” on this column? Email: soundoff@corsicanadailysun.com
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Dick Platt is a Daily Sun columnist.
Discussion
When first is bad...
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