My Least-favorite Part of Full-timing

Today’s our final day at Lake Ray Roberts, north of Dallas/Ft Worth. We’ve spent a whopping ten days here, same site as every year, so we can visit Karen on our way to a week of annual “life garbage” (thanks, Melanie) near Houston. 

Man have I enjoyed these sunsets over the lake; we’ve watched them from the campsite, from the little beach down below us, and Tracy from his kayak. I’m feeling too lazy to bother getting in mine so I just sit in a lawn chair for them.

Well, I have been riding my bike through the woods, and every day I find this guy watching me. Once he was right on the bike path, and I was so freaked out I didn’t really realize it was him (I mistook him for the younger buck also out here, his pic is below) and I didn’t get off the bike to grab my camera in time to get a better shot. Which is a good thing. He is in no hurry, himself. He walks like his rack is heavier than he is, and yet there are four tiny points that haven’t even begun to grow on it. A giant beast, and is smart that I keep my distance.

We’ve also been prepping for November here. We’ll spend a hunk of the month camping on the beach (tide permitting), at maybe five beach spots as we move down the Gulf Coast to Brownsville. But first, big stuff is looming large.

You know. The election. And like lots of people, I’m practically holding my breath with fear. 

This is our second Federal election from the road, and it’s our second time jumping through the hoops to vote. I’ll describe our process to distract myself here. Months ago, we requested an application for an absentee ballot, received it through our mail service, happened to be nearby so filled it out and sent it back. (Jeesh I think that’s right.  It was a while ago.) We checked online and were approved and then … had to figure out where to have the actual ballots sent, seeing as how we didn’t know where we would be by the time they got to wherever we chose. Tricky, see?  

We decided to have them sent to Finn in Michigan, and they were indeed sent to him, but right after we left him, so we had him send them to Karen down in Texas. We picked them up from her, filled them out very carefully, then handed them to a postal clerk who stamped them with the date and mailed them for us. Heck, we might have done a little praying that our ballots would finally be counted after all of that. Well, doesn’t matter how much effort we went to. We want them counted.  

On Election Day, we’ll be in our doctor’s appointment campground, because that’s the life garbage we’ll be occupied with all week before we go to the beach.  I know, we were just in Houston seeing doctors, but that was to figure out a specific thing with my health (I am so close to cracking that case, stay tuned). This time we’re there for our annual check-ups.  Which, turns out to be a lot of them if you cram them all into one week’s worth of visits. Which I hate (a week of doctors) more than anything we do as full-timers. In fact, I wrote out one long complaint about all the doctors we need to see and how long that will take, yadda yadda, and I deleted it.

I am truly grateful we have medical resources, like I’m grateful we could vote from the road. That’s my bottom line. This country’s bottom line, egads. It’ll all soon be behind us, one way or another. In the meantime, let’s collectively breathe. 

Thank you to all my friends (and everyone) canvassing, attending rallies, writing postcards, calling voters.