Another productive day – with holiday treats!

February 14, 2008
Peoria, AZ

Yesterday was a good day, and we crossed several things off the collective to-do lists. Geri was able to get Merlin’s meds from the vet, which we need to have on hand before we head out on the road. She’s also got her dental prescriptions filled (antibiotic, pain, “relaxation”) so she’ll be all set for the implant surgery scheduled for March 11th, when we get back from our trip.

I spent a good chunk of the day working on the coach. I developed a spreadsheet last year that lists all the maintenance items and recommended intervals, tracks “last done”, and projects “next due”. With the drive train, generator (essentially a second “engine” system), and all the house systems, the maintenance list is almost a hundred items long. This time, I focused on many of the inside tasks, cleaning the air conditioning filters (they’re permanent and cleanable, not throwaway inserts like we have in the house), lubricating the pocket doors, etc. Overall, we’re almost caught up on things that are due, and we’ll tackle the remainder when we get back in March. The next major service is in June, and we’ll do that while we’re in Connecticut.

Yesterday, Geri made a new batch of holiday treats, leveraging a recipe that she’d found around Christmas into new chocolate goodies with a Valentine’s Day theme. They’re great (it’s hard to go wrong with Oreo Cookies and chocolate), and we had some last night after “the Last Supper”. We had steak frittes, recognizing that Geri needed to go to the dentist at 8:00 AM today. I pulled a nice wine (2000 Chateau Puyegard) from the wine box and we had a nice dinner.

Most of my typing today has been done in waiting rooms. I started this blog entry at the dentist’s office. As planned, they took out her loose bridge. It turns out that the “anchor teeth” aren’t sufficient to support a new bridge, as the periodontist had recommended. Accordingly, we’ll have to schedule two more implants for the upper right to be done in late March (they need 2 weeks between insertions and she’s scheduled to have the lower left done on March 11th). This will mean that we’ll be scheduling our summer departure for about 4 weeks from the end of March, allowing time to make sure that everything is OK before we go (they recommend 3 weeks but we’ll plan 4 to be safe). The whole thing should work out fine for our schedule, since the lower implants need 3-4 months to heal before being capped but the uppers need longer (4-6 months). We’ll try to get all this work scheduled (and budgeted!) before we leave, since that will help define our schedule. Right now, we know we’re scheduled to attend the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta in mid-October and, like the last time we attended, we’ll take our time getting back to the Phoenix area, since October temperatures are still pretty intense.

While all that advance planning is nice, we’re still in the middle of today’s “stuff”. Since the bridge was removed and can’t be re-inserted, we have an emergency root canal scheduled for 1:00 PM and then a temporary post and crown to be installed immediately after. The dentist’s office was able to find an endodontist to do the root canal (everything’s a specialty these days) on short notice, so we’ll have to find that office (we know the general area) with enough time to do all the paperwork before the scheduled time, then race back to the dentist’s office where they’re squeeze us back in to do the temporary crown.

In the middle of all this, she had a Physical Therapy appointment scheduled. This is an ongoing series for the bursitis in her hip, and we want to make sure she has her “exercises” down so she can keep them up while we’re away. I’m hanging out there as I type, and she should be done soon. Then we’ll head for the other dental appointments mentioned above. We’ll have dinner with Ana and Larry tonight as well, so today’s a busy day…

Whew! Happy Valentine’s Day!