Headed out.

 We had two dry days and I tried to make the most of them. I got my junkyard flower bed weeded. I got the dahlias, and Mattie's plants, and my morning glory seeds planted. I spread the mulch.

I gave the raised beds a good weeding. After 5 days away, I imagine that my garden will look like a jungle. I am amazed at how everything is growing. 

I am all packed up and ready to head east tomorrow. My granddaughters are waiting. We are going to make galaxy high bounce balls. I have a rock painting project. I imagine there will be a teaparty or two. 

At the last protest, a candidate walked our line speaking to us. His question? "What is it that keeps you up at night?" When he got to me, I had my answer. "My grandchildren." He laughed and said. "Do they live with you?"I said no, but that I worried about the world we were leaving them. His smile faded. "I understand that."

You know how things all come together sometimes and you find yourself in a situation that is way out of your comfort zone? That's where I am. 

I live in a red county, and this red county has some ignorant people in it, people who can get pretty hostile when confronted with different opinions.

A woman brought the subject up to me. They are looking for people who can speak knowledgeably. They want people who can respond with facts, not emotion. 

I am not sure that is me, to be honest.

But I stood there with my sign, and I thought. About my grandchildren. About the woman at the ice cream place who was so shocked to meet someone would speak so openly in public. About family and divisions. About what matters. 

I signed the paper before I left. 

So far out of my comfort zone, but I feel as if it needs done. 

Much to my surprise, in broad daylight, I looked out the door and saw a deer tearing off a pumpkin leaf and chewing happily. Not more than 10 feet from the sliding door. She reached down and tore off another leaf. I opened the door and shook my finger. "You! Leave my pumpkins alone." Sheshowed me a bit of respect: she stopped chewing while she decided if I was a threat or not. She ambled out by the truck and watched me watching her. 

Later we had another visitor. It is a poor picture, taken through thermal pane glass.

Looks like we will have to put up fencing this year.

The insurance company is moving kind of slowly. We are prepared to wait them out. 

Happy Things

Today was a day of little wins. We both slept in until 9 am, unusual for us, but I think we were the better for it.

I continued weeding my plant junkyard. I have been buying distressed plants for a couple years now and tossing them into a spot I had designated to be a flowerbed at some point. Now I am weeding, taking stock of what has grown, filling in the empty spots with plants Mattie bartered for a ride, dahlia bulbs I had been given for my birthday, planting seeds,  rearranging plants.  A couple more days of working at it should make me feel better about it. 

As I worked Possum, one of the ferals came over to keep me company. She loves to be petted. She purrs and rubbed against me. She chased dirt clots and finally laid stretched out close next to me. It is so strange. As friendly as she is, I still can't pick k her up and she won't come inside for more than a couple minutes. 

The big news is that Tim got his tractor running. That has been troubling him. I am glad. I have been wanting some rock moved to make a little back drop to my flowers.  He spent a couple hours mowing. 

The vegetable beds look great too. They are so easy to keep weeded. I planted a couple dozen tomato plants - cherry, beefsteak, and San Marzano. Peppers sweet and jalapeños, onions, garlic, peas, beans, zucchini, carrots, corn and pumpkins. Herbs- rosemary, basil, chives. Oregano. It makes me happy to see everything doing so well. 

I saw a bluebird. It is nest building. That made me happy too. 

Thursday, I am headed east for granddaughter time. Another happy thing. 

Step by step

 Last night, I woke up about three hours after I went to bed. My leg just felt strange. Like an achy, sort of electrical thing going on. I got up, took some aspirin, and sat up a bit until things eased a bit back, and then went back to bed.

While I was sitting up though, I found myself fretting a little about the car. I will tell you what it was that troubled me: with that empty gaping hole in center of the console. What did it connect to? Were those components still there? How do you know? I mean, without the rear view mirror, with out that big screen, so many systems did not work. The automatic wipers, the back up camera, the electronic portion of the hybrid system. No navigation system. Simple things. No A/C. No heat. The white liquid sprayed across the console resulted in buttons that stuck when pushed. My big concern was how on earth do they tell what these computers connect up to? Did we still have those components? How can anyone know?

I finally went back to bed. Imagine my surprise to wake up this morning and discover that I managed to do something to my back. I can scarcely walk. It either was pushing a wheelbarrow or a couple days of aggressive weedeating. I was gimping around trying to look presentable before the claims adjuster came.

I almost made it.

The guy spent a long time studying the situation. He played with the sticky buttons. He took a lot of pictures. He retreated to his car to make some calls. He came back out from his truck and took more pictures. He said, "Let me talk to my supervisor on this one." Back to his truck he went. 

The raised beds had already been weeded. Nothing left to be done, I hobbled over and sat on the bench with Tim to wait.

Eventually, he came back out and gave it to us straight. "My supervisor is leaning towards just writing this off. The nearest Lexus dealer is in Buffalo. It would cost $750 to tow the car there. I am already at $7300 worth of parts, and who knows what else they are going to find..."

I think he thought Tim would protest, but all he said was 'That's fine."

The adjuster looked relieved. He made a joke. "I just have this feeling that if we wind up trying to fix this car, you will have to put an addition on your house. I would have to live here because you would be calling me every day with another problem. I am just afraid the car would never be right again. It really is all the Lexus bells and whistles..."

He ran some comps. Everything will be turned over to the claims guy. 

Tim stood looking at the car after he left. "We really had a pretty fancy car for a couple months."

Red Tape

 Tuesday, when I called the guy in charge of our insurance claim to tell him we had the car, that it was badly damaged, he immediately said, 'Let me get in touch with a local adjuster.' He assured us that he would have everything in place before we even got home. He said he wanted to get things settled for us as quickly as possible. 

Sounded good to us. 

This morning, we were trying to plan our day. I felt like we should wait to hear from the insurance guy. Tim, being Tim, had a tractor issue and needed to run into town. I decided to stay home and work on resolving the stolen plate issue. 

The first phone call was to DMV. Their automated system had no way to resolve that. 

I then called the state police. They told me about form MV-44 to replace the plate. I said that I couldn't really file for a replacement plate until I knew what the insurance was going to do with the vehicle. We might not need a replacement tag. 

He suggested calling our representative. I did. Her office assured me that I didn't need to worry about it. I said that I was not comfortable with that approach. Whoever had it was not honest. If they committed a crime... but the woman said, 'as soon as they run the plate, they will see that the tag does not belong to that vehicle.' 

Right...but the tag is still associated with our name and address. 

Boggles my mind that such a simple thing can't be done. 

In any case, it was 11. We still had no contact contact from the claims adjuster. So I tried to reach him, but got his voice mail once again. I left a message. 

I mean, what do you do? Just stay home until someone shows up?

I took my grumpy self outside and worked on weeding my poor flower garden. I weedwhacked for an hour. I planted 30 caladium along the north side of the house. I felt better.

I finally got a call back from Jason who was handling our claim. He was amazed we hadn't heard from the adjuster. He gave me his name and number. 

We know him.

I called and he was bemused. He knew nothing of our case. I said that he was supposed to have been emailed yesterday. He was driving, but pulled off the road to check. "Noooooooo," he said slowly. "Nothing yesterday...wait! Here it is. It just came in now."

Long story short, we are on his list for Friday. His appointments tomorrow are already in place.

Ugh. 

I went back outside to play in the dirt.

Remember those circling clouds that convinced Tim to put on pants? Turned out we had a tornado touchdown here in podunk. 

 https://www.weather.gov/ctp/Tornadoesof14June2026

Long Day.

 We went back to Canada today. The police were quite apologetic about the fact that no one reached out to us from their end. They did call our insurance guy. That is how we found out. The claims adjuster called us to call them and then call him back. 

We were afraid that it would take weeks of bullshitting around to get the car back. The impound guy could not even tell us whether there was damage or if it was drivable. 

There are some real peculiarities to this story that I am too tired to go into right now, but the computer/sat nav stuff has been ripped out. The windshield will need replaced. They backed into something.  Our license plate is gone (although the police officer noted that it was removed from the car and laying on the rear side passenger seat...)

The police released it to us, so I guess the investigative part is done. I can't tell you anything about that because the officer who should have called us but didn't is away on vacation.

The impound guy refused to let us take it out because there was no plate on it. We drove back to the police who called the impound people to say there should have been a plate, that the officer specifically said so, and pointed out that they were the authority not him. Then we drove 20 minutes back to the impound lot, where the guy released the car, writing on the paperwork that it was not to be driven.

You know, it is funny. I guess in the beginning maybe I was too surprised at the theft to be mad, but seeing that car totally ripped apart and our dirty laundry thrown everywhere, the car filthy with greasy hands, an unknown white liquid splashed everywhere...well...I am mad. 

Tim drove it home, despite Mr Impound's clearly written instructions not to drive it.  He was following me because I had the Sat Nav. At the border, I handed my license out, explained what had happened briefly and said that the vehicle behind me had no license plate and that Tim had the police documentation. She didn't even blink. She said that all she had to do was record the VIN for the Lexus. As if stuff like this happened every day.

That made me a little mad too. 

We are home now. Road weary and frazzled. We drove 3 hours with no plate on the car. Still amazes me. 

Insurance adjuster is coming to the house tomorrow.

My favorite shoes were in the back, believe it or not. 

The lines were snaked at the rental. Again. 3rd time in six weeks. I think we have a painful decision to make.

Totally burned out tonight.

Whiplash

The car has been seized. We know no more than that.

Another disaster.

Today after the protest, we moved our tenant's furniture back on the deck. We needed to pick up a half dozen things from the store. Then we headed home. Tim was tired so he undressed and went to bed. He took a long nap, and he needed it too.

When he got up, he was slow to rouse. Thank goodness our phones both started screaming. Weather alert: "Tornado warnings. Take cover immediately." Suddenly Tim was wide awake.

We studied the sky through the sliding glass doors, and the wind was wild. The big white pine was thrashing around. The thunder boomed. Strangely, I did not see any lightning. The clouds were that thick.

Tim said, "The clouds are moving in a circle! I haven't seen that before...." My phone rang. It was my youngest daughter. "Hey," I said, "can I call you back in say 10 or 15 minutes? We need to keep track of the weather, here."

Tim decided it was prudent to go get pants on at about the same time it began to pour. The wind had the rain falling just about any way but down.

And dang...all hell broke loose. 

Storm damage on top of the stolen car. It has been quite a brutal week.

LATE EDIT: JUST TO BE CLEAR, THIS WAS MEANT TO BE A JOKE. IT WAS A BAD ONE, I GUESS. WHILE OTHER AREAS DID SUFFER DAMAGE, THE TORNADO DID NOT TOUCH DOWN HERE. THE ONLY DAMAGE WE SUFFERED WAS AN OVERTURNED BENCH. MY APOLOGIES.