The First Five Days In Texas

I couldn't take a shower on Monday morning. None of us could. That was because there were no shower curtains in either of the 2 bathrooms.

So, my first order of business was to have Ariana drive me out to Target on Monday morning so that we could buy needed stuff for the apartment. I had no idea that all that needed stuff (along with one or two not needed items) would take 2 shopping carts and cost $315 and change.

Monday was also the day that Neil returned to work after his open-heart surgery. Ariana and I stopped to visit him at work after our haul at Target.

In addition to doing all that shopping, I spent the day going through and organizing the contents of the boxes that Neil had in the master bedroom and then putting all those boxes in the closet so that when the movers do get here, there will be some room on the floor for them to put the bed and a whole bunch of other boxes.

That was enough work for one day, especially when I was still not done decompressing from my road trip.

The next day, Tuesday, I got laundry tokens from the leasing office. Normally the tokens are $1 a piece (with it costing one token a piece to run the washer and dryer), but the leasing office gave me 10 free tokens because we just moved in.

With laundry tokens in hand, I went to do the laundry, which really needed to get done because I ran out of bras. Having been spoiled on the large and very efficient washer and dryer we had back at the old house, I wasn't too impressed with the machines in the community laundry room. It took too bloody long to dry one load. I had to use 2 tokens.

While the laundry was drying, Ariana took me out to run an errand to the post office and to help me find a wind chime for the patio. We went to the South Plains Mall for the latter part of the mission.

While not the largest mall in the nation, the South Plains Mall was certainly larger than what we were used to in south eastern Massachusetts and Providence, Rhode Island. Even the stores that we were familiar with back east were much larger here.

Well, everything really is bigger in Texas.

We ran a few more errands before returning back to the apartment.

Also our internet got connected that day.

Ariana and her boyfriend Joe connected my computer and pretty much hogged it for a good part of the day. By the time they were finished, I was too tired to go on the computer.

But, come the next day, Wednesday, I spent pretty much the whole day on the computer blogging away. I published about 6 or 7 blogs that day.

However, part way in between, Ariana and I did take another drive out to the mall. We were on a mission to find the Bubble Tea Internet Cafe that the internet listed as being in the mall. It must have been an old listing because we found nothing of the sort.

What we did find, however, was this cafe that served a very good and refreshing drink called "limonana." It was a drink that was made from lemon, a big bunch of fresh mint, and ice. It was a beautiful green color, and Ariana said that it was "like drinking a salad."

Yesterday, Thursday, I finally did some driving on my own, even though I wasn't planning on doing any driving until Sunday.

Ariana, her boyfriend Joe, and I drove to Post so that Joe could get his birth certificate. It was about a 40-minute drive through some beautiful country.

But before we got to that really breath-taking terrain, we passed many farms that grew onions, cotton, and sunflowers. (It was too bad that the sunflowers were not yet fully in bloom.)

What was unusual was that in the middle of a lot of these fields there were oil jack pumps. And where there were a lot of these oil jacks, the air smelled of stale farts.

When we got back, we were very surprised to see that Neil was already home. He came home from work early because he was not feeling good. He had forgotten to take his pain meds.

Ariana showed me some pretty rocks that she found behind Neil's old apartment. Upon closer examination, I saw that a couple of these rocks were fossils. One looked like a fossilized sea urchin about the size of a coat button, and the other rock had tiny little sea shells in it.

I was pretty excited about these rocks. And it made sense that there would be fossilized sea life here because in prehistoric times Lubbock was covered by an extremely huge body of water. This is a very active archeological area.

This morning I got to experience rain, Texas style.

Even though this deluge was not as severe as others that Neil had seen, it was still quite the drencher.

Neil and I had to leave before 8:00 this morning so that he could go and get his broken foot operated on at the surgicenter.

In just the few seconds that it took me to run not even 10 feet to my car I was drenched to the bone. Water was literally dripping off my face in rivulets.

The intersections were flooded, which Neil said was typical because there are no storm drains in Lubbock. The water came up several inches and would have been well past my ankles had I crossed the intersection on foot.

I was afraid that my car was going to stall out because the water was so high. And as I waited for the traffic light to change to green, I could hear the swift current of the water in the roadway lapping up against my car the way waves lap up against the sides of a boat.

Within an hour, the rain was over.

Neil made it through his surgery OK.

And when we came back, we discovered that the phone line was finally connected.

However, Neil had some troubling news to relate today.

Apparently, Neil received word from his boss that he will be laid off on the 16th of this month. That is one more pay period and about one and a half weeks away.

Talk about poor timing.

But what can we do? These are the cards that we have been dealt, and it's now up to us to play them as best as we could.

Let's hope that we play them well, get lucky, and hit the jack pot ~ whatever that jack pot may be.