Skipped Trip

I’m sorta bummed. Originally we were going to drive to Tucson this afternoon (Thursday) for a long weekend. But a storm is coming and we’re getting high winds, and it’s hard to drive the camper van in a combination of headwinds and crosswinds.

We like to take the van because there’s no working kitchen in the house, and the van at least has a minimal kitchenette with a sink, cooler, microwave, and hotplate. But even if we took one of the other cars, it’s still a long and miserable drive in the wind.

John has to be at work in-person in Albuquerque on Monday, so we’re just going to wait and not go until the weekend before Thanksgiving, when we can spend two weekends plus the week of Thanksgiving out there.

Remodel progress is continuing to be excruciatingly slow. Our floor tile arrived on September 2, and finally now, two months later, it’s all been installed except for the laundry room, back patio, and the master bathroom.

The cabinets also arrived in early September, but they couldn’t be installed until the floor tile was done in the kitchen, so it wasn’t until a few weeks ago that we discovered two of the base cabinets were the wrong size and needed reordered.

Then our contractor called me this morning and started out, “You won’t believe this, but…”

That’s never good. So yeah, remember how they shipped the wrong size cabinets for the two corners in the kitchen, and we had to re-order? The new ones came in last Wednesday, but my contractor was on vacation until Thursday or Friday and then it was the weekend and then Halloween or whatever; he finally tried to put them in yesterday (Wednesday a week later), and guess what? The two new corner cabinets are still the wrong size! Seriously. The’ve shipped us the wrong size corner cabinets twice now. So we’re reordering again, and now we have to wait again.

The problem is, we can’t fabricate the countertop until the base cabinets are installed. And countertop fabrication takes awhile. So we’re still at least a month out on countertop. At least. Meanwhile our countertop slabs are languishing in Phoenix, while we pay storage fees, waiting until we’re ready for it.

So here I sit, stuck in Albuquerque with a wind storm coming, which is guaranteed to trigger a migraine. I cannot seem to figure out what to do to prevent getting migraines during and after wind storms, usually 2-5 days of migraines. It’s not as bad in Tucson. It’s not perfect there, but it’s certainly better. I definitely have more migraines in Albuquerque. The high elevation may make the weather changes more impactful, I don’t know. The elevation at our house here in Albuquerque is about 5,500 ft, which is over a mile high.

Now that we’re not going to Tucson this weekend after all, I’m going to have to hope my contractor will water my remaining houseplants for me. The smaller ones, which can’t go as long without water, have already died.

After getting depressed about my neglected and dying houseplants, I bought a few small ones that I can take back and forth with me. Albuquerque tends to be cold and very dry in the winter, so I’ve got them set up near the fireplace with a little indoor plug-in fountain for humidity and a grow light now that the days are short.

They’re in a plastic bin for easy transport. When we go to Tucson for 10 days for Thanksgiving, they are going with me. I’ve had it with my plants dying.

Speaking of houseplant grow lights, I should probably get out one of my therapy lights for myself. I used to use them to help my mood when I worked in a windowless office in Santa Fe. During the winters I spent up there, it would be dark when I went to work and dark when I got off work. With no windows, I wasn’t getting any natural light during the work week at all. I don’t function well without natural light. That’s the primary reason I left the Pacific northwest for the desert southwest way back in 2001!

So yes, a full-spectrum therapy light would be a good idea. I own at least three of them. But I don’t know where they are. I think maybe they’re in the garage in Tucson? At first I was making lists and spreadsheets and taking photos of closets, trying to remember where everything is. But I’ve given up. I just don’t know what is where anymore. And I’m not going to know until we’re down to only one house and I can find places for everything.

Meanwhile I’m continuing to try to direct this remodel from afar. My main goal today is to figure out whether the latest potential tiles for the wall around the tub in the hall bathroom are going to work. I had planned to bring the tile samples we bought over the weekend to our contractor when we went out to Tucson today, but since we’re not going, I’m just sending him tons of photos instead.

Now you know why I keep posting about past vacations and such – there just isn’t much fun to write about going on here in Albuquerque at the moment!

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com.

Kristina’s Website: Life Coaching for Adults with Autism