“Struggles are just life’s way of saying, ‘Plot twist!”
Anon.
We’ve had pretty much the same end-of-summer routine for the last eight years. In Maine, we put away the deck furniture, empty the fridge, and make sure the house, garage, and shed are locked and organized for leaving. Simple. However, this year we had some hiccups.
Challenge #1: During the final week, garden beds where I was digging up weeds with a pitchfork, separating plants, and laying down mulch for the winter, were attacked by a groundhog. Each morning, the pesky critter left upended plants with the leaves eaten. I kept working at restoration and had only a small section of soil and a half bag of mulch left to finish when my gardening season was abruptly ended. I missed a step on the stairs and came down hard on the landing. The pain resonated up through my knees, both of which are arthritic and have had arthroscopic surgery in the past. The muscles above my right knee were wrenched and soon became swollen. Mobility was tricky. I packed and moved our things limping back and forth from the house to the car.
Challenge #2: It was touch-and-go as to whether we could lock the garage or not by the day of our leaving. We had new garage door openers installed earlier in the month, but a broken spring had to be ordered for one of the doors.
Challenge #3: My husband came down with a cold the night before we left, and we had to stop for Dayquil on our way out of Maine and cancel an overnight at my sister’s house to avoid passing on the germs.. In Connecticut, I made a night run to a pharmacy for a nighttime cough suppressant. Three days later, somewhere in one of the mid-Atlantic states, I caught it too. We went through a lot of tissues driving south.
Challenge #4: Upon arrival in Florida, my husband removed the hurricane brace from our garage door and released the door opener lock, as he always does. However, the door would not open. He called a repairman the next day, and we learned that there is another lock toward the side of the door that we never knew about and wasn’t mentioned in the manual. How it ended up locked, we had no idea.
Challenge #5: My car had been left in the garage all summer and it wouldn’t start. (We hadn’t disconnected the battery before leaving, so our fault.)
We have been back home in Florida for a week and a half now and most of the problems have been resolved. The swelling above my knee is down but I’m treading carefully to give it time to heal better. As for the groundhog, it’s probably having an autumn feast. Our colds are on the wane, and we got our flu and Covid shots. To our relief, the garage door spring in Maine was installed the day before we left. The garage door in Florida was fixed and tuned up the day after we got back, so we were able to put my husband’s car indoors. After calling AAA, my car started up, and afterward, my husband took it for a drive to make sure it was fully charged.
One odd thing happened upon our return. We had been having trouble with mail delivery in Maine. Among other things, a check sent in June and a tax bill sent in July, both mailed from our town there, were not received. Then on September 29, both items were delivered to Florida! The question is: Where were they all that time?