Three again

I suppose summer vacation was over 11 days ago, when school started, but now August is almost over and Rocket Boy has gone back to St. Louis -- and it's really over. Except for the heat. It's not going to be blisteringly hot this week, but hotter than I like it -- close to 90 every day. Come on, fall. We're ready for you.

Rocket Boy left yesterday, quite late in the day. He decided to make the drive in three days, so as not to strain his leg too much, but even so he left much later than I thought he should have. I think it was 3 pm or so when he finally drove off the driveway, and about 15 minutes later he was back again, having forgotten his favorite pencil. His goal for the night was Oakley, Kansas, which is 271 miles from here, according to Google Maps, and I thought it should have taken him about 4 hours. With the time change, that meant he might arrive around 8:30 or so (Kansas time). But when we finally gave up waiting for him to call and called him, it was about 9:15 our time (10:15 Kansas time) and he had just checked into his Oakley hotel. Plus, he didn't stop for dinner, just ate things he'd packed at home. So I don't know why it took him so long. Maybe he took a lot of breaks at rest areas. He has to stop fairly often to rest his leg and walk around.

Before he left, he raced around getting some things done that he hadn't been able to do when we first got back to Boulder, on account of his leg. We're planning to replace the rotted wall and tile in the shower next month, and while RB hopes to be back for that work, we wanted to do as much to prepare as we could. One thing we're going to do is replace our vanity with a new, smaller one, because the old one has never really fit the space. We spent hours online (and in stores) looking at vanities. We finally chose this one from Lowe's, which had so many bad reviews I don't know what to think about it. But it was really cheap. And none of the more expensive ones sounded any better.

Rocket Boy said, let's try to make this work for a while, and if it disintegrates (one review said the porcelain sink was made of powdered sugar), maybe we can have one custom built.

In the meantime, it makes a nice snooze spot for Baby Kitty.

We're pursuing this now, even though we realized the wall was rotting quite some time ago (and taped up one tile that fell out), because of something that happened the first night we were back in Boulder. Rocket Boy was taking a sponge bath, lost his balance, and reached out to grab the grab bar in the shower -- which ripped out of the wall.

Nothing like a disaster to get your ass in gear.

I still have to finalize the choice of tile -- we looked at a lot of different ones and kind of settled on a style, but we haven't actually chosen the specific tile -- nor, of course, purchased it. So that's my job during September.

Friday night, Rocket Boy removed the hanging grab bar, and Saturday morning he and Teen A taped the tiles to the wall with duct tape. It looks like modern art.

I wasn't very involved with his last-minute projects, because Teen A brought home another cold from school, then Teen B got it, and Thursday night I realized I was getting it too. Friday I was miserable, Saturday I was miserable, today I'm miserable. The boys are still coughing badly, even though they're several days ahead of me. It's a nasty cold. (But not covid -- I tested.)

So now I get some time to myself, with Rocket Boy back in Missouri (he hopes to cross the border tonight) and the twins back in school. What I should do is apply for jobs, and maybe I will, since we don't know how we're going to pay for all the work we need to have done on the house this fall.

But for a little while at least I'll get to be home alone, with lots of peace and quiet. First I need to recover from this stupid cold, and then we'll see what happens.