Home at Last - Yr 1, Day 351

Raleigh, NC

I can't begin to express how great it feels to have our home back!  It was so wonderful for Tom Johnson's Camping Center (the repair place) to have it delivered to us, 200 miles away, for free!

It arrived at the NC State Fairgrounds about 2:00.  The folks who delivered it were really nice - a retired couple; he was a professional truck driver.  There's a huge horse competition going on this week, so we were very lucky to have found a space in the campground, as it's 99% full.

Settling back in was a bit overwhelming, but with a nice stiff drink and a cold shower first (it's over 90 degrees now), I was able to survive the unpacking.  Not only did we have a suitcase and bags and bags and bags our our own stuff that we've been traveling with between the kids and hotels and the kids again (and another hotel), but in order to replace the slide, they had to empty out every cabinet, closet and drawer in the bedroom, so there were about 5 giant boxes in the living room, all needing to be unpacked and put away.  It was like setting up my house from scratch again.

Once everything was set up, we met with Jessica and Griffin for a very nice, celebratory sushi dinner.

So far, they seem to have done a good job with the slide.  It's working and the rebuilt bed looks good.  Even the switch that raises the top of the bed up is working again.  They cleaned the place (inside and out), including cleaning out and scrubbing the inside of the refrigerator (which, by now, was full of rotten food), so we didn't need to deal with that as well.  Of course, the frig is totally empty, so we'll have a lot of shopping to do, as we head into Shabbat tonight.

As for the truck, we're still working with the insurance company and repair shops.  I suspect it will be at least 2 weeks before we can have it back.  Meanwhile, the rental car (a Hyundai Sonata) is great!  It's been a year since I've driven a car (anything smaller than a huge truck), so it was a lot of fun.  We're even toying with the idea, since it has a lot of trunk space, of maybe heading up to NY/NJ to clean out the locker while we have the car.  Mitch has a 2 day hands on test next week in SC, so maybe we can head up that way afterwards?  I'll need to do some planning first (it also means packing the suitcase yet again and we'll have to figure out where to stay and how to manage to see everyone).  I'm sure I'll figure it out.