Sheep Guarding Llama

I woke up at six this morning and was way too warm as there is no air conditioning in Luciana’s old bedroom because the vent there is broken.  And I was sleeping in the tent with the girls so it was extra warm.  So I got up for a bit, used the bathroom, took a shower and felt a little better and went back to bed.

I might have slept for another two hours, it is hard to say, but I got super warm again and really felt sick this time.  Ended up being sick, just a little bit, all morning till maybe eleven.  After that I felt fine.

Dominica didn’t get up until closer to eleven.  She felt fine all morning but around two got even sicker than I had been and ended up basically going back to bed and staying there more or less all day.

So that was pretty much our entire day.  Even Rachel was a little sick, but was out shopping nearly all day as she prepared for the Miss Texas competition which is just next weekend.  She is down to the wire and still has a lot of outfits to prepare.

I started watching Friends tonight on Netflix.  I’ve seen the show now and then and probably saw the whole first season when it was new, maybe.  But I’ve never really sat down and watched the show even though I always liked it.  I was never in love with it but always enjoyed it.  So now I’m giving it a chance that it is on Netflix and I can actually watch it in order so that it makes more sense.

Dominica skipped dinner but I was feeling well enough to eat so had food delivered in from Panda Delite which turned out to be excellent.  I had the spicy orange shrimp and loved it.  Liesl got the chow mein, but they didn’t deliver chow mein but chop suey instead, as many American Chinese restaurants do, so she didn’t want any of that.  Luciana got sweet and sour shrimp and loved them.

Dominica managed to leave around ten this morning to do the drive up to Dallas.  She has the little green Spark loaded up with as much as she could fit and the girls with her.  It’s Friday so I had plenty to do this morning before she arrived.  I was up early and wrote and posted all morning.

At eleven twenty Shawn picked me up at the house and drove me down (because I have no car) to Mi Camina (or Fake Fernando’s as people here call it) on Route 12 where we met Rachel, Melanie and Natalie for lunch.  Same place that I had lunch with Rachel, Ashley and Melanie two weeks ago.  I had the fish tacos again, they are still quite good.

After lunch Shawn and I stopped by at a home automation and audio shop that is by appointment only near Trinity Mills and made some connections that I might need for getting the house set up in Carrollton.

I was only back at the house for maybe an hour before Dominica and the girls arrived.  We had maybe an hour before they were all hungry so we went up to the “new” Rockfish on Josey for dinner.  Dominica has been missing that place as much as I have. I am very happy to get to eat there again.

We got back to the house and ended up having a bit of a house party this evening.  Not a lot of people but some friends came by, including Melanie that Dominica has not yet met, and how out until around three thirty in the morning.  Melanie helped the girls build a big tent to sleep in in Luciana’s old room.  So I ended up sleeping in there with them tonight.

Thursday in Dallas.  Dominica was supposed to drive up to Dallas this morning but logistics in Houston made that not happen and then when she was finally able to leave Houston this afternoon a big storm hit and she was going to have to drive for hours in a storm so she bailed on that idea and decided to just hold off coming up to Dallas until tomorrow. At least tomorrow she will be able to leave first thing in the morning.

I got up this morning and had some time to write and post before needing to get the minivan all unloaded.  I unloaded the van into the garage by around noon and drove down to the airport to drop it off.  I waited there for a while and Rachel came from work and picked me up and we drove up to Joe’s Crab Shack on Route 35E and had lunch before she dropped me back at the house and returned to work.  She had thought that she was going to get off of work when we were done with lunch but ended up working until after six this evening.

So I had the afternoon and evening to myself at the house.  Some quiet time to get things done.  I have no car and won’t have one until Dominica arrives tomorrow.

This evening Rachel came home and made dinner and Shawn joined us late in the evening.

Today is the “moving day” for us, moving our stuff from our storage unit in Houston up to the house in Dallas.  I spent the morning working on writing and posting, as usual.  Then had my call at twelve thirty.  From there we ran up to Hobby and Dominica dropped me off to go pick up the minivan that we rented from Enterprise.  We got a red one this time.

I drove back to the storage unit while Dominica and the girls went home and I emptied the entire storage unit into the minivan.  It fit just about perfectly.  It was super hot and I was terribly sweaty from doing that.  But it is done and I was able to go to the office and close out the unit so we don’t need to pay for it any longer.  That’s $30 per month that we don’t need to be spending there any more.  Not a huge deal, but it adds up and it covers the cost of the rental car long before the end of the year and will “make” money after that.  There were so many cockroaches in the storage unit, it was really nasty working in there and at least one giant one made it into the car but I was able to get it back out again, thank goodness.  That would have been just awful.

From there I drove back to the house and we loaded up more stuff from the house into the car. Several suitcases and some other stuff.  The van is very, very full.  Passenger seat all the way up, all seats laying down.  We could fit some more stuff but it is comfortably full.

I was off pretty much right away after showering.  It was early enough that I missed a bit of the rush hour traffic and that that I got caught in really was not all that bad.  I think that the fears of Houston rush hour are very much overblown.  It’s crappy on I45 to be sure, but it isn’t the end of the world to be in it or else so many people would not be in it.  Traffic slowed a lot but kept moving and most of the way things were moving quite well.  Far less traffic than I would have guessed that there would have been.

Once out of Houston I made good time through the emptiness of Texas.  It was getting dark when I get up to Dallas.  But it was not super late.  Rachel and I got a few hours to hang out before bed.

Dominica had to be up super early this morning to take her parents to the airport at six.  She got very little sleep.

Today is my last day in Houston until, most likely, Christmas.  I was busy all day.  Madeline, Dominica and Liesl went to the mall and went to get a haircut for Liesl who has never really had one before.  One time, when she was about three I would guess, and we lived in the house in Carrollton, Dominica took her somewhere to get a trim but it was just the tiniest of trims and that is where the lock of her hair that I keep came from (Luciana still has never had a hair cut at all to this day) but it was at most two inches from the bottom of her hair and nothing else. Today is a real hair cut with the hair getting much shorter in the back and getting bangs in the front under Madeline’s direction.

The new haircut is adorable and makes Liesl look even older.  She loves it.  It went really well.

After dinner tonight, Emily and I made a run to Sonic for our last ice cream together of the season.   We won’t see each other again until Christmas.

Tomorrow is going to be a busy day.  Emptying the storage unit, driving up to Houston.  Dominica and the girls think that they are going to wait another night and come up on Thursday morning instead.