Sheep Guarding Llama

Back in the office this morning to begin my final week of being alone. This coming weekend I am running up to Frankfort, picking up the family and then running out back home where we will be staying with dad so that I can go to my twentieth class reunion. So just five more days to go.

Not much to report today. Things are very slow for me. Just go to work, come up and hang out by myself until it is time to go to bed.

Today it is time to return back home to Peekskill. I stayed at the house this morning watching the kids all morning while everyone except for Madeline went off to Dave’s Diner for breakfast. Madeline just slept so I never saw her. This was my last window to spend time with the little ones before I leave to go back down to Peekskill.

I packed up the car while everyone was gone and they all left to go see How to Train Your Dragon 2 at the noon showing so I left at the same time that they all did. So that worked out really well that it wasn’t such a big “goodbye” to the girls as they were leaving to go do something too. It was sad goodbyes, though, we are getting way too little time together. Liesl understands that a week is only so long. For Luciana it is really rough. Dominica said that she wakes up crying sometimes at night asking for me. L

So I was on the road at around eleven thirty. I took the Thruway thinking that I could hop over to NY 9 south somewhere partway down the Hudson but before I even made the turn from 90E to 87S I was already in stopped traffic! Not good.

I bailed at the first exit that I could get to which let me take 787 to downtown Albany and cross the river there on 9 & 20 from where I worked my way south on 9 all of the way down to Peekskill. It is a much slower road but very scenic. I got to see all of Rensselaer, Columbia, Dutchess and Putnam counties. Columbia is a county that I am not sure that I have ever driven through before, actually. Beautiful countryside. And some really cool historic areas like Hyde Park and Rhinebeck. Places that I know but have never been to, at least not in my memory. There are a lot more major colleges and universities along that route than I had realized too.

It took me probably four and a half hours to get home. Had to stop for gas once and stopped at the little roadside place called Grandma’s Deli just south of Fishkill on 9 for a sandwich before getting home.

On the drive I finished reading “Foundation and Empire” and managed to start reading “Second Foundation.”

It was mid-afternoon when I got to the house in Peekskill. I hunkered in and didn’t really leave the bedroom all afternoon. I mostly relaxed today, did very little work. But I did a little.

Today is our last day to do the big item moves and to get things out of the house and into the roll off dumpster before it gets taken away.  So a busy day ahead of us.

Before getting started Emily and I went to the bakery and got food for everyone.  We got donuts and half moons.  Then it was time to get to work.

Today we cleaned out the basement.  That was the last major part of the house that needed to be emptied out.  It was disgusting but went alright.  There were only a few really heavy items down there which is good because we had to bring them up some serious rickety stairs and the landing was on the verge of collapse.

The second big thing today was bringing down all of the large furniture from the upstairs.  There was a lot, an awkwardly large amount of pointless furniture stored upstairs.

It was an exhausting day.  This evening, Dominica, her dad, Madeline and I went out to the movies to see Transformers 4 which was completely awful.  No plot, horrible directing.  Really one of the worst movie franchises ever which is so sad because the cartoon was so iconic.  But nothing unexpected.

I meant to get up early this morning and get on the road but I must have been exhausted or fighting off something because I did not wake up until eleven o’clock!  So much later than I had anticipated or even thought possible.  Even when I woke up I did not feel like it could possibly be that late at all and imagined that it was actually much, much earlier.  Not good, and email was not working this morning.  So I never got any messages from Dominica saying that they had left.  I checked email and thought that they must have been running late too.

I scrambled to get ready and was out the door very quickly.  Once I was on the road I started getting emails and realized that they had left before eight this morning and were nearly to Waverly already!

I stopped at the Dunkin Donuts and gas station on the circle heading out of town towards the Bear Mountain Bridge and got “breakfast” to eat while I drove.

Almost immediately after crossing the bridge I got stuck in horrific traffic.  I sat nearly at a stand still for a full hour!  So much for ever getting out to Waverly.

Later on the weather got bad and I was caught in bad rain that slowed me down a lot too.

So the drive took a really long time.  I was very proud of myself for managing to get to the family farm without needing any directions.  It is not in an easy to find spot and I have never driven there without Dominica before.  It was late afternoon when I finally arrived.  It turns out that the Tocco clan had decided that they were not spending the night tonight like I had been informed previously, because there was so much work to be done on the house tomorrow, so they were planning on leaving around six!  I had no idea about this until I arrived.  I thought that I was running late but that it was no big deal as we were spending the night.  Nope.  Instead I got there and only had about two hours before turning around to drive up to Frankfort.

So my day ended up being one with a lot more driving than I had intended.  An hour or more extra getting to Waverly and then about four more hours getting up to Frankfort.  Almost a ten hour driving day.

Dominica rode with me in the Spark and the girls went with Francesca and their cousins.  So Dominica and I got some time to hang out on the long drive.

It was fairly late when we got out to Frankfort so nothing in the plans for us this evening.

Got into the office and it turned into an extremely short day for me. Worked until about one thirty when we got let to go home. I had a meeting at two so I stayed for a little bit to do that and then went home around two thirty. That was a lot earlier than I had expected and it was very nice.

I just spent the afternoon relaxing. No plans since I was out much earlier than I had expected. Tomorrow morning I am driving up to Waverly to celebrate the Fourth of July with the family. They are heading down there at eight in the morning.