(written on the 23rd)
Got up early, my procky appointment being at 8:30 at St. Mark’s hospital.
Of course, everything down there was feeling better today. 🙃 So I tried to re-create the issue, sitting a little while on Little John, hoping to get the blood and pain back.
No cigar.
Oh well.
Got taken back to the exam room, where the front desk lady came in to say…
Any guesses?
Yup… they actually don’t accept Liberty HealthShare.
ðŸ˜
Yet another doctor listed as being in network fully accepting both Liberty HealthShare and their pricing structures.
But no… once again, the find-a-doctor portal is useless, and the doctor’s offices don’t know their own financial info.
I was not happy. But what could I do right there?
Ugh. 😒
I kept the appointment, the doc asked my whole history, which was really nice, and then he… dug in. 😅
The only thing that I wasn’t so keen on was the nurse lady who came back in… to watch the procedure?
At this point, I’m getting to the point that bodies are bodies, and there are more and less attractive ones, and nobody is going to care about mine but me, pretty much, so… whatever.
From there, I headed over to the church parking lot by Cory’s house, where I started going through my stuff to get organized and ready to pack up and leave for New Zealand and also started doing my best to seal the roof for the 6 months that I’m going to be gone without doing a permanent repair.
Unfortunately, the duct tape has stuck itself enough that it can’t come off without a solvent, so… I gave up and just double duct taped the holes up. 😅
Aaaaaand then I decided to check my oil– finding nothing reading on the dipstick but some smeared oil (not relevant to the actual level which was so low it wasn’t even reading) a few glittery pieces of metal flakes.
😬
Lovely.
Rover is so weird. Sometimes he burns oil, and sometimes he doesn’t. Last oil change, nothing burned at all. This time? Looks like about a quart every thousand miles.
And why do I say one quart per thousand? Well… 😅. There were only two quarts of oil in the whole system after driving probably about 3k miles (two quarts, and it’s a V8 😶!!! A low-oil-capacity V8, just five quarts, but still.
I had one of those quick drain valves, but because of the concern over metal shavings in the oil, I wanted to get all the oil out, so I went to get my oil drain plug, which I had kept after putting in the quick drain valve, it… was missing. 😶
I looked and looked and looked for it. Nothing. Nada. Nowhere. I remember keeping it. But nope. It’s nowhere to be found.
Ugh.
So I gave up and removed my quick drain valve to get the last maybe quarter of a quart of oil out?
I did find some metal in the oil, but it looked like maybe brass filings from the threads of the quick valve dealie.
🤞
Hope the engine is ok. I also found that one tire, the last of the originals, is about to blow. 😅
I’m not surprised, but… just one more thing to take care of before I go. 😕
I was supposed to visit my friend Robyn today, but she’s MIA. Probably super busy and super stressed.
Had somebody who wanted to buy Cory’s van, but they didn’t read the ad, so they weren’t prepared for what they were coming to when they came to buy it.
Wish people would read ads. That’s why we take the time to write them. Saves lots of wasted time for all concerned.
Oh well. At least I’ve got bills of sale and the title and whatnot ready and signed for whomever buys it. Hopefully somebody soon, as time is running short. 😅
Maybe I should have just had my ticket fly out of Arkansas. 😕
Headed over to Cory’s place, realizing just before I started hanging out with him that an old friend whom I haven’t seen or communicated with in years had apparently recently made her blog public again after making it private way back in mid December of 2023.
Chatted with Cory for a good little bit (until 9 p.m.). Good stuff.
Then I headed south, stopping off at the Walmart SuperCenter in Pleasant Grove, where I read the handful of “new” posts from December ’23 and January ’24 that I don’t think I’d ever seen before.
Miss that friend.
Funny, those posts are almost two years old, but since they’re new to me, they almost feel current? 🙃
It’s a bit weird. I recently had another old friend who cut me out of her life years ago after being offended by something I said (intended no offense whatsoever) send me a couple of emails as part of a small group of “friends” she was writing to with updates about her life.
And now this friend reappears and makes her blog public again and adds me as someone who can see her social media profile as well.
🤔
Two recent “reconnections” without reconnecting. 🙃
Since I could now see her social media profile, I took the time to see what’s been going on in the life of that most recent, still disconnected, reconnection. 🙃
There was a post from a friend of hers about my friend’s most-recent baby, number three (huge baby!), and one from August 6th of last year about my friend’s desires in life and in eternity.
Not really many other posts, but good to see that she’s happy and figuring out what she wants most.
Bought some stuff at Walmart and then headed up to my Slide Canyon parking lot. Worked on catching up my journal a bit and then called it a night.
New Zealand is almost upon me. …why does God want me to go?
Lots of thoughts…
…more now.
Wondering what the future holds for me.
Whatever it is, I hope I can break my struggle cycle and really, truly,
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 