(written on the 18th)
I was up early this morning, as per usual lately. Don’t think the sun was even visible yet.
Really rough night spine wise last night.
It’s an interesting juxtaposition… wanting to sleep but also knowing that it’s a rare night when I find a position that doesn’t exacerbate symptoms and increase anxiety.
Most nights, I’m shifting regularly through the night, hoping to find a position that is at least comfortable enough to fall asleep and stay asleep.
Usually, there’s only one (sleeping on my right side, though that’s a little uncomfortable on its own because before symptoms got this bad, I was used to sleeping on my right side, so sleeping on my left side is akin to using my left hand to do something when I’m right-handed. It’s just awkward).
Eventually, even that position (if it even worked on that particular night), is only comfortable for so long before I just need to move, and then I switch; But that switch is almost never for very long, because the symptoms are much worse in the new position that I can’t hold it for very long.
On nights/mornings like this one, if every position significantly exacerbates the symptoms, and I don’t even have the one decent one, then both the pain and discomfort keep me awake and the increased anxiety.
So that was how the morning started. Early. Unrelievable pain and discomfort lying down that banished all hope of more sleep.
On the bright side, being up that early gave me plenty of time to work cleaning up and organizing the inside of the van to show it today.
I started by doing everything that I reasonably could while sitting on my bed. I didn’t want to bother the neighbors who were parked in a spot maybe a dozen meters away (doors opening and closing during sleeping hours aren’t the friendliest 🙃).
I spent the next… I don’t know how long… doing more clean up and organizing, filling my trash bag up, etc. I had hoped to say goodbye to Livia, but with my van absolutely covered in mud from driving on wet dirt roads, it was prudent for me to leave sooner rather than later in order to make it more likely that I could find a clean river or water fountain or I could fill up my water bottle and slowly rinse the mud off my van.
Funny, I don’t just take it to a car wash. 😆 I guess I’m too cheap, feeling penny pinched with all the financial mistakes and outlays. 😅
So I drove away, waving a mental goodbye to Livia, and headed toward Auckland–looking at Google Maps four rivers that crossed my path.
But it’s the North Island, which means if it’s rained recently, all the rivers are just going to be muddy. 😅
So my first two stops, leaving the highway to enter a side street that crossed a river, were a bust– the river being both too hard to access and too muddy.
Stop number three was also a bust. I don’t know if the river would have been clean enough anyway, but there were two cars parked in such a way as to effectively block access to the rest of the little dirt pullout.
Zero for three…
I was hoping to find a place sooner rather than later so that my drive the rest of the way to Auckland (about two hours) could blow the car dry.
Gratefully, as I was rounding a bend on the highest, at the last second, I spotted a dirt pullout right next to what looked like a little stream. It was far too late to pull over because I thought as I was passing by it, but at the next possible place that I could turn around, I turned around, went back, and was happy to find that it was a workable spot.
🥳
Sadly, there was a lot of trash everywhere. The normal bottles and cans and plastic and what not, as well as wet pieces of clothing and other fabric.
Not the nicest little place. 😅
And being on my way to show my van, I wasn’t keen on spending a bunch of time cleaning up nasty, wet trash.
Over and over again I walked down to the creek to fill up my water bottle, a somewhat awkward and slippery scramble down and back up.
Gratefully, I never took a spill. 🙏
I’m going to guess that it maybe took 15-20 trips?
The mud isn’t so great on the paint, and I tried to be at least somewhat gentle in the removal, but it’s an old car with a faded paint job anyway, thankfully.
The mud also provided good friction material to “sand blast” my rims. 🙃 I didn’t spend very much time on them (just a little bit of time on two of them), but I certainly proved that I could have made them much nicer looking had I wanted to spend the time and effort (it was just relatively mildly corroded aluminum). 🙃
After lots of effort and a fair bit of sweat, I managed to get the van looking pretty good, so I wiped the sweat off my brow, took off my sweatshirt, cranked up the AC, and headed toward Auckland.
On the way, I took the opportunity to get some financial stuff done–credit card bills paid, credit card rewards applied toward balances, and just giving a general lookover of my finances.
Not ever I want them. That’s for sure.
So much money lost in the stock market…
[sigh]
I stopped off at Hatfield Bay Reserve again to drop off recycling and trash, including finally just throwing away all the rusty metal shavings and chunks from my body work efforts.
I arranged to meet the first interested party at Becroft Park, in the Glenfield area. I got there pretty early and let him know that I was early, so he came early as well. Before he arrived, I spent a bit of time continuing to organize and to try and make it easier to show him everything.
He turned out to be a relatively young guy, late teens to early twenties, I would guess. At first, he seemed super interested, checked it out a whole lot, and seemed like he was getting ready to buy it, but then at the end, he changed his mind and said he wanted to go home and think about it first, not realizing that he would have to do some upgrades to the van in order to get it to pass the green-sticker certification requirements.
There that is, that blue-sticker risk I took at the beginning biting me in the butt. 😕
So I messaged the next person, and he came by not too long afterward. Was a little bit of an interesting dynamic, as he was from Iran and happened to be an Iranian who wants to keep the current government.
Seemed like a pretty nice guy. It was frustrating to me, however, when he was super high pressure in his negotiation attempts. When I dropped the price by $100, he basically ridiculed that. I ended up dropping the price $200, and he ridiculed that as well, and that got my blood boiling a little bit.
😠
I just about sent him packing, even after he agreed to the $1700 price with the $200 drop from the original $1900.
I don’t like being treated that way, and I don’t like rewarding people who treat other people that way.
$1900 was already an absolute steal of a deal, in my opinion.
But I wanted to sell it, so I didn’t just send him packing despite the strong temptation to do so.
What I do need to deal with, however, is The fact that I have to trust that he’s actually going to go through with a deal and pay me on Monday. I could have sold it to him right there, but then I would need to give him the van, and I still need it until Monday or Sunday night at the latest if I don’t mind spending the night at the airport Sunday night.
So I’ve got nerves about that. I don’t remember if I mentioned a deposit. I think I did, but I think he wasn’t keen on that because I was going to be driving the vehicle still, and he didn’t want to take the risk.
Something like that.
I don’t like being at the mercy of other people’s integrity.
🤞
With it being Friday, I still have all day Saturday and all day Sunday to kill, and a mostly full tank of gas, so I stared at my map for a little while trying to figure out where I was going to spend my last two days.
I ended up just driving back to Waipu Caves, a place that feels a little bit like home to me, because I’ve been there so many times.
Spend some time texting with my sister Heather and my brother Richard. Heather was able to get my vehicle registration renewal stickers for me, going to the local DMV for me. 🤍
Perks of her knowing the people who work there. 🥳
They’d never let that fly in Arkansas.
My tooth is continuing to bother me a fair bit. Not good. Not good at all. 😬
I spent some time trying to figure out which tooth was of issue, as tooth pain tends to refer out to multiple teeth (at least for me it does). So I grabbed some pieces larger oat pieces from my muesli and placed one between the upper tooth that’s third from the back on my upper left side and the corresponding lower tooth.
All good.
So then I switched to checking the next tooth over, second from the back, and that was it. It wasn’t super painful to bite down on, but it’s certainly the tooth of issue, at least for this particular issue.
So I grabbed my phone camera to see if I could use that to inspect my tooth (lacking dental tools), and gratefully, managed to find a position sitting in the dark in my van with my cell phone screen facing the rear view mirror and my head tilted up, such that I could see my phone screen through the mirror and know where in my mouth my video camera was pointing.
It took me a handful of tries, but eventually, I was able to get a video recorded that got a decent view of the tooth of concern:
At first, I thought it was maybe just a cracked filling, but the crack seems to run beyond that.
Remembering that Grok has been trained to understand and interpret medical imaging, I figured I’d give dental imaging a try, and wow. The AI immediately recognized that it was a tooth, immediately recognized the crack, and gave what seems like a very plausible diagnosis.
At first, Grok suggested that the issue was likely either a craze (a superficial hairline crack that’s not of any concern) CTS, (cracked tooth syndrome).
After adding the information about the near constant, non-painful twinge sensations and the deep but dull ache when biting down on chewy foods like muesli, it changed the diagnosis from a likely either or, to a relatively confident cracked tooth.
Given what I see, and given how it feels, I think that’s going to turn out to be an accurate diagnosis.
[sigh]
It was late at night, but I sent a text, including the picture, to my dentist in South Dakota. I guess we’ll see what they recommend.
😕
If it’s a cracked tooth, I might need to forgo my trip to Arkansas… I have to find out if my plane ticket is refundable or transferable or something.
Ugh.
I also spent a fair bit of time trying to get my van added back to my insurance, so it’s ready to go when I get back , but it wasn’t recognizing the VIN number. S to track a vehicles you used to have on the policy. 😒
My previous insurance companies, it was easy as pie to swap on and off the insurance apparently, not with progressive. The savings was good enough to want to switch, and I’ll stay switched, but between the terrible user interface online, and the frustrating chat bot that’s next to useless, it certainly doesn’t engender positive feelings for progressive in any way other than the price is cheaper.
I guess you get what to pay for. 😅
After working with a rep to get my van added , and being successful at it, as I was looking at the new premium documents, it dawned on me that I think the guy who helped me might have removed my mom from the insurance, as my premium seemed a lot lower than it was last time.
I mean, I’m not complaining if it’s cheaper, but it’s significantly cheaper, which leads me to question whether or not she was removed from the insurance. That would be no bueno.
My mom pays for the insurance, but because Happy, the Z3, is legally owned by me, it has to be listed on my policy with her listed as a driver.
I don’t know how long I spent trying to figure out the drivers listed for each vehicle on the policy. I tried getting what I needed AI, but it kept giving me incorrect information. So I tried talking to another representative, but even though they weren’t closed yet, the AI would only give me days and hours of availability. 😒
You get what you pay for. 😅
I texted my mom to let her know that I wasn’t sure if she was still listed as a driver and shouldn’t drive Happy again until I was able to get that straightened out.
I think it was maybe 8:30 by the time I got everything wrapped up for the night and started veging. I thought about going into the cave, as I hadn’t yet today, but… I was just too tired to want to get out of the van for one last hurrah in a cave that I Love but already know so well.
I did have a little niggling concern about staying a third night in a row here, so I went to look at the signs at the entrance of the parking area, and… 😅… It’s a one-night maximum. 😬
I didn’t have the willingness as late as it was to try to find another place, so I decided to risk the fine.
Of course, what would be my luck but to get fined right before leaving New Zealand. 😅
We’ll see.
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 