Are We Back In Illinois????

The past few days I have been asking myself if, indeed, we have magically returned to the midwest. For the past 2 days we have had "Illinois weather", or close to it. Just when I had thought I was done wearing the heavy coat, stocking cap and gloves, I had to drag it out of the back of my closet to take our walks. Sunday started the crappy weather with a low of 38 degrees and I was pissed...well, little did I know it was going down hill from there..Yesterday, Monday, we woke up to 30 MPH winds and the day's high temp of 33 degrees. woopie..We went into the big town of Sattler and did our laundry...Do I have to wash my coat and gloves?? Are we going to be wearing them alot more...and for how long??
On our way back from the laundry we stopped by the Fischer post office to see if the pkg we had been waiting for from Chris was there yet...I sat in the truck while Den went in..(Hey, it was too cold to walk the 20 ft into the post office, so I sat in the truck and watched the prickly pear cactus shiver.) Den walked out of the post office carrying what looked like a post card and looking confused..This did not bode well for our package..When he got in the truck he informed me that our long awaited package was waiting for us in San Marcos at the UPS office...huh?? Well, come to find out I neglected to tell Chris that you cannot send anything marked "General Delivery" via UPS..they need an address, and we don't have any. I now see a trip to San Marcos in the frigid day's plans.
We blew into the camper with our laundry. Now, our camper is pretty warm. We have our electric fireplace that is a heater plus a small little electric heater we take into the bedroom so we can have morning hygiene with some heat. Mind you, we do have a propane furnace in this thing, but why burn our propane when we can burn the campground electicity?? Also, another note..you can lose alot of heat through the camper windows, especially the huge picture window in the rear living room...these are not Anderson windows, kids, these have zero insulation qualities. What we do if it is severly cold and windy is NOT open the shades, thus creating a cocoon-like atmosphere inside..This is OK for about 48 hours and then you get a little nuts not seeing outside..nuts enough even to venture outside for a walk, albeit brief, in your winter coat, gloves and stocking hat.
And now for the tale of the trip to San Marcos. Did I mention that the UPS office in San Marcos (30 miles away) has weird hours?? Like, they are only open from 4PM until 7PM 5 days a week?? ...and if we didn't get our package by Thursday they would return it to sender?? Thus the reason we had to wait until late afternoon yesterday to venture forth yet again into the Texas "unseasonable cold".We decided to go a little early and run to WalMart there.
What we didn't remember was that "rush hour" is a universal time..3PM until 7PM...and we ended up right in the middle of it.
San Marcos is one of the bigger cities around here and we drove into it sitting in traffic bumper to bumper, armed only with our mapquest map of where the UPS place was. We managed to get to WalMart, only because we DID know where that was, having been there before. From there we were floundering around on and off I-35,(really busy interstate), looking for the UPS office. We were hopelessly lost and the air inside the truck was wrought with "tension" accompanied by a few foul words from the driver..AND.. now we could see it was starting to get dark..Don't panic, Donna...OK..but I do know how much Dennis hates driving winding hilly roads after dark..I also neglected to mention that the road we take from our campground at Canyon Lake to San Marcos is called "The Devil's Backbone"?? ..self explanatory.
To try to make a long story even longer, we went down a wrong road off the interstate... and MAGICALLY, ended up at the UPS office! Here is where I take credit for suggesting we stay the course and keep going that directions... Quick, Den, jump out, get the pkg, throw it in the back of the truck and let's "get the Hell outa Dodge"..or San Marcos. We managed to find our way back across the interstate and headed back out of town as the sun was setting (if there had been any sun yesterday). We made it back to the camper before it was totally dark, ran in and started a much needed cocktail hour.
Well, the package was worth every bit of the trip!! In it we had a brand new WebCam for our laptop, courtesy of Chris and John...PLUS 2 caps, a sweatshirt and a long sleeved T-shirt for me from John's sister, Crash Gladys..Let me explain that Crash is not her real name, it is the name she goes by on the TV/radio show in California that she is part of, called SpeedFreaks. She and 2 guys,(she's the only female), do a show about auto racing, NASCAR, stock, drag racing...all kinds of racing..One of the caps for Den was signed by all of them and I know when he wears it he"ll think he is King Shit!! It was just like Christmas opening all of the goodies..Will Den sleep in his new cap??
When we woke up today, it promised to be yet another "curtains pulled" day..temp was 28 degrees. We had coffee and peeked outside..hmmm...no wind...let's brave it and do our walk..We did and actually it was not nearly as bad as yesterday..no wind chill to deal with. We dealt with the curtains down until about noon, then I could handle it no longer and pulled up a few at a time..Hey, it was now 39 degrees, and I needed to see that I was NOT in a bad dream and back in Illinois..No, by God, I WAS in Texas!!!! AND they are predicting 70 degrees by Thursday!!
You may have noticed there are no photos in this blog...because our activities of the past few days have consisted of laundromats, post offices and kamakazee runs to UPS offices..Not great photo ops..I will blog more with photos when I finally see the sunshine and can get out of my sweatpants...Later