On the Road Again.......

I didn't blog last April's travels (2016) because I was too busy eating ceviche every day at a different beach cantina on Holbox, Mexico after hiking through the jungles of Yucatan to Chichen Itza. I saved a paper folder of pics and stories to tell later.

This year (2017) our travels encompassed visiting Home Depot on February break and painting our house up a storm despite the flu and sleeping every other hour.  For April break, I was working in Oxford County so Judd came for a hotel vacation and we "hit the Oxford Casino."  i.e. we put in one dollar for each kid on the nickel machine and when Ryley's dollar made $5, we immediately "reinvested" and lost it. Then we each each played a hand of Spanish 21 - like Black Jack but with the 10s taken out of the deck (for $10 each hand) and immediately lost $20.  We deemed it "not that fun" and tried to walk out of the place with our Oxford Casino engraved wine glasses.  The nice bouncer at the door said, 'you can't leave with those....'

The work that brings me to western Maine is working as an independent contractor for a company that sells my time to various insurance companies to do Annual Wellness Visits in people's homes. That's a Medicare screening/health care advice template with a mini-exam thrown in.
https://www.cms.gov/Outreach-and-Education/Medicare-Learning-Network-MLN/MLNProducts/downloads/AWV_chart_ICN905706.pdf

The company rented me a car and a swanky Hampton Inn as home base so I can do visits every day for a week without making the 75min drive home. This has inherent pros and cons.  Sure my floors are immaculate and I get control of the TV clicker, but there's no Judd, no garden, no sunsets on the lake. 

And then there's the work.  It's not physically taxing-- I can get in and out of the car 10 times and drive criss crossed-ly across roads I don't know, although it will be less charming for the next  3 days when it rains non-stop. The hard part is not knowing, hour to hour, what will be behind the next door. The first day I got bit by a dog. A nice old man put his three ankle biters, as he called them, behind a door and they yapped loudly through the whole exam. Between the din and the hard of hearing, I had to yell the screening questions.  Then as we were finishing up and I was packing my bag, the man said, "Oh, I'll let them out to say hello since you're leaving now," and the little devil dogs ran right at me barking and yipping. The ring leader bit me on the foot:  two puncture wounds with a big bruise in between. I sterilized  my wounds with Purrell (THAT stings) and found two bandaids in my purse to get me through the next two visits. Despite soaking it, icing it, elevating it and ibuprofening it, I was still mightily ticked off the next morning AND now skittish of clients with dogs, no matter how "good" their owner claims them to be. When I called my company to report the incident, the ditz on the phone didn't seem to know why I'd report it.  I said, "You know, in case I get rabies or my foot gets gangrene and falls off in the next week." She said, "OH!"