A day of ups and downs......

7:38 am - Friday - April 3rd - Wittmann, AZ - 56° F, 48% humidity, wind 4 mph out of the northeast.......clear, blue, sunny skies this today with a forecast high of 80° F.  Woke up this morning to one of my 8d house batteries sulfating.....haven't had that happen for over 3 years.  Basically that means this battery, which was 9 years old, finally gave up the ghost......not too bad.  I'll write more about that tomorrow.

You might have noticed I posted my daily missive late Thursday morning.  I had it mostly written by 7:30 am, but we had to leave to make the 25 minute drive over to the COSTCO in Glendale, AZ to arrive in time to participate in the new senior hours which has the store opening from 8 to 9 am for those over 60 years of age.  I had two prescriptions to retrieve, and we were going to make another try at getting some Charmin, Cottonelles, and Kleenex.  We arrived just after 8 am to find the parking lot full, and people already exiting the store with full carts....wait, what?

We soon found out from a COSTCO associate that by 7:15 am the line to enter the store was too long to wait any longer, so they opened the store 45 minutes early, hence the full carts we observed at 8:05 am.  And it was a long, long line......

....we grabbed a shopping cart and made our way to the back of the line, which, as you can see, was way in the back of the parking lot.  Once you reach the COSTCO building in the background you have four 100 yard switch back lines to get through before you are able to finally enter the store.  Now, we could have played the prescription card, and been taken directly to the pharmacy, but we would not be able to take a cart with us, and we needed a cart for all the bulky stuff we hoped to be able to buy, so we had to get in line.  As a side note we wore our nitrile gloves, and new face masks, as were about 80% of the seniors in line.

We finally entered the store around 8:40 am......for every 50 people who exited the store they would allow 50 more to ingress.  While I walked to the pharmacy to pickup my meds, TLE got in the one way line to get TP.  On this day they were passing out 24 roll packages of TP, and we got Charmin, which happens to be our TP of choice.  She also got a 12 pack of Kleenex, but they were out of Cottonelles, as well as any generic offerings.  By the time I finished paying for my meds TLE was mostly done shopping.  The actual checkout line was not that long, and we were soon exiting the store and making our way to the VW with our spoils......

......we then got in line at the COSTCO fuel station to fill up the VW gas tank at $2.19/gallon for premium unleaded.....by, and far the best price we have paid in over 3 years.  Next up was the local Walmart Supercenter just 3 blocks away where we hoped to find some Cottonelles, and we scored there getting the absolute last package of the same.  TLE bought some produce, and a few other things.  By 11 am we were on the way back home with everything we had set out to procure arriving back at home base in Wittmann just after 11:30 am.

While TLE was putting away our spoils an Amazon package arrived via UPS with our new panniers for our eBikes....frankly they exceeded my expectations.  They were quite easy to install, and within minutes I had them attached to both bikes......

....for some time I have wanted to fabricate some sort of box to contain all of my Sea-B-Que grill tools, and the box which contained the new panniers was perfect, so within 20 minutes I had cut it down to fit the space......

.......and finally I had what I had wanted for a long time now.  By this time it was after 1 pm and time to take a break, which I did.  By this time TLE had gone inside for her daily card games with Darlene.

Around 3:20 pm I got a text from my brother, Dwyer, advising he had received a text from my sister Hilary's husband (Bob) advising my sister had to call '911' for my mother (Virginia) as she was in respiratory distress (fluid in her lungs).  She was rushed by the EMT's to the ER at Sacred Heart Hospital in Spokane, where she was admitted in short order to an isolation unit within the hospital until they can rule out the Chinese Virus, which will take some 3 days for test results.  In the interim no one, including my sister, can see her, or be with her.  We can only call her in her room.  In the mean time they have stabilized her, and after some treatment she is now breathing more easily.  Virginia is over 90 years of age.....she is 20 years, and three weeks older than I....we were both born in October.  The frustrating thing is I cannot get there right now to be with her.  We pray she will recover, but she has several 'co-morbidities', or underlying issues, including her advanced age which are in play.  Your prayers for my mother will be greatly appreciated.

TLE and I are doing well.....no symptoms.  In Arizona our numbers are as follows:  1,598 positive tests, 21,111 negative tests, 32 deaths, and 228 hospitalized.  Nationally the numbers are: 241,734 positive tests, 1,046,279 negative tests, 5,862 deaths, and 33,040 hospitalized.  Of those numbers we see NY has 92, 381 positive tests, 146,584 negative tests, 2,273 deaths, and 20,817 hospitalizations.....staggering numbers for sure.....NY has 2/3's of all the national hospitalizations.

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