on friday, september 19, 2014, we drove over to williamsburg, VA, which is where the closest verizon store to deltaville is located. silly us - we completely forgot about the iPhone 6 debut! no choice but to get in line - it was an hour and a half drive to get there. tom ran off to lowe's while i stayed in line. since i hadn't had a phone all this time, tom and i had been using facetime on his iPhone and on my iPad to communicate when we were separated but that only works when i have wifi. i tried to get the password to the verizon store's wifi and explained that the reason i was there was because i had no phone - mine had failed the swimming test! i wasn't given the password but was offered a phone to use when i needed to make the call to tom to let him know when i was getting close. it's funny - it never even occurred to me to borrow someone else's phone! the line was outside of the store and when i got close to the door, i noticed the blankets on the floor. apparently, some people had come the evening before to line up and camped there overnight - to get a new phone! insane... we were at verizon from 9:00 a.m. to 12 noon, which, considering how crazy this whole iPhone 6 thing was, wasn't too bad. ultimately, even though i would have been perfectly content with a basic rather than a smartphone, a droid is what i ended up with - it was the most inexpensive route that the verizon lady could come up with together with a slight change in our calling plan and the activation of my little iPad's cellular component. quite frankly, she made me all dizzy with her manipulations - i just needed a frickin' phone so that when i need to make a call, i can! in any case, it was all good - i wasn't expecting to own a smartphone and now i have to learn how to use it, plus i don't have to depend on wifi or tom's iPhone hotspot when i need to use the iPad. the bottom line is that i cannot live without internet and i am not ashamed to admit that :) the other lesson learned here is that one needs to make sure that no new iPhone is being launched on the day that you decide to go to the verizon store! after that, it was major grocery shopping and then finally back home to deltaville. long day, certainly, but not over yet.
while we were having dinner that evening, there was a frantic knocking by our neighbor. apparently, little tinkerbelle, one of their three yorkies, had fallen in the water! our neighbor is 83 and has parkinson disease. her husband is 87. they don't move too quickly obviously. tom and i were out there immediately with flashlights and tinkerbelle was nowhere to be found for what seemed like a good long while. the husband wasn't even aware of what was happening. the wife was nearly hysterical. what we think happened was that the little dog managed to get herself trapped in a space under the floating dock and that is why we couldn't find her. however, eventually, tom saw her - she was already limp and underwater, not on the surface - and he fished her out. i immediately began compressions. she was cyanotic, her tongue was blue, pupils were dilated and her sphincter released. for all practical purposes, she was dead. the husband finally came out of their sailboat - the dog is his favorite of the three, he sometimes comes alone to the marina with her - and he was totally devastated, giving her up for dead, but i just kept working on her and a greal deal of water and foam came out. she was so tiny and it was hard to see anything but her nostrils were flaring slightly and i said, "she's alive!" the husband decided to take her to an emergency vet. the closest vet hospital to the marina is in hartfield nearby but after office hours, they refer emergencies to yorktown or richmond, neither of which are close. when they left, tinkerbelle was breathing and moving her head. tom took down their phone number and said he'd research the vets and call them with information but they never answered the phone. it turned out that they drove like mad to kilmarnock after finding the hartfield animal hospital close. they went to a regular emergency room - in a people hospital - where they were told that dogs were not treated there but that they should put her down on the floor as she was breathing. all three of them came back to the marina that night but we got a call prior saying that they were on their way back and that tinkerbelle was alive! in any case, she looked much better than when they had left. later that night, the husband took the little dog to a vet in richmond while the wife stayed on the boat with the other two dogs. the vet suggested to keep her at the animal hospital over the weekend. it was a long day and an even longer night but the story at least had a happy ending. tinkerbelle is 12 years old and really a very charming little thing. it could all have ended so horribly. and now, of course, tom and i are heroes :)
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| anne and tinkerbelle |
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| tinkerbelle |
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| try keeping track of these three in the dark! |
we have just a little more than a week to get all our stuff together and be prepared to say goodbye to deltaville for this year as we may not stop here again on our way south after the annapolis show. i don't suppose that anyone ever feels prepared for the adventure of a lifetime but like everything else in life, we'll play it by ear and see what happens.
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