"Plan" is a 4-letter word

Last night, in an effort to give my autonomic nervous system a chance to calm down, I turned off my lovely hostess's wifi while I slept. Eventually, I did sleep, after several hours of meditation.

Why the insomnia?

People change with time. My sweetie is discovering that in the harshest way. A friend of 20 years is sinking into the pit of addiction and her transformation has put him at considerable risk, due to the company she now keeps and what they think of him.

I hadn't heard from him since midday yesterday, and since we had agreed to call twice more that day for different logistical reasons, not being able to get hold of him was deeply worrying.

I followed my inner prompting to head away from the coast (where another storm is heading in, this one bitterly cold) and get to Cleveland, with the option of flying out from there to get to California to do whatever was needed for my sweetie.

I took off at 9:30 (woefully early for me) after plugging the router back in and forgetting my jacket -- which my lovely hostess chased me down to my parking spot to return.

Worth a thousand words

Dr. Goyal and White Plains Urgent Care were a small parking lot and two buildings over from where my nav device had placed them yesterday. /sigh/

She was saddened and intrigued by CRPS, making notes in the margins of my sheet.  She was initially somewhat dismissive of my description of the bite, because this morning it was being coy, hardly red at all.

I said, "I knew I should have taken pictures. Let me draw you a picture."

Despite my having explained its vacilating nature clearly, I know from long experience that they need to see it to believe it.

So, using the big white paper sheet they have you sit on, I sketched the bite when I first noticed it, half a day later, a day after that, and so on. I wound up drawing a series of concentric circle patterns, growing, then shrinking, then growing, then shrinking.

I finished by drawing an arrow from top to bottom and saying, "Would you trust that pattern? Because I wouldn't."

I walked out with a prescription for 3 weeks of doxycycline and having promised to follow up with my CRPS specialist.

I know it'll take 3-6 months just to get my insides back into any kind of order. Could take up to a year. I had a bad feeling about this bite, so I'll consider it time well spent.

 When people talk about Mercury Retrograde, this is what they mean

 While I was in there, my lovely hostess texted me: "Internet still not working - what to do?" An hour (and a lot of non-Mac behavior from her Mac) later, my best answer was, "Call the cable company; it's a hardware problem."

Doing unsuccessful telephone tech support for one dear friend behind you, for a problem you might have caused, while driving at highway speeds on strange roads, when you're sick with worry over another dear friend ahead of you, is not something I would recommend. In fact, now that I can check it off my bucket list, I think I'll try not to do it ever again.

Her life depends on the internet even more than mine. It's not optional. I wanted to whip around and ride back to save the day ... but for the lashing in my brain to go on, and the fact that her hands work better than mine and I know the interfaces by heart, so there was nothing -- in practical terms -- that my presence would have added.

I had a fierce feeling that, if I could get far enough away from the tangled vibes behind me, both of these problems would resolve themselves.

So, with solid logic on one side of me, and crystal-clear intuition on the other, I charged ahead.

I crossed the New Jersey/New York state line. Then my lovely hostess texted me to say that she had found a second loose connection -- and that the internet was now working fine.

How to search for someone who's gone missing

I crossed into Pennsylvania. I'd been stopping every hour to stretch and breathe, but I couldn't stop mulling my sweetie's situation, so I pulled over to start the legwork of searching.

Here's the drill. The order varies depending on what you think the situation is, but, when someone has gone missing and you fear the worst, I find it's very soothing to rule out the worst as soon as you can bear to:

- Contact the police in the area you last knew them to be in. (Use the non-emergency number; the goodwill is worth the effort.) Have they had any dealings with that person? Car accident, fight, anything? One of the first things cops do is ask for ID, whether it's appropriate or not, so they're likely to have records of even minor events.
- The police can connect you to the morgue. Rule out the worst, breathe a sigh of relief, and move on.
- Call the hospitals.
- If they aren't admitted to the hospital, ask for the Emergency Room admissions, which may be a different number.

If all of those turn up negative, count your blessings and wait for them to get back into signal range or to realize they let their phone's battery die.

First, I surfed the police logs to see if anything was reported. If there was any violence, then it's a small enough town to turn up on the online blotter. Nothing matched.

I mulled whether it was worth calling the non-emergency number to see if they'd had any other dealings, and I decided to go straight on to calling the hospitals, on the grounds that any police involvement in the situation would be blotter-worthy.

Then the phone rang.

And it was him.

I really think there were gouts of steam poufing out of my ears. My eyes closed and I dropped against the door, so I'm guessing, but it felt like it.

He was slightly shaken, but intact, and maybe beginning to really "get it" about how some people change.

He told me emphatically to be careful who I trust, not to pick up hitch-hikers, and be careful who I talked to.

Naturally, I promised him that I would.

Just for the record, I have really great friends who always have my back to the best of their ability. I am one lucky human, and I know it.

Kylertown, PA (don't blink... No, really,  don't blink, or you'll totally miss it)

After sorting out some logistics and stopping for a quarter of hot roasted chicken (definitely a local bird -- tasty!) I came to the sinking realization that Motel 6 doesn't go along I-80, and I can't afford the ones that do.

Garmin is no help, because they just list the upper scale lodgings. Lots of B&Bs, but no cheap little roadside doss-houses.

I don't need much, and can afford slightly less. It can be a problem.

I stabbed "Kwik-Fill Motel" on my phone's map. What the heck, truckers know a thing or two about cheap dossing.

I spoke to a woman, which was reassuring; when I blew past the exit (# 133, if you're curious, and it's right after a wooded curve) she did a swell sales-job that convinced me to drive the 10 miles to the next exit and come back... and it turned out to be a good decision. 

This place has been in business since the 1970's and has only raised its prices $10 since then. It skips the kitsch, thank goodness. My decent-sized room has the tasteful modicum of furniture with classy Colonial lines, with just the occasional bit of '70's carpentry or carpeting peeking around the edges. Decoration and color schemes are quite tasteful, for a motel, and -- most importantly -- the heater works.

A total find.

Next time you want to come to the wilds of Western Pennsylvania, you might as well plan an overnight at the Kwik-Fill; you can't do any better, but you could do a great deal worse.

The only downside is, I wasn't prepared for Pennsylvania water. I'd intended to bring a case of bottled for PA, but it was just like I didn't have time this morning.

I'm going to run the bath and the fan, and give the whole thing time to clear the copious chlorine. If it doesn't smell bad after that, I'll have a nice bath at the end of this roller-coaster day. If it does, well, I'll let it go and be grateful for the rest.