I’m no sissy!

So its spooky and scary night again, called Halloween and mountains of candy and chips are being handed out tonight to kids dressed up in costumes. Such a nice tradition we knew nothing of when we came to Canada from Germany many moons ago. We don’t have many kids living in our neighborhood, but I’m prepared and any leftovers will disappear in no time at our house, I’m sure.

This Halloween photo was sent to me by my friend Linda
"We Two Travellers Living the Life"

Yesterday I had a restless night and the night before as did Reggy.  A couple of weeks or so ago I noticed that he had a kind of pimple/bump on top of his tail. I applied a Tropical Corticosteroid cream on it, but it didn’t help. Last Friday we made the trip to the veterinarian hospital and their two staff doctors took a look at it and performed a microscopic exam for cancer, which was negative. Reggy got an injection against infections and a Tropical Antibiotic/Corticosteroid gel was prescribed. He got to wear a cone around his neck to prevent him from licking the affected area for the next two weeks. Well, that didn’t go well at all. 

 

Reggy had not one minute of rest in his crate with the cone bumping around and his whining, scratching and hyperventilating became intolerable. He ended up in our bed for the remainder of the night. The next day I put a panty (Elsa’s old panty from the time before she was spayed) on him and sewed an old sock around the tail opening and therefore preventing him from licking his tail. That worked for the day, but at night the same thing of restlessness, romping, whining and hyperventilating until I took him out and into our bed. I’m sure the steroids are causing this and so I might discontinue this treatment. 

 

It being already the end of October, Benno winterized the travel trailer just because we don’t want to be caught by an unexpected frost until we head south. He drained the hot water tank, plus the hot and cold water pipes and then he put non-poison antifreeze solution into the hot and cold water pipe circuit using the from the factory build in winterizing provision. If we have to leave during frost we’ll flush the toilet with windshield washer solution and take bottled water for washing and cooking along until we are out of the freezing area.

 

Last Monday we again made the trip across the St Clair River to the “United States of America” to Algonac, Michigan with another lovely ferry ride to pick up the PSS shaft seal that had arrived. We were lucky to have another beautiful sunny and calm day for that ride. Benno was eager to get on with the final installation and wasted no time to remove the propeller shaft from the Aqua Drive so he could get at it the job to slip the PSS Shaft Seal over the shaft. The drive shaft with the CV joints had to be disconnected too, to be able to get to the six socket head bolts for the final mounting and tightening of the propeller shaft. After the propeller shaft was pushed back into the Aqua Drive the PSS Shaft Seal got mounted properly and final. (I bet you all needed to know this in detail, right? ;)) 

In the instruction for tightening the bolts on the Aqua Drive there were several sequences of different torque settings to do. However, there were no suggestions given of how to prevent the shaft from rotating while torqueing. So Benno thought that if he put the old four blade 20-inch propeller back onto the shaft, I could stand underneath the boat holding the propeller while he would go through the sequence of torqueing. Well, that is easily thought, but although I am no “Sissy”, have you ever tried to hold a propeller while sets of each 10 and 30 and 60 newton-meter are being applied to six 10mm socket head bolts by a guy using a big 2ft torque wrench? Just before he finished the first bolt on the last sequence I had to holler to stop as my muscles were screaming and my feet were leaving the ground. In the end Benno wedged a piece of 4x4 wood between ground and one propeller blade to stop the propeller from turning and we finished that task, thank goodness! I still have muscle ache from that undertaking!

 

Thanks for dropping in again and do spoil the little “trick or treat” munchkins!