Days 41---A Runaway

You know how you get up in the morning and think you have your day all planned out.  Well, that's how I woke up this morning.  Then I got out of bed.  Nothing went according to plan from that moment onwards.  MY plan for the day was to get Bill's dad moved to the lake for the weekend, go to a visitation for one of my former students who drowned last week.  I not only taught him, but his brother and sister and his dad was on the faculty while I taught at Academy as well.  And then, Bill and I were going to go to see Much Ado About Nothing at Tablerock Amphitheater in Salado for my "first" for today.  Scratch all of the above!!

After Bill's dad got mugged on Thursday at his apartment, we decided we needed to move him somewhere, no matter what.  He is no longer safe there.  So I suggested to Bill that we suggest to his dad that he spend just the weekend at the lake house and see if it was something he might like.  We met him for lunch and talked about the plan--our mistake was thinking that he could hear or understand a thing we said!  After lunch, we went to his apartment and had him pack up his clothes, toiletries, etc. for 3 days--and he did--and we drove out to the lake.  His fat dog Eddy had fleas so we wouldn't let him in the house until that was taken care of, so we bought some stuff that would kill the fleas quickly--30 minutes they said at Petco.  We administered the pill on the patio at the lake, and we all sat around and waited and waited.  Thirty minutes later--fleas still everywhere.  So I took off to our vet in Belton to ask if they had any kind of spray or anything.  They recommended the same thing we had already administered.  BUT, as I started to leave, the girl I was talking to suggested that I buy some original Dawn detergent and told me to soap him up, leave the soap on for 5 minutes, the fleas would suffocate, and the dog would be flea-free.  So when I got back to the lake, that's what I did.  Low and behold, it works!  First #1 for the day!

So we went inside, and I showed Bill's dad where everything was.  I had taken food from his refrigerator, taken his books he had out that he was reading, took the dog food and water bowl, the dog's blanket, BG's blanket, his sweater, etc.  He had the clothes and toiletries.  We stayed there at the cabin with him about 2 hours, and then Bill needed to get back to the office, and he was with me, so we left so I could take him to the office.  Bill told him one of us would be back in about 3 hours.   I went back home and did a few things, and then I drove back out there to check on him.  He was gone in his pickup and had locked the house up tight.  I called Bill, and we knew he had on his little tracking device--but it wasn't following him for some reason.  Bill called the company, and they started working on the situation.  Meanwhile, I'm afraid he is almost to Austin or Waco.  Finally, after about 45-60 minutes, they found him--at his apartment.  We never believed he would be able to find his way back home from the lake in Belton to Temple.  We certainly underestimated his mostly cloudy mind!  But our relief was very real because we were next going to have to call for a silver alert or something.  Bill went over to his apartment and asked him why he left, and he said because we didn't come home, and he decided it was time for him to go back home.  I think he thought we were living there, and he was our guest and we had abandoned him.  But he only took his toiletry bag back home with him--everything else was still at the cabin.  Bill went to his house, and this time, he wrote out everything about the plan to have him try out the lake house and see if he liked it and that if he did we would move him out there, but that we would not be living there until after we sold our house, etc, etc.  Bill asked him if he would stay at the lake for 3 days--without his pickup as a trial and see if he wanted to live there.  He agreed.  We shall see.