Category Archives: Personal

Brazos Bend

04 Saturday Mar 2017

Posted by in Bartleby, Campground, RV, Travel

≈ 7 Comments

I spent one night at Brazos Bend. I’m starting to believe that one night is not enough for any park, but it’s especially not enough for one as big as Brazos Bend. So many trails there! So many things to see! An observatory and a windmill and multiple lakes. I’m not even sure what I might have missed. Well, except for the alligators–based on the warnings, I should definitely have seen some alligator activity there, but our one morning there was cold so there was no sign of them. I don’t actually mind that, ha.

We did see vultures. Lots and lots of vultures. Zelda and I actually startled about a dozen of them while we were out walking. They’d been hidden in the brush and I hadn’t noticed them, but we were so close that the sound of their wings beating the air as they leaped into flight was incredibly loud, like a motor suddenly starting right next to you. I ducked, heart abruptly racing. Zelda was totally nonchalant, of course, but vultures are quite big when you’re only a few feet away from them.

The above plants were really loud, too. The wind blowing through them was a steady rustle, like… I don’t know what. Maybe I don’t have a comparison. They sort of sounded papery, but loud papery–like dozens of people all reading newspapers at once, making no other sounds, no clearing of breath or shifting weight, just shuffling their papers around. I’m not musical enough to be sure, but I bet there’s some musical instrument that could replicate the sound. It was so loud and steady that I’m fairly sure I’d never heard anything like it before, though.

Traveling like this is really making me feel incredibly ignorant. About so many things! Musical instruments at the moment, but birds, of course. Plant life. I have no idea what the above plants are, or the names of any of the wildflowers I’ve been admiring. The stars are an almost complete mystery, after I’ve found Orion’s Belt and hunted for the Little Dipper.

Then there’s geography. Having moved on from Brazos Bend (and back to Matagorda Bay), I’m currently sitting on the banks of the Colorado River. In Texas. This was completely mystifying to me until I finally googled and discovered that Texas’ Colorado River is not the same river as the Colorado River that runs through the Grand Canyon. (And, random new fact, Colorado means “red” in Spanish. I had no idea.)

And the proper way to murder mice. At this point, I’ve captured and released one, killed another, and spent about $45 in anti-mice devices. I have ultrasonic repellers plugged into three different outlets, traps baited with “mouse attractor” in two locations, peppermint oil sprayed along the floor, dryer sheets in the drawers, and the whole van smells like Christmas from the FreshCab mouse repellent in the kitchen. Seriously, I feel like I should be putting up lights and baking cookies. Meanwhile, there were still little mouse droppings on the kitchen counter this morning, so my unwelcome guests have not been sufficiently repelled yet. I haven’t braced myself to do the glue traps yet. They seem so unkind. But that’s next, I guess.

I’m a carnivore, so I really shouldn’t feel guilty about killing mice. I eat cows and pigs and chickens and fish, the death of a mouse should be trivial. But I really hate this. It makes me simultaneously sad and jumpy, paranoid that every sound is a mouse getting near my bed and that every sniffle is the first symptom of a mouse-born virus.

And Bartleby is so allergic to springtime that he is chewing himself raw, which is frustrating both of us. Me, as I try to stop him from chewing, and him, as he tries to soothe his own itching. That reminds me, though, that I have anti-itch shampoo for him–new goal for today, give the dog a bath!

 

Palmetto State Park

02 Thursday Mar 2017

Posted by in Food, Grace, House, Personal, Serenity

≈ 8 Comments

wildflowers at sunrise

Wildflowers at sunrise

At the Onion River Campground in Vermont, I walked Zelda through fields of high, dry weeds with scattered faded flowers, surrounded by deep green grass and trees with leaves that were just starting to hint at autumn, and felt like we were in the essence of late summer. I think it’s why I remember that place with so much pleasure.

At Palmetto State Park in Texas, we are in the essence of spring. It is pure spring, all around us. Trees with soft green leaves unfurling, growing so fast that it feels like if you look away for an instant they will have changed when you look back. Wildflowers — yellow and white and purple and pink — some tiny, hiding in the grass, others standing tall and proud. A robin sitting on the branch outside my window as I write. White-tailed deer leaping through the trees at sunrise. Sweet olive trees covered in white flowers, their fragrance drifting on the breeze. One of the sweet olive trees — the biggest one I have ever seen — hummed as I approached it, mysterious until I realized it was the hum of a thousand happy bees. (I then cautiously moved away because, okay, humming tree, fascinating and cool; hundreds upon hundreds of bees, totally scary.)

My day here yesterday was… I want to say spectacular, but it was spectacular in a really quiet way. Zelda and I walked the San Marcos River Trail a little after sunrise. It was beautiful and lovely. We saw the site of the old mud boils, quiet now, but still noted with a sign. (Otherwise I wouldn’t have known what I was looking at). The trail was smooth, well-maintained, shockingly litter-free, and starts about twenty steps away from our campsite. It was a perfect morning walk, chilly enough to need a jacket, overcast, but not raining, a good length, interesting things to look at.

I did some work, including updating my work blog, texted with some friends, did some knitting, made myself a delicious lunch — scrambled eggs with chorizo, brown rice, goat Gouda, avocado, mushroom, and green onion (as posted on Instagram), and ate it sitting outside looking at the view. The sky was clearing, and the air was warming.

Then Z and I went for another walk, in a different direction. We crossed the river at a low point, which for her meant wading and for me meant hopping along the stones at the edges of the paved walkway, the rest of which had water flowing across it. I felt slightly ridiculous and yet also had that little kid thrill of knowing that if I fell, I would splash.

Back at the camper, I wrote. Good words. On Grace! First time in a long while that I didn’t feel like I was trying to fix something broken, but just letting the characters be who they were. We went for another walk. I sat outside on my new camp chair ($6 at Walmart and so much more comfortable than the $50 backpacking chair that I started out with) in the sunshine, warm enough to not need my jacket, and tried to write some more. Then Z wanted to be on my lap, so instead I snuggled her and felt so grateful to be in that moment, in that chair, with my dog licking my face. At sunset, we went for another walk. We ate dinner. I wrote some more.

Then I heard a rustling and caught a mouse in my trash can. Yes! A mouse. Serenity has mice. I can’t even…* I realized Tuesday that I had a mouse problem and it really ruined that day for me. Yesterday I let it go–nothing to do about it until I get on the road again–until one of them fell into the trash can. I carried it outside and released it, telling it to watch out for owls. Unfortunately, it was either not the only mouse or it came right back inside, because there was one after my granola this morning. Gah. So today I will be buying traps and repellent while I’m on my way to my next park.

But I didn’t let the mice stress me out yesterday. Yesterday, I enjoyed a perfect spring day. And not just a perfect spring day. My day, the day that I wanted.

A year ago, I was just starting to think about this adventure. I hadn’t decided to do it yet. I could still look around my house and think, wait, this is the home that I worked so hard for, the place where I wanted to live forever, my fantasy house. The window seat with its cushion made from material my mom and I found at a garage sale, the French doors, the bougainvillea, the neighborhood with its ponds and birds, the kitchen that is exactly right… was I really going to let it all go?

Yesterday was the day for which I let it go.

sunset moon

This sunset is worth a mouse or two.

*”I can’t even…” feels like a complete statement to me, but it sure looks odd when written down. So, you know, envision it with the head shake and wince of pain and hands spread wide that it needs in order to make sense. 

Edited to add: OMG, the showers–so much water pressure, so hot! Not new and fancy, your basic rundown campground shower, but the best shower I’ve had in months.

Goose Island State Park

23 Thursday Feb 2017

Posted by in Anxiety, Campground, Personal, Travel

≈ 6 Comments

sunrise on Goose Island

Not a goose, but a pelican. And that tiny little sliver of white in the sky above its head is a crescent moon.

Very, very erratic internet here. I’m using my phone as a hotspot and even that is not so solid. So this may be a short post when my frustration level gets too high.

I’m at Goose Island State Park. It’s an interesting exercise in appreciation. I’m on the bayside loop and I have a beautiful view of water and boats outside my front window–but there’s a road and another line of campers between me and the water. If I had one of the sites on the other side of the road, there would be nothing in front of me but water.

Would anything in my life be different? Nope, I would still be camped in a beautiful place on a gorgeous day with dogs that I adore in a comfy little van… and yet I feel vaguely dissatisfied, wishing I was on the other side of the road.

I’ve been feeling very unsettled in general. Which is, of course, a perfect word, because although I mean it as a synonym for something like uncertain, I am literally not settled. Constant motion, constant change. It’s unsettling. My neighbor here has been on the road for four years and she used the word “rootless”–it’s a good word, too.

But I leave here tomorrow with no destination in mind, no campsite reserved. I may wind up spending the night in a Walmart parking lot, which will be good for me. It will remind me to appreciate campsites with water views, even when they have road views, too.

Surprised by beauty

16 Thursday Feb 2017

Posted by in Personal, Randomness, Travel

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

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I woke up this morning and thought, okay, it’s time to move. It’s my 6th day here, making this just about my longest stay in a state park. I’ve visited the little beach around the corner a few times every day, and I’ve walked along the road toward the front of the park every morning. I was getting tired of it. Yesterday was cold and grey and I turned back when I started to feel raindrops, so I was decidedly unenthusiastic about doing the same walk one more time.

An hour later, I was in love with Galveston again.

It’s sunny.

And it’s so beautiful.

This morning instead of walking all the way toward the front of the park, we turned off on a road that we’d been on once before. But after we hit our normal walk length, the point where I would usually decide it was time to turn around, we kept going. I found a trail that led into the park and we took it and walked out into the grasses.

It was a half mile loop, so nothing too long, but it included a stand to climb up, so you could look out over the expanse and a bridge over one of the shallow inlets. I feel like inlet is the wrong word, but I don’t think it was a river. This area of the park (the bay side) is the coastal wetlands, so I think the water ebbs and flows through all of the land, and the shallower areas stay wet. But maybe it was a river. It was water. With lots of white birds stalking around and floating in it.

I didn’t take any pictures that remotely do it justice—the sun was too bright, the birds too far away. Plus, of course, photos can’t capture the air, the smells, the sounds. But the picture at the top is the closest I could come. Pretty sure those are snowy egrets. Absolutely sure that they were beautiful. On the other side of the bridge, there were dozens of birds, but they all turned into dark spots against the rising sun. They were beautiful, too.

Right now I’m sitting in Serenity with the screen door open. B is on the floor, in the sunny patch by the door. A little while ago, a starling was sitting on the picnic table squawking at him. Starlings definitely squawk. There’s a little tree—maybe even a tall shrub—outside my window, and a bird that I’m going to guess is a common yellowthroat (why, yes, I did download a bird ID app, why do you ask?) is flitting back and forth around it. Not building a nest, but it’s got a branch that it keeps revisiting. And I am pretty sure that a hawk of some sort, probably red-tailed, just glided by.

In a lot of ways, I’m still getting used to living in Serenity. I’m still finding ways to make life easier, things to change. I bought $20 of tupperware a few weeks ago and threw out all the random pieces of tupperware I had, so that now my tupperware all stacks. It felt so wasteful and it sounds so trivial, but wow, what a lovely difference to not have leftover dishes falling on my head when I open the cupboard. On the same extravagant day, I bought liquid soap and threw away my bar soap and its holder. Bar soap is just not worth the effort; it gets too messy. I’ve finally figured out where it’s best to keep my toothbrush, at least for now. (Inside a cup, in the medicine cabinet.) I think I’m even finally getting the hang of washing dishes in a single sink while using the least possible amount of water.

But one of the trickiest things to figure out is how long to spend in any one place. Traveling too fast is so disruptive that I get no writing done. Traveling too slow and the van starts to feel like a trap. But I think I may have mixed up traveling too slow with staying in the wrong places. Two weeks in a campground where my view is other people’s sewer lines and our morning walks are along rows of trailers may be very, very different from two weeks in a place where six days in I can still be surprised by beauty.

Grayton Beach State Park

25 Wednesday Jan 2017

Posted by in Campground, Florida, Food, Serenity, Travel, WIP

≈ 3 Comments

Grayton Beach sunriseBeautiful beyond words.

I used my grill twice, once for a hamburger that I ate with baked white sweet potatoes, and the second time for bacon. Bacon on a grill was… fiery. That feels like the wrong word, but I can’t find a better one. I had to throw some away after it turned into charcoal, and while I didn’t burn myself, I honestly don’t know how I managed not to burn myself. Seriously, the flames were leaping high. So that was an interesting experiment, and I will not be repeating it. I guess bacon is just not a food I get to eat while I live in a camper. But if yesterday was my last bacon, at least it was delicious: I mixed it in with scrambled eggs with cilantro, rice, and hot sauce, and it was very yum.

I met some fellow Travato owners and had a very pleasant hour or so chatting with them and seeing their camper. They’ve got the other model, the G, and they’re about two years ahead of me in traveling. It was so fun to hear their adventures — their favorite ghost town in Arizona, the restaurant parking lot where they spent the night in Malibu, the tram parking lot with the view of the mountains, the Walmarts & the beaches. They love their Travato for the flexibility, for the ability to just stay anywhere, and they’re very forthright about asking if they can park for the night. When they got here last night, the campground was full, but the ranger let them stay in the overflow lot — they were right on the water this morning, with a view that must have been amazing.

The writing is not going well, much to my frustration, and I’m starting to strongly suspect that I’ve caught a cold. But it is wonderful to be on the road again and going places.

Today is six months since I started this journey, an anniversary I very nearly missed until I was about to post, and blinking at the calendar wondering what was significant about January 25th to me. I meant to write about the highs and lows of my first six months when this day rolled around, but… well, I wasn’t thinking about it. And I actually feel like I’m kind of too busy living in one of the highs right now to write about the lows. I don’t even have words to express how beautiful this campground is, how perfect the weather, and how content and serenely happy I am to be here. I’m moving on today, though — the next campground is beckoning to me! — and that makes me serenely happy and also sort of bubbly with adventure excitement. Life is good. I guess that’s pretty my summary of my first six months on the road, too: life is good!

Roadtrippers

19 Thursday Jan 2017

Posted by in Reviews, Serenity, Travel

≈ 1 Comment

I’m having so much fun playing with Roadtrippers.com. I haven’t really planned out my previous adventures, except in terms of which family member or friend I was headed to visit next, with stays at Thousand Trails campgrounds or state parks between visits and errands. But I decided I needed to map out my next few weeks of adventure while I had plentiful internet access, so I spent a big chunk of the past few days reading links off roadtrippers and being alternately wistful about the things that just don’t make sense to do with two dogs in tow and excited about the ones that do. In other words, no Mardi Gras, even though I’ll probably be in the right area around the right time. But Dauphin Island might work out and it looks lovely.

I say “might” because I’m not making reservations. Not yet. Serenity is in for service again today and I’m… well, not doubtful, exactly. But I lack faith. I’m not really thrilled with the fact that I’ve gotten so comfortable at the RV dealer’s service facility that I bring my own coffee cup along to help myself to their (really quite decent) coffee rather than making my own coffee on service days, and that the vast multitude of people who work there are starting to become familiar to me. There are three women who work behind the service counter and I have a favorite, the one whose line I prefer to get in. (Short version: the cheerful, helpful one, of course.) That’s not a good sign. But fingers crossed, today might be the day I’m done for a while. This morning I noticed a latch sticking and I just closed my eyes to it. I’ll live with a sticky latch. If it does break, I’ll figure out how to fix it myself.

Serenity did get a nice upgrade this week. My dad and an old family friend installed a shower curtain rail for me in the bathroom. I’m waiting for clips to actually hang the curtain, so I can’t say for sure what it’s going to be like yet, and I’m going to need to get a tie of some sort to keep it bunched in the corner when not in use, but I’m very optimistic that this will make showering in the van seem like less of a project. Previously, every shower required snapping the shower curtain along the ceiling and walls to protect the closet and drawers, and it was kind of a PITA. In the last two months, I haven’t showered in the van once — I’ve learned a lot about campground bathrooms, and never ever forget to bring my flip-flops to wear while I shower anymore! — but it’ll be nice if showering in the van feels easier now.

But back to Roadtrippers. You set a starting point for your trip and pick a destination, and select what you’re interested in discovering along the way. Roadtrippers has data on hotels, restaurants, points of interest, campgrounds, all sorts of places. And links to their sites, of course, so when I find a campground or state park that I like, I can find out more about it by following links. It currently doesn’t have enough reviews — I wish they and TripAdvisor could join forces because Roadtrippers’ mapping software is way more useful than TripAdvisor, but TripAdvisor wins for quantity of reviews — but roadtrippers is very fun to play with and explore. When I’m on real internet, of course, not cell data!

Re-posting

14 Saturday Jan 2017

Posted by in Bartleby, Personal, Pets

≈ 2 Comments

Someday I will actually have my site working again. Today might even be the day. Why not think positive, right?

Reposting from Thursday, to see if this works:

Highs and Lows

It’s been a weird week. I started this post by saying that it had been a rough week, but then I thought back and realized that my week has had some really lovely things in it to counterbalance the roughness and perhaps I should focus on those.

B’s test results showed that his heart is enlarged and he is in the early stages of congestive heart failure. Before the vet appointment, I did my best to not dwell on the possibilities, to not prepare myself for bad news, which is totally unlike me. Turns out, hearing bad news is actually not any harder if you haven’t spent two weeks focusing on preparing for the bad news and in fact, might be easier. And in the long run, I’m no worse off now for not having spent two weeks dreading what I would hear and then hearing it.

But I’m still sad, of course. Everyone with a dog knows that our time with them is not going to be long enough, could never be long enough, but that doesn’t make it easier to find out that the time is going to be measured in months, not years. On the other hand, I now have heard a couple stories from people whose dogs did live years, so I’m not going to think too bleakly. We’re living one day at a time and today, B is a happy, cheerful, entertaining companion who is not suffering at all, just has a good excuse for his extreme laziness.

It was still a low to have gotten that news. But the high that balanced it was my nephew, seeing me, saying immediately, “I’m sorry,” and giving me a hug. Twenty-one years old and such a sweetheart, so kind. And my brother checking in three times during the long day of waiting for news, knowing I was worried and worrying with me. And my son, getting to hear his voice on the phone, when he told me how sorry he was, and and all the friends who called and texted and commented on Facebook and sent messages. I never felt alone in my sadness. I felt lucky to have so many people who were sad for and with me.

Of course, now I’m all tearful again, but that’s okay.

Another low–and high–was helping my dad help my sister move. I’ll skip the details on the low part, it’s not entirely my story and probably more personal than appropriate for semi-public consumption, but I feel/felt a remarkable amount of anger and frustration around the circumstances. I managed not to say anything totally unforgivable, (in my opinion, anyway) but I sure thought some unforgivable things. And you know how it goes with anger: when you’re furious, you wind up carrying it around with you, ruminating on it, brain going in circles of nastiness. It’s been tough to let go of those hostile feelings and it’s really darkened my days to be feeling them.

But within that, I got to spend some really nice time with my dad and stepmom, who are both such terrific and wonderful people. I feel incredibly lucky to have them in my life. My stepmom should probably be nominated for sainthood. My dad is so, so fortunate to have found her. And on two evenings this week, I got to escape to spend time with friends — the kind of friends who once upon a time, several years ago, were acquaintances with a single common interest, but who have become people I hope to have in my life forever, truly for the rest of my days.

For a long time in adulthood, it seemed impossible to make real friends — people through work drifted away when the work was done, people through school (either the kids or my own) never became more than friendly acquaintances, neighbors always stayed casual. And maybe that was all me, but it felt like it was part of adulthood, too, that everyone was having the same problem. But there are people in my life now who are like… ha, like characters in a Maeve Binchy novel. Unexpected friends. And I got to spend time with them this week, which really helped balance out the stress of the other stuff that I was going through.

Tomorrow it’s back to the vet, then this weekend I’m headed to Sarasota for a couple of days, which will include taking care of forms and financial aid paperwork. Next week, it’s back to central Florida to do some final van stuff, I hope–an oil change, tire rotation, and finally getting the fan fixed. And then… then!… finally adventures begin!

Highs and lows

12 Thursday Jan 2017

Posted by in Bartleby, Personal, Pets

≈ 4 Comments

It’s been a weird week. I started this post by saying that it had been a rough week, but then I thought back and realized that my week has had some really lovely things in it to counterbalance the roughness and perhaps I should focus on those.

B’s test results showed that his heart is enlarged and he is in the early stages of congestive heart failure. Before the vet appointment, I did my best to not dwell on the possibilities, to not prepare myself for bad news, which is totally unlike me. Turns out, hearing bad news is actually not any harder if you haven’t spent two weeks focusing on preparing for the bad news and in fact, might be easier. And in the long run, I’m no worse off now for not having spent two weeks dreading what I would hear and then hearing it.

But I’m still sad, of course. Everyone with a dog knows that our time with them is not going to be long enough, could never be long enough, but that doesn’t make it easier to find out that the time is going to be measured in months, not years. On the other hand, I now have heard a couple stories from people whose dogs did live years, so I’m not going to think too bleakly. We’re living one day at a time and today, B is a happy, cheerful, entertaining companion who is not suffering at all, just has a good excuse for his extreme laziness.

It was still a low to have gotten that news. But the high that balanced it was my nephew, seeing me, saying immediately, “I’m sorry,” and giving me a hug. Twenty-one years old and such a sweetheart, so kind. And my brother checking in three times during the long day of waiting for news, knowing I was worried and worrying with me. And my son, getting to hear his voice on the phone, when he told me how sorry he was, and and all the friends who called and texted and commented on Facebook and sent messages. I never felt alone in my sadness. I felt lucky to have so many people who were sad for and with me.

Of course, now I’m all tearful again, but that’s okay.

Another low–and high–was helping my dad help my sister move. I’ll skip the details on the low part, it’s not entirely my story and probably more personal than appropriate for semi-public consumption, but I feel/felt a remarkable amount of anger and frustration around the circumstances. I managed not to say anything totally unforgivable, (in my opinion, anyway) but I sure thought some unforgivable things. And you know how it goes with anger: when you’re furious, you wind up carrying it around with you, ruminating on it, brain going in circles of nastiness. It’s been tough to let go of those hostile feelings and it’s really darkened my days to be feeling them.

But within that, I got to spend some really nice time with my dad and stepmom, who are both such terrific and wonderful people. I feel incredibly lucky to have them in my life. My stepmom should probably be nominated for sainthood. My dad is so, so fortunate to have found her. And on two evenings this week, I got to escape to spend time with friends — the kind of friends who once upon a time, several years ago, were acquaintances with a single common interest, but who have become people I hope to have in my life forever, truly for the rest of my days.

For a long time in adulthood, it seemed impossible to make real friends — people through work drifted away when the work was done, people through school (either the kids or my own) never became more than friendly acquaintances, neighbors always stayed casual. And maybe that was all me, but it felt like it was part of adulthood, too, that everyone was having the same problem. But there are people in my life now who are like… ha, like characters in a Maeve Binchy novel. Unexpected friends. And I got to spend time with them this week, which really helped balance out the stress of the other stuff that I was going through.

Tomorrow it’s back to the vet, then this weekend I’m headed to Sarasota for a couple of days, which will include taking care of forms and financial aid paperwork. Next week, it’s back to central Florida to do some final van stuff, I hope–an oil change, tire rotation, and finally getting the fan fixed. And then… then!… finally adventures begin!

 

Welcome to 2017

02 Monday Jan 2017

Posted by in Books, R, Zelda

≈ 2 Comments

I had the loveliest/weirdest New Year’s Eve. It was R’s 21st birthday and I was prepared to be sad about not getting to spend time with him on his birthday. Obviously, now that he is an adult, that’s going to happen less and less often anyway. It is certainly within the realm of possibility that I will never spend his birthday with him again. Although having written that out, it seems very unlikely. I didn’t often spend my birthday with my parents between the ages of 20-30, but after that, I sometimes did, especially the major birthdays. I definitely saw them on my 30th and 40th.

Anyway, it’s a nostalgic day, of course. As always, I remembered details of the day 21 years ago, mostly how madly, head-over-heels, totally joyfully in love I was. I know some moms don’t get that. My midwife told me it was the endorphins from a very long labor. It might also have been some exhaustion delirium—my water broke on Thursday and R was finally born on Sunday morning and there was not a lot of sleep during those three intervening nights—but whatever, I was dazzled and awed and infatuated beyond anything I have ever experienced before or since.

But I was also trying to remember details of the year before that — 22 years ago, the New Year’s Eve when I had no idea, none, of how dramatically and permanently my life would change in the next 12 months. I couldn’t remember a thing. I assume I spent it with the boyfriend that I was coming to realize I ought to be breaking up with and probably that we both drank too much, but no specifics beyond that.

And then my thoughts turned to last New Year’s Eve. It was just a year ago. I had no idea it would be my last new year in my house. If you’d asked me then, I would have predicted this new year’s to be just as the previous seven or so had been: quiet, at home, probably including a nice meal with R…

Instead, he was in Paris. And I was sitting in a friend’s driveway watching the best fireworks display ever. Best, not because the fireworks were out of reason spectacular — Disney has some great fireworks shows with music and fireworks that create designs in the sky, ie Mickey Mouse ears, so I’ve seen some impressive fireworks — but because it went on and on and on, and I could watch it from the cozy comfort of my own bed with the dogs on top of me.

I would love to know what Zelda thought about the whole thing. She’s always hated fireworks, but she’s never figured out that they’re the flashing lights in the sky. She started to get agitated, barking and pacing, when she first smelled the smoke and heard the banging, but then she came and sat on me and watched them with me. Ears up, eyes alert, I really think she paid attention to the whole thing. And they were beautiful, big fireworks, some simple explosions of blue and red and green, others those swishing things like one little explosion after another in white sparkles.

It was a lovely night. Not what I meant to write about this morning, but I’m glad to save the memory.

The other lovely thing that happened was that Andrea Host released a new book in her Touchstone series. I don’t know whether I’ve mentioned the series here before — I know I have elsewhere on social media. But those books somehow became comfort reads for me, such that a few months after reading them for the first time, I got sick and the only thing I wanted to do was reread the series. They’re fantasy/science fiction, but the new book, In Arcadia, is very much a romance: it’s a calm, quiet, slice-of-life story that tells the tale of the main character’s mom from the previous books falling in love. I read it between fireworks and thoroughly enjoyed it. If you haven’t tried her books and you like fantasy/sci-fi/romance, I really do recommend them—she creates worlds that I love escaping into. I’ve reread almost all of them, I think.

In fact, my one regret about In Arcadia is that it makes me want to reread all Andrea’s books, one right after another, and I really shouldn’t. I should be writing my own books!

Resolution for 2017: write lots of words.

My bed of roses

29 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by in Randomness, RV, Serenity, Travel

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I have no data — I’m even out of data on my phone! — so I can’t look up the origin of that phrase I’m using as a title. But I’m coming back to it in a minute.

Night before last, my fan went crazy. I bet that’s the kind of description that drives mechanics crazy, too, but believe me, it is an apt description. When the craziness settled out, it was beeping. Beep. Five second pause. Beep. Five second pause. Beep.

The five seconds is a weird number. It is just long enough that there was no way to turn the beep into background noise. No possible way to ignore the noise, convince myself that it was cicadas or a crazy bird, no way to fall asleep between beeps and not wake up for the next one. Five seconds is maddening.

By 6AM, I was at my RV dealers (getting sent away by the security guard) and by 7:45AM, I was back at my RV dealers, plaintively begging for help. I didn’t have an appointment, of course, and they don’t generally take walk-ins, but they said they’d try to take a look and at least figure out how to cut power to the fan and shut it up.

While I sat on a couch in their show floor, dogs beside me, desperately wishing for sleep, I catalogued Serenity’s problems. There was the leaky air-conditioner that let so much water in the first night that the beds got soaked. The window that once opened wouldn’t close. The screens that weren’t properly placed in their tracks. The propane tank that wouldn’t fill. The thermostat that didn’t measure the temperature correctly. The sticky drawer latch that led to the facing of the drawer pulling off, exposing bare nails. The sink latch that jammed, had to be replaced, promptly broke again, and while I waited for my service appointment to get it fixed a second time, let the sink bounce around enough that the hinges broke, leaving the sink dangling half off the wall. The dead awning which fortunately died while closed. And then, of course, the fan going crazy.

All that in the first six months of ownership.

I was filled with gloom and doom. After the air-conditioning and until the fan, none of the problems had been major livability issues, but what next?

And then I took a deep breath and began re-cataloging. The air-conditioner was fixed. I don’t open the window that’s hard to close. I got the screens into their tracks and yes, it was a pain, but they work fine now. The propane tank’s sensor reset once the tank was empty and now I know to tell the guy filling it to go very slowly. The thermostat was user error, albeit based on unclear instructions, but still, no longer a problem. The drawer had been repaired. The sink was scheduled for repair. The awning was scheduled for repair. The only real problem was the fan.

And I went to Vermont. I watched the sunrise over farm fields and mountains, and waded in a mountain stream with the dogs. I sat next to the ocean and wrote. I wandered around the cutest little Massachusetts town at dawn. I’ve seen owls and coyotes and manatees. I’ve visited relatives and friends, gotten to have real time with people that I hadn’t seen in years. Sat around the table with my dad and stepmom on Christmas Eve eating chocolate cake.

The service guy came back. He told me they’d pulled the fan out and ordered a new part for it, but wouldn’t be able to get it fixed until the part came in, some time in the next couple of weeks, but that they’d stopped the noise. Oh, and that they’d fixed the sink and the awning. I hugged him.

Beds of roses do have thorns. I’m not excited about how many things have gone wrong with Serenity and I’m definitely not looking forward to whatever goes wrong next. But the last thing I have to do in Florida now (depending on when the part for the fan comes in) is a vet appointment on the 10th of January, which means that in less than two weeks, I can be heading west. And just thinking about that makes me want to bounce with excitement. Or you know, roll around on my bed of roses, hoping none of the thorns draw blood.