Category Archives: Serenity

A Room with a View

24 Monday Oct 2016

Posted by in Randomness, RV, Serenity, Travel

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On Friday, I left my campground in Vero Beach, with some unexpected regret. I really thought that ten days sitting still, all alone, was going to make me totally stir-crazy, but I was completely peacefully happy there. And the writing went so incredibly well — it was writing like I haven’t experienced since, I think, February 2014, which is an awfully specific date, but it was when Fen was spilling out of me like she was writing A Lonely Magic by herself.

I tried to convince myself to wait until the last minute to leave the campground, but that is just not in my nature. When I know I’m going, I need to go, so I packed up early and hit the road. But since I was on the road, I decided we should have a little adventure. I headed for Captain Forster Hammock Preserve, a dog-friendly park that according to Bring Fido included a pleasant 3/4 mile hike to a beach where dogs were allowed. I got lost on the way there and wound up driving on a dirt road for about forty minutes, through mud puddles galore, but eventually found it and took the dogs for a walk. Not, however, a 3/4 mile hike to the beach.

The post-hurricane mud puddles had turned the trails into slip-and-slides, as well as creating perfect breeding grounds for a mosquito world domination plan. When B sat down and refused to go any farther after about twenty minutes — I think we were getting close to the beach, but I couldn’t say for sure — I decided to take his opinion as law, and we turned and headed back to the van.

I’m one of those people with blood that must taste like mosquito ambrosia and as a result, I’m pretty mosquito tolerant. I’ve claimed before that my secret superpower is the ability to defend other people from mosquitoes, because a mosquito will always go for me if it has the option. I’m usually very good at ignoring them. But not even I could ignore those mosquitoes. They were very, very happy to have discovered me, but so prolific that some were even going after the dogs. Still, the park was beautiful. It felt like walking through a jungle, with palm trees and underbrush, but with nice wide paths.

As we headed back inland, I was thinking about the rest of my plans for the day: grocery store, maybe storage unit clean-up,  hanging out in a parking lot until I could meet up with a friend for dinner, and wishing I could really just write instead. Noah’s being so very, very opinionated. Quick example:

She’d neatly sidestepped his earlier question, returning to ridiculous stories about her brother and other people in the town. He hadn’t wanted to call her a liar, but telepathy? Precognition? Auras? Sure, there were people who believed in those things but people believed in astrology and lucky numbers and the dangers of black cats, too. People could be stupid.

He didn’t think Grace was stupid, though.

As I was thinking that, I drove past a… well, sort of a park, I guess? It was a parking lot. With one pavilion and one picnic table and plenty of room for cars. But it was right by the water. Impulsively, I pulled into it and parked, parallel to the water. I got out my computer, and for the next three hours, I wrote to the sound of ocean waves, the smell of sea, and the feel of a cool breeze coming in through the open windows. It was basically paradise.

verobeachroomwithaviewOne of the absolute best things about Serenity, both as an experience and as an aspect of the make of RV I chose (a Winnebago Travato 59K) are her windows. A lot of RVs, especially the smaller ones, are pretty closed up. The wall space is used for storage and appliances and it feels like you’re sitting inside a box. But the Travato 59K has long windows running along the twin beds. In fact, the 59K basically has windows in every single place it’s possible to put a window. Even the bathroom has windows on the doors. When I was looking at it, I liked it because of the light it let in. I thought living in a box would likely be easier if it was a well-lit box. But now that I’ve lived in her for a while, I love it because of the views. I love lying in the bed at night, turning my head two inches to the left to see the night sky. And I love working in my office (the same bed, switching to a perpendicular position) and looking up from the computer to see trees and leaves and… well, sometimes ocean views. In the future, more ocean views, I hope, because although that was the first time I wrote from a parking lot with a view, it will not be the last. Campgrounds with ocean views are too expensive, but parking lots are a bargain.

In other news, Z and B are both sick. I spent the day at the vet on Saturday, emerging precisely $600 poorer. Ironically — or perhaps in just a not-very-amusing coincidence — that was how much I told my brother it would cost the previous day when I was debating whether I needed to take them. Yes, I can predict vet costs! Not a useful skill, really.

And not at all ironically, I was not happy about the results of my visit. Z has been refusing to eat. Not just her kibble but anything. No wet food, no treats, no people food. She rejected rice and roast pork on Friday. The vet ran a bunch of tests, came up with nothing, so sent her home with a bunch of medications and some special food. But since she won’t eat, I couldn’t get her to take either the medications or the food. My big plan for yesterday was to get some chicken and rice and see if she’d take that (nope), and do a bunch more reading about raw diets for dogs. I am somewhat grossed out by the thought of the dogs eating raw chicken in the van — raw chicken, ew! — and I don’t know how I can manage creating the veggie mixes with my tiny fridge, but I think it might be time to try. B, meanwhile, has another ear infection. Yep, life with dogs. Totally worth it, but still frustrating.

And much to my relief, on Monday morning, Z still turned up her nose at the special prescription food, but thought it was definitely time for some of her regular food. Yay! I knew as soon as I woke up that she was better, which was one of those puzzles — how did I know? But I realized after I’d been awake for a while that I knew she was feeling better because she woke me up when she demanded I move the blanket out of the way so that she could come snuggle. That’s the way she generally wakes me up and for the last few days I’d woken up on my own. I would really like not to have to wake up on my own again anytime soon. But I hope I won’t have to.

This week: lots of useful stuff, unfortunately getting in the way of the writing. But seeing some friends, getting a check-up, fixing some stuff that’s wrong with Serenity, spending some time with family — all good stuff. And I hope to squeeze in some more words around the corners.

Ten weeks

03 Monday Oct 2016

Posted by in RV, Serenity, Travel

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In the past ten weeks, I have camped in twenty-two different places. (I think.)

    One state park.
    One Harvest Hosts farm.
    One parking lot.
    One KOA.
    Two independent campgrounds.
    Four Passport America parks.
    Five Thousand Trails.
    Seven driveways.

Those are definitely not in any meaningful order.

I loved the state park — if it had come later in my journey, I would have loved it even more because I would have realized how incredibly nice it was.

The Harvest Hosts farm was amazing, one of the best days, best experiences, of my first ten weeks.

The parking lot was interesting. As parking lots go, it was nice, but I suspect camping in parking lots is not going to be a huge factor in my life. I have never felt more “woman traveling alone” than when I was awake at 3AM with the street lights shining in my windows. I’m not sure I can relax enough to start enjoying your average Walmart parking lot anytime soon. Maybe, though.

The campgrounds — from KOA (pricey) to Thousand Trails (free – $3/night) — were an incredibly mixed bag. Some were lovely. The Onion River Campground in Vermont was so peaceful, such a pleasant place to stay. But the Thousand Trails in upstate NY — the one where I had the hostile neighbors — was the only place in my journey that I’ve been grateful and eager to leave behind.

The seven driveways have been by far my favorite places to stay. I didn’t expect that at all. I thought driveways would be sort of uncomfortable, occasional places to stay. But Serenity has enough solar power that unless I need air-conditioning to keep the dogs comfortable, it’s really easy to stay in a driveway. Also reasonably private, usually pretty quiet, and cozy. And sociable. In fact, I really didn’t expect how sociable moving into a camper would be. I figured I’d be very isolated — plenty of time to do lots of writing — but not so much.

Today I’m in C’s driveway. She gave me a key to her house and told me I should count her driveway as home base while I’m in central Florida — it made me seriously teary. I absolutely love what I’m doing, no question, no uncertainty. But I do have moments when I feel… well, homeless. Floating, untethered, Mary Poppins-like drifting where the wind blows. Sometimes I love that. Sometimes, not so much. I’m not going to move into C’s driveway for a long stay anytime soon — I’ve got lots of places to go — but it feels like safety to know that the option is there.

The princess and the RV

25 Thursday Aug 2016

Posted by in Personal, Serenity

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The sheets story: When I was researching RVs, I read comments from several people that the Travato beds were as comfortable as their beds at home. I know now the appropriate response to that should be, “Something is drastically wrong with your bed at home, get yourself a new mattress!” I’m not so uncomfortable that it’s making me sad, but I definitely haven’t figured out how to sleep soundly in this bed yet.

The bed, as I’m referring to it, is actually two twin beds, with a low table set between them that supports two cushions, making a oddly-shaped, full-sized bed. Oddly shaped, because the two cushions don’t add up to a twin-size length, so the top of the bed has a gap in the middle, like a capital H with the space under the connector filled in.

Before I got Serenity, I figured I’d just use my usual sheets and leave the bed set up all the time. I knew the first time I tried to make it that that would never work. If you’ve ever tried to make a bed in a corner, with walls on two sides, you know the experience, except this was trying to make a bed with multiple walled corners and a fitted sheet that didn’t fit right. Plus two dogs being total pests during the process.

And there was no way to use my real quilts, because there’s no place for the sides of the blanket to go, except to be tucked underneath the mattress entirely, which is really difficult to do when you’re also having to crawl on the mattress.

I also figured out quickly that leaving the bed set-up made my space a lot less livable, since I had to crawl across the bed to reach my clothes or some of my kitchen stuff or even the switches to turn on the water or propane.

I theorized initially that I could leave the beds made as twin beds — with both fitted sheets and flat sheets — and then put my queen-size fitted sheet on top when I set up the table/cushion part of the bed. Didn’t work. The four extra layers of fabric were enough that the cushions were very hard to squeeze into place and prone to bumping up, making lumps in the bed.

I then wound up using two flat queen-size sheets, one as a bottom sheet, one as a top. But they worked their way loose because I’m a restless sleeper, making me an even more restless sleeper as my bed got uncomfortable and lumpy.

Next I tried a sleeping bag liner, thinking I could simply put it on top of the cushions. Nope. I can’t keep myself entirely in the liner and I can’t sleep with the feel of the cushions under me — they’re ridged, like couch cushions, which is practical for when they’re being couch cushions, but I’m turning out to be very princess-and-the-pea about them. Misery.

I finally found a solution that almost worked. I covered both twin beds with a fitted twin-sheet, and when I set up the middle, I covered the cushions with a flat twin sheet, edges tucked under. I then used the sleeping bag liner for my own sheets. The bed was flat and neat and not lumpy and I was tucked in, not kicking the covers loose. Yay, it worked.

Except… oh, what a princess I am. My real sheets, the queen-size sheets from my former bed, are extremely nice sheets. I buy my sheets on sale or at extreme discount stores, but even so, I spend good money on them. My twin sheets and the sleeping bag liner are not. Extremely nice, that is. The sheets are generic cheap sheets, bought at Target so that I would have something for when I needed to use the beds as twin beds, i.e. when my niece was staying with me. The liner is microfiber, which is okay for a night or two, but not something I love.

Add to that the dogs, campground, dirt thing and I was sleeping on uncomfortable sheets that were usually dirty, encased in a polyester bag. Not a happy camper. And being over-tired all the time has not been enhancing my life.

My latest solution was having my sister-in-law’s mother take my good queen sheets and sew them closed along the side and the bottom, turning them into sleeping bag-style pouches. I think that’s almost done it. It means that I have comfortable sheets above and below me, yay, and I can’t kick them loose. It’s a little imperfect for Zelda, who can’t figure out how to crawl under the covers with me, and who wakes me up by trying to burrow into them, but it’s mostly working for me. Folding them up and putting them away every morning is helping keep them clean, too.

The next step will be finding something to cover the cushions with, something better than my cheap (and ugly) twin fitted sheets, that’s comfortable to sit and sleep on. I’m not sure what that will be. If I knew how to sew or if my mom was still around, I’d be browsing the racks of some local fabric store, trying to find a comfortable, soft, dirt-resistant, attractive fabric to make slipcovers with, but as it is, I’m probably going to be searching for better twin sheets. Still, progress, not perfection!

It’s been a month today since I sold the house and took to the road. It doesn’t feel like it. I’m still very much in the constant process of tweaking my space, trying to find better solutions for storage and cooking and sleeping, even bathing. But it’s been a good month: no disasters, no scares, no major downswings.

I don’t really feel comfortable yet — I’m still worried when I set up that I’ll do something wrong and anxious when I’m trying to park her. And it’s been so hot that the dogs have been a constant concern, which wasn’t something that I anticipated. The scope of what I imagine myself doing narrowed drastically, because I can’t leave the dogs — so no casual stops at restaurants, no wandering around museums, and so on. That said, the dogs have been pretty good overall and they’re adjusting.

And so am I. One month in, and I still feel lucky. My tiny house is indeed very tiny, but it’s working.

Wrong side of the bed

24 Wednesday Aug 2016

Posted by in Personal, Pets, Randomness, Reviews, Serenity, Television, Travel

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I woke up totally on the wrong side of the bed. Sort of literally, too — I find the longer of the twin beds feels like it works less well for me, for some reason. But mostly emotionally. Yesterday was a “wherever you go, there you are,” sort of day, in which I didn’t make healthy choices about food and exercise and how I spent my time, and today I get to pay the price.

Although, on a brief digression, Stranger Things, on Netflix… I spent about six hours yesterday downloading it in 5 minute increments because I don’t have high-speed internet, but I HAD to finish it. I saw the first four episodes at my brother’s house, as normal television, and yesterday I binge-watched the final four, in torturous slowness. It was still worth it. I would not ordinarily ever watch something labeled horror — it is so not my genre — but I knew nothing about Stranger Things before I started watching it, so I didn’t know it was horror. And yes, it gave me nightmares, so I retain my ridiculous sensitivity to scary television, but it was still worth it. If you haven’t seen it, I’m not going to spoil anything about it, but I will say that all the people who are raving about it are right.

Moving on… wrong side of the bed. I woke up crabby. Stiff, not feeling well, cranky, cold. But I had some nice texts with a friend and decided to change my day. I would walk the dog, find some quiet space in this overcrowded campground and appreciate nature.

Nope. That was not how it turned out. Z was far more interested in smelling people’s garbage than she was in having a brisk walk into the forest, and I wound up coming home from our walk more irritated then when I’d started. I was even mean to her, that’s how grouchy I was. (I took B for a walk and left her in the van, which I never do. She gets long solo walks, because he is slow and won’t walk very far and she needs more exercise, but whenever I take him out, I take her, too, because she can use all the exercise she can get.)

After I fed the dogs, I decided… again… that I would change my day. I would meditate. I would find peaceful serenity in the silence of the van.

Nope. I couldn’t get my brain to shut up. The dogs were being total pests, both trying to be on top of me at the same time. They could tell that I was in a bad mood, and they both think that’s the cure. They’re often correct, but it wasn’t working today.

So I decided I would journal out my frustration. It didn’t make me feel better. The roots of my irritation were too much my own fault. I did too much sitting yesterday, not enough walking. I did too much watching, not enough writing. I ate delicious gluten-free pizza — nightshades, corn, dairy, so multiple food triggers — and not enough good food. I deserved to feel crappy.

Nothing was going to change my mood.

But then I got lucky. Or unlucky, as the case might be, but I’m choosing to call it lucky. I got some new neighbors.

I already sort of hated this campground. It might be really nice if it had half the people in it or if I had three kids that I was hoping to entertain on a busy summer vacation, but as a spot to sit and write, it’s not exactly heaven. I could tell myself all sorts of things about how it could be worse, and it seriously could be much worse, but it is no Frances Slocum. It’s the kind of park where you can watch all television all day long and not feel guilty about it, if that makes sense. It’s the kind of park where the cars almost outnumber the trees. (<—Total exaggeration.) Yes, I am being curmudgeonly — people are having fun family vacations all around me and that’s a very nice thing but I wasn’t going to be one of them.

And then my new neighbors arrived and they are even more curmudgeonly than I am. In fact, they are way MORE curmudgeonly. They are angry. I’m not quite sure why they’re angry, but it involves a fair amount of bad language, words about calling lawyers, a sense of absolute grievance. I think it has something to do with the site they’re in. It’s not good enough for them? It’s missing something? But along with their anger about whatever is going on with the campground, he is the kind of guy who’s telling her to not ask stupid questions and to get that dumb look off her face. And of course, it’s a campground, so the only way for me not to be overhearing them would be to close up my windows and start my air-conditioner running.

Talk about getting immediate perspective. I feel incredibly sorry for them — especially for her, of course — but I am also really grateful not to be them. They might be the kind of people who enjoy having grievances. Maybe complaining satisfies them. Maybe living in that emotional space feels comfortable and normal to them. But for me, it was the spur I needed to get out, to eat something healthy, to do a little stretching, to snuggle my dogs, to change my day.

The sun is shining and life is good.

A tale of two bridges

22 Monday Aug 2016

Posted by in Randomness, Serenity, Travel

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The campground I stayed at for the past couple of days, Council Cup Campground in Wapwallopen, PA, was rich in bridges. (Is that not a great town name? I keep wanting to say it aloud, just for the fun of it. Wapwallopen.) It was an interesting place, a very strange mix of new and old, arty and… well, skeezy.

I nearly didn’t stop when I drove by because there was a trailer with a confederate flag flying, which is a pretty clear indicator of it not being my kind of place. But I’d made a reservation and the camp office looked professional, with a AAA sign and a sign for the laundry, so I gave it a try. Some of the trailers were filthy — covered in dirt, looking like they hadn’t been moved in decades, surrounded by junk. Even wire fences around them, which to me always feels like an indicator of a dangerous neighborhood. But the playgrounds were fantastic and plentiful, the people were friendly, the camp store was nice with a great selection of kids’ toys, and it was possible to walk deep into the forest, into total solitude and quiet.

And it had bridges! Lots of bridges, because a creek ran through the campground. Supposedly, there was a waterfall, too, but I never found it. The creek was just a few yards wide — nothing like a small river, like the last creek I was near at the Gettysburg Farm campground. This one was shallow, running fast, over rocks, and as soon as I saw the first bridge, I knew we were walking over it.

a bridge

It was just that sort of bridge. Made of iron, but with gaps, like a grid of metal. I was not thinking of the dogs, though, until we got a little ways onto it and B refused to move. Oh, my, I’m laughing even at the memory, even though poor B was probably not amused and poor Z was definitely not amused later. Anyway, B could see that there was nothing underneath him to hold him up. It wouldn’t have been a long fall, only a couple of feet, really, but he was not going anywhere.

At that point we were not so far across, and I should have turned back, but Z was doing okay, so I picked B up and carried him. But then Z realized that she could fall through the gaps, when she did on one leg. She was scooting along, almost on her belly, inching forward, ears back, eyes wide. I wound up carrying B out to the end of the leash, going back and picking her up, carrying her out to the end of the leash, then going back and picking B up, hip-hopping the length of the leash, all the way across… we must have looked ridiculous.

I got a little anxious that Z might hurt herself when both of her back feet went through the holes in the grid on our last section and then I was worried, too, but we made it across, both dogs totally weirded out and giving me looks. It was terrible, but also terribly funny.

Our other bridge was much safer, but even sillier to cross. I’d walked out into the woods, searching for the waterfall, and I was so deep that I felt alone in the wilderness. There were tables, lots of picnic tables, for tent camping spots, but not a single tent anywhere to be seen. It was beautiful and a little spooky. When I saw a bridge of course I crossed it, because hey, bridge. But the path started to disappear afterwards and I kept going.

Bridge2

I kept thinking about the woman found in the woods, just a mile or so away from the trail that she’d lost. Dead for months before she was found, like she sat down and waited to be rescued and waited too long. It was probably good for me to be thinking of her, because I kept glancing over my shoulder, locking landmarks into my memory for when I gave up on the waterfall and turned back the way I’d come. Which, of course, I finally did, although mostly because I stumbled upon civilization in the form of houses and knew that wherever the waterfall was, it wasn’t the way I was going.

I love the way you can feel alone in the wilderness and then, oops, houses. That’s probably my kind of wilderness, the kind where help is actually easy walking distance away. I’m really not the wilderness type — I like the illusion of it better than reality.

Other things: I’m still going to post about sheets soon, but I’m sort of annoyed with myself for already spending so much time on this blog post — I had some major digressions about how confederate flags offend me and wire fences make me uneasy, which I deleted because boring, plus posting the images took forever because slow internet, but it’s almost 11 and I only have another hour to write today before I head to New Jersey. And then tomorrow is a long driving day.

Normally that would not matter at all, but for the last couple of days — between adventures on bridges and the Wapwallopen Peach Festival, where I bought peach jalapeño jam and cranberry cherry jam — Grace has been going really well. I’m almost scared to write that for fear I might jinx it, but… yeah. It’s pretty darn exciting to be enjoying writing Grace. I hope it lasts!

Practical angst

18 Thursday Aug 2016

Posted by in Personal, Pets, Randomness, RV, Serenity, Travel

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I bought my coconut milk in haste at the store the other day and it is vanilla-flavored coconut milk, instead of normal coconut milk. It is, to put it in a nutshell, disgusting. It is making me sad when I drink my coffee and I refuse to contemplate what it might be like on cereal. I ought to throw it away, find myself a new grocery store, and buy myself some new coconut milk, but the last “coconut milk” I bought was half almond milk, half coconut, and it was also disgusting. I did throw it away. Throwing away two almost full half gallons of milk-like substance feels so wasteful.

Plus, that time, the store didn’t have any regular coconut milk. I’m currently in a place that could be safely described as middle-of-nowhere, and I’m wary of heading out on a drive to a grocery store that might be half an hour away only to discover when I get there that it doesn’t have coconut milk. The obvious solutions occur to me — GPS nearby grocery stores, find their numbers, call them up and ask! — but I currently have no internet, so even that solution means packing up for a drive to find myself some connectivity.

Obviously, by the time you’re reading this, I will have done so, because ha-ha, posting to my blog also requires internet, but at the moment I’m feeling very disinclined to get on the road. It rained last night, gloriously heavy, so that the pounding of drops on the roof of Serenity was like living inside a maraca. And I totally have to google that word, because I’m not sure whether I’ve got the name right, but again… no internet.

So yeah, living inside a maraca, or if that’s not the right word, one of those instruments you play with as a kid, a gourd filled with seeds that you shake like a baby’s rattle. I wasn’t being shaken, but the sound was that fast, heavy rattle. It was lovely. But I had decided when last I looked at the sky that the overcast white wasn’t gray enough to bring real rain, so I left my chair and my towel and my purple-striped Mexican blanket outside.

They are well beyond damp.

I don’t want them inside Serenity.

Honestly, I don’t even want to touch the blanket. I put it down for the dogs because the ground here is hard gravel and dirt, with some puddles of mud, and I didn’t want them — Zelda especially — to choose the mud puddles as the comfiest place to get cozy. Zelda would. Bartleby also likes to roll in the dirt, but not with the same abandon. He’s not a huge fan of baths and he’s much more sensitive about the possibility of scolding. Z likes baths and she’s seldom been scolded so she luxuriates in the dirt, then comes in and goes straight to the tub. With no tub, I don’t know what she’d do, but tracking mud all over my bed has never bothered her, so I’m pretty sure it would involve me needing to do laundry. I guess I’m going to have to do that anyway, since the blanket might never be clean again. But at least after it dries I ought to be able to shake off some of the dirt and fold it up, so it’s out of the way until I manage to find a washer. My sheets, on the other hand… well, sheets are turning out to be a saga of their own.

Dirt in general is turning out to be an interesting aspect of living in a camper. I’m not a dirt-phobe. Good thing, because campgrounds are dirty and dogs track in dirt and living partially outside and otherwise in a very small space means that there is dirt. I was showering yesterday in my cute little bathroom and the floor was muddy. Not just from my dirty feet, but because I have to stash outside stuff on that floor when I’m on the move. The power cords and water hose lie on the ground outside while I’m parked and when I’m putting them away for a drive (“away” being defined as “on the bathroom floor”), I’m not worrying about the fact that they’ve picked up dirt and bits of leaf debris and grass. Generally speaking when I go camping and things get dirty, I think, well, I’ll get it clean when I get home. Except this is home.

I thought my solution would be to wipe them dry with a towel as I rolled them up to stow them away but at the end of that process, I have a dirty towel. And towels — well, towels are causing me almost as much angst as sheets.

Yesterday the radio hosts on a show I was listening to were debating how many times one should use a towel before washing it. There was an actual, honest-to-goodness argument for once. Dry yourself with a towel one time and then wash it. Um, no. I brought five standard towels with me and I’ve jettisoned two of them to take back the storage space they were using. I brought four or five dish towels with me, and that turns out to be not nearly enough. Drying dishes, wiping spills, cleaning hands after cooking, drying hands, wiping off dogs’ feet and bellies after coming in from a walk… at that point, the towel goes in the laundry bag and before I know it, I’m out of dish towels, and nowhere close to needing to do laundry for anything else.

Except maybe sheets. My sheets are causing me some serious angst, but I need to eat breakfast and get moving — and I can’t believe I haven’t written about the more interesting stuff that’s going on! — so more on sheets and sleeping later. And also the interesting stuff.

Small adventures

11 Thursday Aug 2016

Posted by in Personal, Serenity, Travel

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I had an adventure yesterday. I went to the grocery store.

Yes, that makes me laugh, too. But it sure felt like an adventure. Strange roads, following my GPS, managing the parking lot and running the generator and air-conditioner for the dogs, roaming the aisles of an unfamiliar store. I actually also stopped at a farm stand, run by a woman in Amish clothing, where I bought shallots and a squash and a cantaloupe.

I thought about going to a museum. According to Roadtrippers, the Agricultural and Industrial Museum was right down the road from the grocery store. (My Internet is so slow that I’m having trouble testing my links: apologies if those don’t work the way they should.) It felt like it would be virtuous to go to the museum, like it was something I should do.

But while I waited for my GPS to give me directions, I remembered two things. First, I’m not a tourist. My goal with living in Serenity is to have a simpler, more flexible life, not fill up my brain with factoids and miscellaneous places. I’m sure it’s a cool museum, but there’s no inherent virtue in adding another random place to my collection of inaccessible memories. Second, “should” is not the same as “want to.” When I took that mental step back, I realized that I’d really rather go back to the campground and sit under my awning and knit and think about Grace.

So I did.

Alas, nasty little stinging flies were chewing on my legs, so I didn’t last outside all that long. It lacks romance to admit that I retreated inside and hung out in the air-conditioned van for the rest of the day, but I did my Insta-Pot experimenting, some knitting, texted with friends, wrote a little and thought about resistance a lot.

If I was camping — say, on my one-week summer vacation from an office job, due back at work on Monday — I’d feel guilty for my wasted day. I could have been outside. I could have been kayaking. I could have been exploring the battlefields of Gettysburg, soaking in the history and tragedy of my location. But living in a camper is not the same as camping, and it wasn’t a wasted day.

In fact, today I think I will do pretty much the same thing. At the moment I’m sitting outside, listening to the noise of the bugs — so incredibly loud, beyond chorus levels and into rock symphonies — and watching the occasional wildlife. I’ve seen a chipmunk, so cute, squirrels and birds. I heard a big splash in the water, which gave me an instant surge of adrenaline before I remembered that murky water + splash doesn’t equal alligator in Pennsylvania. No idea what the splash was, but probably fish of some sort, since I didn’t see a bird. The flies are biting but not as badly as they were yesterday when it was hotter and I was sweatier.

My big adventure for today might be walking the dogs up to the field with the animals and seeing whether the brown creature I caught a glimpse of yesterday when I was driving in really is a baby alpaca.

Yesterday, I was joking with my friend Tim about facing the challenge of the grocery store. The thing is, going to the grocery store did feel like a challenge. I had to pack up Serenity for driving, unhook her from the electric and water, dump her tanks at the “sanitation station”, navigate unfamiliar roads, start the generator to run the AC to keep the dogs cool, check on my alert system for a temperature reading inside the van, park more carefully than I did… (I really need to remember that Serenity is tall — I again scraped her roof along trees, alas.) But it was exciting. And it was fun.

And I realized that I’m accomplishing (almost) exactly what I was vaguely, incoherently, hoping to accomplish. I’ve turned my life into an adventure, where even the small challenges, like going to the grocery store, require an eyes-wide-open approach, an appreciation of where I am and exactly what I am doing. My heart is beating. It’s a wonderful feeling.

It’ll be even better when I’m also writing again regularly. And that is going to happen. Maybe even today.

Walking in a cloud

01 Monday Aug 2016

Posted by in Randomness, RV, Serenity, Travel, Zelda

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Sitting in a parking lot outside the vets. Both dogs are inside, getting looked at. Poor Z was pretty frantic about being left, but B, it turns out, had a goopy ear, which inspired me to ask to have Z’s ears checked, too. And of course they’ll give her an exam, so if her stomach stuff is anything feverish, we’ll find out about it. (Given the circumstances, I’m really not worried that it’s anything more serious. Well, that’s not true. I’m worried, but only in the way that I know it’s probably not a bomb, despite my predilection for worrying about such things.)

This morning’s walk took place in something between a mist and a drizzle. I could hear the rain in the trees, but it felt like a cool damp breeze on my skin. Pretty much like walking in a cloud, I suppose, but a cloud at a temperature that felt lovely, not too warm, not too cold. I walked both dogs around the “block”, so to speak. Is it a loop in a campground? But when we got back to Serenity, Z didn’t want to go inside, so I left B and took her on something more like a hike. We walked up the road and up some more, past campers and trailers and sites more like summer homes than temporary habitations, up and up, and then found a trail through the woods that led back to the front of the campground.

It was exactly like my daydream of a week ago. Except for the bugs and the sticks that kept getting in my shoes and the drizzle. But the joy and the sense of freedom and adventure, those were exactly right.

At the entrance to the campground, we found the enclosed dog park with agility equipment inside. I took Z in and tried to get her to play on the agility equipment, the tunnel, the low fence for jumping, the ramp and slide. I always kind of thought she might love agility games. Ha. She did not understand why I would want her to take the indirect routes and wouldn’t go on a single one of the objects. I’m sure I could get her to do it if I kept her on a leash and gave her treats, but letting her run around off-leash and sniff all the corners made her happy, so I didn’t bother. Maybe later.

Family time and campground days

31 Sunday Jul 2016

Posted by in Bartleby, Personal, Pets, Randomness, RV, Serenity, Travel, Zelda

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My Saturday night was an exercise in contrasts.

It started out great. I’d had a really nice day, filled with family time. Hanging out with my niece, working on a jigsaw puzzle from my childhood. Video games with my nephew, including introducing him to World of Warcraft. Running errands with my brother. The farmer’s market, where I bought fresh kombucha and spicy radishes.

We even watched some bike racing at the Velodrome. (I mostly felt sorry for the bicyclists — it was a hot day to be dressed like they were, even without the biking really fast in circles in the sun part. bike race . )

After dinner, the whole family watched Guardians of the Galaxy. And at 10:30, my niece, sister-in-law, and I headed to Barnes & Noble for the big Harry Potter release. My niece, M, was probably one of the youngest kids there, but stayed resolutely awake. I got to sit and color with her at the Ravenclaw table while her mom waited in line.

Such a nice day.

But when I went to bed, Serenity… well, smelled. Bad. Like something had gone wrong with the black tank, where the sewage accumulates. I tossed and turned, worrying and sleepless, making plans. I’d get up, take her to a dump station. Or no, maybe a full hook-up campground would be better. I hadn’t dumped the tanks before, so I wouldn’t want to be figuring it out and maybe messing it up if I had to hurry. Still, how could it have gotten so bad, so fast? Maybe a week in the heat of summer was too much to let accumulate? But (if you’ll excuse the TMI), there wasn’t a lot in the tanks to cause a problem — I’d mostly been using the bathrooms at rest stops and campgrounds and my brother’s house. However, clearly it was enough to get bad because it was bad.

But it shouldn’t be. But it was. So was something wrong? Toss, turn, toss, turn, worry, hold my breath, try to sleep, toss, turn, worry, repeat endlessly. At 4AM, B wanted to go out. Sometime after that, maybe 5ish?, Z wanted the same. I think I finally fell asleep for a while after the sun came up, which meant I missed my chance to go to a coin show with my brother, much to my annoyance when I finally got up around 9.

And, of course, when I did get up, I discovered that the black tank was fine. One of the dogs — or maybe both of them? — had had diarrhea under the bed while I was out. Ugh. So not nice to wake up to. And made even worse by worrying about them, of course. B has been scratching himself into a scabby hairless mess and Z has been refusing to eat her kibble. I honestly think that both of them are going to love this lifestyle eventually, but at the moment, they’re both really stressed out by the change and uncertainty.

My big plan for tomorrow — one week after the house closing, the first of August, the day I had determined was going to involve lots and lots and lots of writing words — is to find a Banfield and take B to the vet. I would take Z, too, but based on my past experience with Z having digestive troubles, they’d want to keep her for observation and right now, I feel like that would be a truly terrible idea. If she’s stressed, the cure is not going to be to make her more stressed. (The first time I took her to the vet for digestive stuff — years ago, now — the vet wanted to keep her until she was eating and going normally again. After two days, they finally said, “We don’t think she’s going to eat while she’s away from you.”) So as long as she’s still enthusiastic about walking (she is!) and giving me happy smiles, I’m going to give her a few days to mellow out. The long car days weren’t good for her but the campground days are.

So yes, campground days! I stuck to my campground plan, in part to empty the tanks and in part because the house electricity in my brother’s driveway was just about enough to run the AC consistently, but not if I did anything else that took power. And it only worked if I was parked in his driveway, close enough to the house for a single cord to reach Serenity, but on a fairly steep slope. The extension cords weren’t capable of handling the load if Serenity was in the street. (I’m learning more about electricity than I ever needed to know before, including that long extension cords are not good.)

Anyway, I’m now parked in a KOA campground about twenty minutes from his house. It’s expensive, but very nice. Lots of families here — there’s mini golf and a swimming pool and a nice playground, plenty of grass and trees. The spot I’m in is huge for Serenity, with a picnic table and fire pit and big tree. We’ve gone for a couple walks, chatted with some of our neighbors, and I ate my dinner — an antipasto plate, basically, with olives, dates, prosciutto, cheese, crackers — outside at the picnic table. The best part, I think, is that Serenity is backed up to a stream. Zelda saw the stream and immediately waded right in. B saw the stream and immediately sat down and refused to move any further. So typical!