Category Archives: Randomness

Life without internet

02 Friday Sep 2016

Posted by in Randomness

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I am pretty sure that September 1st will be the first Thursday in all of 2016 on which I didn’t post to my blog. I am writing a post, though, which ought to count for something. But for the past couple of days I’ve had no internet. Not slow internet, not bad internet. None, zip, nada.

Not even a phone connection.

It was sort of glorious.

Today didn’t start out that way, though. This morning, I walked Z up to a high field and spent too much of the walk trying to get a cell phone connection, trying to check my email, annoyed at the bugs. I tried to appreciate the subtle beauties of a grey day, the quiet colors of the late summer wildflowers, more subdued than spring flowers, but still shades of purple and gold and amber. I tried to find the forest lovely in its dark depths.

But you know what? I didn’t. Not much, anyway.

Mostly I tried to find a connection and shooed off bugs and got annoyed at Zelda for continually getting her leash tangled in stuff. And when I finally decided that the bugs outweighed the merits of a one-bar internet connection that wasn’t successfully managing to pick up my email anyway, I headed back down following a path that disappeared. We wound up shoving our way through tall, tall weeds, getting tangled up with burrs and nasty sticky plants, Z’s leash tangling on every other strong stem, and me worrying steadily about ticks.

I kept trying to tell myself that it was an adventure. But it was grey and wet and chilly — my jeans were soaked through from the knees down by the time I made it out of the field and back to the bathhouse which is where the sign had claimed the path led — and it mostly just felt annoying.

On the other hand, when we got back to Serenity and I dried us off and searched, I found no ticks. So hey, there’s a blessing in disguise. But when a lack of ticks is the good news, you’re definitely setting the bar low. It did remind me to reapply the dog’s anti-bug stuff — good news — but that means that they sort of stink and I need to remind myself not to pet them too much and that’s not so good.

But the day improved steadily from that point. I don’t know why exactly. I did make a conscious effort to change my mood, but I’ve done that plenty of times with less success. I meditated, highly disrupted by the dogs, but still good. I wrote a lot. I took the dog for good walks. (Dog, singular, because B has very little interest in good walks. He’s a fan of short walks.) I did some organizational tasks, including sorting through all the CDs I brought with me. I even cleaned the bathroom and did a little yoga.

I ate pretty good food: a spicy omelette with sausage for breakfast; a salad with a kitchen sink’s worth of vegetables in it for lunch. (Not size-wise, just a little of this, a little of that, a little of the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. I was finishing up odds and ends, but it was good.) And for dinner, a plate of snacks: peach slices, crackers, Vermont summer sausage, cucumber, olives, two types of cheese.

So maybe it was all those things. Or maybe it was just that the sky cleared and it got sunny. But it wound up being another truly lovely day.

This campground, Onion River Campground, near Montpelier, Vermont, technically has some strikes against it. No internet, no cell service, near a busy road, so traffic noises… but I have loved it. I got here by about 4PM on Tuesday, planning to spend Tuesday and Wednesday nights, but by early afternoon on Wed, I knew I wanted another day. Mostly because the writing was going so well.

But the days here have been blissful. I know I probably make it sound like all my days are blissful, but honestly, not so much: I work on it, sure, but I’ve spent a lot of my past five weeks trying to adjust to constant change, a new bed, and a much higher level of dirt than I am used to. With sick and stressed dogs; strangers living twenty feet away from my windows, sometimes less; no dishwasher, washing machine, or bathtub… yeah.

But these past days have been what I hoped to find: Serenity feeling like a cozy home rather than an overstuffed vehicle; the dogs relaxed and enjoying themselves; the writing going beautifully (except for the part where I’m back in the beginning again, oops); and my days filled with moments of appreciation.

The spot I’m parked in is in the tent zone, under a tree, so instead of being in a parking lot of RVs, I’m off in a field and it feels like I’m by myself. There have actually been two tents here, but somehow people with tents feel more peaceful than people with big trailers. By the time I walked the dogs in the early evening, I could look at the field of wildflowers and the apples in the orchard and the green hills, and think, wow, how lucky, how incredibly lucky, I am to be here.

Tomorrow — well, today or maybe even yesterday by the time I find an internet connection to post this — I’m back on the road again, spending the weekend with my cousin. I’m hoping to get some useful stuff done: laundry and finding a place to get propane and dog food (probably not the same place, but maybe!) But I’m also hoping that the weather will stay nice enough that we can try out my kayak. I’ve been on the road for over a month, with my kayak taking up precious space and I have yet to use it. Mostly because there’s been so much else to learn that adding one more thing to figure out just felt like too much. But I’m ready. Fingers crossed that all goes well!

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.

The eye of the beholder

15 Monday Aug 2016

Posted by in Depression, Personal, Randomness, Travel

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fungus

I suffer from the relatively common ailment of mean brain. Not mean to other people, but mean to myself. It’s something I’ve worked on for a long time, but I still have flare-ups. Maybe it’s like an allergic reaction? My hyperactive immune system thinks that half the common substances on the planet are dire threats and stimulates misery in response. When my mean brain gets triggered, it stimulates misery, too. Maybe it’s some kind of protective mechanism, but it’s not a very good one.

Sunday morning, it started whispering. I’ll spare myself writing out the details — it’s not like it’s going to be good for me to spend more time in those thoughts — but the words “homeless” and “failure” were pretty loud. Fortunately, I was in a really good place to see those thoughts for what they were, just words. Just labels.

Earlier I had been sitting in my chair, watching the water and the trees and a chirpy little sparrow. The sparrow was adorable, totally charming in that tiny bird way. It kept a fearless eye on the dogs, but it was much more interested in whatever it was finding in the dirt. It flew away and I thought, “What a miracle birds are.” Flight is so amazing. It’s incredible that they can just lift off and soar through the air. It’s not a new thought, I’ve had it many times before, often when seeing birds take off around the pond where I used to walk the dogs. And then one of the nasty biting bugs landed on my leg and I thought, “Hmm, I don’t think I ever think about bugs being a miracle. But they can fly, too.”

I waved the bug off and moved on, heading inside to figure out what I could eat for breakfast. The campground I was in was a first-come, first-served campground, and I was reluctant to pack up to make another grocery store run while weekend people were coming in. My spot was lovely, a mix of sun and shade, looking right out on the water, with a pretty view of an open field on the other side. It was also nice and flat with no major ruts or big muddy spots, easy to get to, and reasonably simple to access. In other words, I was afraid to leave it for fear I’d lose it. But food supplies were running low. Still, I made myself breakfast from the dregs of the fridge. And when it was ready, I took a picture of it, because it was very pretty.

salad photo

As I sat down to eat, I was thinking about reality and how we shape it with our words. Here’s a reality: my nectarine was bruised. I had to cut out the bruised bits. My cucumber was a tasteless grocery store purchase, no flavor at all. The radishes, from the farmer’s market two weekends ago, never tasted very good and were getting squishy. I threw the rest of them away when I was done with my salad. The carrots are the kind that seemed old the instant I opened the bag, slightly bitter and drying out. The salad greens are still remarkably nice given that they’re a week old, but they’re heavy on some grassy thing which I’m not nuts about. One of my three remaining eggs was cracked, so I had to throw it away. As a result, I only had one egg on my salad, so I could save the second one for later when I would be hungry again.

Here’s another reality: the egg was perfectly cooked and delicious. Still warm, it peeled easily and the yolk was exactly right. (Go, insta-pot!) I made a dressing to go on the salad that was fantastic — mayo that is gluten-free, soy-free, egg-free, and dairy-free (aka, miracle mayo), plus olive oil, lemon juice and powdered ginger. It made the cucumbers delicious, the carrots tolerable, couldn’t help the radishes, was interesting on the nectarine, and was amazing on the egg and the greens. I didn’t quite lick the plate, but I ate every last bite of the whole salad, even the grassy stuff.

And maybe those thoughts about reality and how we shape it were the trigger for me being mean to myself, but before I could do more than take two or three nasty swipes at my choices and my character, I caught sight of the image at the top of this post. Such a bright color, almost like a California poppy. And the curves of the stalks are like petals on a flower.

But it’s a fungus. A fungus growing out of the picnic table where I was eating. Ick. Gross. And yet… it really was beautiful in the sunlight.

When my mean brain triggers, my eyes stop seeing the beauty around me. And in me, too. They start labeling: bugs, fungus, homeless.

It is a reality that I have moments when I feel homeless, not adventurous. Three weeks ago, I had a perfect last day in my house, and the memory is bittersweet right now. I miss my pool. I miss my shower. I desperately miss my high-speed, always-on Internet connection! And it’s painful to be homesick for a home that you never get to go back to.

But my mean brain is not running this show. It’s also a reality that I feel incredibly lucky. My salad was no different, no better than any salad I could have had a month ago at any time… but I appreciated it more. A shift of the kaleidoscope wheel and the pieces are the same but the picture is changed.

Spicy sweet potato hash

12 Friday Aug 2016

Posted by in Food, Randomness, Spicy

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Spicy sweet potato hash

The dogs couldn’t believe I didn’t share. I always share sweet potatoes with them. But it was so good, I just kept eating and then… it was gone.

So, in the insta-pot (surprise!), cook one chopped up sweet potato on a rack with a cup of water at high pressure for 2 minutes. When it chimes, use the quick release to let the steam out.

Take the sweet potato out and dump the water, then turn the insta-pot to saute. When the screen says Hot, saute some chopped up bacon and 1/2 cup of onion until they’re cooked to your liking. I like my bacon crispy and my onions carmelized, but you could stop when the onions were translucent if you like them better that way.

Return the sweet potato to the pot, and add some chopped up fresh cilantro, and something to make it deliciously spicy. I used about a teaspoon of a spice mix from Trader Joe’s called Pilpelchuma, a blend of chili, garlic, cayenne pepper, paprika, cumin, and caraway. I considered using chili garlic sauce, but you could also use a jalapeño pepper or some sriracha, whatever suits your spiciness needs.

Mix the ingredients together and make a little nest in the pile. Carefully crack two eggs into the nest. Turn the insta-pot back on high-pressure and set the time for 1 minute. It will take a lot more than a minute for the insta-pot to reach the pressure level because there’s not a lot of water in there to create the steam, but eventually it will chime. Use the quick release button to let the steam out and then carefully lift it out, trying not to break the eggs.

Say yum.

Don’t share with your dogs, even if they give you pleading looks. Although come to think of it, if you made more, you might have leftovers and they’d be good, too. Honestly, if I had another sweet potato, I might make myself some more right now. It was that good.

It’s been incredibly hot. I don’t mind so much, but it’s impossible to go anywhere, because I’m not willing to leave the dogs alone in the van. Plugged in, with the AC on, we’re fine, but if I was relying on the generator… well, I’m just not that confident. I bought an alert system to let me know when the temp in the van gets too high, but I’m not so convinced of its reliability that I want to test it out in life-or-death weather. So we’re hanging out at the campground, I’m fiddling with Grace, and listening to a lot of country music. Life is good. And so is spicy sweet potato hash with poached eggs!

Gettysburg Farm RV Resort

08 Monday Aug 2016

Posted by in Bartleby, Pets, Randomness, Zelda

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I can tell already that the campgrounds are going to blend together. Less than two weeks and I was struggling this morning to remember which one had the concrete pads, cracked and broken, with grass springing up in the ridges, and which one was like parking in a field. A nice field. With a lovely walk for the dogs. (Ans: St. John’s RV in St. Augustine for the first; Bass Lake in Dillon, North Carolina for the second.)

I don’t think I’ll forget today’s campground soon, though. There are goats! Lots and lots of baby goats, wandering around the driveway like they own the place. As, in fact, they might do. It’s a first-come, first-served campground, so after I picked my site, I wandered back up to the front to turn in a card with my site number on it. I brought the dogs, both because they needed the walk and because, like apparently a lot of campgrounds, one is not supposed to leave pets unattended. (I suspect I’m going to have to break that rule upon occasion, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.) We were headed back when we startled a little white and brown goat that had been browsing in the bushes by the mini-golf course. It bounced away like a Superball, surprising both dogs. Z looked mystified, but B was all set to charge after it.

B has been seriously rambunctious lately. It’s quite a surprise. I expected him to tolerate traveling while Z would like it, but Z’s been anxious while B’s energy level has skyrocketed. At my brother’s house, he was playing, chewing on a blanket that wasn’t his, mouthing my hands… not at all the “hide in closets” puppy that he used to be. Serenity has a screen door that I suspected would be no deterrent to Zelda if she saw a squirrel, but Bartleby was actually the one who barreled right through it — and for no other reason than that he thought it was time to be outside! He wasn’t chasing anything and he didn’t need to be walked, he just didn’t feel like being in the van so shoved his way out the door.

Or maybe he wanted to check out the campsite. I chose a spot that looks onto the water, and instead of pulling in or backing in, I parallel parked Serenity, so that she’s alongside the water. Well, I didn’t literally parallel-park. There was plenty of room, so I just pulled in as if I was parallel-parking. You can see the view from my window on instagram (because I am having trouble uploading files to wordpress.) Having trouble taking photos, too — my phone stopped letting me save photos, which is possibly the universe telling me that I shouldn’t bother? But it’s hard to resist the temptation.

So I’m going to be here for a week. It’s my first test of real life in Serenity. I’ve been living in her for two weeks already, but it doesn’t feel like it at all. It’s been two weeks of driving and learning and visiting family. I’ve felt busy and on the go. This is my chance to slow down, take some deep breaths, and get back to work. I wish I could say that the weeks in which I’ve not been writing have been inspiring me, the words piling up like water behind a log jam, but alas, such is not the case. I suspect I’m going to be off to a slow start. Still, better slow than not at all.

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!

Playing house

21 Thursday Jul 2016

Posted by in Randomness, Serenity

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I spent a couple hours this morning moving into Serenity. Like, really moving into Serenity. Tomorrow morning when I want coffee, it’ll be in the van. When I get dressed, I’ll be running out to the driveway first. My cooking capability in my house is down to… well, nothing, actually. My frying pan and two pots are both in the van, along with all my utensils.

Does this make any sense at all? No! I’ve got four more days in my house and Serenity’s not hooked up to water, and the refrigerator’s not cold, so it’s impractical to think I can really just stay in her. But I’ve been having to make tough choices about what I can bring & what I can’t bring and tomorrow is my last trash day, so I needed to make decisions. The easiest way to decide was to try things out.

It was fun, actually. I put all my dishes and pantry goods onto the shelves, then realized that when the bed is made up as a double bed instead of two singles, one of the cabinets will be difficult to access. So I rearranged everything. And then I decided that my shelves didn’t work the way I needed them to, so I did it again. It felt remarkably like playing house, like being a little kid in a pretend kitchen, doing pretend shopping.

Analyzing the way I use my dishes has also been entertaining me. I have two pretty mugs, blue with red flowers, white interiors. I’m very fond of them. But I use them only when I’m having an extra cup of coffee. They’re “special” mugs. On a daily basis, they’re too small and they cool off too quickly. Meanwhile, I have four tall latte mugs, and I use them exclusively for tea. They’re the perfect tea mugs, because they heat so evenly and hold the heat so well. I also have two red mugs that I didn’t actually like very much aesthetically, but they were what I drank regular coffee from, because they were a good size and weight.

Eight mugs. Serenity does not have enough room for eight mugs. Also, I am one person. I do not need eight mugs. For a time, I had six in there — two of each. But even six didn’t fit. So then I had one of the pretty ones, one of the red ones, and two of the latte mugs. The reality, though, is that my perfect tea mugs are by far my favorite and the most useful to me. What to do? Finally I asked myself the daring question: could I actually drink coffee in my tea mugs? It turns out the answer is yes.

But it amused me to realize how rigid I am in my uses of specific things. I put almost all my knives in Serenity for exactly the same sort of reason: I need the small one for apples and other fruit, and the next size up for carrots and vegetables and the third for slicing meat, and the fourth and fifth and sixth… but I suspect that after I’ve lived in Serenity for a while I will discover that I can live with two or three knives. Fortunately they don’t take a lot of room, so I’m going with abundance when it comes to knives for now.

Ugh, and bowls… so many tough decisions when it comes to bowls, because apparently I need a certain bowl for scrambling eggs and another bowl for marinades and a third bowl for mixing salad dressing and a fourth bowl for making rubs. And let’s not forget cereal, fruit, and frozen treats! I could actually explain why each of these bowls is better for its purpose than another but I did manage to decide that I could adjust to having only a couple types of bowls. Well, four. Or five. Anyway, I still have plenty of bowls, but I picked ones that stack and reluctantly let go of the ones that don’t.

Spices and herbs have been fun, too. I think I wound up keeping almost everything except red pepper and pink Himalayan sea salt. Their containers were just too tall or I would have squeezed them in, too. Three kinds of vinegar — balsamic, red wine, and white wine, but I jettisoned all the oils except coconut and olive. I hardly ever used the avocado oil, the red palm oil, the canola oil and the other oils I had, so I can live without them. Soy sauce, yes, fish sauce, no. Four kinds of hot sauce and chili-garlic sauce, yes, but all pre-packaged salad dressing, no.

Tomorrow I take Serenity to the dealer and get her vent fixed. Saturday and Sunday — I finish cleaning the house, I guess. Do a last load of laundry. Swim and swim and swim some more. Spend some time with friends, I hope. And then I’ll be moving on. And getting back to Grace! I find it really very funny today that Serenity has stolen so much of my attention from Grace. Even funnier when I realize that my mental name for APB (which has also stolen attention from Grace) is Balance.

Serenity, Grace, and Balance — three very nice things to have in one’s life.