Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind?

We are expecting our first overnight guests in our RV. It's a little scary, and I hope our friendship can endure this adventure! We are moving the RV to the motorcycle clubhouse for the New Year's Eve party, since the kids are with us and after all- we do have a mobile home! I'm crossing my fingers that the space does not fill up too fast and that I do not turn into a pumpkin as the night goes by. But to be honest, I just hope I last until the clock strikes 12~ I haven't seen past ten in quite a while! And preschoolers do not understand that mommy and daddy did not go to bed at eight as they did...So that is what is new in RV world for the Hickeys....
Now onto deep thoughts....
As I look back at 2010 I have to look back at the entire decade. What a life altering decade it has been, but with only having three decades (yes yes, into my fourth I know), haven't they all been life altering? I became a mother, three times over. I became a wife, I graduated college, and made many, many moves. For a girl who bucks against change, I have certainly had my share of it. I may not remember what I had for lunch yesterday, but I sure remember how I brought in the new millennium. And yet it all seems to have happened in the blink of an eye. I'm learning that it is often best to keep my mouth shut and my tongue in check, because I now hear words come out of my mouth and think, "wow, did I really just say that?" My memory is losing its staying power, and the hard drive of my brain is very near capacity. Which if I think about it is a good thing, because I look back on things I've said and done and thought, "Oh dear Lord, how dumb was that?!" Things I'd most certainly rather forget, though I have friends with cameras and photographic memories that most certainly won't let me! Which brings me to another valuable lesson: pick your friends wisely- because they will be the ones with the evidence later! I believe life is a series of battles, which become more pronounced with age. The battle of the scale and the battle of the bulge, the battle against memory loss and the battle to be energetic. The battle against road rage and the battle against my temper. It is a battle against my headstrong children and a battle against fatigue in doing so. But in these battles I have found acceptance: acceptance that I am who I am and that I must learn to like me, and acceptance that I cannot do everything on my own. I have found that I treasure my friendships (although the thought of having to make any more makes me want to lie down and take a nap). I have learned to accept that I will never again be a size two. So in high hopes for the forthcoming decade I can only know for sure that there will be change, there will be wrinkles and age spots, and there will be life changing events. But what I can hope for is the good sense to find the humor in it all. Happy New Year?

It's like rain on your wedding day, it's the free ride that you just didn't take....

I certainly try to follow the rule that one should try to find the humor in any situation. Even when certain situations may not call for humor. My children received wonderful LeapFrog pens (the ones that read the stories to you) for Christmas- one a piece. I am grateful for the gift because as the gift giver said so eloquently "We hope that their mother's love of reading passes on to them." So today, three days after we get home from our Christmas excursion, I sit down to download the necessary, um, stuff? to the pen readers. Just plug in, enter the website address, and voila, right? Well, three hours and a few choice outbursts later I have the book audios downloaded and onto the reading pens. Three hours. Three grueling hours serenaded by the three year old's haunting rendition of "I want to play" and "I want apple juice" (one of my daily favorites) directly in my ear as I'm trying to convince the computer that I know what I'm doing. I am astounded that the military base police have not been summoned to our campsite to find out why I am beating my children. Which I am not, but for as much crying and whining goes on in here you'd think they each received hourly lashes which would induce said noise. Perhaps I should order that straight jacket for the moment when "I want apple juice" finally forces me to snap and an aneurysm to burst forth? On the bright side of this adventure, we have found a happy medium to counteract the freezing of the pipes each night- just in time for it to warm up! Shut off the outside water and run only on water that is kept in the RV's freshwater container. Problem solved! But with every positive there must be a negative. I have broken the drawers in the bathroom- TJ says I pulled with too much force and ripped the metal holder off the back. I also completely tore off the doorknob to the back bathroom. We have lost random screws daily to God knows what, with no idea to what they must be returned to (so I just throw them away, probably not the best idea?) The microwave has a rotating plate which I found our Monday as two bowls of spaghetti o's rotated into themselves and spilled over. Such an exciting discovery. And for every amount of dirt I sweep or vacuum out an amount equal to or greater will be brought back into the unit at double the speed. Seriously considering a Roomba, though I haven't figured out how to broach how the $200 investment would positively affect our lifestyle subject to the Teej. Plus, with my delicate touch the technological wonder would only last at best two weeks before I broke it. And that's a best guess scenario. So I believe that is all for today's update, and now I am off to the gym work the remnants of the holiday bounty which have become afixed to my bum and middle parts.

Fruitcakes in the kitchen, Fruitcakes on the street....

Eleven day break, snow and traveling has happened. Oh, and a holiday. More frozen water lines and propane tanks emptying in the midst of the night, and heaters tripping the circuits and shutting off. At least we are getting pretty good at improvising on the spot, and that's the silver lining. It snowed a bit while we were away for the holidays, and snow accumulated on top of the RV. So yesterday TJ decides to crawl up on the roof and sweep off the snow so that no damage is done. I suppose in hind sight it was a good day to do so, seeing how yesterday was the last day of our military insurance coverage. But ice does accumulate at our front steps, and though I helped each child down to safety...they both slipped and fell on their behinds as we journeyed to the laundromat. No one was hurt, so it was okay to giggle. We began our search for a gym yesterday. It amazes me how I can workout so hard for over a year and all it takes is a couple of weeks of crappy eating to blow it all to shreds. I figure this week is a pre-serious warm up for next week's seriousness. Or something like that. I have no other adventures to report at this time, though stay tuned....tomorrow is another opportunity!

I want a yacht and really that's not a lot....

It costs our family ten dollars to do laundry each week, not including detergents, fabric softeners, effort, or any unforeseen catastrophes that warrant an emergency load (potty accident anyone?) Nor does it include folding, hanging, or putting away of said laundry. As my very quotable sister-in-law once said, "laundry is a thankless job." I knew I would miss having my own washer and dryer, but it is happening sooner than I planned. My advice to anyone pondering to embark on the journey we are on: begin said journey in the spring or summertime. Because inevitably things will go wrong immediately and most of these occurrences require outdoor work, and the winter is not the time to be outside learning to fix the sewage line or remove a tire. Or, as it were, to lug full laundry baskets with children in tow up a hill to the laundromat and back down again. I am still set firm in my belief that any number under forty should not be allowed to be called a temperature.
The four-year-old wandered into my room last night around one am and told me his head hurt and he had to go potty. So I got job one squared away, felt his head, and immediately groaned. His dad had indeed shared whatever fevery-coughy-shivery-sickness he had with his son. I medicated said child, tucked him into "mommy's bed" and stood my post to sleep little and make sure he got some rest. The difficult part of this scenario is not that the child is sick, nor is it the lack of good rest, it is trying to keep the three year old away from the sick four year old so that he does not contract whatever wonderful little holiday yuck his brother has partaken of. When you have less than 40 feet of distance/length to work with, there aren't a whole lot of places to run to when escaping germs- no matter how often you wash and sanitize. If I gaze deep into my crystal ball I can foresee a sick three year old mid-week of Christmas to occur either simultaneously with mommy contracting said illness or that mommy's will occur on the tail end of everyone. It's a gift.
On a happier note, we finished 90% of Christmas shopping this fine day. TJ winced as we went store to store and he was the financier of this operation, followed by a groan of "you know this is killing me." See, he missed out last year because of his Afghan deployment and I do believe the Grinch (as we call him this time of year) would rather have been in the dirt playing war than here "celebrating." Just a thought. And now, it's that great time to trek up the hill and finish up the laundering. Clothes, not money, that is.....

When it rains, it certainly does pour....

"Did you strap the refrigerator? The freezer? The oven?" are all questions an average person on an average day will never utter. "Are we tilted again?" Yes, yes we are. Why? Oh, yes, the tire is flat. I suppose that is something we should be prepared for, right? Oh no no no. We are not. It's raining and cold, and we set off to find jacks and somewhere to fix a tire before our home falls over. I giggle as I write this because it is truly too absurd! Dark, rainy, and cold envelope us as we crawl together under the RV to begin jacking up the left side. The RV weights 11,000 pounds. Add in two toddlers, two cats, and a retriever and it weighs more. With much grunting and twisting, we each get our individual jacks raised and our "home" even once again. I won't even get into the tiny detail that the socket we own is the incorrect size for which to remove the bolts that hold the flat tire on. That's a story for another time. So far on this little adventure I have not screamed or uttered obscenities regarding the situation. I have to smile.  After all, what else is there to do?

I hope they serve beer....

A balmy 9 degrees is what we awoke to this fine am. That's not a temperature- it's barely an age! I knew it was cold in the night as I stretched my arm out and touched the outer wall with my hand and the cold woke me from a dead sleep. Yikes! Our sliding door was frozen shut as we tried to let the dog out. It's funny, he really needed to go out and couldn't understand why we weren't letting him! And with that fur coat he wears, this weather is probably about right for him!
T-minus eight hours and counting until we hitch up the camper and head....south? Not really, it's more like a crescent down and around to get across to Alabama. And guess what? It's really cold there too! Snows, or so I've been told. So far this adventure has been much like the Bible- stuff starts going wrong pretty much immediately! Exodus anybody? But with each new uh-oh we learn a little more about what not to do. I can only assume that's how the cavemen did it- trial by error.
The husband is quite sick. As I rub the crystal ball I foresee many hours of driving in my future! Good thing I have Sirius. I love talk radio. Teej tells me he didn't realize he married an 80 year old white man. Talk radio and comedy. With all that talking, you think I'd enjoy commercials more....
 On a different note.
My grandmother told me that you could have twelve children, though I'm not sure why I would do that, and that no two would be the same. Truer words have rarely been spoken. The four year old is smart, sweet, and mellow (unless instigated by his brother). The three year old, by contrast, is bullheaded, stubborn, aggressive, and fearless. As I write this Ethan is relaxing on the bed, while Asa is running and sliding and falling down from stem to stern of the RV. Yes yes, I'm certain chopping their play area by 3/4's was the most intelligent idea....
On a darker note...
As I am writing my heart goes out across the country to a family that had to say goodbye to their furry family member this morning. KC lived twenty full years of his feline life, and went to kitty heaven this morning. Because of that I have made sure to give a lot of petting and cuddles to our three furry friends to remember that life is fleeting and moments must be cherished....

The Devil is in the Details....

Moving time yet again. Said our goodbyes to the company at the Christmas party last night, (the guys) had a tearful going away on Thursday. Time to move on. For all the struggles we've dealt with in the last several years, things are finally becoming sewn into place. Trying to get things nailed down to swap vehicles and move the camper to Alabama, and a snag is hit. I felt that we would run into this particular one, so it came as no shock. In order to swap vehicles to move the camper ourselves we would drive up to Virginia Beach, back down to Lejeune, down to Alabama, back up to North Carolina to swap back, then back down to Alabama. It would be way to much driving for all of us. And it would be done in a relatively short amount of time. Trying to be wise on both time and money, I suggested we speak to a tech who has a moving business about helping us out rather than swapping vehicles. My argument was met with some resistance, but eventually he caved. Nothing is free, and nothing worth doing ever comes cheap it seems. We are being allowed travel pay for moving which helps out massively for this endeavor, and as I type the husband is working out the details of this particular plan. The moral of this story? We need a truck. Unfortunately we have to wait about ninety days to get our ducks in a row to purchase the truck, which isn't bad. This whole move would have just run simpler if I didn't have a mom-mobile and we had a truck. Boys and their trucks. I hate it when he's right!
The kids got to see "santa" last night. With all the screaming children "patiently" awaiting their turns, it was enough to make many of us wish for a noose! (I joke, mostly). However, it's not about us but about the kids and they did have a good time overall. Ahhh, the sounds of the season! Bring on the eggnog!!
It's rainy and dreary outside. I want to put on my jammies and watch whatever will make the boys sit still and quiet, but I must venture out to a previously scheduled engagement. Here's hoping we have met the most of our fated hurdles, though I doubt we are quite that lucky. Happy Holidays indeed!

It's always sunny in Philadelphia.....

My dog is a retriever. It's in his nature, the very core of his being, to retrieve. Yesterday afternoon while I was relaxing on the "sofa," he whines at the door then runs to me and whimpers- and goes back and forth a few times. I assume there's dogs outside he wants to play with, so I get up and look. Nope, two deer are less than a hundred yards from our door. So, trying to be a good mommy, I put him on his lead outside figuring he could go to the end of it and at least watch. The dog takes off like a flash, I watch as the lead comes to an end and then effortlessly he snaps his collar off and jets off to chase the deer. Of course I'm yelling at him like the crazy lady I am, but to no avail. The Navy officer in the RV next to us comes out of his home and helps me to catch Titus. Maybe just to get the crazy lady to stop yelling, who knows. Grrrr. It's amazing to me that even my dog knows that it is better to ask for forgiveness (after the fact) than to ask for permission! But that was yesterday...
In other news....
I do not claim to be techno-proficient in any way. Why in our home I'm the one responsible for the computers is a mystery to me, but I am. Somehow in my savvy-techie attempts to fix the netbook, I managed to mess up a few programs. Instead of being able to Skype last night with Jonah, I spent hours trying to uninstall and install the darn thing- to no avail. Today I took it in to Best Buy and thirty dollars (and forty-five minutes) later have Skype working on the pc, but still get nasty messages when I try to use Word. Can't win 'em.
On to other musings. I love the gym. I do, I truly enjoy working out. I hate cardio. I would rather have every ounce of anything sucked out of me by a vacuum with no anesthetic than ever do cardio. I really, really despise it. Ask my workout buddy, she'll tell you. I'd prefer to lift every weight in the gym- including the racks, and deal with the muscle pain that would follow than walk even a minute on a treadmill. I have to find a new gym next week after we move down South. This is not something I'm looking forward to. Especially since I like to jump and dance around and act like a cartoon character to keep up my momentum- new folks might not understand that at all!
The RV still leans to one side. I think it's starting to affect my balance. Who am I kidding, I do not possess balance or coordination. I gave those to my kids. Along with my memory, sanity, and any intelligence I previously held. Well, now I'm off to prepare for TJ's going away at the company. Gorman called me and asked if TJ was right or left handed. It's such an odd question that I'm a little concerned about what they could possibly be doing for his plaque which that information would be pertinent! Fingers crossed!

Sometimes you can't plan enough....

New day, new crisis. We all awoke this morning at 6 am so that we could take TJ to work and the boys and I could get our gym time in. No pipes frozen, no heat lost, nothing tragic (yet) within our home. Today is a big appointment for Teej to do his final physical and audit to leave the Corps. Yippee! But wait, tragedy lurks. As he rifles through paperwork (still piled on the tiny floor of our bedroom) he begins to panic. A very important piece of paperwork is not where he believed it to be. He begins to sweat and swear, up in his "tree," while I attempt to calm him down and help look for it. See, when you move from an actual house into something much, much smaller you tend to place things and then forget where they went (I blame old age, and childbirth.) So we tear through the RV looking for this paper, but it's not here. It's got to be at work I tell him. So he heads off to search his locker in a mild panic. Minutes later I receive a text saying "go look in the tralor." Yes, tralor, not trailer and that makes me smile amidst the frustration. He is incredibly smart, but he is a phonetic speller (just ask him about the "travel clams" presentation he once gave to a room full of marines). I layer clothing and jackets onto the boys and myself and we head down to our bike trailer that is currently holding everything we "might" need in the next two years that did not go into the actual storage unit. To put it mildly- it's not very organized. As I am pulling out boxes, toys, and bike stuff I am silently praying for this folder containing the paperwork to be both in the trailer and fairly easy to locate. Five minutes later I'm holding the folder and calling him repeatedly to say I've found it. I've also located the container of litter I knew I had purchased but forgot where it went. My aging memory is really letting me down as of late. So TJ pulls into the RV park and I hold the folder up for him to see. Crisis averted. He slumps in his seat and declares, "I'm ready for this crap to be over." I agree! So see, it's good to be partners with someone who is an opposite. That way when they are up in there tree, you can talk them down and visa versa. You always need to know that there's someone available to handle your bouts of insanity that will inevitably arise in times of crisis, and agree to do the same for them. Oh, I'm sure that something else will pop up and go wrong in the next sixty-ish hours he has to finish checking out- it's Vegas odds that it will!
On a higher note, we installed a cat door in the back bathroom that has become a storage closet of sorts. We keep the litter box and cat's food in there, so the kitty door was to keep a very nosy Golden Retriever out of the "kitty biscuits." Mazi figured out the kitty door immediately. In, out, in, out, no problem. Zeta, on the other hand, has yet to get it. We showed her, in and out, in and out, but she gets in and cannot figure out how to get out. This is not NASA level stuff here. So she just stays in there until we start wondering where she is. I guess old age is affecting her as well!

In the beginning....

So we have lived in our "tubular home" for one week today. And in one week I have discovered that many things can go wrong that we did not plan to go wrong for a while. For starters, the RV has yet to be level. It leans to one side, so water collects in the floor of the shower. Which creates condensation. Which fogs up the windows. Which can lead to mold. Job one: get a dehumidifier. To which the salesman asks, "don't you mean humidifier?" No, I tell him, I do not. I need to remove humidity. So we removed humidity but still sleep tilted. Oh well, I guess it could always be worse, right? Secondly, the outlets inside randomly quit working. TJ gets frustrated trying to figure out why, I just giggle. I giggle because he's there to deal with it. Until today, that is. He's checking out of the USMC all week, going from building to building, in my car since it's below freezing and the bike is not a suitable transportation method at the moment. So I wake up today to hear, "the water lines froze. Gotta go." We have no running water today, no husband to fix it, and no car to escape with. Oh, and we have ZERO cell phone reception out here at the beach, so no phone calls either. What a joy. So I've yet to wash my face or brush my teeth, thinking I can wait it out until he gets home this afternoon. Wrong again. Mid cooking lunch for the boys I notice that it has gotten considerably cooler inside, and then the fire goes out under the pan. Propane is out. Of course it is. Okay. I put on my big girl undies, bundle up, and head outside. I switch propane tanks, turn off the water, and bring the hose inside to thaw out. Ice cubes are falling out of the hose, which I have placed in the shower to drain. Water soon? Maybe? And it's only 12:01......