The shortest distance between two points is under construction...

I thought about how to make today's entry applicable to being in a camper, and I successfully determined how...
As we were preparing to leave Huntsville we received terrible news: there was a death of someone we loved very much, and at some point we would be traveling to Florida for the services. It was my first encounter with death as related to a motorcycle accident, and it indeed hit very close to home.
Thursday morning found me in the car, loaded with kids and a dog, heading to Baltimore to make a "kiddie switch." Five hours later I was piled into my car with three "EOD techs with motorcycle problems" (aka bike club members) headed to Florida. It was a 14 hour trip. We drove from 1:30pm and arrived sometime around 4 am the following morning. Matters discussed during said car trip were as follows: work, bikes, and club shennanigans. Each of the three topics were discussed at full volume (techs are notoriously deaf) for a total of 6 continuous hours. No female input was necessary nor requested.
It was only three hours into the trip that I realized I had forgotten my school textbook that was absoutely vital to me finishing homework that was due that coming Sunday. Whatever. I read my book and tuned out the surrounding conversation. I also needed waterproof mascara, which took a total of three (yes three) seperate stops to stores for me to acquire. Because I kept having ADD moments and would subsequently enter the store, purchase items unrelated to waterproof mascara, get back into the car and only several miles later would remember what I originally needed from the store. I believe the actual mascara purchase happened in Southern Alabama around 2 am.
When we arrived at the clubhouse we noticed three RV's in the grass and driveway. When we asked about sleeping quarters, lo and behold please gander at where we were pointed: an RV. I suppose since we currently reside in one full time the powers that be figured we would have no problem staying in one for an additional two nights. And there is where the camper diary entry comes in to play. So for three hours the first night my husband and I shared the dining table/couch/leather seating thingy. I slept. TJ didn't. I awoke at 7 the next morning to several bikes being started right below the window where I was sleeping. It was a jolt, to say the least. I will say this: I would rather sleep in a camper than on a blowup mattress in a bike trailer. Poor Ariel. She's a trooper. And, might I add, the only person I know that can go to bed in a bike trailer and wake up looking like she just rolled off the cover of a magazine.
There were a lot of tears that day. And night. We followed (in a truck) the bikes to the funeral home, attended a heartwrenching service, and proceeded back to the clubhouse. There were around 175+ bikes in the processional back home complete with police escort. It's really a beautiful sight. I snuck away late afternoon and crawled up into the loft of the camper to take a nap. For the record it's not easy to sneak away and nap with 500 people around. Inevitably people will come in and ask what you are doing. I had climbed a ladder for this nap people!! So needless to say, we were able to find smiles in a time of sadness.
There was also a tatto artist at the clubhouse, etching nonstop for all of us who felt the need to ink the occasion onto our skin as a memorial. That's not the part that makes me smile. The artist was recently released from prison, and was a member of a questionable gang. When I told my girlfriend in Georgia about this she replied, "white flour!" Drink will absolutely shoot out of your nose if you are not expecting something like that to be said!
The next morning I piled back into my car with the three biker techs. Everyone was tired, which may explain the humorous conversation that ensued for two hours. We took off in the wrong direction. Things were off to an amazing start. Twenty minutes down the road we had seen: electricians working on stoplights with police directing traffic through the intersection, a car being jumped by another car on the side of the road, and a person being pulled over by a cop. "Does anyone else see the circus going on outside today?" was posed by our driver. There were movie quotes ("That is a juicy burger!"), reliving the previous nights antics (country two stepping anyone?), the works. At one point Truax (I suppose trying to make a point) asked, "You know that Michael J. Fox movie?" To which Slack and I simultaneously said, "Teen Wolf?"
Did Michael J. Fox do any other movies? Guess none too memorable!
We ordered at Sonic. I took the keys with me to the restroom, I'm not an idiot. My luck they would either pull around and hide on the other side OR leave me altogether.
Sonic got my order wrong, so when they came to check on us my husband says, "mustard, cheese, and pickles only" and he and Slack said "hold the spit." I guess you had to be there. They locked the car doors with the windows rolled down, all while leaving wallets and other unsavory items visible on the floor. Really?
For some reason, it took us 17 hours to get home. We did stop and eat at a Hooters, because no bike trip is complete without a Hooters visit. It rained. And Sunday afternoon we were back in the car bound for Baltimore. Kiddie swap time. 37 hours in a car for a visit that lasted 19 hours.
So now we are back home, back at the campground, back in our own beds. The world is short one amazing soul. But I guess time usually heals all wounds...unless, of course, you are hit by a clock...
...Tempus Fugit...

***R.I.P. Noah "Flatliner" Sarvis***

Unless you're the lead dog, the view never changes...

I believe Murphy never lived in a camper. Or perhaps he did, and that is why pretty much all of his laws pertain to my life at any given time. One cannot be certain.
We unhooked from our post in Huntsville and ventured...North? Northeast? I am not really certain, since Huntsville is, in fact, so very far north for a "Southern" state. What I do know is that a less than seven hundred mile trek from one state to another took far longer than it ought to. Saturday morning, straight out of the pen, the truck begins to overheat. This is not an F-150 mind you, nooo. It is an F-350, and it supposedly would pull anything. We discover via a phone call that overdrive should be deactivated for these type hauls. Things seem to be going fine until we hit the "mountains." Apparently our truck did not like towing an object in mountains, which had I known ahead of time I would have re-routed through more flatlands. So Chattanooga (less than 100 miles from H'ville) finds us pulled to the side of the road, hood open, coolant boiling over. This process happened a few ( X 50) more times between there and here. I would like it noted that I did not freak out or lose my temper once. I just smiled. Of course, having my house there (to include but not limited to my bathroom, refrigerator, couch...) made it much more bearable. And I'm certainly glad we alloted two full days to complete this "12 hour" journey. The lack of packing necessity also helped.
My view did not change much for those two days. I began to wish I'd mounted a flat screen TV on the back of the RV so I could at least watch a movie while driving waaaay under the speed limit and being forced to see nothing. (However, I know know there are seven red taillights, seven rungs to the ladder, and six siding sections on the rear of the RV, just to note). I began whining "are we there yet?" right around Richmond. And the answer was "no." I really miss Huntsville.
We now live next door to a pasture. The nearest "town" is close, though it looks like it hit its "prime" some eighty, ninety years ago.
Our neighbor decided to take a sledgehammer to his metal bumper on day one. During lunchtime, which is naptime. While all our windows were open. Really.
The water pressure is...low. Taking a shower feels like....you know when you step outside and feel water drops  but it's not hard enough for you to think "gosh, it's raining?" Okay, slightly more than that. But only slightly.
I took my laundry to a facility yesterday at noon to wash. At two thirty the large front loading washer was still washing my clothes. I began to get worried. The washer, it seemed, was holding our clothes hostage. An hour later the hostage crisis was resolved and my clothes were free to dry. This Virginia thing is not off to a great start.
Today I made my way into the nearest city in search of this great gym I had heard about. I waltzed off and forgot to get the GPS out of the truck and apparently decided subliminally I didn't need our internet phone either. Thirty minutes later I was lost. Thank goodness I have friends on speed dial with computers who were able to save me. Maybe OnStar wouldn't be too bad of an investment after all. I kept thinking that the folks behind me must be angry with my slow driving, only to get angrier when they noticed the "Alabama" plates. Folks up in these parts don't take too kindly to "dumb Southerners" slowing down traffic!
I have resumed command of the home and all of its inner workings. One could tell that by looking at my counter loaded down with dishes. Clean and drying. It's a testament to my cooking every meal again.
On a positive note, we did find a butcher local so we can purchase meat there at a fairly reasonable price. They did have some questionable things in there (pork parts slathered in gelatin, ugh), but I dared not look too intently...

You never learn anything by doing it right the first time...

As a beautiful client of mine said of this bipolar weather which cannot decide between summer and winter, "this cold snap is simply a 'commercial' for December.'" No truer words were ever spoken- this month, anyway. So what I'm getting of that statement is "keep summer clothes handy, along with your snowsuit." Can't hurt.
I got home at an abnormally early time today. The sun had not yet set, the kids were not yet cranky. However, what I assumed to be the onset of a lovely evening cascaded into me realizing the RV was tilting at an odd angle. So now, everything is leaning back and to the left (down). If you set a ball on the floor, it will roll southeast. If you set a drink on the counter, it will settle tilted down to the right. Normally I would worry about this since I fully believe that our attitudes, behavior, and mood depends on our equillibrium being just that. But since we leave in 36 hours, I think I will let this one slide. Literally. The cats don't seem to mind. The kids don't stand straight anyway. The dog thinks the floor is a playmate, rolling his ball away for him to chase. It could be a cosmic gift for him.
Last night it rained. I say this because when I looked at the forecast (alright, yeah, several, several days ago) it said "zero" chance of rain. Seriously. Zero. That's a pretty ballsy forecast for anyone outside of LA. So imagine my surprise when I walked outside yesterday and it was raining! What I suppose the forecasters meant was, "zero chance that our forecast will be accurate." I can't be certain. What I do know is that at midnight thunder and lightening woke me at 12:19 from a solid sleep. Actually, the thunder did the job; the lightening seconded the act. Also the cowardly dog (wasn't he in the Wizard of Oz? No, wait, that was a Lion) jumped onto the bed shaking. Always a good sign. I then proceeded to look at our internet phone (don't ask) to see the weather, which upon attempting to place back on the teeny-eenie bitty shelf (haha, seriously?) dropped onto the mattress and took a nose-dive between the bed into the 0.12532 inch wide crevace beside the bed and the wall. Which happens to be 2.7 feet back from where I can reach with my own arm and hand (what a math problem!) Good, great. This morning I was forced to use the Lowe's paint stick  (25 gallon version, thank you very much) and a pair of tongs to finangle this phone back into my grasp. Why, oh why, would the Puma creators put such an awkward space in a camper? I suppose for the same reason Congress votes their own pay raises...but I digress...
My children slept in my bed last night. It's a king sized bed, surrounded by a wall on two sides. One would think that if a person were sleeping in the center of the bed, flanked by two persons and walls, that the person would be relatively unable to encounter harm, right? Wrong. Apparently the three year old devised some sort of "sleep/dance/wiggle" that allowed him to escape the safety of the head of the bed and slip off the end of this massive cushion and slide onto the floor. With a thud. I'm not even sure if he is aware it happened, he simply climbed back up and proceeded to pass out with his toes in my nose. Horizontal. Head in his brother's chest. Almost cute, if I could breathe that is.
Okay. Tomorrow is our last full day here. Instead of being sad I insist on seeing the good that has happened here. Snowstorms, ice, tornadoes...WAIT. There was good.....there really was.....stay tuned....

A critic is a legless man who teaches running...

Two weeks into this solo...well, if solo includes two kids, two cats, and a dog. I always was bad at math. We had a great weekend filled with visitors, I've got the photos to prove it. So it's safe to say I'm exhausted. Since it has been two weeks I was informed that the poop needed to be picked up outside (from the husband) that the dog had deposited. Of every set of words he has ever said to me, "pick up dog poop" may very well be right at the bottom of my "happy" list. I say "may" because I fear other words could show up at some point, and I don't want to deprive those words of being at the bottom. He also told me to climb up on top of the camper and sweep off the roof and the tops of the slide outs, which was met with a boisterous "HA" because....no. I do not like heights. He better hope for some high winds...or a studious squirrel...
We leave in six days. Our neighbor is also leaving Saturday, headed to Afghanistan. So I suppose it's good. My husband says he misses us, though I have to wonder if what he misses is our incredibly comfy (per Jessica) bed, complete with a house that is not home to a baying hound dog...just a thought. I've been wrong before.
I've been told I'm cynical.
My children are learning not to slam doors. Slamming doors here backfires. They are sliding doors, and the effect which "slamming" is intended to have...doesn't. Rather, the door- when launched at an appropriate speed, will ricochet off the opposite frame and back into their face. It's incredibly amusing. Unless I'm mad. Then not so much. If I've mentioned that before, sorry. I'm getting to "that age."

Are assistants tax deductible?

Summer is over. We didn't get a gentle send off into fall, we got "flung" into fall. Actually, we got "flung" into the almost winter and I demand a redo. How did it go from a boiling 99 degrees with 110% humidity to 51 degrees and wet? No one consulted me. I'd like two more weeks of summer, please. I'm manning this fort solo right now. It begrudges me to admit that my husband was actually a bit of help the last few months. I didn't realize how much crap there was to do around here until it's now all my crap to do. It's been raining for five days, and the lines that need to be drained don't care if it's wet or dry outside; they still fill right on up and into the indoors if they are left unattended. And the smell, ugh! I thought I might need an ark for as much as it's been raining lately, but maybe short of floating this place is more like an ark than I thought!
I made it home in time to "cook" dinner this evening. By "cook" I mean I made tuna helper, and the fact my kids didn't eat it did not make it very "helpful." I also still have yet to completely unpack from this previous weekend's adventure to the beach...which turned out to be nine people for three days in a condo and a tropical storm making landfall and spoiling the Labor Day festivities. It was three days RV free, so I'm honestly not complaining. We returned home in rain and storms that traveled up I65 our entire way home, forcing me to unload everyone in a downpour. Such an adventure.
Huh, I am honestly too tired to try to make this post humorous...better luck next time....