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....

Don't ever mistake kindness for weakess...

My hopes were that for each place we get to live that we take in as much of the area and sights as possible. I'd say for living in Huntsville for 8 months, we've done pretty good so far. We visited the Cathedral Caverns back in the Spring, the Botanical Gardens a few times, the Space Center, the Museum of Art (for yoga, and that would be only me), and today- the Safari. Yes, I said Safari. A drive-thru adventure where wildlife literally invites itself into your car. I fought with a deer to keep possession of the feeding plastic cup I was given; he tugged, I tugged, we tugged, he won. An Alpaca who wanted to enjoy some of the, um, whatever food the people gave us to feed them was kicked by a Shetland pony who had decided the food was solely for him. He eventually made his way window to window, and along with slobbering yes- they do spit, he did receive a cupful of (apparently) delicious treats. We fed a camel, mini-horses, deer, sheep, bulls, tortoises, and emus. Lots of emus, and very aggressive are these animals. All in all much laughter was had and, to be honest, it was better than an average zoo and one thing I never considered I would experience in North Alabama.

Apparently it was a good thing we moved from North Carolina, as Hurricane Irene made her way along the Eastern seaboard starting yesterday. I'm pretty certain that an RV would not fare so well in a hurricane, though as my husband says, "our house has wheels, we can just move." Better not to chance it though. There was also an earthquake in Virginia a few days ago. But if your home has no foundation, there's nothing to crack!

This morning the husband warmed up the oven to make breakfast. As he pulled the oven door open, the handle fell off. And to get it back on properly we must disassemble the entire oven door to get to the place where the screw can be re-affixed into the handle! As I write this I am looking over at it, hanging limply on one side, and thinking how in the he$! did that come loose!?!? Unbelievable. What's more unbelievable is that when it broke, I wasn't the one doing the pulling!

I never panic when I get lost, I just change where it is I want to go....

We have a saying around our house: “Well, if this whole EOD thing doesn’t work out….(insert random ideas here).” So far the endings to that sentence have been: you could always open a restaurant; you could always run a gentleman’s club; you could always open a maid service (cough, cough, giggle); we could always open an RV park. See? It’s that last one that has kept me awake at night. Because though I took that statement as a fleeting idea, he hasn’t let it go.  I’ve seen schematics, been shown property locations, the works. In all my life, I never would have attributed “RV park manager” to my resume or life’s pursuit.  Just another notch in the belt of life in camperville. Lord, please let this EOD thing work out!

We have begun to make preparations for another chapter in this adventure. We have to relocate to another state, so the move will be a two act play. First, the husband takes the truck and bike trailer and heads to the new state as an advance party (or “advon” to you military savvy’s), leaving a wife, two children, a dog/teenager, and two cats behind at the wheeled fortress to man the base operations. Should everything go as planned (again, cough, cough, giggle), part one will require patience, understanding, and a case of wine. Now, once the “scout” completes his initial recon, he will return at a later date to assume command of the family and act two will commence. Act two is where the General, that would be me (because really, that’s just how it is), assumes her nervous breakdown. We are going to pull this 42 foot camper across the East Coast and it will be the first time we’ve been responsible for such a long haul with the camper. The husband had made mention that at some point I would be driving the truck and pulling the camper, and I think I spit my drink out of my nose. Seriously. Has he forgotten how poor of a driver I am? In my little car/crossover/whatever? It’s only what, ten feet long? And I can’t even park that correctly. Does he seriously think I’m ever going to assume the responsibility for the massive twenty car pileup that would inevitably ensue on the interstate because he decided to let me pull the camper? I think not. That would be like asking a deaf-mute to sing the Star Spangled Banner at Yankee Stadium for opening day; or asking Magnus von Magnusson to dance the lead in Swan Lake. Nothing really great could come from it is all I’m saying.

I was informed before I left for work today that my husband’s agenda included bathing the dog, cleaning out the cat room/storage room, and some other things that didn’t register in my brain. I was gone for four and a half hours, and the kids were with me. When we came home this evening he was working hard, had made a pizza (frozen, not from scratch; white, no marinara because of my tomato allergy- hahaha, God),  and had pulled everything out from that back room and strewn it all over the kids’ room and living room. That’s about 8X4 feet of space littered with crap. The dog had yet to be bathed. The room was far from “cleaned.” My point here is that a woman’s plan and course of action for a given task is far different from a man’s. 

In our years together we’ve had to move several times; that’s just how it is in the Marine Corps and you learn to be flexible. You make friends, usually military, and you know the time together is limited though sometimes you meet again. If we’d had a crystal ball we would have lived our RV life sooner, but again, hindsight…This is the first time that a move is going to impact me in a way I never thought. Huntsville, believe it or not, is truly a perfect place- for me, anyway. Yes, the weather is tumultuous at best; brutal at worst. But with rain comes rainbows, and I suppose to get the beautiful landscapes a few storms must fall. The people here are truly special, because they are friendly, loving, kind, and fun. If I had my way we would live here forever, and I laugh because I never would have thought I would desire to spend my life in Alabama. It’s just a really great place, and I’m sad to go….

Get all the fools on your side and you can get elected to anthing...

Had I been smarter, I would have had the back toilet removed and placed a washer/dryer instead. The toilet in there has been used not once except to hold boxes, while a washer would have earned its keep ten fold. You know what they say about hindsight.

My nine pound cat has made it her mission to disrupt each night's sleep until one of us is dead I believe. She has taken turns laying on our faces, only to be launched across the room. Honestly, that cat has seen more air time than Tony Hawk's skateboards. She lays on the pillow and purrs. All night. I did not request a vibrating pillow. I would remember something like that. While I'm on the subject, this cat also licks the blinds. Licks them. Why? Ugh, so disgusting.

There are a finite number of showers that can be taken before the shower floor fills with water. Apparently 2.3 showers can be enjoyed before the lines must be drained is the best I've figured it. I have also learned that someone in this house will need to perform a less than stellar-smelling bathroom activity seven seconds before I am due to shower/put on makeup/fix my hair. Normally the announcement involves a smallish person tearing a$$ through the camper announcing loudly, "I GOTTA GO POOP," occasionally holding onto their bum. On the other occasions a not so smallish person simply locks themself in the facility, no announcement necessary.

The dog likes to sleep in during the morning hours. Seriously. He lays in front of the drawers that I certainly have to open and pretends like he doesn't see that I need to be where he is. You call his name, nothing. Punk. Ask him if he needs to go outside, nada. It's like having a four legged teenager.

My husband is off work this week. As I look around I see toys, blankets, and other odds and ends strewn about. It's like a mini-hurricane crossed through. And guess what, I'm not cleaning it up....

Okay. I give. Off to clean up the mess.....