RV Blog--Life in a Box. This just ain't 'camping' any more....

Christmas Eve was fun. My kids think I’m insane, but, well, I think I’m entitled. After all, here we sit, behind a big old farmhouse, and I insisted that my kids and their families climb over each other in our RV! Sure, it seems nuts, but I wasn’t insisting on a meal, or anything. Just sitting around, watching the kids with presents (mostly Connor, because he’s 8—the baby is just a little too young to get into ripping paper off packages, this year.) But they survived.
You couldn’t have asked for a gloomier day, tho! Misting rain, turning to pea soup fog by nightfall. Illinois threw some of its most classic winter weather at us! Did ya ever notice that there are no songs written about slogging to Grandma’s house in the mud, or pictures of folks picking out Christmas trees amidst piles of old, blackened snow, or rushing home with treasures in the pouring rain-- back home in the Midwest?
Hubby spent Christmas Eve and Christmas afternoon, in a hole in the ground that he had dug out with the neighbor’s backhoe the day before. See, it’s one of those little facts of RV life, that it is necessary to have a place to dump your not-so-nice, used water tanks on a regular basis. In a campground, you just attach a hose to a pipe coming out of the ground, pull a lever and it disappears into a septic system somewhere. But we’d been living with ours since we left Florida and were running out of room! So he had to sink a plastic tank and make a septic system! Now, once again, we have a functioning home. J There is still a mountain of black dirt out back, that has to be shoveled back into the gaping hole in the yard, but the worst of the job is done, just in the nick of time!
This weekend, we’re off to Louisville for a weekend with the Schnauzer Cloud over New Years. Normally, we’d have parked our house in the driveway on the way to IL, but time was short this trip! So, we’ll pack a bag and go be ‘houseguests’…and thing we’re not used to doing any more. Much easier to just pick up your home and move it to someone else’s for a visit. It’s not quite as easy, with diesel fuel so high, of course! The really big challenge is finding transportation! We might still end up taking the trip in the Big Yellow Bird! The only other transport we have available is the ¾ ton pickup we left here…which hasn’t been plated or insured for over a year—and which is sitting in the shed, loaded down with stuff we packed out of the garage before the thieves could come back for them.
And, so it is time to commence to begin….. Stay happy!

We’re adjusting to real Winter, slowly. After a week here, and one single digit nite where the water tank apparently froze for a while, we have our heaters in place and have discovered that the thermometer on the overhead heat pump/air conditioner has ‘issues’ in ultra cold weather! That was fun—NOT.

Our first day back we went and checked out our storage trailer and garage and assessed the damage done by local thieves. We didn’t leave much of real value, but they found it. Looks like they had plenty of time and were pretty thorough. They got the Minolta SRT 101 that Keith brought back from Thailand in 1969. (I loved that camera! It was one of the first SLRs made. Took a lot of black and whites and really had fun with it.) They also found the Minolta X700 that I bought several years later, all the lenses and filters and bags. My bad, for leaving them there. They made off with Keith’s fancy nail gun and accessories, of course. And the part of his knife collection that he hadn’t taken along. PLUS, a couple of high-dollar heaters and random things. AND MY WINTER COATS! What kinds of thieves steal a person’s COAT???? They missed the bag of 50 cent pieces dating back into the 19th Century, tho!

Insurance? We had no stinking insurance! After all—we’d rented the place out to a guy who was supposed to park a mobile home on the property, keep electricity turned on and take care of the place! He was supposed to have had his fancy Harley Road King parked in the garage and be around to look after things. Turns out he put the mobile home there and then abandoned it and the entire plan. Took his Harley and rode away, as it were.

So, that nite we went to the school Christmas program. Next morning we went back to do some damage control and damned if they hadn’t come back and carted off BUILDING SUPPLIES! They didn’t get them all, but we spent a good part of the day gathering and loading what was left and boarding up all the windows and doors.

Yesterday Keith spent the day visiting pawn shops, hoping to find the SRT101, at least. It had a lot of sentimental value… And it didn’t turn up anywhere.

Today we’re moving, again. Our current location is about 100 yards from where we need to be parked in order to have a proper drain and be close enough to a freshwater source, due to the fact that the driveway was iced over and this was as far as we could go! Got a little heat wave coming in before Christmas and most of the ice is gone. Should be something to watch, since he intends to move it without pulling in the slide-outs! When he’s done, we’ll have a row of old rusty gas tanks right outside our door. Wahoo!

The insurance company, in their wisdom, has decided that an inability to remain awake long enough to put in a full day’s work, let alone have a life, does not constitute a reason for a temporary disability payment, so it looks like we’re just screwed on that count. They will pay out for 3 weeks on his hernia surgery, tho. That might cover his share of the health insurance payment from work… Oh well, we knew we were going to be broke all winter…

Meanwhile, we’re here. Our kids and our grandkids are here. And it’s Christmas! Life is good.