The (sheltered) men in my life.

No, this post isn't going to be about my husband nor is it about my son. Actually, it's going to be about my dogs. (If you're a rescued cat lover, I have one of those too, but she's a girl...so suck it up and read on.)


Have you ever been into a shelter or pound? I don't ever remember going as a child, and knowing my mother, she would have spared us of that torture. But when I was 18, I ventured into the Mahoning County Dog Pound, a 72 hour kill facility, for the first time in my life. I was interested in attaining a puppy and I had every intention of saving a life.

I'll never forget the noises I heard the moment I entered the door to the outer hall. The block building was full to the hilt with dogs, every cage full. Some of them even had a few dogs sitting together, and a few others had full litters of puppies in them. And very few of them were quiet.

Instead, they were screeching and barking and yipping and doing what they could to get my attention. I had never felt so wanted in my life.

I was told which dogs were not friendly, and indeed, when I passed the crates, I was welcomed with a snarl or a warning bark. But for the most part, there were wagging tails and smiling faces and ears facing forward, as 50 plus dogs tried to garner my interest. I passed the older ones, though, and headed to the puppy crates.

I wanted a baby. Something to be trained and brought up in the way I wanted to. I was looking for something I could care for, something young and vibrant, as I was living with death. You see, I was staying with my grandparents at that time in my life and my grandfather's health was rapidly declining as he lay in the living room, dying from pancreatic cancer.

I needed to bring a life home. I needed to focus my attention on something that was going to live, something I could actually rescue and keep from dying, because I knew there was nothing any of us could do for the man who spent 18 years raising me as if I was his own daughter.

So I had the keeper open a pen full of wiggly brown balls of fur and one of them chose me. He was soft and cuddly and he couldn't lick my face fast enough. On top of it, he smelled like cocoa. It was love at first sight and without another look back, we left the dog pound together.

It was the first time I had ever bought anything that large, as all my prior pet purchases were always able to live in a tank. So with the puppy on my lap, we headed home. I named him Speagle because I could tell he had some beagle in him, and I just liked the name. I snuck him into the house past my grandfather, because I knew in his condition, he wouldn't have wanted a dog in the house. But my grandmother and I both felt it would help us a little bit as long as it didn't hurt him.

So Speagle spent his days in my room way in the back of the house, playing and waiting for me to arrive home from school, when I would spend the rest of the evening romping around after him. Things were going well until his first bath, when a floppy, wet puppy raced through the house and the smell of cocoa permeated the rooms. Suddenly, my grandfather realized there was a dog afoot. He called me over to his hospital bed and asked to see the animal, so dutifully I produced the puppy. As I watched his nose crinkle and his eyes darken, I knew what was next. He began retching from the smell of the puppy and waved me off immediately.

You see, his cancer and pain medicine had changed his ability to tolerate certain smells. We were limited to what we could cook, bring in the house to eat, or even with what perfumes or bath soaps we used. For example, popcorn would have him heaving almost immediately, as would any type of meat product. And it became apparent to us that chocolate also gave him the same reaction. Without another word of discussion with me, he spoke to my grandmother the next day and demanded the puppy be taken back to the pound. She broke the news to me after school and suddenly I was faced with a horrible realization. I had just saved this puppy from death a mere month before, and now I'd have to put it back in a place where it was sure to face the same fate as before.

I couldn't do it.

I sat down with my grandmother and insisted that she give me the time to find the puppy a good home. He was a great dog, very loving and obedient for how young he was, and I couldn't let him face death twice. Lucky for both of us, she agreed and she lent me the money to place an ad in the paper.

We had him a new home within a few days and together, we drove to drop him off. I can remember crying as I held the puppy out for the man who was taking him off my hands; I was unable to say anything to him but I remember that he was Greek and had just moved to America. His family was replacing a dog he had left back home. When the older woman and the family surrounding him started telling him the puppy was for him, all he said in broken English was, "Dog?" and then Speagle was gone. The group enveloped him and the puppy, each trying to get a look at their newest family member.

I turned and walked back to Nana, who seemed a little melancholy herself. Without speaking, we got in the car and drove home, happy to see the dog had gone to a family who welcomed it so, but sad to see the little guy go at the same time.

So flash forward 16 years. Our rottie had just passed away and my husband was beside himself with shock and despair. I waited a month, knowing we had put down another of our dogs 18 months prior and had also found yet another one a home where she could be the only dog in the pack.We were down to one at the time, Koty, our 12 year old standard poodle. And as Patrick sat in the living room, I headed out to petfinders.com for the umpteenth time to look for our next baby.

I had come across so many already. Mixes, most of them. Some I called on, others I passed by knowing they'd be picked up without issue because of their size or color or breed. And then I came to this face --->

My mind went back to my senior year in high school when a puppy that smelled like cocoa had graced my life for a month or so. He was the same brown with the same dark muzzle, and his ears were floppy just like this puppy. It only took me a second to realize we had found our boy.

I put a call in quietly to Noah's Ark and they informed me he was still available.  They were calling him "The Rock" because his muscle tone and gorgeous brown eyes reminded someone there of Dwayne Johnson. I told her without a doubt, please put a hold on him and we'd be down first thing in the morning to see him.

He was six months old and he was listed as a "Boxer/Cur". That's a generic term they use when they don't want to tell you there's pitbull in there somewhere, because pits don't find homes in most cases. But it didn't deter me one bit. I showed Patrick his picture and then we told Jaryd. I'm not sure any of us slept that night as we anticipated meeting this bundle of love.

But the next day, we arrived to a shelter full of potential adopters and several volunteers. Scared we wouldn't get the dog we wanted, we agreed to at least look at the others if he was no longer available. Patrick and Jaryd waited outside the ruckus, and I dove into the melee looking for someone to point me in the direction of my new baby. I was told he was on a walk with a volunteer and would return shortly. It left me in a lurch.

I was back in an old scene suddenly, with dogs barking and screaming, hitting their cages with their paws trying to get attention. I wasn't sure I was going to make it standing up so I bent over and began to rub the head of the nearest dog around me.

Meanwhile, my husband was sitting outside with Koty and Jaryd, waiting for me to bring out "The Rock". As the volunteers started coming back in from the woods, he noticed a puppy pass him that really struck his fancy and he remembers commenting to Jaryd about how beautiful and sleek the dog was as it passed. He decided he was going to ask to see that one if ours had already been adopted out.

But that switch wasn't in the cards. The same puppy Patrick had seen walked back through the doors with the volunteer, passed the 20 people in the room and headed right up to me. He then proceeded to jump on my back and pantsed me in front of this room full of strangers. As I was hurriedly pulling up my drawers, I turned around to see what would be the next love of my life.

It was love at first sight for all of us and we brought him home, happy to have saved a life. As we were leaving the shelter, I gave the family the option of names. "Tater Salad", as a dedication to our then favorite comedian Ron White, or "Diesel". (The boys chose the latter and we later learned he would definitely live up to his name, but that's a story for another time.)

Eighteen months passed and Koty was sliding downhill. We knew she wouldn't be with us much longer, so we went back to petfinder.com and began our search anew. This time, I wanted something smaller in the house, a dog that would fit nicely into Diesel's routine.

I decided on a Beagle mix and focused my search on finding the right one, which is how we rescued Toby Joe. You'll see him on the right, in the back, behind 2 of his brothers from the litter. There were 5 or 6 of them, total, and none of them even resembled Toby, or Mr. Moseby, as he was known back then. Right then, I knew he was special.

Again, we went down and picked him out; this scared, shy little puppy that was in distress from the noise and anxiety of the other dogs. He was shaking and tense, his little body as hard as a rock and about as unforgiving. He couldn't relax and he couldn't trust, he had been through so much more than any of the rescuers knew, but one thing was obvious - humans had not been kind to him during his puppyhood. It took me a while, but I eventually won him over, and before long, he and Diesel were best buds. Now, as those who have heard his protests can attest, the two of them are inseparable.

So where does that leave us? Ahhh, yes. It leaves us in the middle of the love story we have with these dogs. Both rescues. Both originally in kill shelters as puppies because there are too many born every year that people throw away. Too many that aren't sought-after purebreds or designer dogs, too many that look like pit bulls (or have pit in them) and too many that aren't chubby, wiggly and happy, which are the ones families gravitate towards first.

Instead of buying, instead of breeding, we went with the alternative route on these two and we couldn't have asked for better dogs. All of our dogs have been special, no doubt, with each of them having a certain charm that endeared us to them for eternity. But these two, these two are brothers in every sense of the word. And we, their human parents. It's like they remember, and have possibly shared their tragic and scary pasts, and they know we were the ones who gave them homes with warm beds to sleep in, and fresh water to drink, and nutritious food to eat. They are thankful, still, after all this time, and they show us that with their demeanors and their enduring loyalty.

So in closing, I just want to say that from that first puppy 20 years ago to the latest 2, rescuing is the way to go. You're saving a life and the dogs know it. Their fidelity to you for doing so will be their greatest asset as pets and they will never let you down. I haven't met a rescued dog yet that gave up on his rescuers.

And when it comes to love, what better way to spread it than by saving an animal's life? I can't think of  one, can you?

The decision to stay.

So this month will mark the 90 day anniversary of our move to Florida. For the first two months, I will admit I couldn't relax. I just kept thinking some huge cosmic rubber band was going to snap us back up north against our will. But my husband convinced me that our future is up to us. It's our decision where we end up and how we do when we get there.

So after much discussion, we decided to really put down some roots here. And by roots, I mean deck legs. Yes, we are building a deck. Well, no, we aren't. OMG. It's 100 freaking degrees out there! I mean, we are paying to have a deck built. One of the guys in the park works with another of the guys here and they build decks for the full-timers.

So this will make it official. Well, as official as it gets, I guess. I mean, when we do eventually leave, we can't take the deck with us. We'll have to "give" it to the resort like the one in Ohio that we bought used and already on-site at the campground there. But in the meantime, if you spread the payment out over 12 months, it's literally cheaper than the total monthly cost of Patrick's Dunkin Donut runs. How could we not add 128 square feet of living space?

It's going up over the patio area so we'll be forsaking a wonderful piece of concrete. But it will add a whole bunch of extra space for the dogs and I plan on buying some screen panels and hanging them from the awning so we'll finally be able to eat outside without being eaten alive ourselves!


After all, that is also where I cook every night.

Now, yes, for those of you who have never seen our humble abode, we do have a full kitchen setup inside. However, as any of you who have lived in smaller homes/apartments know, whatever you cook can and will smell up your entire house for days, especially if the rooms are open to each other. Well, in our home, every room but the bathroom is open to the  main area and I'd really appreciate it if my clothes didn't smell like frying fish, baking clams or even the occasional splurge of garlic-laden homemade red sauce. 

So some reconsideration of our set up was necessary if we were going to do live this lifestyle long-term.

First, we took the two old grills to metal recycling and bought a new smaller grill for 2 people (Bonus for the future: it's easy enough and tiny enough to get on a condo patio without paying movers to help). It's a pretty nice model that has enough room for 6-8 half pound hamburgers, which is still more than we would need, but it's got a great compact footprint, especially with the sides down.

It's only about 2x2 and it's fairly no frills, but it does have a really nice ceramic coated inside and it seems to cook very well. But will it hold up? We're notoriously hard on our grills, going through a gas grill every two seasons since we even grill throughout the winter months. Our longest lasting grill was the stainless steel Jenn Air Patrick bought with his first bonus check from BAE, and that lasted us 8 years. But not without all 3 burners dying on us and the starter going fairly early on.

So the BBQ is taken care of. We could grill meats and crisp up corn and potatoes, but what about pasta and sauce? Or frying anything? Our only other modes of cooking are in the microwave or in the toaster/convection oven combo inside. Back to the drawing board.

And that's how we got to investing a small bit into this new diddy:

She's a beaut, ain't she? I named her Sally the Stove. (I don't know why, she just looks like a Sally to me.) We had been eyeing her since we decided to do this trip and then when Patrick started working, we took the plunge and brought her home. Well, really, FedEx was kind enough to deliver her to us from her previous home at Amazon, but you get the picture.

She's got 2 burners, 30,000 BTU's each (your home stove is lucky if it's got 10,000 BTU burners on it as most are 5,000 and 7,500), so of course that means no teflon-coated pots lest we die from poisoning as it melts off the aluminum. (Did I mention I can boil 5 quarts of water in just under 3 minutes on her?)

Nope, everything has to go to cast iron or copper clad. Being that the cost of copper is outrageous and cast iron will last long enough to eventually be willed to my grandkids, we decided to go with the cheaper and longer lasting of the two.

So that then meant I had to add a few pieces to my already established collection of Lodge cast iron cookware. (Do you see where this is going? Have you caught on yet?)

Let me just state this before we go any further:

I LOVE LODGE COOKWARE.

If you've eaten at my house, you've probably been fed from my gorgeous rooster-red ceramic coated dutch oven. It is the bomb! Everything I've ever made in it comes out perfect each time. I can't tell you how much I love this piece!

From a whole 8lb 30 clove garlic chicken to enough Di Russo's sausage links to feed 30 people at 2010's Christmas Dinner, plus all the green peppers, onions and mushrooms it could hold, this baby is one beautiful and solidly build work horse that goes from the stove to the oven and back again with no issue.

All in a striking red paint job. Brilliant!

However, she's currently packed away  and buried in an unmarked and inaccessible box in the storage room. ACK!

So I had to head to Walmart and find something to replace her when we first came down here and were cooking right on the grates of the old grills. We picked up a 6" skillet, a grill pan and another 5 qt dutch oven. I figured that's a good start.

But I just felt with this new stove, there were still a few pieces missing. I searched online to see what else would make me a gourmet full-timing chef and I came across a griddle and this nifty combination of dutch oven base (that I'm going to use for making pasta and sauce in since it has a nice rounded bottom) and lid that doubles as a 10" skillet.

 

Now we're talking...

But how did this lead to the deck, you ask? 

Well, have you ever carried cast iron cookware? It's heavy. With food in it, it's freaking heavy!

So the way things were set up, we had the grill and the stove on the patio, which was down the 3 precarious shifty metal steps of our rig. Carrying food in and out meant having to brave a trip up and down this staircase that rocks like one of those carnival fun-house get-ups. Add to that a 20 lb pot of steaming hot liquidy food and you've got yourself a definite recipe for disaster.

So we opted to have the deck built.

Now all I will have to do at dinner time is step directly out the door onto a nice level surface, with my stove and my grill not but 5 feet away. No steps, no traversing concrete, no extra danger of scalding myself as I try to climb back up 3 wobbly stairs with 20 pounds of food and cookware in my hands. 

And it gives us somewhere to put the picnic table, a few of the wrought iron chairs we got from Craigslist, and second best of all, it gives the dogs somewhere to go outside where they will be safely confined so they can watch the world around them instead of staring at me blankly all day, stuck inside.

And if all else fails, while we're still here, it will double as a very weighted place to tie down all our outside stuff during the hurricanes...

Because if you know me at all, you know that's the main reason I signed on to have it built in the first place.  ;)

Did you know celery has fat in it?

What kind of crap is that? Richard Simmons used to say that veggies were free foods, you could eat as many as you wanted and they didn't count. So we did! Who knew we were still "chewing the fat"?

So why do I care about celery, you ask. Well, I care because the health insurance companies keep telling me that I'm not in their range for coverage because my Body Fat Index isn't less than 24%. What? Really?

Ok, let me start again. I jump in too fast. Sometimes I'm bad that way. Oh, and this is going to be short because that's just how I feel today.

Here's the generally accepted chart.

Body Fat Percentage Categories
Classification	Women (% fat)	Men (% fat)
Essential Fat	10-12%	2-4%
Athletes	14-20%	6-13%
Fitness	21-24%	14-17%
Acceptable	25-31%	18-25%
Obese	32%+	25%+

I am in the "acceptable" category. Firmly in the acceptable category. But based on my weight and my height, my BMI is too high. Which makes my Body Fat index too high for coverage.

If they'd accept me at all, some companies want to charge me an additional $1,000 a month to offset the fact that I'm not below 24%. So, if paying an extra $1,000 a month is Plan A, we're moving onto Plan B.

Get below 24%.

I don't have far to go. Like I said, I'm firmly in the "Acceptable" range. But some lifestyle changes are going to be necessary.

For example, we're buying bicycles. We've been looking at some basic models from Walmart since we don't want to spend a lot of money right now. I think it's come down to a few retro style cruisers with wide, whitewall tires so we can ride around the resort after the sun goes down at night, and plus they'll work well out on Honeymoon Island on the sandy bike trails.

We're also changing our diets up a bit. I'm doing protein shakes and veggies during the day with a protein and veggie for dinner. Patrick is allowing me to change his diet a bit, too, and cut out the extra foods that are holding us where we are. Dinners out are also going away. Can't keep track of what's in the sauces or the dressings, so it's better just to grill it up here at home.

I've even got my food journal and my measurement journal all ready to go, so Mondays I can pull out that measuring tape and see my progress once I pop the numbers into the excel spreadsheet I downloaded. My handy dandy charts and graphs will hopefully keep my spirits up as I see the numbers go down. If not, I'm going to stick a big blowup copy of a  $1,000 bill above my desk here and stare at it until I'm too depressed to eat. One way or another, we're going to get below that 24%. Oh yes we are.

Now where did I hide that body double?

Full-timing isn't for the faint at heart

So when we started this adventure, we really thought we'd stay in the RV maybe 2 months. After all, the deal we got at the resort was buy one month, get one month free. Bonus! It took Patrick approximately 5 weeks to get a job here in Tampa, and we really thought we'd probably extend out that stay in the RV one more month, just in case we didn't hit the goal in the first 8 weeks. But when they emailed to say he was starting this past Monday, suddenly we had to decide what our plans were.

It wasn't that we weren't already talking about extending our stay here. Most of this park is full of people who have lived in their RV's for years. The guy and his wife next to us are on year 17 in that same spot. Other people around the park that we've befriended have celebrated 6, 10 and even 12 years in their rigs. Which is great. Except. Well, they're in much more than 310 square feet. Some of these rigs are 45 to 53 feet long with multiple slides (some even have 2 full bathrooms in them). You're talking 450 square feet and up. Like I said before, my first NJ apartment was the size of a two-car garage, and it's do-able with that kind of footage underneath you.

But what we're in now is comparable to a walk-up in Brooklyn. I take that back, as I've actually been in an efficiency in Brooklyn with  more space.

So when the discussion came up seriously the other day as to whether we stay or not (since we are almost at our 8 week deadline to decide), we looked at each other trepidatiously and began discussing it.

Besides the size, there are several things that are different from house living. Let's start with the good, since I'm a mostly optimistic person.

There is only 310 square feet to clean. Yay! As Nana so truthfully told my husband when I married him, I hate cleaning. OMG. I hate cleaning. Let me say that again. I HATE CLEANING. It's not that I don't do it. It's not that I don't do it well. As  a matter of fact, I probably do it well so I don't have to do it again any time soon. But I hate it. So 310 square feet is perfect for me. It takes me 3 minutes to sweep the floor with the broom. It takes me 5 minutes to Swiffer it. Vacuumming takes about 8 minutes. The hardest part is making the bed because of how our camper is set up, so that actually takes about 43 minutes just to get the sheets on.

This is a diagram of how our trailer looked when we bought it. Do you see the master bedroom in the photo below? See those cabinets on either side of the mattress? Yeah, that design sucks. Let me say that again because it's the truest thing I've ever said - EVER. THAT DESIGN SUCKS!!!

You literally have to fold the foam mattress in half with one person on each side of the bed holding the sheet on for dear life, and then slowly, ever so slowly, roll the foam back until - dammit - the flipping sheet snapped off again. (Yeah, that's how it goes for 43 minutes. You want to talk about being too pissed off to sleep?!?)

But I digress.

What else is different in full-timing? Well, laundry. I was skyping with Jaryd just yesterday and as I gave him a tour around our humble abode and showed him what we've changed out, all the poor kid could see was clothes hanging around the cabin. Being that you can't have clotheslines outside due to aesthetics, we have to hang everything inside. So first thing in the morning on laundry days, I trudge over in the heat to the laundry room (we have 4 so we have a good selection of them) and I do our loads, bringing back the shirts and dress pants to hang dry. In our houses, we had metal racks we put up in unused rooms and let the clothes hang dry behind closed doors. Not in the trailer. Oh, no, if there is a place that I can put the hook of a hanger, there is a piece of laundry hanging on it. So most of the day and evening on laundry day is nothing more than weaving your way through the jungle of hanging damp garments. Thank goodness, with our (sub-par for the RV size) air conditioning unit, they will finally dry in about 12 hours.

Oh, here's a good one. The toilet system.

If you have an RV, you know that there is a tank (called the "black tank") under your toilet that holds waste until you decide to open the valve to let it flush out. You also know this is NOT a septic tank and is nothing more than a an enclosed plastic bin hung by straps to the bottom of your rig. Onto this plastic box of 40 gallons, you attach a hose that leads to the sewer/septic connection for the park. (We have public sewer here, so no septic smell. Bonus!) In between the tank and the hose you connect, you know there is a knife valve that either holds in the contents of the tank or lets them flow freely through the attached hose. (Watch the movie "RV" with Robin Williams in it for what happens if this system doesn't work properly.)

Here is a teaser:

At any rate, if you have an RV, you also know that the knife valve needs to remain shut on the black tank (poop holder) until it becomes 3/4 full, lest you have pyramid poop clogs and all sorts of other nasty things happening to the most important system on your rig (let's not even discuss that right now). Plus, when it's 3/4 full, it does a full flush of the tank by the pressure of the water trying to exit the tank through one tiny little 3" hole, so you get a good clean tank. Well, the joy in holding a tank closed, as the manufacturer tells you do and as good common sense directs, also leads to smell. Yes, there are chemicals and bacteria to put into the tank. Yes, they even sometimes help. But we're in Florida. Not only are we in Florida, but we are in Florida IN THE SUMMER. It's 93 on any given day. It's mostly sunny, although we are in monsoon season, but sun leads to increased heat, and increased heat leads to, well, let's just say, Methane Buildup. Yep, that's right. Monstrous methane buildup in the black tank. So where does that smell go?

Theoretically, the smell should come back up the system and go out the vent pipe in the roof the RV, venting peacefully off into the atmosphere, like it does in your house (yes, methane vents out of your roof from your sewer/septic system through the vent pipe in your walls. Don't get freaked out by this.).

Guess what? As in any other realm, there is a far leap between theoretical ideas and actual experience.

In two days, even with stuff added to the tank that is supposed to control the smell, Holy Lord, does that methane stink!?! I keep a can of Febreze over the toilet and when I'm flushing with one hand, I'm spraying with another. By day four, when we reach 3/4 full, the smell can knock you out. Now granted, when you first empty the tank and close the knife valve, before you even go to the bathroom in it again, you are supposed to fill it 1/4 full with fresh, clean water. This water helps dissolve the special RV/boat toilet paper you are supposed to use to avoid nasty clogs and, like I said before, keep the pyramid poops from forming (YOU DO NOT WANT PYRAMID POOPS! If you get them, you pay the entire cost of the RV to have someone come in and change out your black tank. At that rate, just dump it on the side of the road and write it off because no one is going to deal with your pyramid poops.) So the smell isn't so bad for the first day, or even the second day, since we've got city water here and it's treated. But come visit me on day 3 and you'll wonder if you'll ever go camping again...

That leads me to a funny story about DeShawn, one of our foster kids, and our summer down the Jersey shore, where the methane leaked into the trailer for 2 weeks while we were up at home. DeShawn was the first one to bound into the RV when I opened the door and if you've never seen a fairly dark black kid go in dark but literally come out GREEN, it's a laugh riot. That's not to say I tortured my foster kids, but hey, he was just shy of adulthood, he was taking that risk on his own.  And I thought the 5 of us standing on the outside of the camper still were going to pee our pants from laughing so hard.

At any rate, please don't let me scare you off. Like I said before, there are up sides to living in a rig. Other than the lock breaking on the door that needed fixed, the plastic water pipes bending and cracking, the leaky valves at the sinks and tub, the kitchen sink seal that dissolved with age and had to be replaced, the fuses that blow pretty frequently and leave us without lights, the storage space that only holds about 7 days worth of clothes for each of us, the metal steps that have rusted in 6 years and are slowly breaking off from the RV, the random water leaks in torrential rains, the hot water tank that only holds 6 gallons of water, the need to tighten the stabilizer jacks once a week so you don't rock and sway yourself off the hitch stand, the fact that you have to turn the AC off to use the microwave, coffee maker or the convection oven, and the walls that are only 2 inches thick so you hear everything around you and everyone can hear you if they're close enough, it's actually not bad living.

We changed out the J-sofa (named for the jackknife action of it, and not because my son Jay used to sleep on it) for a dual reclining loveseat and we tore out the dinette to put in a dining room table that we are using as a double desk. The rocker chair you see in the photo is now on the patio outside and we put up a screen room with a nice 7 piece iron set with cushions that we bought off Craigslist. Patrick's plan is to put a fairly large TV out there and make it a man-screenroom. The outdoor kitchen is set up with a pantry cabinet, 2 grills and a prep table, with a toaster/convection/regular oven inside the RV under the microwave. We use Patrick's monitor on it's swing arm when what we want to watch is online instead of on the regular TV. And we've moved in as many of the comforts from home as we could. Even most of my 20-year-old houseplants survived the trip and are in front of me on the desk enjoying the UV rays coming through the slide windows.

So I guess we'll probably stay here another year. That said, we've already put some stipulations on that. For example, if Jaryd (and Nori) were to move back with us, we'd have to get a rental unit of some sort. Or if this rig finally gives up the ghost, being that it's meant for weekends a few times a year and not the steady pounding of daily living, we'll definitely have to find something more permanent. But for now, we're comfortable. And we've gotten to the point where we know things are going to break, sometimes on a daily or weekly basis, so we're working around those things.

After all, we do have a pretty nice yard where I can plant flowers and shrubbery, and they'll let us put up a deck and install patio stones to expand our outdoor flooring area. And the amenities in the resort are very nice - between the pool and the landscaping and the boat launch and the clubhouse and most of the people who work here, not to mention the activities schedule. And on top of it, staying here is half the price of renting, which is great because we could really use the break to pay off some bills that have accumulated over the last couple years.

So, after all our discussions, I guess it's safe to say we'll stay for a while...methane smell be damned, of course!

Changes, alterations and modifications

I know, I know, it's been two weeks since my last confession. I just haven't had time to have a deep thought or even a funny one! Time has sped up to lunacy speed this month and I can't keep track of where I'm going from one minute to the next. So many things have gone on, so much needs to be done on a daily basis. It's almost impossible to keep up with the different schedule now.

However, the one thing that has been constant since we arrived here, heck, even since way back in September of 2009, is change.

Most of you know that story. Man has a good job in a defense company. Democrat (socialist) gets elected to office. Democrat cuts all defense spending and man loses good job. Hence, man's family is put into a tailspin with their lives and 22 months later, here we are now.

3 moves in 2 years. Buy stuff, sell stuff. 4 different cars in 10 months. And now our 3-person group is split across 1200 miles.

It's been a challenge to keep going. The phone doesn't ring often enough. No calls from Jaryd upsets me, and no calls from hiring managers upsets Patrick. Together, we sit and stare at the phones most of the day willing them to ring. (Note: He's winning. Jaryd, CALL YOUR MOTHER.)

But one thing that's for certain is that our marriage is under a deep amount of testing every day. If you think it's hard to live with someone in 1200 square feet or more (I know some of you have huge houses), imagine being locked into one room of your house with your spouse for 31 days. We spend 24 hours each day together in a space the size of a middle bedroom. Sure, we can go outside if we want, but mostly we're attached at the hip. The only real time we've had away from each other is doing hygiene rituals, where it's just not feasible to fit two people together in a room that small.

But we're doing ok. In 31 days, we've had 2 fights, neither too serious, both over within an hour or so with no lasting implications. Our most common bone of contention comes with the discussion of "inside" versus "outside".

You see, it's summer in Florida. Which means it's hot. Not Palm Springs or Death Valley hot. But days are 90-95, and now with the humidity, the heat index is around 100-105 each day. Nothing we can't handle from a past of humid, stagnant Ohio summers or summers in New Jersey, where for a few weeks, barely a breeze would blow by in the 97 degree heat. But I really thought Patrick would have a problem with it, and our staying here depended on his acceptance of these 3.5 months of continual, no-relief-in-sight heat.

Comes to be that he loves it! I don't mean he can deal with it as we walk the dogs or go to the clubhouse to play some pool. I mean, LOVES it. He wants to sit in it, "bathe" in it, relax in it, spend his hours in it. And he wants me to join him.

I, on the other hand, am totally for air conditioning. Ok, fine, our system isn't the best in the RV as it's 81 in here most days with 2 humans, 2 dogs, a cat and 2 computers on; it's still 15 degree warmer when you step outside. I'm sorry, I like it "cool". Ok, I'm not sorry - I just like it cool!

So most days, it's a tug-o-war to see who's going to win. He's resorted to tricks, like, let's go for  ride (in the air conditioning) and then he gets me to a shoreline somewhere and makes me get out of the car to walk it with him. Or, he'll put down the windows while we're driving so there is a heated furnace blast blowing in from the asphalt at us.

Now granted, he does have reason for this. Whatever struck him at the Westview house has completely changed how he has to live. Cold, chilly weather caused his body to lock up and during the Ohio winters, it was impossible for him to get out of bed in the mornings due to horrible pain and stiffness. He would drain the hot water tank while taking a shower upon dragging himself in there just to unlock his joints. Here, when he gets up, he's moving. And he's moving good. After a little while outside, he's like his old self and working as a well-oiled machine. I can't believe the difference.

He's also anxious to go walking - not only around the park but to places where you have to walk all day, Epcot, Sea World, Cape Canaveral. It brings back a memory of last year when we went to Colonial Williamsburg on a weekend where it was 96 degrees every day and he jogged around that place like it was nothing. It's amazing the change in him.

It's just one of many modifications that have been made since we've been here. There's been others, like  when I had him take out the curtain rod in the shower and put in an extender rod in there. Please, people, if you have an RV with a regular shower using a curtain rod, you have to invest in one of these:

Extendable shower rod

It is the best thing on the market. We put a PEVA shower curtain in there so there wasn't any hard vinyl corners and this thing makes showering a pleasure. Even if you just have a small shower at home, go find yourself one. I can't tell you how great it is. (And then, when you're doing laundry and you need a place to hang stuff, it folds into the shower so you can drip dry your unmentionables. Awesome!)

Another thing we've changed is how we store things. I've always loved Command hooks, but we have become vertical storage commandos with those things. Just sitting here right now, I can see 20+ things around me hanging on the walls, held up inconspicuously by Command products.

We've even modified the stuff we eat. Without any way to boil water or use a frying pan, as I refuse to use the stove inside the RV, we are living carb-free for the most part. No pastas, large loaves of Italian breads, or fried foods. None of that stuff. We're grilled meat and veggies most days, with 2 days a week saved for fish. I walked in front a full-length mirror yesterday for the first time in a month and was amazed at what I saw in changes to my body. In Patrick's case, I've been wolf-calling at him this whole time as I can see him slimming down right in front of me but I didn't realize I, too, was being altered by our new healthier and lighter diet.

It wasn't fully unintentional. I did want to lose weight and slim down, as I have a delightful blue and white polka-dotted bathing suit of my grandmother's, in a true rock-a-billy style, that I want to fit into. It's from the forties, maybe fifties, and the look of this piece is absolutely darling. It's in immaculate shape, I don't know that it's ever been worn; but if you knew my grandmother, you'd know she was 4'11" and at her heaviest, a size 14. That's a foot shorter than me and she weighed half of what I do. There's no tag on it, so I can't tell it's size, but it is much smaller than the clothes I currently wear. So I do have a way to go; I have that bathing suit hanging at the foot of the bed on the wall, so I can see it when I wake up, when I'm cooking and when I go to bed. It's going to encourage me to alter myself in this process.

So that's what's been going on and where I've been. Nothing too exciting has happened, but all-in-all, we're still glad to have made the move and are enjoying our location. Please pray, if you get a second, that some work comes through and then we'll be fine. It's the last major change we need to happen (other than maybe convincing Jaryd and Nori to go to school in Florida!).

Until next time...May all the changes in your life be positive, happy and healthy ones! God bless.

Recalculating.

She drives me nuts. I mean REALLY NUTS. Her voice is like nails down a chalkboard for me.

When I first brought her home for Patrick, it was for our 10 year anniversary and we were heading to Connecticut so the kids from Vernon United Methodist could go see Rock the Sound. He needed her because I'm not always around, and since I'm usually the one directing our existence, someone else telling him where to go in my absence seemed like a good idea to me at the time. He named her "Tammie 2", and at first I was honored. What a sweet thing to do!

However, not only did I not realize how jealous I was going to be over her, but I just didn't know how much her existence was going to bother me. He fondly started calling her by his new nickname for her, "T2", and he took her everywhere. Fine. I could have dealt with the fact that she was going along with us for the ride, but she was just so annoying, talking "trash" all the time, getting bitchy when someone made a misstep.

It got to the point that I actually tried to change her personality. I made her male and Australian. Well, that didn't work. It was like Crocodile Dundee had suddenly joined our marriage.

Ok, let's go British. That was even worse. It was one step higher than listening to Ozzy telling us what was up ahead. Patrick made me change the accent back to American and I thought maybe I had gotten away with adding another male to our life, but it wasn't long until he glared at me and told me he wasn't comfortable with a man telling him where to go.

FINE! Back to her. Ugh.

I hate her. Well, I don't hate her, let's just say it's a strong dislike!


But I digress.

I don't know where my navigating skills came from. It's uncanny, if I do say so myself, how I can find my way in places I've never been, without using any form of navigating device besides the sun. But I do it. And I'm good at it. And he has always been in awe of my ability to get us there and home without using much planning at all. But here was this woman again, telling my husband where to go!

And of all things - she was giving him directions that didn't match mine! And he was following hers!

Um, hello?

Oh no he didn't. (Oh, yes he did!)

I had to resist the urge of throwing her out of the car. I mean, really, she was there to help him come home to me. She was designed to get him to where he needed to go. But how dare she take my place. I was furious. And her voice, it seemed to taunt me, to egg me on and remind me that he trusted her capabilities more than he trusted mine. I couldn't take it anymore. I banned her from our relationship for quite a long time.

It wasn't until we were living in Ohio and he was driving to Cleveland where she became a major force in his life again. He would touch her in just the right spot and turn her on first thing in the morning. She'd spring to life and begin seducing him with her "powers" before they were even out of Boardman. Soon, he was locked into every word she said, following her commands as if they were Bible passages. He needed her. She was there for him. He depended on her and she...

Well, one day she was wrong. Oh, yes. She was wrong. (Finally!) She took him 30 minutes out of his way. The first time he had made that trip, he had followed her word for word and did what she said. The second time, though, he had an idea to drop off the highway and take another road he had seen that ended in the same spot he had gone to before. Lo and behold, he landed 30 minutes sooner than she had predicted he would if he went the way she was leading him.

He couldn't wait to tell me. He called and I dutifully answered, his voice somewhere between despair and disbelief as he recounted how she had led him astray. On my end of the handset, all I could do was smile, as I had been hoping this day would come.

Ha! Had I finally won? Would he finally see me again for my ability to steer him in the right direction? Would this be the end of his fling with T2?

If only.

The next day, I placed a phone call to him and when he answered, I heard her voice. She was back. She was in the car with him and she was once again telling him the path his life should take. I was mortified. How could he when he knew she had led him so wrong?

I asked him about it, interrogating him on his need of her services. I was upset. I was jealous. I was devastated by his betrayal. I didn't know what to do.

But, like the smooth talker he is, he assured me she was only there to keep him focused (granted, he does like to drift when he's driving). He said her gentle reminders kept his mind on the road and he needed that to get to where he was going.

I decided to accept her in his life and I backed off, knowing I'd once again have my day.

I'm waiting. Patiently waiting. So far she's only popped in on our travels a few times since being down here and it's usually when I'm admittedly having troubles (headaches seem to be my kryptonite and they disable my internal navigational device.) But one of these days, one of these days - it's going to come to a showdown.

Tammie and Tammie 2 are going to go head-to-head in an all-out battle to win the love and respect of my husband and when we do...she's going down.

That's right, do you hear me, T2?!? You're going down...

And why is that? Because I'm not only calculating, but I'm...


RECALCULATING!

Like a Hand out the Window in the Wind

After Patrick put in his 7 hours researching jobs and sending out resumes yesterday, we decided to go on a drive to explore some more of the area. I suggested Cortez. It's a throwback to simpler times, a place that supposedly hadn't seen much progression in 140 years. I love that.

However, when we finally got there, we zoomed right through the town without so much as even stopping for the lights, as they were green all the way through. Without knowing it, we were suddenly over the water and onto Anna Maria Island. When the road ended at the gulf, we made a right and kept trucking.

With no maps to guide us, no previous visit to help us along, we just drove. Most of the roads on the island are 35 miles per hour, with some dropping to 25, so we had time to just glide along and look at our surroundings. It was a tropical paradise and time had seemed to stop there.

Unlike the northeastern seashore of the United States, most of the houses weren't new, but instead, oozed that traditional Florida Cracker charm; the roads were cramped and the soft edges gave way gently to sugary white sand. People were bicycling and lazily walking down the streets; a blue trolley was ahead of us, dinging it's way through the maze of roads with a load of people inside. It was like the past had come to life in front of us, the island's memory from a long ago time suddenly in motion for only us to see.

We followed the historic vehicle to the end of the island but turned right instead of left, as it had, and we found ourselves at the Anna Maria City Pier. Pulling over, we parked to the right of the structure for a moment on the soft crystals of sand and breathed in the salty, clammy air.

Patrick shot me a look and asked, "Quick, without thinking, what does the smell remind you of?"

Without hesitation, we replied in unison, "Cape Cod." It was a memory of our long-ago past, but one we had imprinted within us because of the time the three of us shared on that wonderful little island together.

The scent was that delicious rich smell of the oceans that only comes when there is low tide and remnants from the sea are left to bleach and decay on the shoreline, baking in the heat of the sunload. That deep ocean smell that you know Poseidon carries on him as he stands out above the seas and raises his trident over all the creatures he rules.

Without speaking, we just sat there and basked in the sun and the smell and the warm salt air, letting our senses mark this moment in our memory and our  minds. Then, Patrick put the car into gear and we were off again, driving deeper into the island to explore some more.

Before too long, we crossed back over to the mainland and headed back to 275. As we drove along the highway, windows open, late afternoon sun casting a gorgeous golden haze around us, I stuck my hand out the window like I used to do as a kid, and I played with the wind.

As we climbed the ascension on the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, where the wind became bolder but the view was ever-reaching, I realized how closely my journey through life resembled the resistance my hand met out the window.

I've always wanted to slow down time, but we barrel through life at an impressive speed. Just like us crossing that bridge at 70 miles per hour, life flies by us before we even realize it's gone.

I thought back to the weeks before the move when I would just sit with Jaryd in the family room, soaking up his presence and just being with him before he began his own journey. I tried, like I had done many times over the course of raising him, to slow down the clock, make it tick just a little bit slower so that I could put more hours in a day, more minutes into the moments we spent together. It never worked, but oh how I tried!

The memory hit me hard and I hid my hand-cum-airplane for a minute behind the mirror, watching as St. Petersburg approached in the forefront and Tampa grew bigger in the distance. I thought for a moment about how many other people had come here before us, refusing to let time pass them by any longer, striving for something better than what they had known in the past.

And I know all too well how people and lives are taken from us every day. My mother was gone in an instant 25-years-ago this week. One moment, her bright smiling face was gracing us with her jokes and laughter and the next, she was silenced forever.

I wondered for a moment if she'd be proud of what we had done, knowing she often talked about moving to Florida but had too much holding her back. I wonder if my grandparents, who have also both passed, were looking down at us and cheering us on. They, too, loved the warm weather and with my grandfather's sister just south in Englewood, came down to visit this area often.

Those were fond memories, driving with them across the state of Florida, exploring the white sands and blue waters, and then growing excited as we went inland to explore the parks and the thrills they offered.

But this trip for me is different. We're alone now. Auntie passed, it's gotta be at least 12 years ago now, and my cousin Dale has moved on with his life, going farther south into Fort Myers. So we explore the Tampa area alone, with only their eyes all looking down on us from above.

I raised my hand one more time in the wind, over the mirror, so the full-blast of air hit it as we charged forward towards our new home, and I spent one more second missing all the people who have meant so much to me but aren't sharing this adventure with us. Then, I pulled it back inside and looked straight ahead, ready to slow down the days and enjoy the ones I have left.

We never know when our time's going to be up so we have to take each minute as it comes. I've spent 38 years rushing towards the next "sweet" spot, whether it be a weekend event or just a day off from the daily grind. It's time now for me to live, to enjoy what God has provided and to have faith that I'm where I'm supposed to be when I'm supposed to be here. I don't know how long it will last, but I do know I'm not taking one more second for granted. I'm going to spend my remaining time on this earth living, because if there's anything that I do truly know, it's that days go by.



Days Go By lyrics
Songwriters: Powell, Richard Monty; Urban, Keith;

I'm changing lanes, I'm talking on the phone
I'm drivin' way to fast and the interstates jammed with
Gunners like me, afraid of coming in last
But somewhere in the race we run
We're coming undone

Days go by
I can feel 'em flying
Like a hand out the window in the wind, the cars go by
It's all we've been given
So you better start livin' right now
'Cause days go by

Out on the roof just the other night
I watched the world flash by
Headlights, taillights running through a river of neon signs
But somewhere in the rush I felt
We're losing ourselves

And days go by
I can feel 'em flying
Like a hand out the window in the wind, the cars go by
It's all we've been given
So you better start livin' right now
'Cause days go by
Yeah, these days go by

We think about tomorrow then it slips away
Oh, yes it does
We talk about forever but we've only got today

And the days go by
I can feel 'em flying
Like a hand out the window
When the cars go by

It's all we've been given
So you better start livin'
You better start livin'
Better start livin' right now

'Cause days go by
I can feel like 'em flying
Like a hand out the window in the wind the cars go by
It's all we've been given
So you better start livin' right now
'Cause days go by
Yeah, these days go by

So take 'em by the hand
They're yours and mine
Take 'em by the hand
And live your life
Take 'em by the hand
Don't let 'em all fly by

Come on, come on now
Don't you know the days go by?

I'm with Stupid

First and foremost, please let's get it straight that I'm not referring to Patrick.

No, I'm actually referring to the mutt that I have been assigned to walk every day.

We have two mutts right now but one of them has to be the most stubborn, hard-headed, focus-challenged dog I've ever owned.

For those of you who know my dogs, I'm talking about Toby Joe.

For those that don't, please know he is a sweetheart. Don't let me give you the wrong idea about the dog, but thank God he has that saving grace because otherwise he and I would be having much stronger issues.

I do want to set up this scenario properly. We have always had a fenced yard. From the moment we brought Toby home in October of 2008, he has only had to "go" on a leash for about the first 2 weeks when we still had the camper down the shore. Otherwise, we had merely to open the back door and let him outside into our fenced mountainside, where he seemed to know just what to do. Even our pet-sitter in Vernon was impressed how easily he learned from our older dogs to go outside, do his business and come right back in.

The Westview house had a nice flat, fenced backyard that the dogs loved and once again, in and out, no problems. Valley View was only a 30 by 6 foot fenced run, but he was quick and disciplined. Out and back in within 3 minutes.

So why would we think we'd have a problem with him when we had to put a leash on him? After all, we've had him for just shy of 3 years, and he has been very good about going about his business then coming right back in when we've let him out.

But I should have known there was going to be a problem when after riding 4 or 5 hours in the truck on the way down here, Patrick couldn't convince Toby to follow Diesel's lead and mark the trees when we stopped for a break. It took a good 12 to 13 hours before he'd relieve himself, usually where we had stopped to overnight.

The second clue I should have had was that he's part Beagle, which makes his first interest "prey". We couldn't have a bird, squirrel or rabbit in the yard without his shrieking yelp announcing the invasion from his view inside the house. It didn't matter the time of day or night, he'd let us know there was a "visitor" outside and made sure the rest of the neighborhood knew it, too.

So is it really any wonder I find myself so flabbergasted with getting this dog to focus on relieving himself as we walk through the resort?

To my husband's credit and at his insistence, we were taking them down to the dog park twice a day, where, after running 10 laps around the huge fenced in area, Toby would promptly do number one and number two on each visit. However, we moved across the resort from the dog area, to where the walk in the heat is too much for me with my asthma; and on top of it, they were having diarrhea while using it, which made me nervous about worms. So much did the worm issue bother me that I'd have both Patrick and I studying the poo very closely before picking it up. I still wonder how that looked to the folks who had sites around the dog park and were watching these two transplants squatting on the ground, staring at excrement in the 90 degree heat. Idiots with a poo fascination, I guess. (I still look, but we walk them where there aren't any sites now, so I feel a bit more casual about examining the poo for parasites.)

But at any rate, last week, when we moved over here, he didn't go for 24 hours at a time as he was strapped to a leash and unsure of how to act. Diesel didn't seem to have much issue at all, and once I started carrying treats with us to try to help with training, Diesel has since learned to pee on every tree he comes across, then he stares at me expectantly, waiting for me to reward his leg-lifting endeavors. Toby, on the other hand, who is usually my food-obsessed pooch, couldn't care less about the treats.

Instead, he's completely, wholeheartedly, decisively focused on every squirrel, duck and bird that happens to be in the field behind the pond. He chirps at the door in the morning and early evening, seeming to want to be let out to lighten his load; but instead, all he cares about are the animals around us. As he pulls me violently across the green grass to the treed area where we take them, you would think his urgency had to do with internal pressure. Instead, he gets to where we're going and then acts as any good hunting dog would. He stands there. Rock solid. Feet planted. Muscles taut. Eyes glued to each and every movement happening around us. And no amount of my pleading, encouragement or demanding can take his focus off the animals he is stalking.

I can't convince him with food. I can't bully him with commands. I can't even lure him with the smell of Diesel's markings. No. There is nothing that can interfere with his unwavering dedication to hunting the critters around us.

So today I started chiding him about his intelligence. Patrick even suggested I get a shirt that reads, "I'm with Stupid". And it was all fun and jokes until my husband then says, "Here, if I take him and he goes, will you pick it up?" Okay, uh, sure.

Patrick puffs out his chest, pulls back his shoulders, hands me the leash of the big dog and then grabs Toby's leash out of my hands. As I stand there with Diesel, I watch as my husband trugs along with the 35-lb Beagle dragging along behind him, like a stilted, cardboard cutout. Nothing he tried worked either. Then as if to solidify our incompetence as Beagle trainers, a squirrel ran up the tree in front of us and sat right over us on the towering branches, with Toby's eyes glued to it like his life depended on it.

As we stared up into the tree at the gray rodent that seemed to be mocking us and our difficult dog, we realized we needed a new strategy. Although he's extremely easy to train when it comes to tricks, he's absolutely horrible on the leash. His focus is completely off us, especially when we come across another animal, whether it be a woodland creature or another dog, and his screeching and screaming at their presence is hugely annoying, to say the least.

So the first thing we did when we arrived back at the RV was look up training collars. We're ratcheting up our efforts a bit and we're taking things to a new level. Somehow we need to break the bad habits and then, when he's ready to accept the positive rewards (treats), begin again with the leash training.

It worked with Spark. It worked with Jaz. It works every day with Diesel...with him, you just snap that collar on him and with a beep, he's a different dog. So how will Toby react?

I'm not sure any dog can beat Diesel's reaction the first time he was buzzed (if you've got some time, remind me to tell that story!) I still almost pee myself with laughter when I remember his first time and as much as I don't want to come off callous and mean, it's quite impressive how the training collars get their attention.

I just don't know what else to do with Toby and we're pretty much out of options. If he won't go, he can physically hurt himself and possibly need a vet visit. On top of that, I best not come back to the RV to find he's gone inside.

So until I can get him a collar and a remote, we're going to use Diesel's to begin to train him. We'll see how long it takes until we get his attention and his focus is back on the pack alphas and their commands again.

And I hope it works quickly...For Patrick's sake, I'd hate to have to order that t-shirt.

A Break in the Weather

My sister Kerrie texted me yesterday and asked how we were doing. The conversation was going along fine and I updated her of our site move, since the last time I had talked to her was the day after we arrived here 2 weeks ago.

It wasn't until I said that we had moved 50 feet from the pool before she stopped writing back.

I had told her before I didn't want to talk about the weather or about where we were, as I'd like to keep talking to her in the future. What I meant by that was, I don't want her to ask me about the weather or our activities and then get upset or jealous when I give her an answer.

Before moving down here, I watched some folks I know posting things on social media sites just to get a jab in at those in the colder weather. One of those cold weather people was me, and it drove me nuts. It didn't make me jealous, but it did give me the push I needed to make a drastic change in my life and go somewhere I considered to be paradise. So I was ok with it, working a grin-and-bear-it attitude through the cold, wet Ohio spring. Some folks weren't, though.

So I wasn't surprised when Kerrie stopped texting me. She is stuck in the humid mid-west, 90 minutes from Lake Erie and hours from the east coast shoreline; the closest thing she has to water to swim in is a teeny pool her friend owns over by Nana's old house. I knew this and I tried to answer her questions as ambiguously as possible so there weren't any hurt feelings, however, I'm not sure I succeeded.

There are somethings in life that I have done that people are in awe of. Not huge inspiring things, like winning the Nobel Peace prize or climbing Everest, but out-of-my-mind crazy things, like driving to Miami to go to school when I was 18, or leaving Ohio with a 2 year-old little boy and heading to New Jersey to make a new life for myself. Our recent move to Florida to live in an RV seems to be one of those things people keep gawking at me over, like the others in my past.

I've heard:

"Wow, I wish I could just up and leave everything to start someplace new! You are so brave!"

"You are doing something I always wished I had the guts to do!"

"You're living my dream. I just want to walk away from everything here (Ohio) and move to Florida with you."


I have looked them right back in the face and said, "You CAN do it! Just make the choice, stick to your decision and make it happen!"

Then their faces cloud over and a slew of excuses comes tumbling out.

"I can't. My mother is sick and someone needs to look after her."

"I wish I could, but I own a farm and I can't get rid of it in this market!"

"Oh, I'd never have the guts for that! It's better left for people like you!"

From owning businesses to kids still in school to spouses with jobs they just can't give up, all the excuses are there.

But we no longer had an excuse. My job is portable (thank you to my very understanding clients!!!) and Patrick's occupational skill set can take him just about anywhere there are people, so we didn't have any reason to stay.

Well, not in the "excuse" sense anyway.

Some people have asked me about missing my family. I lived 15 years in New Jersey and they only came to visit 2 or 3 times in that entire time span. Some never came to visit at all even though they were within an hour or two of us. And even when I moved back to Ohio, cousins I saw maybe once a year. My own sisters lived 1.75 miles from me and I saw them at my house about 2 or 3 times in the last 13 months. It was evident time and the lack of distance wasn't going to bring us closer together.


Others have asked me about again leaving friends from where I grew up. Same scenario. Until facebook came around, I didn't even have contact with most of them. Had to build me a whole new set a mere six hours away from where I was raised. Weirdly enough, to this day, it's the New Jersey set that I still usually talk to the most.

So yes, I will miss my family and the few friends we spent time with, but I couldn't let them become my "excuse" to not move on with my life. I love each and every one of them, but in all honesty, I love myself, too.

Most of the moves in my life have come down to the weather. I can't do gray. I can't do shades of gray. I can't do white, either (unless it's white sandy beaches against sparkling blue water!) When fall would come, a sadness would overtake me that destroyed my soul. I put up with it a good long while, but it finally became too painful to endure. I wasn't rebounding in spring and that worried me. When I wasn't finding any joy by summer, I knew I had to do something.

It wasn't until Patrick started to react the same way that I finally knew we could go, but together, we made the decision that we had to follow the sun, no matter whether it took us - south or southwest - we had to go where it was.

And now, when people ask me what the weather is like, I can't answer them. Come November and December, and further into winter, when someone wants to know if we're enjoying the warm weather, I can't say. And I won't. Because our move wasn't the right one for everyone. They might want it to be the right one, but the timing has to be right, as does the "weather" they are going through when they finally make the decision.

And so what's the weather like in Tampa today?

Well, as I type this, there is a steady rain tapping at the roof and the light coming in the windows is dim. Thunderstorms rolled across the peninsula today and we saw some awesome lightening bolts come down from the heavens right before the air and ground shook with maximum ferocity. It was a wonderfully rainy day, 20 degrees cooler than it has been, with bruised, rolling clouds dominating the skies. As we move from a steady tap to what is now monsooning swaths of water pouring down on us, we've taken to loving every minute of it.

I guess that's what happens when almost every waking day is 90 and sunny, with a slight salty ocean breeze coming in off the water...you can finally appreciate the gray skies.

Now who's watching the hurricane forecast again?

Oh DVR, how I miss thee

Growing up, I had a black and white TV in my bedroom. The screen couldn't have been more than 11 inches from bottom left to upper right, but how cool was I that 3 whole stations, fuzzy and bland as they were, somehow made it to the small box in my bedroom? In the living room, we had a 19 inch set that actually had color. On it, we could watch 5 stations. Three were out of Youngstown, one was out of Cleveland and the last was out of Alliance (PBS).

Sometime when I was 7 or 8, my grandparents had cable turned on at their house. Not only did they have a huge console TV, which was all of about 25 inches diagonally in the glossy wooden cabinet, but we could get upwards of 30 whole channels! Watching TV was a true experience at their house.

Not one to be beaten, the male part of my gene pool called Armstrong and not only signed us up for cable and HBO, but went out and bought a big screen TV for the basement. Life suddenly centered around television - when no one was really watching it, the Weather Channel or CNN replayed constantly. But when someone wanted to see something, we placed bids on the TV in the basement and spent hours waiting for our programs to begin.

Soon, we had a VCR and we had to figure out how to set the time if we wanted to record our shows. The blinking light was no match for a young teen that wanted to see Poltergeist one more time!

In college, I headed to Miami sans TV. I really thought one of my roommates would be bringing a boob-tube but no dice. Not one of the 5 of us had the money nor the parents back home that would afford us outside entertainment. It was the first time in my life I couldn't just flick on the TV when I was bored and at first, I hated it. We all did.

We went through withdrawals and eventually a group of us formed that would go to the movies twice a week just so we could have some mindless entertainment. Schlepping 10 of us across town on the monorail was a feat in and of itself, but once we met up with the group of guys that would inevitably want to come, it was a true miracle anyone got to see the screen.

After a few months, we really didn't need the movies anymore to entertain our ever-overloaded brains and mindless entertainment became passe. The trips across town became an excuse to just hang out and even after moving back home, it was a long time before TV actually interested me again.


Then, on a stormy day in the middle of summer, that all changed.

A few years after Miami, I was hanging out with a friend, one of my former professors from Sussex, who had satellite TV. It was a totally new concept to me and as I sat in her living room in Newton, New Jersey, watching her scroll down hundreds of channels, I was in awe. No VCR was needed to record programs, no more remembering when to turn on a machine to record or having to set the clock every time the power went out so my weekly programs would record. She had something called a "DVR". Light from heaven shined down and angels sang. I made her walk me outside to look at her setup in the raging weather and I memorized everything she told me.

I got in the car and drove as fast as I could to tell my husband and before the end of the day, I had called and put in our order. It was back in the early days when the system was still being developed, back when people still used the term "Tivoed" to mean they recorded something digitally. But we loved it. We'd flop down on the couch and scan all 450 channels (we skipped the 100 that had sports on them) and we'd hit the record button a hundred times in 10 minutes with all the programming we didn't want to miss. It was glorious.

We told everyone about it. You can record without having to program anything! No, there is no blinking clock that needs to be set! Yes - you can watch one channel while recording on another! Oh My! Life was grand. If DirecTv had that offer back then where they give you $100 for each referral, we'd have made some cool cash. We had everyone turned on to it!

But then we realized as our prices rose, it was time to reconsider our options. The cable company was now up-to-speed and we really didn't want Sprint running our internet connection any longer, so after 9 years of DirecTv, we sent back our boxes and went with the cable company. They were good but they weren't as good as satellite. Still, we made do.

Then we moved to Ohio. Armstrong kicked some ass when it came to our DVR. It was on par with the DirecTv system, minus some functions we had come to love. But still, at any given time, you could turn our TV system on and find it 50% full of programs just waiting to be watched. We never missed anything! Mornings at the water cooler talking about last night's shows put us at the top of the TV gossip pile. We had "access" to everything and we loved it!

So when we decided to pull up and move again, it was a big consideration as to whether we were going to go back to satellite, as most RVers do, or if we were going to stick with the cable in the park. It's not bad, the resort cable, now that we have it working well. After all, we get about 40 channels, which include 4 HBO stations. And most of our favorites are on there, Fox News, Food Network, FX, Travel, HGTV, Comedy Central, USA, Discovery and TNT. We're missing Pay-per-View, Syfy and the Military Channel, but we're okay so far without them. (Thank goodness for Redbox!)

However, the one thing we don't have - a DVR.

Life has come to a stand still. Now, it's back to the old days, watching the clock to get to the TV for our favorite shows. Putting them on a calendar to remind us when they are on. Researching their existence on the web to see if we can stream them online.

I've been lucky, GLEE and Swamp People are easily accessible, as are most ABC, NBC and CBS shows. However, not all shows are so open about their broadcasting and easily watched. Kitchen Nightmares, for example, or Dancing With the Stars. Sure, we can see recaps, but no full episodes.

It was a mess last week when the finales of American Idol and Dancing with The Stars was on at the same time. It was an earth-shattering decision to watch one over the other, but the stations made us choose by purposefully scheduling them at the same time!

It's going to happen again when Hell's Kitchen and America's Got Talent are on the same nights starting July 19th. Neither is available online. What are they thinking? Don't they know not everyone in America is digitally savvy? Please don't make us choose! There's too much pressure, I swear!

So it's come down to looking for a way to record as much as we can. We've been back and forth on setting up a computer station at the television. It's one way to go but probably not the most cost-effective and definitely not easily programmable.

We've talked about dipping back into satellite TV, but seeing where people have to put their dishes here, and knowing how expensive it is, it's also not one of our first choices.

Tonight we went back and looked again at TIVO receivers. However, the additional $20 a month for service and the fact that it probably won't work with the cable (that's indirectly DirecTv broadcasting through the clubhouse) that we have here in the park causes us to second-guess ourselves on this plan.

So what's left?

Yep, you guessed it. If we can find one, if there's one out there and usable, we're going to look for a VCR (right after we've sold and given away all 200 of our VHS movies). They're extremely hard to come by, and because of their scarcity, their prices have gone back up. However, we just don't see any other way to handle this dilemma.


Ugh.

Really, I'm okay with the huge tapes and having to remember to rewind them before we re-record the next night's programming. It's doable, the weekly scheduling I'm going to have to remember to do. I'm even okay with the fact that we'll be able to only record one show at a time. However, the one thing that ticks me off the most - someone's going to have to remind me again how to set the clock to get rid of that damn flashing light!

A Thousand Miles and oh, I miss my son

Vanessa Carlton came out with a song a few years ago called, "A Thousand Miles". It has the feeling of a love song, but I never heard it that way. I always thought of my son when I heard it. He is, after all, the greatest love of my life and the best gift God ever gave me. It was natural to me to dedicate it to him when I heard it.

He knew how much I loved it and one day when it happened to come on the music channel on the TV, he turned it up so I could hear it. I walked into the room and said, "Oh, I love this song!" With a look of pride on his face, he said, "I know that! That's why I turned it up!"

He doesn't remember that day but I do. And I remember how much it meant to me that he had paid attention and that he had gone out of his way to make me happy, that something as simple as a favorite song of mine had registered with him when he was but 11 or 12.

And tonight, after a brief meltdown on my behalf when I couldn't find him to talk to him when I was really missing him, I was brought back to what I would do to see my child.

No one can understand how much love there is between a mother and her child, the depth of the river of feeling that flows from our hearts into theirs. But as he goes on with his life 1,200 miles away, this song is just as true to me today as it was back then when I originally sang it to him 9 years ago.

After 19 years of hugging and squeezing him, sometimes several times a day if I was lucky, it's been 2 L-O-N-G weeks since I hugged him last and I don't know when I'll get to do it again. I think my heart will never get over that, but every day I know I'd walk all that way just to hug him again.

I love you, honey. And I miss you with all my heart.

"A Thousand Miles"

Making my way downtown
Walking fast
Faces pass
And I'm home bound

Staring blankly ahead
Just making my way
Making a way
Through the crowd

And I need you
And I miss you
And now I wonder....

If I could fall
Into the sky
Do you think time
Would pass me by
'Cause you know I'd walk
A thousand miles
If I could
Just see you
Tonight

It's always times like these
When I think of you
And I wonder
If you ever
Think of me

'Cause everything's so wrong
And I don't belong
Living in your
Precious memories

'Cause I need you
And I miss you
And now I wonder....

If I could fall
Into the sky
Do you think time
Would pass me by
'Cause you know I'd walk
A thousand miles
If I could
Just see you
Tonight

And I, I
Don't want to let you know
I, I
Drown in your memory
I, I
Don't want to let this go
I, I
Don't....

Making my way downtown
Walking fast
Faces pass
And I'm home bound

Staring blankly ahead
Just making my way
Making a way
Through the crowd

And I still need you
And I still miss you
And now I wonder....

If I could fall
Into the sky
Do you think time
Would pass us by
'Cause you know I'd walk
A thousand miles
If I could
Just see you...

If I could fall
Into the sky
Do you think time
Would pass me by
'Cause you know I'd walk
A thousand miles
If I could
Just see you
If I could
Just hold you
Tonight

Campfires and New Friends

It's amazing what campfires do to people.

For those of you who have never been to one, you need to find an excuse and go, or figure out your fire laws where you live and have one in your own backyard. There is nothing so soulfully cleansing and primitive as watching beautiful red and yellow flames gently lick the sides of rough-edged logs. It's mesmerizing.

When you add in the company campfires draw, often times it's the best of both worlds - the internal one, which is somehow hypnotized into a sedated, ancient comfort and the external one, where friendships are often born and nurtured under the starry sky.

Such was the evening tonight.

After "Casual Friday" in the clubhouse, eating Chinese food and playing games with other residents, a woman we met last week upon arriving here invited us to come back to her site to see a camper sofa she and her husband are giving away for free because it's too big for their space. As we stepped with her onto her deck, the group around the campfire, most of whom we've had only met briefly, welcomed us as if we had just walked into Cheers. Before long, we were sitting around the fire pit, laughing at the stories told and spinning some tales of our own.

Of course, Patrick and I have always loved campfires.

He grew up camping in the woods in NJ, and for him, fires weren't just a chance to catch up on the lives of friends, but means by which to cook food, clean utensils, and heat water for their stay on the mountain. With my childhood being spent at a cottage on Berlin, campfires were precious to us because it was only a few times a year my grandfather would go through the motions of building one. But when he did, out came the fruit pie makers and the smores ingredients. You didn't have to ask us twice if we wanted one stoked up. And when a pyre was blazing in the yard, just strides from the rocking dock on the black water, kids would come from throughout the neighborhood to hang out by our fire.

Some of my most precious moments around the campfire, though, have come from last summer and the summer of 2008. When we had the foster kids a few years ago, we had put the RV down the shore in New Jersey and on Patrick's long weekends off, we'd head down, with my husband building a blaze Thursday night which lasted all the way until Sunday morning. Those were extremely fond memories, sitting around that circle with my son, my husband and our foster kids. If I close my eyes, I can still see their young faces reflecting in the flickering glow, and the joy those city kids shared with us at getting back to nature there on that sandy soil.

Last summer, in Ohio, we put the camper at a seasonal spot out by Salem and had the pleasure of spending the summer with Mandy (Fleet) and Rob Mackie and their kids. Most weekends were spent sitting on their site, sticky smores smearing goo everywhere and kids laughing into the night as they got themselves ready for bed. It was a rare occasion that we'd have a fire at our spot because of our location, but even then, it was a pleasant way to relax before turning in.

Campfires are magical. Even without the alcohol often brought to them, they seem to be earthy and simple ways of bonding for humans. It's really amazing how filled your soul is as you walk away from the deep red embers left in the pit, and how good your heart fills at the friendships you've just built upon.

Everyone should attend at least one bonfire or campfire a year with friends. Even if you just roast a marshmallow or spend fifteen minutes staring into the flame, you'll find life never feels so rich as it does when you're disconnected from the world and centered on nothing but the heat of the flame and the hearts and voices of those around you.

Somehow, even without the smores, life is sweeter when your life is blessed by a fire pit and the company of friends.

288 Square Feet

"The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak." - Hans Hofmann, Introduction to the Bootstrap, 1993
 
In a home, 288 square feet would make a nice sized space. You figure, that's 14 feet by 20 feet, plus some. With a sofa, loveseat, easy chair and a TV and you've got a living room. For a dining room, 8-10 people could be seated comfortably around a long country-style table with a fairly large china closet against a wall.

My first real apartment in Brookchester, over in New Milford, NJ, was 400 square feet and 288 of that would have been 3 full rooms. Still not bad if you're prepared for apartment living in post-war housing.

But then you've got our 288 square feet of internal space. In it, we have a bathroom, 2 bedrooms, a kitchen, a living room, and we had to forgo the dining space for an office built to fit 2 people and run a business out of. Now granted, if you add the outdoor space under our awning, as most RV people do, there's another 119 feet you don't want to squander. So, that gives us a total of 407 square feet to make a home. In reality, it's actually bigger than my first apartment, because there you weren't allowed to place anything outside, and those extra 7 feet are to be cherished.

"Small rooms or dwellings discipline the mind, large ones weaken it." - Leonardo Da Vinci
 
So what's it like living in a space so small?

Well, let's make it clear the two humans in this tin box aren't alone. There are fellow travelers that reside with us. In the top bunk in the back bedroom, a 14 lb fuzzy 7-year-old cat makes her home. She's in the top floor condo, enjoying her sky-eye view across the RV. Her gear fills up a lot of her space, but she's made it home and seems to be settled in.

Under her, two canines have taken the lower floor condo (read: bottom bunk). Our big boy, a 70 lb mix who loves his humans a little too much sometimes, shares his residence with his little brother, a 35 lb mix, who has a mind of his own. Together, they sleep on a top-of-the-line baby mattress, with their toys, bones, food and water bowls surrounding them.

Then we have two humans. Patrick and I. We share the rest of the space. Barely. I say that because it's hard to share space that only 1 human/canine/feline can occupy at a time. You see, the RV is quite large inside without all our "stuff". But between 2 big office chairs, the rocking chair that came with the trailer and the island we built that I just had to have, there is a small aisle of about 2 feet that leads from our bedroom at the bow to the bathroom, in the stern. We spend most of the day sliding past the other person in that aisle because what we need is always on the other side of the warm body in our way.

Add to that 3 critters that are always underfoot and you can imagine how tight things are.

But I say that lovingly.

"Out of intense complexities, intense simplicities emerge." - Winston Churchill

After all, small houses bring closeness. There's not much between these walls that takes up as much space as our love for each other, even though pictures would belie that fact. Love for the pets that share our lives. Love for the child that is living 1,173 miles from us and never calls (that's a hint if you're reading this - CALL YOUR MOTHER!) Love for the sunshine outside that gives us a wonderful boost of Vitamin D and a healthy, positive outlook on the future. Or love for the cool air conditioning when that blazing ball of gas in the sky gets to be a bit too much for our delicate, Northern-born skin.

Yes, we have frustrations as we trip over each other or hand things to each other to "hang up", "put away", or "hide". And even sometimes the animals are frustrated with the size of the space, preferring to go back to their "condos" to hide out in the open space the bunks provide for them.

But all in all, as we hang hooks up and down the walls for things we will use (umbrellas, keys, dog leashes, etc.) or as we move the giant, 250 lb island back and forth so we can see the TV or access our bedroom, it all leads us to appreciate the roof over our head even more. And more than anything, it begs us to simplify. It forces us to choose. It makes us live "honestly" and "simply".

It's not a huge space by any American standard, but it's our space. It's our home for the time being, and if it gets too tight in here, we have a lovely lot that gives us another 1500 feet of space to move around in. Of course, depending on our length of time here, there may be gardens in the future and once again, we'll be resigned to following "paths" to the outside areas we plan on accessing.

But as I sit here and look out at the grounds around me, the resorts' fire pit area with it's rustic charm, the flower-laden picnic area and inlet pond to our left, the beautiful blue pool surrounded by towering palms, sea blue umbrellas and crisp white fencing to my right, I realize that no matter how small the inside of this trailer really is, there's a whole world out there calling to us. Inviting us to make it our home, encouraging us to make use of that space. Insisting it's okay to lose ourselves in the room it offers.

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." - Leonardo DaVinci

And of course, there's that screen room  we put on order. It should arrive by next Friday. And not a moment too soon!