My "Disconnected" Life

Guys.  I have a confession to make.  Well, more like a statement to make.  Or maybe it's just like a memo that you didn't get yet, which totally hasn't mattered, because you're sitting there all living your life and not really knowing that I've been over here going through all kinds of epiphanies and stuff.  And since I may or may not have lots of words to say about all of it, I also compiled a bunch of fun photos to make this more like a photographic memo, which should make it more fun for me for you.  

So here goes-

I don't remember what the date was, but it was maybe two weeks ago now, when I turned on the internet news and saw that there had been a(nother) college campus shooting by a(nother) demented...I don't even know the word.  For the sake of clarity, we'll just call him a terrorist.  He doesn't deserve any attention.  Anyway, of course I read the story, because the whole entire world drops everything and reads these stories.  And something in me just snapped.

This happened in Oregon, where I have lived before.  I adore Oregon.  Roseburg is one of the towns we always drove through and said "Hey, we should totally MOVE here, because it's gorgeous and quiet".  So, for this to happen there, really just got me.  Plus, he targeted Christians.  Blatantly.  Executed.  Christians.  Which is what I am.  Which means, if we'd moved to Roseburg and sent our oldest to that college (could happen), our family could have been living through this nightmare right now, with all those other families who are living through it.  

I won't try to wax eloquent on that, but I read the first day's worth of news on that story, and I just...cracked.  I'm done.  I don't want to know what's going on out there any more.  I don't want to hear how evil people can be.  I don't want to see the endless debates about whether this was or was not a terrorist attack or how it revolves around gun control or not.  I don't want to see a constant stream of photos of loved ones grieving the sudden loss of a child/husband/fiance/friend.  I'm just...done.

I turned off the internet and walked away from my desk.  I spent a solid week avoiding my desk, except to work.  I had to use the internet connection to run customer credit card transactions and answer emails, but other than that, when I opened the Google main page with that search bar and all my saved page tabs at the top of the screen, I just stared at it for a minute, then clicked it *off* and walked away.

Actually, it gave me kind of a satisfyingly wicked sense of control to decline the invitation of that blinking mouse cursor, waiting for me to click my way back into the harsh reality that is the world today.  Kind of like that feeling you get when you really want a piece of cake but you're on a diet so you grab a carrot stick instead, and you feel all strong and grown up and girl power-ish.

So, I read more books.  I worked on a crochet Christmas gift.  I played with the dog.  I got re-obsessed with nail polish because why not?  I adore nail polish.  I continued with our South Beach diet, which is working and is a story for another post because yay, weight loss!

We went camping, even further from the world of internet and terrorists and in-your-face angst and online trolls (what is with the comments online? Are they even people?).  No cell service for 3 days was heaven.  I sat by the lake with the dog.  We sat around campfires with our large extended family of in-laws, cousins, nephews, nieces, and parents and just enjoyed each other and the mountains.  I read some more.  On the way up, I had to call a sister-in-law to ask her why all the flags were at half-mast, because I hadn't heard any news for over a week, and God forbid...what's happened now?  She wasn't sure, so I took that as a good sign that hopefully nothing earth-shattering had happened.  (I think it was for the funerals from the above event).

When we got home, I did get back online to keep my French lessons current, because that's just a goal I want to accomplish.  I  have enjoyed my Instagram account just for nail art and nail polish because, again, why not?  I haven't checked Twitter.  I haven't checked Facebook.  No, wait--I did log on accidentally and see my feed once, and the first thing I saw was a comment by a loved one that just made me want to scream "REALLY??!? You're saying that? ONLINE?"  I composed a message to elaborate my point, then deleted it and logged out. Walked away shaking my head.  I went back outside with my coffee and shook it off by listening to the waterfall and the birds, watched the yellow leaves rain down from our birch tree, and enjoyed that only-in-the-fall juxtaposition of sun on my face and cool nip in the breeze.

Ahh, much better.

OK, in all fairness to the internet and the goodness thereof, I do have a few blogs that I still read, because they show up in my email in box, and this morning I *did* have to Google "how to get the smell of dirty socks out of clean dried laundry" (which is probably self-explanatory, and also gives you a peek into my laundry life that is possibly TMI).

Other than that, I haven't been back online.  I just don't even care any more.  If any good news comes along, I'd be happy to hear about it.  Other than that, I'm just done.  Not hiding from reality, just...blocking it out of our house, which is our haven from the world, and I'm going to keep it that way.

Wow, that was a lot of words.  But then, if you're reading this, you're probably not surprised.

In case you skimmed this just to look at the pictures, here's a pictorial essay that says the same thing, but with less words.

So I turned off my internet...

...AND social media, because NO ONE CARES WHAT YOU'RE HAVING FOR DINNER

Yo.     Stop.

My friends, when I tell them I haven't been online for 10 DAYS..."Whaaat?"

Them:  "Doesn't that feel like you're living in a CAVE? How can you TURN OFF THE INTERNET?"

Me:  I already explained this.  WITH PICTURES.

It feels kind of like this...

...And THIS.  But with more laundry and dishes.  And less  beach

Still.  No internet = Very little negative crap in my life.

I WIN.




Still need more?

Hold my calls.  I'll be outside painting my nails.

Survived RV-ing. Got the T-Shirt.

Make 2000-mile round trip in an RV with family and giant dog.  Check that off my bucket list.

no

You guys.  We got home at 1:28 a.m last Thursday, after driving straight thru for about 9 hours one day and 14 hours the second day.  Shane drove the whole entire trip, both ways, because he is the actual model that they used for Superman, except that now I think he needs a vacation from our vacation.  His superpower is that he can drive for two days straight and still smile.

At my prior post, I was packing the RV with our wholeentirelife, plus possibly some stuff we never use because what if we have a medical emergency and someone needs a wound stitched ON THE ROAD; plus enough stuff to have a yard sale to raise gas money for the trip home because we always have some financial crisis whenever we leave town and find ourselves scrounging under the driver's seat for cash for that last tank of gas; plus EVERY CRUMB of food in the house; plus EVERY SINGLE PIECE of clothing in the house, because what if it gets too hot/cold/windy/wet/dry or we need to go swimming in a river suddenly; PLUS my husband, our teenager, my mom and all of her luggage, AND a 70-pound English mastiff puppy for good measure, because who wouldn't want to take a 70-pound dog in an RV with no tip-outs, with walkways the width of your kneecaps? Bindi has added "knows how to back up while standing in a moving RV" to her short but growing list of handy tricks, so we feel like she's definitely special.

Who could leave this face at HOME?

We crammed all of this into a new(to us) RV that we'd never test-driven further than the nearest gas station, made sure the basic things worked like lights, water, and the generator, slammed the door, and drove it ALL THE WAY TO ALAMEDA, CALIFORNIA, because we keep pretty strictly to our code of living by the seat of our pants.  From our house, Alameda turned out to be exactly 1,006,000,000,000 miles away, but we thought we could take turns driving and it'd all be a hoot, right?  I pictured us playing Scrabble along the way and telling family stories as we cruised through Washington, Oregon, and California.

no

Oregon turned out to have A LOT more uphill climbs than I remembered.  After living there for 5 years and driving back and forth to Idaho a lot, I remembered, like, ONE.  There were actually about a thousand, give or take.  It turns out that I-5 through Oregon is JUST HILLS.  It's literally just...a freeway--straight through the middle of a mountain range.  I remember it being much more fun to drive when we were younger, in our (then) new BMW 328xi, but the whole experience in a 28' RV shaped like a giant SAIL was somewhat less exhilarating.

And we didn't play Scrabble OR take turns driving.

Because WIND.  Add to the nonstop hills, the fact that the wind blew, hard.  The. Whole. Way. Picture riding inside a breadbox inside a windtunnel inside a hurricane, pretty much all the way right up to my aunt's doorstep in Alameda.

I may or may not have seen this out the window at one point

Because of the WIND, we didn't switch drivers except that one time when Shane laid down in the back bed at a rest stop, in need of a nap, and I figured I could definitely drive this thing down a straight freeway in the Columbia River Gorge for awhile, because how hard can it be, right?  I think he lasted all of five minutes on the bed before he tiptoed up to the front, stepped over the dog, and said lovingly in my ear Pull over.  You're going to kill all of us.

In my defense, I was totally staying between the lines, even though I think I maxed out at a speed of like 47 mph.  No wonder the drivers of RVs always look like they're 100 years old, all hunched over and crabby.  The wind pushed us around so much that the only place that felt safe was the front seats.  The further back you got, the more it felt like you were in a shuttle launch, with all the crash-warning alarms blinking.  Every time any of us went in the back of the RV, we thought this is it.  This is how it ends.  We're just going to be blown out of control and roll over a hundred times and we'll all die.  I don't want to die in an RV bathroom in my pajamas.

We also ended up driving through northern California in the midst of a 3-year drought and a heat wave at about 5 p.m., so there were lots of OH MY GOSH HOT comments every time we stopped, which was about every hour, because the RV needed gas in every town to compensate for our 8 mpg fuel consumption, and the dog needed to get out at pretty much every single rest stop for the entire length of I-5.

Just kidding.  It was actually more like every *few* rest stops.

  

And as an aside, can I just say for the record that Oregon has some of the nicest rest stops I've ever seen in my life?  Like, you could live there.

OK, not THIS nice.  But still.

Then things started going awry.  About halfway down I-5, we realized the generator wasn't going to work for longer than a few minutes at a time before it died, even though on all our test runs at home, it had worked fine.  It was also so loud that we knew that if we started it up within an acre of any humans, we'd cause a evacuation, so we'd been hoping to run it while we were driving, to keep things charged and possibly use the air conditioner, because Sacramento.  Apparently there was an issue with the relay breaker flux capacitor fuel pump thingie.

So...no generator = no A/C + no charging of the things.

Having no way to charge our phones along the way, I realized that mine was at about 22% battery as we approached Sacramento, and we still needed it to navigate into San Francisco.  I can not even imagine how we all ever did this stuff with just...maps.  Oh. My. Gosh.  I turned my phone off and hoped that the battery wouldn't die in the dark, in the middle of San Francisco traffic.  Because the one thing I did NOT pack was a map.

Right about the same time, I realized that the wet spot on the carpet by the sink wasn't from the dog splashing her drinking water.  Our hot water tank was leaking under the cabinets, (yes, the same hot water tank we had spent an entire 98-degree evening struggling to fit back into a hole that was, I promise, not as big as the tank itself). The spot was spreading.  I looked under the sink cabinet area and assessed the situation.  All the cleaning supplies I brought...soaked.  All the dishtowels and washclothes we brought...soaked.  RV kitchen carpet...soaked.  Wait--Who puts carpet in a kitchen??  

stay focused

I stuffed a large towel under the sink to soak up the leaking, and we stopped at a rest stop north of Red Bluff and laid our motley batch of wet towels to dry out in the sun on a picnic table.  The staff at the rest stop gathered around to ask us, nicely, if we were doing our laundry?  Because if so, it's probably not really appropriate to lay out your laundry to dry on the picnic tables, ma'am.  We reassured them that they were just wet towels, and since the surface of the tables was 1,000 degrees, the towels dried in about 30 seconds, and we were on our way.

I also had an opportunity to actually YELL at my very first complete stranger, because Bindi is very shy around new people and dogs (as in: she panics if they approach too fast).  This woman pulled up in her Mercedes to a rest stop and let both her dogs out, unleashed, where they proceeded to pee everywhere except the area marked PET AREA.  She then watched unconcerned as one of her dogs ran straight for us, where we were sitting with Bindi at a picnic table, on a leash, like normal people do.  Bindi saw the strange dog and went into full panic-reverse mode, straight backwards up Shane's leg.  I completely forgot my diplomacy skills and shouted at this lady, "Leash.  Dog on leash please.  Leash your dog.  LEASH WOMAN!!!"

She huffed off to her Mercedes and drove away.  No apology.  Not even, "Oh, I'm sorry, but I'm just way too special to follow leash laws.  Those scratches look like they hurt."

I've never yelled at a stranger before, but it felt kind of freeing...

We continued on.  The wind never let up for the entire trip, but I speak for both of us when I say that the last 45 minutes into the Bay area at 9:30 p.m. that night ranked in our top 2 scariest road trips.  We paused about an hour outside the city to text my cousin and suggest that maybe we should spend the night at a campground and come into the city in the daylight the next morning. "Oh, no, you're so close! It's only another hour! Just come the rest of the way!" We were like, "Right.  Because, how hard can it be?"  So we headed back onto the freeway, checked my phone (19% battery), and hoped for the best.

Imagine trying to handle a giant box of an RV in strong gusting head-winds, driving 70 mph on a 19-lane 5-lane freeway full of crazy city traffic, while trying to navigate to an unknown destination in the dark.  Shane's a great driver and the calmest man I know, but I've literally never seen him so stressed.  It took all his concentration to keep us upright and also not run over the various insane drivers who kept cutting in front of the RV at 70 mph with like 3 feet of space to spare, without signaling.  

We were both getting tenser by the minute.  Our daughter gave up watching through the window and decided now would be a good time to face the back and PRAY.

Our conversation the last few miles consisted of fun stuff like this:

Him:  We're in the middle lane.  What lane do I need to be in?  What lane WHAT LANE WHAT LANE?!?  WHATLANE???

Me:  Hold on.  My phone's still powering on.

Him:  Hurry UP please.  The freeway forks in 1/4 mile.

Me:  Almost done...I can't make it start up any faster.

Him:  JUST TELL ME WHERE TO GO!!

Me:  YO, I DIDN'T BUILD THIS FREEWAY SYSTEM.  I'M AS LOST AS YOU ARE, SO--

Google Navigation Voice:  In 1/4 mile keep left to take the exit towards I-580 south Alameda/San Francisco/Mexico/Brazil and I-880 south San Francisco Airport/I-80 west Fairfield/San Rafael/Napa/blahblah.

Him:  What?? I just need to know which exit.

Me:  I think we keep left.  Ok--Yes.  This is good.  So...Stay left.  LEFT.  Change lanes NOW.

We find ourselves off the freeway under a tangle of what seems like all the freeways and overpasses ever built, driving in the dark, in the industrial part of Oakland.

Google Navigation Voice:  Keep left at the fork.  Keep right at the fork.  Slight right onto Jackson. Use the left lanes to continue onto Central Ave.

Us:  ...did it just say keep left AND keep right? WHICH fork??   AH MIGASH.

Him:  We're going to die.  Can you see any street signs? Where are we?

Me:  No, it's too dark.  Wait.  It says Jackson on the sign there, behind that tree branch.  I think.  No, wait--that's Santa Clara.  Nevermind.

Him:  Just TELL ME WHERE TO TURN, because there are four lanes here, and I can't get across all of them in one block.  Why can't we see any SIGNS?

Me:  I've never been here, so I know as much as you do right now.  Yes, wait-- OK, we're on Central. OK, turn left up here.  You need to be in the left lane.  I think.  Yes.  Move over a lane now.  LEFT.  LEFT LANE RIGHT NOW TURN HERE.

Google Navigation Voice:  Your destination is on the right.

We made it.  Then we saw the alley my aunt was directing us to drive into with this 28-foot motorhome.  C'mon back!  You guys.  It was the smallest alley I have ever seen.  Like the kind of alley that was probably installed when the milk man delivered milk with a one-horse cart, and it is used by apartment dwellers who drive those little electric hybrid city cars, very slowly.  It was lined with brick apartment entries on one side and a solid wall of hedge on the other, and it was exactly 8 inches wider than the whole motorhome.

On our first try, we went in at the wrong angle, caught the trees with the RV stair that had somehow slid out, and bent it all to heck.  When I tried to open the door to check out how badly we'd mangled the step, I could open the door about an inch and a half before I hit the trees.  The step was ruined, so it couldn't be pushed in.  Start over.

He backed up, out into the 4-lane street full of Friday-night traffic, straightened the RV more, and tried again.  This time we were lined up right, but the alley was so narrow that he literally was pushing through all the bushes the whole way back for about 100' to where the parking area was. One really stubborn bush actually broke off our exterior running light and left a set of 4 scratches the whole length of the RV.  As Shane passed one brick apartment entryway, he reached out the driver's window and gently pushed their potted plants out of the way so he could inch past it.

scrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

The whole way down the alley, I was following him with a flashlight, wondering are we going to have to back out of this alley? Because if we are, we'll just have to sell the RV in pieces, right here in the alley and fly home.  I wonder if I can put Bindi on an airplane? We can NOT afford plane tickets.  It turned out to be a U-shaped drive-through, so we didn't have to sell the RV.

By the time he turned off the motor, I think my skin was the only thing actually holding me together.

Once parked, we knew we couldn't use the generator in the small space we were in without somehow building a new muffler for it, but we figured no problem, we'll just plug our 60' power cord into my aunt's storage unit outlet.   But no, because the outlet turned out to be 70' away.  Which didn't matter, because the outlet was the wrong amperage anyway.

Holding firm to our "wing-it" creed, we used the onboard batteries all week, got a jump-start when it was time to leave, drove out the other entrance to the apartments (which turned out to be much wider, thank goodness), and did the whole trip in reverse, in daylight.

About an hour outside of San Francisco, we realized we're out of water, so...no toilet, no shower, no washing dishes.  Also still no generator, so also still no A/C or charging of the things.  And why do I smell the septic tank??

Break time.

We found an overnight RV camp ground about half way home and were able to plug into actual electricity, refill our water, dump the septic, charge the things, and continued on home.  I won't even bother marveling at the small-ness of the camp spots at this lovely, shaded RV park by a river.  I stepped out of our door and nearly hit my face on the slide-out of the camper next to us.  Yes, they were that close.  On all sides.  Because:  Hey, suburban life is a drag.  I know! Let's go CAMPING, so we can live EVEN CLOSER to our neighbors. 

this is roomier, by comparison...not even kidding

Aside from the stressful trip getting there and back, it turned out to be a seriously awesome visit with a group of my family that have never before, and may never again, all be in the same city at the same time, so everything was worth it.

And we got to see some beautiful scenery.

Heading down the Gorge

Columbia River

Mt Shasta 

Cool hills outside Fairfield, CA

Unloading.  Because why not?

Shasta again on the way home

Mt Hood from Portland freeway, after going 21 miles in stop/start rush hour traffic. why

But hey--I had time to knit this sock...

If anyone's interested, we also have an RV for sale.

"Is it me, or are we getting too old for this?" and other joys of camping

I know.  We make this look SO EASY

You guys.  It seems like just yesterday I was writing about packing for a trip and working on our irrigation system, and here I am again...packing for a trip and working on our irrigation system.  Because there's nothing as motivational as knowing your entire property could be a parched-to-death wasteland and/or flood-plain when you roll into the driveway after a week of living somewhere else in your very own traveling "home".  I use the term "home" loosely to mean the space where we (and when I say "we", I mean I) take pretty much everything we own, and possibly some stuff we don't, out of our large house and cram it all into various storage compartments in a microscopic traveling box camper and then drag our entire mini-life somewhere else for a few days to a week, then reverse the process when we get home.

Actually the camper's a pretty sweet set-up...I just get snarky when it's time to pack

"Live small" is our motto when we go camping.  Little tiny stovetop, tiny pans, tiny utensils, tiny bathroom, tiny counters, tiny floor space, tiny closets.  If you use a dish, WASH IT AND PUT IT AWAY because there's no other place to set it down.  If you are taller than 5'5", too bad--your feet are going to hang off the bed, no matter what.  Get over it.

To justify the prep-time involved in going camping or RV-ing, the goal should be to stay gone for more days than the packing/unpacking takes.  So, if it takes two days to pack and two days to unpack, plus the rest of the time it takes to sort everything out, get the followup laundry done, and put it all away, we should be gone for ...*stares at ceiling and counts on fingers*  one thousand days.

aaiieeeeeee

The older we get, the more Shane and I look at each other in the midst of Windex-ing surfaces, packing ball bearings, replacing RV hot-water heaters, and flipping random light switches and saying "Is anything on NOW?", the more we realize that the term "vacation" should really only apply to those times that involve AIRLINE TICKETS AND ROOM SERVICE.  You know, the kind where your biggest concern is that your sunscreen won't pop open in your suitcase, and when you get back to your room from dinner, the bed is made and there is possibly a towelgami thing sitting there.

This

Because, for the mom (and often for the dad), camping is never, ever truly a break.  You spend 3 days (or more) tearing apart your closets, kitchen, and bathrooms, and moving it all INTO the camper.  "Where's the first-aid kit/folding chairs/hot-dog prongs/bug spray?" THEN you spend the whole time away doing dishes, listening to random "there's nothing to eat" comments, and picking up shoes and socks from the floor.  Kind of like being at home.  THEN you actually come back home and reverse the procedure, unpack everything you own and drag it back into your actual house, dump most of it on the laundry room, and spend the following week washing all of it and putting it away again.

Yay, when can we do this again?

Add to the mix, the fact that we now travel with a fully operational English mastiff puppy who at 6 months old weighs about 75 pounds.  So...there's her bed, toys, slobber rags, food dishes, food, ramp (yes, ramp), and random other dog-related crap to deal with.  no pun intended.   Well, actually...  

Three weeks ago at 5 months/65 pounds

Last night Shane and I were out working on the motorhome that we are using for this next trip.  We aren't taking our usual camper, which is always packed for the summer with more or less everything we need and therefore only takes 2 days to get ready for take-off (so it's...fairly simple to leave to go camping in the summer--just put in food and our clothes and go)  (kind of).

I had already transferred all our nicely pre-packed stuff out of the camper and into the motorhome, and we were cleaning dead bugs and pine needles out of the ceiling vents, wiping sweat off our brows in the 98-degree heat, and wondering why the air-conditioner keeps blowing the breaker on the turbo twin-prop generator, when we realized that we could use a real vacation.

Haha ha    HA.

I'm no prophet, but I can definitely predict that our next vacation plans will include the words "cruise" and "Bahamas".  There will also be towelgami involved.  Just sayin'.

I'm Retiring As Irrigation Goddess--

What. the. heck.  It's always the week before you're trying to go relax somewhere that all hell breaks loose.  Literally...

After a longish break from worrying about our yard or how it looks, we finally got our front yard renovation started.  We were able to put down plastic and lovely bark on like half of the front, so it looks all grown-up-ish in front of the house, except where the beds extend out away from the house.  Then it looks like no one has lived here for about 8 years.  Seriously.  I can't even describe how bad it looks.

In putting down mulch we decided to get the bits and pieces we needed for the various sprinkler heads that have or have not worked for roughly seven 4-5 years, mostly because the last time we renovated, we used a skid steer to yank various trees out, and when we did that, we accidentally also hooked the underground water lines.  So to keep it simple, we just turned off those sprinkler zones.  Forever.

Until this year.

And of course, IT'S BEST TO WORK ON THIS STUFF RIGHT BEFORE YOU'RE TRYING TO GO CAMPING.  Because, the mom ALWAYS has a ton of free time to spend kneeling in the mud trying to fix irrigation, two days before you're leaving.

I should insert here that I am a freaking irrigation GODDESS after 15 years working on this yard.  I should start my own irrigation company, I've repaired so much of it.  

At first it seemed simple.  Assess.  Ok we need to replace two sprinkler heads.   Wait. Make that three heads.  Two that were broken, and the one that we hit with a pick ax while putting in the lovely new mulch.  No wait--another two at the road were broken off and shattered all the way down below the ground by the snow plow.  Again.  Add those to the list.

Because I am an irrigation goddess, I fixed the two at the driveway with parts that we already had, from 15 years of collecting random parts, but they were some off-brand sprinkler brand that I don't know how to work.  Still, I screwed them in and hoped that, even if they might blow water in the road and not on the actual lawn, at least they might not leak any more.  Plus, how hard can they be to figure out?

Unfortunately, these off-brand sprinkler heads can only be set to spray water in 90-degree or half circles or whatever, BY EFFING ALIENS because humans must not be allowed to decipher the code of arrows, circles, and X's on the top of those stupid heads.  Also, I don't have the brand-specific tool to adjust them, because it's special, so I promptly lost it.

So today, instead of making potato salad or cookies or putting our hot-dog-roasting sticks in the camper, I...went to the sprinkler supply store for new heads to replace the three sprinklers in the flower beds that were no good, and came home with parts, thinking, haha yeah, check this out.   Dug them up and replaced the first two, but the last one is the wrong size to screw onto the existing pipe, because WHY WOULD THEY USE THE SAME SIZE PIPE IN THE WHOLE YARD HAHAHAAAAAHAHAHAAAA.

After fixing what I could with the parts that WERE the right size, I felt pretty good about myself, so I turned on the water main, and immediately discovered that one of the previously working sprinkler heads in the lawn had been hit with the lawnmower since I assessed everything last, and it was obliterated.  I called our youngest, who had run the lawn mower last, to come start digging out this new problem sprinkler while I started on another head by the driveway that needed dug out further and probably replaced. While I was working to dig that one out, 6" down in solid clay and rock, I broke my trowel in half.  Threw the broken trowel for an almost 15-yard field goal and went in search of another trowel.

I tramped off to the garden shed, barefoot, but couldn't find any of my other trowels.  I DID manage to get tangled up in a 50x50 shade tarp that seemed to suddenly be big enough to cover the Titanic, and some random electric cords from pet water dishes that had found a life of their own.  Then I stepped barefoot on a dead mouse, among the staples on the floor.   Sweet.

I replaced the half-dug-out sprinkler with MORE parts that I found, and it did spray water. BUT, it didn't ROTATE.  Add that to the new and growing list of new parts I need to go buy.  Tomorrow.  Mental note to my mom-self that none of the camping stuff is getting done yet.

Time to move on.  Next I replaced an old solenoid on one sprinkler zone with a new one (even though they SAID the old one wasn't bad).  I wired the new one in, and  HA! -- it worked!  Except that where I screwed it on... it leaked.  So, I re-tightened all 6 bolts on the valve with a wrench, and... managed to BREAK a bolt completely off.  So, now the sprinklers in that zone aren't on 24/7, but the solenoid assembly is leaking, which I guess is an improvement over a unit that doesn't leak but also doesn't work.

To fix THAT properly, we'll have to cut into 3" water mains and re-join a whole new valve, which unless you've ever worked on this stuff, you can't even imagine the pain in the level of nuisance this is.  For the love...

Long story shorter, I still have to buy at least 5 more heads, dig them all out, and replace them.  And they'll be some new brand I'm not familiar with, so yay.

In the meantime, I'm also supposed to be loading our camper for the five of us, so it will be ready to go for this weekend, wash all the laundry, and figure out what to do with my entire garden of starts that are INside under lights, which will die while we're gone unless the sprinklers can be fixed.  Circle of life stuff, guys.

So, today was pretty sucky.  The margarita is helping, though.  Thanks for listening.

Of Hot Coffee, Camp, and Navigation with Kids

So, today, I had to drive my youngest to camp at the crack of 9 o'clock, first thing this morning.  ALL THE WAY TO THE ACTUAL CAMP YOU GUYS.  Usually, we just meet at the church (10 minutes away), throw a bunch of teenagers and their gear at some grownups and a bus, and leave.  Then we come back next week and do the whole thing in reverse.  Everyone wins.

Apparently things have changed in the camp insurance world, though, due to probably the last two decades of grownups suing other grownups over every-little-ridiculous-thing, until now...no one can drive anyone anywhere ever NEVER EVER, but I didn't know this until about 12 hours ago.

We just got back from camping last night ourselves, unloaded OUR stuff from the camper, threw HER stuff in the laundry and BACK into another bag and into the trunk.  Then I happened to check the email for the info on her camp, for this morning.  I stopped at the part where it said "Hi guys! We're meeting at the camp this year."

*...*  It's an hour away.

What?  Ok, it wasn't actually that big of a deal.  I'm off, I have the time.  I even have a car, which is a rental, so woo hoo, because FREE MILEAGE.  Except for that thing I hate above all else:  I had to set an actual alarm clock.  I hate mine like you can't even believe, so I made coffee for the road.  As we turned out of our road, I handed it to my daughter and said, "Here. See if this helps."  Because hello, it was 9 a.m., and I'm pretty sure no one should be driving at that hour without coffee, plus don't forget we just got back from a long hard weekend of nothing, and we were both kind of groggy.

I forgot that she is completely unlike me, in the sense that she likes her food and drinks...lukewarm, whereas I like them to be still actually sizzling on the plate.  So she takes a sip through that dangerous little siphon-top on my travel mug, and I hear:

Her:  WOMAN!!!

Me:  What?

Her:  HOT!!!!!!!!  

Me:  Oh.  Sorry.  Yeah...it's hot coffee.  You weren't supposed to guzzle it.  But...sorry.

Her:  GAHHH.  THAT'S LIKE MORDOR IN A CUP.

What was really cool was that she set my phone somehow to navigate the trip for us, with that voice that tells you when to turn, and if it hadn't been "on", I'd have taken an actual wrong turn at the last minute and probably ended up in Albuquerque.  So the navigation voice was like the coolest thing ever.  I didn't even have to look at the phone, or zoom in on a map to see where we were, or pull over and look up directions.  I feel so modern.  Then she was like, "Mom.  Seriously?  You've never used navigation?"

I haven't.  Trust me to find out how cool something is, right about the time it's almost obsolete.  Yeah...I'm crazy techie like that.  (and, yes, I know they can steer you wrong...I'm not that old).

Anyway.  I'm back.  And oh!--I have a cool post to write coming up that I was invited to do by a fellow blogger who thinks I'm way more talented than I am, but I'll let that be a surprise.  Or like a surprise that you know is coming.  Or you can just act surprised later.

So, keep an eye out for that, but first I have to sort out four days' worth of business voicemail, glance at some random bills that probably needed my attention a week ago, unpack the camper, and do  ALL THE LAUNDRY from camping, which somehow multiplies between the camper and the laundry room, until it seems like we must have had about 100 people with us, judging from the heap of bedding and shorts and beach towels.

*sigh*

You mean, we have to UNpack it, too???

Hammers At Dawn

I may or may not be writing this from a camper.  Ok, I'm in a camper.  But it's more like a small perfect house, because I don't camp.  If you've read any of my Time Traveler posts, you may understand why not.  No, wait.  I haven't written *that* post yet... The one where we lived in a tent for most of a year in 1977.  Five of us, with my brother in diapers.  Outside shower, outdoor kitchen, washing dishes in a pot on the ground, with goats and chickens that came in the tent.  Oh, yes.  I will write that post eventually...but-
 

Anyhoo.

So, yes.  We're in a camper on a mountain by a lake.  My oldest and my husband had to leave at 5 a.m. this morning for the one-hour commute back to civilization because WORK, so we got that kind of relaxing 5 hours of sleep you get when you are relying on the alarm to go off on a Droid with 60% battery left and no electricity, plus the requirement that "If I miss work, I will be fired.  Mom. Are you totally sure your phone won't die?"

Of course I said yes.  Because I wanted her to sleep without worrying that she may miss work, get fired, not be able to go to college, and end up living in a van down by the river.  All because her mom wanted to go camp by the beach. 

The good news is that my phone didn't die, and that horrid Droid alarm did exactly what it should do...which is: wake up everyone except her.  I'm kidding.  She eventually got up, after I was completely awake, and they left on time.

I snuggled down to go back to sleep because hello--NO ONE IS AWAKE THAT EARLY.   Seriously.

I thought a lot of time had passed when I heard another camper start up....their generator... in the absolute still quiet of the forest.  With no clock in sight, I mentally forgave them and assumed that it must be later than I thought.  "Well, yeah.  It's probably like 7.  They are probably morning people and were kind enough to wait until 7 for their coffee." I drifted back towards the sleep I still hadn't really had.

Then.

Gun shots.  Six.  I counted.  Where we are, this isn't really cause for alarm, so I tried to sleep again.

Then.

Hammering.  I kid you not.  Now that I'm awake, I'm not sure why hammering is more alarming than guns?  All my windows were open, so it sounded like someone was building something IN THE NEXT CAMP SITE.  At first I thought "Ok, sure.  They're probably just tapping the end of their picnic table together so they can have breakfast safely.  It's cool.  They'll stop soon."

Guys.  It didn't stop.  I sleep light, so this was a total deal breaker.  Bam.  Bam.  BAM .BAM. 

BAMBAMBAMBAMBAM.   

BAM!!!

I shut the windows and tried to sleep anyway.  It went on.  I tried to imagine WHAT COULD YOU POSSIBLY NEED TO BUILD RIGHT NOW!!???!! 

Finally I flung the covers off and actually went outside in my jams barefoot and stood in the road looking for the source of the noise.  I couldn't see anything.  The next camp site was still quiet.  I did my best *arms flung out* gesture that universally means WTH, GUYS??? WHAT ARE YOU HAMMERING? DO YOU REALIZE THERE ARE PEOPLE SLEEPING RIGHT NOW?? Not a soul was visible.  Just the sound of hammering.  Two hammers, actually.

I gave up and went back in the camper.  Glanced at the clock.  I had to squint...the big hand is on the... 9. Little hand allllllmost on the ...6..  Wait. 

It's 5:45? 

WHAT THE EVERLIVING HECK ARE YOU WORKING ON AT 5:30 IN THE MORNING?  I can't even.

It did finally stop, and I was able to sleep. I woke up at 10:45, which felt great.  Kind of like being on vacation.

Plus, I found two bars of service on the windowsill of the camper and woke up to an email from one of my favorite blogger friends, so it looks like today will be ok after all. Except I have the added joy of customers being able to reach me while I'm camping, so that's a love-hate kind of thing. Yeah.  The service is patchy at best here.  Sorry I missed your call while at the beach...really!

P.S.  They are still hammering...someone must be building a house, or a mountain-top monastery, or something.   Gah. 

The view from my door right now.  With less hammering.