Two Years in A Tin Can

Busy, Busy

2010-11-13T23:29:00.000-06:00

I think about blogging a lot more than I actually blog. Sorry about that I've been busy lately. I have found that i now keep house when before I did not. I think that living in the Airstream had a lot to do with that. I find myself unable to walk by a sink full of dishes without washing them when before I would "get to them later." It's strange to me and I think I might be nesting, I am almost thirty now and this could be the first ticks of a biological clock that I never thought I had.

Tonight didn't start well, I locked my keys in my truck and had to call a locksmith to get them out. We I say I locked them in there when technically the truck locked them in for me. I should never set my keys on the bumper, I will post a photo later.

Took the kids over to the coffee house and my night started to improve. We had a poet come to read for them and they were all given the opportunity to read some of their own poetry. I was surprised when they took turns reading most of the night. They badgered me for a while knowing that I was once a poet I felt badly because I didn't have anything to read for them. I felt as though I was asking them to share when I myself did not have the courage to do the same.

This guilt forced me to write a short poem and read it for them. It wasn't anything to writ home about but I did throw together something fairly decent for them to hear. I guess it's a start. I hope that it's enough of a jump start for me to begin finding my voice again.

Every day is a new day and hopefully today I allows me to begin anew.

At Home

2010-10-08T20:26:00.000-05:00

We're finally all moved in at the Tulsa house and there is barely anything left at the house in OKC. What is left resides mostly in the garage. Winter clothes, holiday decorations and that sort of thing. There isn't really much there, other than the furniture we purchased seven years ago, that makes it still feel like home. It's strange for me right now, because the house in OKC will always be our first house, and we put so much work into it for so long that it will always feel like home. Years from now I'll drive by that house and our keys will no longer fit in the locks, but it will still feel like our house. It feels like our house now, but it no longer feels like home to me.

I don't know if it feels like home to Wynn still, but I am beginning to doubt it. We want to keep both houses and financially we can keep them both quite comfortably, since we do have a roommate living in the house in OKC, but now that we have made a commitment to live in Tulsa fulltime I'm not sure if we actually will end up keeping both. Wynn will eventually have to go back to OKC to go to med school and it would be nice to still have the house in OKC for her to live in while she gets both her MD and her PhD, but for now I have to at least finish my BS in Social Work first. As it stands I am taking the gen ed courses that I neglected to take and I'm not sure how much longer I actually have before I will graduate.

That reminds me, I have to go to NSU Broken Arrow with my OSU transcript soon to find our just how much longer getting my BS will take.

Things certainly came together quickly like they always do. Wynn and I always talk things to death and then suddenly we make them happen as if out of the blue. It's nice to feel as though I currently have everything that I wanted last year, but I wonder what will happen next year.

Dry Spell

2010-09-23T19:55:00.002-05:00

We're all moved in now, there are boxes still laying around and loads of laundry to finish. We still need to buy desks for our office and bookcases for the myriads of books I have stored in Oklahoma City, but technically we now live in a house. The Airstreamer Era is over for Wynn and I. The Airstream is now sitting at a storage place between a gutted bus and an 85 primer gray Chevy Silverado. It's like a graveyard of sorts and part of me feels guilty for keeping such a beautiful piece of history there, but it is the practical thing to do.

The Airstream is for sale and I know, I know, post photos. I will, I've taken them, they're on the IPhone and I may post them tonight if I'm not too busy at work. I shouldn't be, the kids will be in bed by the time I clock in and aside from finishing a spreadsheet for my boss, I don't really have much I need to do other than homework, but neither of those tasks should take eight hours.

I have hit a rather dry spell lately with the blogging and all of the writing I do. It's as though I don't feel like I need it to cope anymore like I did in the Airstream. There are so many other things that I could be doing, like making my own bread in the bread maker I bought at the Goodwill for $4 the other day, or reading.

Currently reading: The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
Currently listening to: The Clicks
Would really like to be reading: The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien
Movie I'd like to watch: Apocalypse Now

Frustration

2010-09-12T03:41:00.000-05:00

Yes, tomorrow is move in day and I am very excited about moving into our awesome little rent house here in town. It's going to be chaotic due to the fact that there is not enough room in the Airstream to pack before we move. I am alright with the chaos because I know that it is just a part of the process.

My frustration has absolutely nothing to do with anything that is currently going on in my life. My frustration comes from a small quiet voice deep inside that becomes louder with each post I make on this blog. This small voice keeps telling me that in a literary sense my voice has changed.

Let me go back a few years for those of you who aren't sure what I mean. I am a writer before anything else that I do professionally. I am a poet who has lost her ability to write poetry; I'm not sure that it is actually gone I am only sure that I can no longer find it. I am sure it was there once just over a decade ago, I know I had talent and promise, but I somehow feel as though I have squandered it. If I knew just what went wrong I could find it again and I could write again.

In 1999 I auditioned and was accepted into the Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute, my poetry, my ability beat out several other high school students in Oklahoma. In 2000 I was accepted again but even at the audition I felt as though my ability to write poetry was slipping away, little did I know that by August of that year it would be totally gone, or if not gone unreachable.

By the time I entered college in the fall of 2000 I knew it was gone and at the protests of my friends and some of my professors I refused to pursue an English or Creative Writing degree because of this. I tried desperately to write again on an almost constant basis. I tried so often that it affected my ability to concentrate in class or do homework. I enrolled in as many English courses as I could, in hopes that they would somehow force me into writing poetry again.

They didn't, even as much as I wanted them to.

I ended up dropping out of college a few years later and because I didn't have a degree I had to work in jobs that forced me to dumb myself down for the sake of the customers and even my coworkers. I feel like the years that I spent doing so caused me to lose my voice. As I read my previous posts and look at the language and punctuation used, I feel as though they were not written by me. I feel as though their style and grammar are remedial. I feel as though any refinement I once had is gone.

I am just so frustrated by it.

I am not going to stop blogging because of my current frustration. I'm just going to keep plugging away post after post, in hopes that my voice will start to come back. I just wish it weren't too much to ask to one day be able to sit down and write poetry once again. I miss the release and the satisfaction that I used to feel after completing that final stanza and knowing that what I had just produced was quality work and not just some remedial sophomoric drivel.

Save The Admiral Twin Drive In

2010-09-07T12:10:00.001-05:00

I've been busy again, but I'm still blogging when I have time. It's been a rough few days here lately. I had a birthday on the first and Wynn and I have been busy looking for things for the house. We move in six days so things are starting to get a bit hectic. We went to a furniture auction yesterday but we were out bid on everything, but we have a bed and I know of some free furniture stashed away at a family member's house a few miles away so that will do for now. Oh I made an A on the Biology test last week, so that's awesome.

Here's what's not so awesome. One of the last drive in theaters in the US burned on the second. I loved this place it was just down the road from where the Airstream is parked and only a few miles from Route 66. One of my favorite movies was filmed there, The Outsiders, and the theater was still in operation after all of these years and I had planned to try to make The Outsiders Festival on the last day of the season.

I'm still devastated by the loss of this historic structure.

It was just the screen but the screen was not insured. It was a nine foot wooden frame structure that no one would insure and it was a total loss within ten or twenty minutes. No one knows for sure how it caught fire, I personally think it was arson. It had recently rained and there were no electron components in the structure.

There has been an out pouring of support by the people of Tulsa and it looks as though the Admiral Twin will be rebuilt and open again by next season. Wynn and I plan to attend a benefit to raise money for the Admiral Twin on October 10th at the Rose Bowl another historic Route 66 attraction.

I hope that someday soon the Admiral Twin will be showing movies at dusk like it always has before.

Gratuitious Outsiders still taken from one of the scenes filmed at the Admiral Twin.

Sorry, I've Been Busy

2010-08-30T20:40:00.000-05:00

I've had a lot of homework lately and I just really haven't been on the computer much. There isn't a lot going on right now, we're just waiting to move and looking at furniture. We've bought a bed and I've located some free furniture that we need to go and look at, but that's basically all. I have a test in Biology on Thursday and even though I've been studying around 4 to 10 hours a night I still don't feel prepared for it. I'll let ya'll know how it goes. I really think I'm just over thinking things lately, but I can't be too careful when it comes to school. I need to start getting my gpa back up now so I can get into grad school in a couple of years.

When something exciting happens I'll let ya'll know and when I have time to sit down and recall some more Airstream moments I'll get that done too.

Vintage Airstream For Sale

2010-08-23T16:49:00.000-05:00

So here it is, I still can't believe I'm typing this. Our Airstream that has been our Tulsa home for two years is For Sale.

Price: $4000

Specs:

1972 Airstream Sovereign Land Yacht International dual axle travel trailer, 7500lbs dry weight, 9000lbs loaded. Trailer comes with hitch and original EZ stabilizer bar kit.
32ft Rear bath mid-ship bunk with large closets and credenza.
Vista View windows.
Skin is in excellent condition one minor ding that is barely noticeable. She has ghost numbers and a ghost of a Wally Byam Travel Club sticker just above them.
Under skin is also fully intact and stiff walled newer trailer tires with plenty of tread.
All four jacks are in perfect working condition.
All four original hubcaps
Brand new Carrier AC/ Heat unit installed Spring of 2010
Original Dometic propane refrigerator
Original Dometic propane cook top
Original Magic Chef oven
Original double basin stainless steel sink.
Original lounge gaucho sofa bed
Original radio and control panel
All curtains and blinds intact
Original rock guard
Original aluminum propane takes and regulator. Propane takes have been converted to match OPD specifications.
Original bathroom fixtures, tub and hand flush Thetford toilet.
All closet doors are intact.
Tambor doors are a bit rough but most of them are intact and working.
New RV plug installed last month July of 2010.
New rugs in December of 2009.
Linoleum floors throughout.
Non working hot water heater, may just need a part but we were unable to tow it to an RV shop due to the fact that we lived in it. The door is still intact and may be fabricated to fit a new hot water heater if one is needed.
Forced air furnace with ducting throughout the inside and the under skin of the trailer.
The electronics of the furnace were replaced in October of 2008 and she blows hot.
This model has four closets, two bureaus under the credenza and two huge pantries in the kitchen.
It also has plenty of overhead storage in the bunk and in the kitchen and bathroom and under bed storage under the gaucho and the bunk.

She is definitely tow-able and livable. As a reminder I am sitting in the bunk looking into the kitchen as I type this up and she has been our Tulsa home for the last two years as stated above.

She will also be listed on Craig's List, RV Trader and the Airforums. Leave a comment with contact information and I will get back to you as soon as I can. She will not be available before September13th and she will be moved to a storage facility as of the 16th. We will show her at both locations once we have moved our things into our new home.

Photos to come soon.

Who Wants to Buy the Tin Can?

2010-08-23T16:22:00.000-05:00

We found a house last week and fell in love with it. It's just the right size in just the right area. It's in our age range and price range and it's just what we've been looking for. We were the first people to look at it as it had just been put back on the renter market. Interestingly enough we didn't even know it existed when we were driving around trying to get to a different neighborhood. I took a random residential street to try and cut across Route 66, and there it was the first house in from the corner of a wide, well kept, quiet street.

This is the house we went to look at after we found the Saab and we filled out the paperwork right away. Wynn was hopeful but I have a hard time getting my hopes up, I've always felt that if I do I am setting myself up to fail. I'd rather be pleasantly surprised than devastatingly disappointed.

At any rate I tried not to think about it all weekend and at the same time promising my friends that I would tell them as soon as I knew anything. So I worked my last 12hr shift of the week and came home this morning to sleep for a few hours before class. At 9am Wynn called and woke me up. I was so dead asleep that what she was saying didn't even register at first. "We got the house." "What? What are you talking about?" "We got the house." and then I dissolved into non-words as my mouth tried to catch up with my brain.

We are moving in on the 13th of September, 12 days after my 29th birthday and my father will be pulling the Airstream out of our rental slot to a nearby storage facility on the 16th the day rent is due here. The Airstream is officially for sale. I know I will miss Airstreaming full time but I'm not sure when exactly I will start missing it, probably when we park her at the storage facility down the road.

The house is red brick with white trim and a working fireplace. It has wood floors throughout and tile in the bathroom and kitchen. It was probably built in the late 1920s and still has all of the original details. Someone built a garage on probably in the 1940s and also added on a sun room. It has two bedrooms a formal dining room and a large living room. There are 1920s era French doors into the sun room where our office and my study area will be. All of the plumbing fixtures as far as I can tell especially in the bathroom are original.

It has brand new appliances in the kitchen; gas stove, dishwasher, refrigerator, garbage disposal and even a washer and dryer. The garage is big enough for all of the tools that I drive around with in our 4Runner and even our motorcycles will fit.

I am so excited that I have been up since Wynn called at 9am, I think I shall crash after class and sleep until my class in the morning.

The next post will have the specifics on the Airstream and the price.

Yes I Know

2010-08-22T18:20:00.002-05:00

Yes I know that this is still an Airstream Blog and yes I have plenty of stories to tell, it's just that we've been so busy lately and things are moving so fast in the here and now. Honestly I'm afraid that if I don't post about the present right now I'll forget.

So I will be posting more Airstream stories soon and photos, but I have to wait for things to settle around here a bit. Once we find out if we get to move into the rent house we want and once we start preparations to move into said rent house I will catch back up with where I left off on the perils of living in an Airstream.

Oh, I will also post when the Airstream is for sale and for how much when the time comes and I think the time will come soon. Sorry about the hiatus, just give me some time to breathe and the stories will flow again.

So It's Not A Jetta After All

2010-08-22T18:04:00.001-05:00

My first week of class is officially over. I'm caught up with all of my homework and I have some reading to do for biology but I can do that at work tonight after the kiddos go to bed. Everything seems to be going better than expected, I'm thankful for that. It's been a confidence booster, I think I can do it this time and do it well instead of just half assing it like I've always done before.

Alright so, those of you who follow my private Facebook page already know what happened with the Jetta, but just in case you missed it here is a recap.

So we found the Jetta at Volkswagon of Tulsa over two weeks ago and we were told that all of the work that needed to be done to it would be done, however that turned out to not be the case. After ten days of not hearing from them at all, ten days that they were holding a very large down payment check, they finally called us and told us that it would be $5600 to fix the Jetta and that they were unwilling to do so. So we went and picked up the check and took our business elsewhere. It wasn't so much their refusal to fix the car that made us angry it was the fact that for ten days we knew nothing. Ten days and they couldn't spend two minutes on the phone to let us know what was going on. Then Wynn happened to look at the reviews for Volkswagon of Tulsa online and found that we were not the first customers to be extremely unhappy with their service.

We still needed a car and we weren't going to buy from them. Wynn looked online while I finished up a five hour shift at work and by the time I got home she had found another Jetta at a smaller dealership just down the road. We test drove it and like the Jetta before it just felt like crap. It felt like it had been driven into the ground. She happened to notice two Subaru WRX wagons on the lot and asked the salesman about them. He stated that they were good cars but that they had been street racers. Damn.

He then led us over to a Saab 9-2x. The Saab 9-2x was made by Subaru. It is basically a WRX with Saab badging. I love Saabs and Wynn loves Subarus, perfect. It was more than we could afford but we test drove it anyway. It was amazing, it felt like a car should feel, tight steering, smooth ride, effortless shifting and power. We decide to negotiate once we got back to the dealership.

The owner of the dealer ship met with us and was unwilling to take any less than what he had priced it at and we made it clear how much money we had loaned for the Jetta. He then offered to let us pay out the difference over the course of three months. Sold. Totally Sold.

We picked up the Saab the next day and took it to Oklahoma City to have it insured. No waiting on parts no bullshit. We have a second car and I think we're damned lucky that we didn't end up with that broken down Jetta instead.

Oh yeah and it's also a manual, so I guess I will still have to learn how to drive one, but for now I'm just happy to see the 4Runner parked next to a Saab in the driveway. Photos of our happy little car family will be posted soon, I just really need to wash the 4Runner first.

P.S. After we bought the Saab we went to look at an awesome little rent house. The paperwork is pending so I'll let ya'll know when I know. Hopefully that will be the next post.

That Was a Pleasant Surprise

2010-08-16T21:59:00.000-05:00

I went to my first class tonight, I was still nervous enough to forget my student ID and my parking permit, but I found a visitor spot and I didn't need my ID for class so that was good.

I was quite surprised to find that this math class starts at a low enough level that I actually understand it. I haven't understood a math class since middle school. I have always been terrified that I would finish everything else and fail college algebra right before graduation. I'm not afraid of that anymore. I found out that I will have to take one more zero credit class before I take college algebra but that it is for the best.

Tomorrow morning I have biology and lab and I must remember my parking permit because the metro campus has very little parking without it.

I feel better, I'm less nervous, somehow things feel right. Tomorrow after class I'll get an iced chai from Shades of Brown and go and get a hair cut from Julianna. Then I'll pick up Wynn from work (no the car still isn't ready) and we'll go look at houses and go by the dealership to see what is up. I'll order my text books and start organizing as best as I can for full on homework assaults Airstreamer style.

I Feel a Bit More Confident Now

2010-08-16T03:22:00.000-05:00

Yes, I'm posting again, and yes I'm still up. Luckily my first class tomorrow is at 5:30pm.

I feel a bit better now, I just spoke with a friend of mine that I haven't had a long conversation with in ages. I found out that she graduated with the same degree that I am shooting for at NSU. We became friends her senior year there when she was interning where I work but I never knew what her degree was in. She went a similar route as I, basics at TCC and degree from NSU and she was able to make me feel much better about going back to school.

She was an adult student like I am and I think that makes a difference. I could talk to college aged students all day and it wouldn't make me feel any better because I am no longer a college aged student and I can't really relate anymore.

I think I can actually do this now. I think once I get through these first nine hours successfully my college phobia will be gone.

She has just finished her masters and you know after talking with her about the difficulty of the classes she's taken I feel so much more confident. Will I get that nervous feeling in my stomach when I'm walking to class tomorrow? Yeah, I will but I think it will be more out of anticipation than nerves.

I can do this.

I will do this.

I will not look back on my failures and I will, for the first time, believe in myself.

Oh and more importantly, I will not skip class and will do my homework.

Thanks L. M. I'll call you and let you know how it goes.

Third Time's The Charm... I Hope.

2010-08-16T01:26:00.000-05:00

I'm really nervous right now. My first college class in four years starts tomorrow and even though it's zero credit math, I am terrified. I don't know why I think I've always been terrified of college, it's as if somehow I'm going to suddenly find out that I'm not as smart as I have always thought I was. I see all of these people with degrees and I think to myself, "my god if they can do it I sure as hell can", but now that I'm actually going back to school, again, I'm am petrified. What if I can't? What if I'm really an idiot and I've been kidding myself all of these years?

I started college at OSU in 2000 and I should have graduated in 2004. I used my partner's illness as an excuse to drop out in 2003. I could have finished, I was a Junior but I was terrified of taking my basics so I dropped out.

I went back the first time in 2006. I had a car wreck and used that as an excuse to quit again, I was commuting after all. Oddly enough Wynn was commuting with me and she was able to finish school despite the car wreck, even though it was our only car.

And now here it is 2010 ten years almost to the day that I started college the first time and I'm trying again. I have to finish this time, I have to, but I'm terrified that I won't. I'm afraid that I will start skipping class again or not doing my homework.

Wynn and my boss have done everything they can do to make sure that I finish this time. Wynn bought a second car and has decided that we will stay in Tulsa, get a house and sell the Airstream. My boss was able to arrange an awesome work schedule for me.

Now it's up to me, I hope I don't let them down.

Busy, Busy

2010-08-15T13:36:00.000-05:00

I know it's been several days since I have posted, we have been quite busy and I am still trying to put the last few years living in a tin can in the correct order to post. This week started on Friday for me as it generally does so even though it is only Sunday it has already been a long full week.

Friday I went to try and enroll at OSU Tulsa since I am already a student at OSU Stillwater, however I skipped my basics when I was there and so even though I am Junior I still have to take Freshman level courses. OSU Tulsa does not do courses that are below the Junior or Senior level so off to TCC. I've been at a four year university on and off for ten years and now I have to go to a community college? Yeah I'm getting over it and putting the ego in check, it's my own fault for dropping out.

So instead of starting class on August 23rd I am now starting school tomorrow. I have to go to two different campuses and I have night classes and day classes. Again, my fault for enrolling so late.

Wynn's Jetta is still at the dealership having repairs made, hopefully we'll have it this week and my class schedule won't make Wynn's work schedule more difficult.

We have found a couple of rent houses that we are really interested in and since I don't have to be in class all day and I don't have to work until 7pm on Friday we are going to spend this week finding a place to move into. We're having to rush a bit more since I am going back to class a week earlier than we had initially planned but we'll get it done.

Speaking of work schedules, this is one of the reasons I love my job, I have the most accommodating bosses. Starting Friday I will be working 3 twelve hour days a week with four hours here and there to make my 40 hour work week. So I have three days on four days off and I don't go to school on Fridays. So in effect the days I am off work I am in class and the days I am in class I am off work.

Hopefully within three years or less I will be done with my BS in Social Work and almost finished with my Masters and my licensing hours for my Counseling Certification.

We Have a New Four Wheeled Addition

2010-08-12T00:51:00.008-05:00

Well we finally did it after ten years of sharing a vehicle, we finally bought a second car. I'm serious we found a car for Wynn and actually bought it. We've been talking about buying a second car for years and we finally got serious about it this year. Wynn has been looking at cars for a while and I was beginning to wonder if she would ever find the perfect car. Today August 11th 2010 Wynn finally found her perfect car and we decided to buy it.

We were going to go down to Texas because Wynn had found the car she wanted down there, but she happened to check Autotrader right before we walked out the door and found a similar car here, at a dealership. So we thought we'd check out the car here and if it wasn't right then we'd go down to Texas.

So off to the VW dealership to check out the car. Turns out it had just been traded in today and they hadn't even finished the inspection. After some negotiation we got them to pull it off the rack and let us look at it. She wasn't pretty. The little old man that owned her had parked her under a tree and so the hood had some serious oxidation on it and there was some hail damage.

The asking price was $9800 which we thought was way too much and so we handed back the keys and got ready to road trip it down to Dallas. The sales manager who had not actually seen the car offered to take a look before we left and "see what he could do" about the price. We offered $6282 as is due to the extensive bodywork that would need to be done. He offered to do the bodywork for $7900 plus any engine work that would need to be done which would include replacing the timing belt and the water pump due to the mileage on the car. Deal.

So we bought the car. We handed them $1500 for the down payment and they offered $500 for Wynn's old Rodeo if we can get her running and get her here. They are going to repaint the hood and fix the hail dings in the roof and the trunk, they are also going to do the engine work and let us take her to our private mechanic to have her checked out.

We will not have the car until next week and the deal is over if she is not up to our specifications, but I have a feeling she will be. It feels good to have this over with.

Interestingly enough the sales manager's father in law is interested in buying our Airstream once we get a house.

What did we buy?

A Silver 2002 Volkswagon Jetta GLS TDI
Black Leather Interior
5 Speed Manual
Aluminum Rims
Rear A/C
Keyless Entry
Am/Fm CD (Soon to be upgraded)
Premium Sound (Soon to be upgraded)

We'll be upgrading the head lights and lenses
Tenting the windows (Immediately)
Custom wheels will be added later
We'll be dropping in a new stereo and taking the truck boxes out of the Rodeo and putting them in the trunk.
Remote start for cold days

By the way the TDI, if you don't know is VW's clean diesel engine, it gets 50 miles to the gallon and can easily be converted to biodiesel (we are currently looking into this). TDIs are extremely hard to find which was why we were willing to drive all the way to Texas.

Time for photographs. These are not of the actual car but I was able to find some of a similar car online. I will post photos of the actual car once it is ours.

2002 Jetta GLS TDI

Remember this is not the car we bought.

It's like Christmas in there, ooh somebody's check engine
light is on.

And this translates to cheaper fuel costs.

Black leather interior, yes I know this car is actually an automatic
but it was as close as I could find.

Gratuitous TDI stock engine photo.

All of our audio work, the remote start and the window tenting will be done at our favorite audio shop in Oklahoma City Lower Soundz on North May Ave, across the street from the Nichols Hills Starbucks. They did an awesome job on our 4Runner and we will always do business with them. Here is their website http://www.lowersoundzinc.com/. If you live in Oklahoma and you can drive to Okc it is totally worth it. I actually plan on posting about what we went through with our 4Runner's audio and how helpful they were.

P.S. I can't drive a stick shift so that will be yet another adventure that I shall be posting about in the future.

Well Maybe Not

2010-08-10T12:32:00.000-05:00

Wynn's schedule varies a lot, it sucks. We make plans to do something and they don't work out. I know it's not her fault but the type of work she does. So it seems since it's getting close to the time I have to go to work that we won't be looking at the rent house she found today. The upside to this is that I have the next two days off, so whenever she gets off work we can go check it out. Except for part of Thursday, I absolutely have to go enroll on Thursday.

On another note, my boss is trying to fix up a back to school schedule for me and he is talking about putting me on three 12hr days, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and then coming in for a couple of hours here and there to get the rest of my 40hr work week in. Sounds cool right? Yeah it does I just have to make sure that it works with Wynn's schedule. I'd like to have some time off with her from time to time, but I'm sure she and I can work something out. I hope.

Tuesday's Child

2010-08-08T11:55:00.002-05:00

*If you want to know, just ask a Tuesday's Child... Yeah that's right, I am in fact a Tuesday's child. Wynn was a Sunday's child, if you're curious.

Okay, that's enough of that. What does that have to do with anything at all?

Tuesday of course.

On Tuesday we are going to look at a rent house. Yay! Maybe, just maybe, it will be the one and we can put down a deposit on and be in by the end of the week. Oh I would be so happy, we wouldn't have to pay another full month's rent on the slot for the tin can. No more early morning propane runs.

I'll let ya'll know when I know. Keep your fingers crossed.

*Line from Tuesdays Children, Indigo Girls 1986ish.

Craig's List Again

2010-08-07T14:15:00.000-05:00

So we've decided to rent a house for six months until we can get our credit ratings up high enough to buy a house. I think the house that we are looking at will still be on the market by then. If not we'll find something better. So it's back to Craig's List we go. We had found a couple really nice homes there to rent at reasonable rates but we just weren't ready to make that commitment at the time. I wish we had been, we looked at a really cool one at one point that both of us fell in love with, but it just wasn't to be. We need to find a place that will be comfortable for Wynn and I and the dogs, so it needs to have a nice yard with a good strong fence and hopefully it will fit into to our specified time period for homes (nothing built after 1935). More on this quest later.

Oh My Life of Humidity...

2010-08-04T17:47:00.003-05:00

That's not my quote up there, but I like it and it works as a great title for this post.

It's 103F here today with a heat index of 106F, Oklahoma in August horrible. I thought it felt quite warm in here today even with the new air conditioner going at full blast. I mean I'm sweating a bit and the dogs are all spread out on the linoleum floor under the A/C but 103F? Yowza! I really wanted to light up Ol' Smokey and cook some nice organic brats for dinner this evening. I'm not sure I'll be doing that now. We might just pick up some junk for dinner while we're out doing the laundry this evening, or I might do one of my famous 1am BBQ sessions. More on that later, sounds like another story to write up.

Oh and by the way, this is one of the reasons that I don't mind not having a functioning hot water heater. Rinsing off in a shower with water straight out of the ground is quite refreshing on a nasty day like today.

Heat example

High today in Northeastern Oklahoma
103F, wait a minute, remember the heat index? Ahem, 106F

High today in Atlanta Georgia
92F, I'm jealous.

High today in Phoenix Arizona
107F, but no humidity.

Dust Bowl 1930's Oklahoma

So you take the heat from the Southwest and you mix it with the humidity of the Southeast and welcome to in August in Oklahoma.

*Post title is from Late Bloom a song by Amy Ray from the album Stag 2001 Daemon Records.

Famous Airstream Owners

2010-08-04T17:23:00.002-05:00

I saw this list on the Airforums site a few weeks ago and figured it was pretty complete. Sean Penn once owned an Airstream also but I heard it was destroyed in a wildfire in California.

Arthur Godfery
Fatty Arbuckle
Gene Shepard
Lawrence Welk
Ben Blue
Joe Lewis
Joe Bolton
Veronica Lake
Gale Storm
Anne Jefferies
Milton Supman
Zazu Pitts
Leo G Carol
Manny, Moe & Jack (shared)
Jack Cones
Jame Gumb
Ed Gein
Billie Thomas
Danny Thomas
Maurice Jarre
Andy Devine
Rufe Davis
Edgar Buchanan
Gunilla Freeman Hutton
Slim Pickens
Gertrude Hoffman
Virginia Christine
Randy Whipple
Ann Southern
Frank Yensan
David Jansen
Jonathan Harris
Bill Mumy
Veda Ann Borg
Walter Pidgeon
Sterling Haydin
Art Linkletter
Howard Hughes
Matthew McConaughey
Eddie Vetter
Lance Armstrong
Ted Cassidy
Mark Harmon

Well and of course Wally Byam the most famous of all.

God Bless America?

2010-08-04T16:33:00.001-05:00

So this happened toward the end of winter, I think actually the first time was during the Super Bowl. It was still cold at night and warm during the day, but cool enough over all that the air conditioner was not running in the tin can. While Airstreams are pretty sound proof when compared with other RVs there are times when you do hear everything. The perfect conditions are as follows; the air conditioner is off and the noisy party is walking right next to your trailer.

As I've mentioned before, I work at night and sleep during the day, this can be complicated by noisy neighbors but I have become able to sleep through just about anything. Well almost anything. I was sound asleep on Super Bowl Sunday with the dogs curled up around me like furry hot water bottles, it was one of those nice sleeps you have when the air is cold but you have a nice warm blanket to cuddle up under. When suddenly it happened, something jolted me out of my sleep and the dogs began to bark tentatively.

What was it you ask? A loud, drunken rendition of the chorus of God Bless America. Just the chorus nothing else. And as loud as it was the singer in question was stumbling through the space between my fence and my neighbor's trailer. He was just wondering around singing God Bless America at the top of his lungs at 9am.

I thought I was losing my mind, seriously. Was I really hearing this? Was this a dream? So I called Wynn at work to tell her about it, if only because I wanted to see if I was dreaming or if she would mention it when she got home. You guessed it, I wasn't dreaming, she asked me about it when she got home. Great, I kind of wished I'd been dreaming because the other alternative was that Airstream living had finally gotten to me and I was losing my mind.

The next day Wynn was home and off work and at 9am guess what woke her up. The drunken chorus of God Bless America being sung drunkenly at full volume. Yes! I'm not crazy, or either we're both now crazy. So being the type A person she is, Wynn called the office and they went on a hunt for the drunken song bird. He was real and we weren't crazy. They told him to keep it down and we didn't hear him again.

So about a week later I'm out in the yard emptying the black tank before a cold snap and I see this man wondering around in the dark with a light on his hat and one on each bicep and a light strapped to his dog. Okay cool, he likes to see where he's going, great. Living in an RV park you get used to having a few people around that are just a few bricks shy. It's part of every day life. Fine, live and let live. I finish what I'm doing and usher the dogs inside before they can bark at this guy.

I don't think anything of it and I decide to go up to the shower house. There's the light man, dressed like a frontiersman, you know, coon skin cap, scraggly beard, buckskin jacket with fringe and this fluffy little dog. Okay great, cute dog. As I head to the shower I over hear him complaining to one of the guys that work at the park that someone made him stop singing in the mornings. You guessed it, this was Mr. God Bless America himself.

I found out later that he started to deteriorate after a few days and the police had to take him out of here. I felt bad, he was just trying to live life the only way he knew how. I think that's what we're all trying to do out here.

Pseudo Friday

2010-08-03T02:37:00.001-05:00

It is officially Pseudo Friday, even though I just got off work and haven't gone to bed yet. This will be the first time that my last shift doesn't bleed over into the morning of my day off in a very long time. Generally I would got to work at 11pm and get off around 7am on Wednesday morning, the first of two days off. Now I will actually get off tonight. I'm not sure what to do with myself. Oh yeah, I suppose I could take care of the laundry monster that's making the Airstream bunk/ hallway almost impassable. And I suppose I could actually continue the Airstream stories. Maybe if it's cool enough I could cook out instead of reheating cheap prepackaged food or running out for fast food. Alright never mind I have plenty to do and since Dakota is all new and improved now I don't have to worry about leaving him unattended. His stitches are out and the cone of shame is no more, I guess I'm out of excuses. Ooh I could get a haircut, I really need one of those, ahem after the laundry of course.

I'm Doing it Again

2010-08-02T12:37:00.000-05:00

I'm reading old houseblogs when I should be blogging here. Today it's the Bangor Bungalow, I can't help it... we have a bungalow of our own in another city and we are looking to buy one here. It's so easy for me to get distracted when there are so many people doing such neat things to bring their old homes back to the era in which they were built. So I'm reading this and bookmarking that and just futzing around in general today. I will pick up where I left off with the Oklahoma Blizzard, just bear with me I'm more in the mood to move ahead than to remember.

Sustainability

2010-08-01T12:16:00.004-05:00

I think the hardest part about Airstreaming full time is my urge to become sustainable. Sure we buy recycled and organic as often as we can afford to and my cupboards are stocked with non-perishable foods, but we depend way too much on Whole Foods and Farmers' Markets for foods that we could grow ourselves if we had the space. Yes, yes, I'm yet another person jumping on the sustainability bandwagon. I grew up with a garden and later with beef cattle, I ate farm fresh eggs, butter and milk and I knew where my food was coming from if it didn't come from my own home. Now that's not to say that I don't know where half of my food comes from. I know when I buy meat from the woman who runs a farm outside of town that it's coming from her farm. Or if I buy veggies from one of the farmers at the farmers' market I trust that they have grown them in their own gardens. But there are certain things, like what I made for lunch today that come prepackaged.

Sure I didn't run and get fast food but it did come out of a package.

Kielbasa and sour kraut, the kielbasa came from a big box store and was made by one of those infamous meat makers that all of the grocery stores stock, the sour kraut came from a can. Now realistically I know the fine art of sausage making is well beyond my abilities, but that is something I can buy from the farmers' market. Also I am trying to get rid of prepackaged meat, and it's better to eat it than it is to throw it away. But the sour kraut realistically I could buy my own cabbage and pickle my own, but in the Airsream I just don't have the room or the means. Eventually I would like to get to the point that we are growing a small garden and putting up produce from that garden for the winter so that our cabinets aren't full of food that came from wherever with scary chemicals in them, that we just pour into a pan to reheat and serve.

Thaw

2010-08-01T11:03:00.000-05:00

We eventually thawed out from the blizzard but it was staying really cold at night. It was in fact cold enough that our pipes stayed frozen pretty much until March. Towards the end of the winter it got cold enough that pipes froze and burst all over the city. In fact the sprinkler pipes at my work burst and brought down a ceiling. During that time our pipes at the Aistream were still frozen, not much had changed about that until the thaw. Last winter we'd gotten away with our pipes intact and we had just assumed we would this winter too. Not so. Remember that there is an oil heater running off an extension cord plugged into a surge protector in the bathroom and that's where all of the pipes are. So it seemed like a good idea at the time and I'd still run it the same way this winter if I had to.

I had come home from an overnight shift and it was still dark and cold outside when I went to bed. At approximately ten am or so I awoke feeling warm like the sun was shining in on me. It felt all warm and cozy so I just kept my eyes closed and hoped I'd fall back asleep. I then became aware of something, an odd noise keeping me awake. It sounded like a pressure washer in the bathroom or behind the trailer. So I leaned over the side of the bunk and waited for my eyes to adjust.

I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The bathroom was flooding, and the flood was creeping up the sides of the surge protector. I ran outside and opened the trunk first just so I'd know what had gone wrong. Was it a fitting (we can fix that) or was it a burst pipe (we can't fix that)? I could tell that it was a PVC pressure fitting that twisted on and off the copper, but I couldn't twist it down tight enough to stop the high pressure spray that was hitting me in the face and spraying into the trailer, so I just turned off the water and cleaned up inside, the surge protector was unharmed and nothing shorted out.

Hottest Day of the Year?

2010-08-01T00:12:00.001-05:00

So apparently it was the hottest day of the year today, well yesterday, and the Airstream stayed pretty cool. I didn't really notice how hot it was until I went to work. I guess our air conditioner isn't set for this kind of heat and we can't get to the controls until Monday. Yay! I get to sweat for eight hours tomorrow too. I can't wait. So my first day back was good. I only knew two of the kids, but I wasn't too surprised. I work in a homeless shelter so kids are always coming and going and after being gone for ten days I would have been disappointed if all of the same ones were still there. I like to see them change and progress and move on and it saddens me when for whatever reason they get stuck. So it was nice to only see a couple of familiar faces. Change is good especially in my line of work, and no two days are ever the same. I love my job, I do, that's one thing I can say. I love what I do. I don't make much money and it can be extremely stressful but in the end youth work is something I will do until I die, even after I retire. This job is the only reason we chose to stay and live in the Airstream. I'd never found a career path that I love until I found youth work and Wynn and I decided that it is certainly something worth staying for.

And Life Starts Again

2010-07-31T12:06:00.000-05:00

Well my vacation is officially over even after ten days off I could have used more time. We were able to accomplish a few things. Dakota had his surgery and is now fully healed, he still can't jump onto the bunk yet, but I'm not sure if that is because of the huge pile of laundry we didn't get to or because of his incision. I got the kitchen cleaned up which was no small feat. I found out whether I would be working in a different department (no, apparently finishing my degree is more important than I thought it was). We decided that I needed to go back to school, I'm still waiting to hear whether or not I can go back to overnights by the time school starts before I enroll. We also decided that Wynn needs to start back to grad school. We decided to buy a second car to facilitate this, this will also help with our credit scores. We decided to buy a house here and sell the Airstream, more on that when I know more. We found out that we fall just short of qualifying for a home loan, and we are trying to figure out how to remedy that until we can build our credit scores up, more on this later. We will be building our credit, starting now, but in the mean time we are trying to figure out how to get out of the Airstream and into the house we want, right now. Tricky very tricky.

I'm not sure how I feel about going back to work this afternoon after being so close to moving into a higher paying position that would have started Monday. The vacation helped, giving me time to deal with my frustration, but I'm still a bit bummed. However, if I can go back to overnights by the time classes start going to school full time will be a lot easier than it would have been if I'd gotten the 9-5 job.

Even after ten days I feel like I need "just one more day" to finish everything, I think I'd feel that way no matter how much time off I had taken. I'm pretty sure that if I had today off I'd be thinking the same thing tomorrow. I love most aspects of my life. I love Wynn and I love our dogs. I love my job even thought I thought I was ready to move on. But sometimes being an adult sucks.

Yeah You Caught Me

2010-07-30T22:01:00.000-05:00

So I only updated about Dakota and his stitches and I didn't update about the loan stuff. Yeah, busted I know. Um... I really don't want to talk about it at the moment. Suffice it to say we are still trying to figure things out at the moment and when I know more, probably, hopefully this coming week I shall post about it. So we'll leave it at that for the moment. I'm currently reading the Life In a Prairie Box blog to keep my mind off of it.

Cone of Shame

2010-07-30T20:13:00.001-05:00

Dakota's stitches came out today and he is ecstatic. He bathes himself much like a cat and has been unable to do so for almost ten days. I guess he has felt extremely dirty as of late, he is certainly doing a lot of bathing. He's a happy dog and that's what matters.

Dakota Benson 2004

Oh it's the "I love you mom" face.

Late Breaking News

2010-07-30T13:25:00.001-05:00

We have an appointment at 3pm to find out whether or not we can get a loan. Yay! Step one. Oh and Dakota- Benson would like me to tell you that Wynn is on the phone with the vet to see if we can get his stitches out today. He is very hopeful that he will no longer have to wear the cone of shame.

Well Will It?

2010-07-30T12:25:00.001-05:00

So we've found a house that we really like and the price is right. We are starting the process of getting a home loan hopefully today, I'm still waiting on Wynn to get home so that we can go meet our loan counselor. We are ready to move and I think we both feel that we have lived this way for long enough. As you can tell by the Carson House blog we love older homes, we have vowed that we would never live in anything newer than a 1930s home and so far we have stuck to that. Our home 190 miles away was built in 1925 and the house we a currently looking to buy was built in 1918. There is a lot of work and that goes into living in an older home and really it's best that you have a good sense of humor, but the character of the home makes up for the work and minor annoyances that go along with it.

This house needs work, it needs less work than other homes we have looked at and even less work than the house we still have. The carpets need to be ripped up and the wood floors need to be refinished. It needs central heat and air and possibly some electrical work. The rooms all need a fresh coat of paint and the library needs some serious seventies panel removal work done. The kitchen counter tops need replacing and the cabinets need refacing but these are all things that we can do while we are in it, well except maybe the floors. The garage apartment is move in ready except for a new shower surround and the yard is the perfect size for the Airstream dogs.

Will this be our house?

I really hope it will I am getting tired of finding a house and then not ending up buying the house. After the Carson house I'm a bit more gun shy and a lot more jaded than I once was, but here's to hope and new beginnings.

Full Disclosure

2010-07-30T12:12:00.000-05:00

For the sake of full disclosure I must make one point very clear. This will be a hybrid blog of sorts. Once I finish recounting the two years we spent in the Airstream (The Tin Can) and the time we've spent as we wait and hope through the home buying process this will become a house blog. I will document the wait and the stressful steps it takes to buy a home, but as it stands as I write this post we are still in the Airstream. I am sitting the bunk with the dogs that have just come in from marking their gravel yard and until that changes and I am sitting in the living room of an old house this will still be an Airstream blog.

Once we have purchased a home this blog will transition with us. It will turn from RV park antics and Airstream moments to choosing paint colors and pulling up carpets. There will be photos of the progress and the happy homeowners and our pets. I'm sure I will still referrence our time here and remember things that I have left out of previous Airstreamer posts.

False Start

2010-07-30T12:05:00.000-05:00

At one point we thought we had found the perfect house. We had been inside it on several occasions, and even my friend Matt and I used to visit after we'd come off of an over night shift and just sit on the porch for a while. It was in an awesome downtown historic neighborhood. It had a huge carriage house apartment for us to rent and the second story of the main house had it's own kitchen, so we could have rented that too. It was perfect, it needed some work but I was in love. I still feel a bit down when I think about the fact that we just didn't move fast enough. I just hope it's in good hands.

The 1915 Carson House... yes I still pine away.

Oklahoma Blizzard

2010-07-30T11:34:00.000-05:00

So we made it through the first winter and summer and the fall was fairly uneventful aside from some entertaining RV park antics that I have recounted in the previous posts. The second winter was colder than the first and we could certainly feel the difference in our little tin can. Our water hose and pipes froze up almost immediately and stayed that way for most of the winter. We had to use jugs of water to flush the toilet and to do dishes but all in all we adjusted to it very quickly. The sewer tank only froze up once, when we ran out of RV antifreeze, yes they make it and it's best to use it frequently during the winter.

This was also the year of the huge Oklahoma blizzard during Christmas. We had gone home to our house to be near Wynn's family and to take a break from the freezing conditions in the Airstream and we got stranded. I missed several days of work as did Wynn. Our roommate at the house got stranded in a McDonald's parking lot on Christmas Eve and we couldn't dig out our 4wd truck to go and rescue him.

When we finally made it back to the Airsteam everything was fine, the furnace was running and we had enough propane in the second tank to make it for a few days without refilling. It was quite cozy looking from the outside with all of that snow snuggled up around it's base. Even so we were glad that we had been at our house during the worst of it.

Bang Bang

2010-07-30T11:24:00.000-05:00

There are certain things you become accustomed to living full time in an RV park. You get your share of unseemly neighbors and you know that during the winter you will freeze during the night. These things just become a part of day to day life. You also know that if you don't run your air conditioner twenty four hours a day during the summer you will boil and that the occasional wasp will find it's way into the bathroom at the most inopportune times.

Depending on where your park is located you may be surrounded by good neighborhoods. I have mentioned before that we live really close to an airport, this is a general sign that your neighborhood probably isn't that great. Ours certainly isn't. There is a mobile home park across the street and a sewage treatment plant behind us. A major highway runs less than a half a mile away. The land the park is on was taken over by imminent domain in the seventies so no permanent structures can stand on it. This was done to build a reservoir to keep the nearby flood plains from flooding. So all in all it's not a great neighborhood to live in. There are gunshots and police sirens on a nightly basis, or what I find even more creepy, gun shots and no police sirens.

This isn't the worst neighborhood in the city, in fact it's nowhere near that, but it took some getting used to.

The Brothers

2010-07-30T11:09:00.000-05:00

So we made it through the summer with the sort of working air conditioner and we made it through the meth lab incident and the shady neighbors. So on to fall and the changes that always come with the falling leaves. New rental neighbors, just what I always wanted. I awoke one afternoon to voices outside my open window. Something was being said about the rental trailer next door looking like a "new beginning". Okay there are plenty of great reasons for this, maybe someone just got out of a bad relationship, maybe someone's sister just left her abusive husband, maybe someone just got out of prison for a nonviolent crime. I'm the first person to say that we lock too many people up in this country and mandatory minimums are unjust and unfair.

So my new neighbors moved in, two brothers, the third brother also lived here but in another part of the park with his wife. His wife had rented the trailer for his brothers to move into after they got out of prison. Alright fine, I can live with that. They were nice enough, the older brother drank twenty four hours a day but he seemed harmless and the younger one seemed to be a nice guy just trying to get back on his feet.

I went to do some laundry one afternoon and was stopped by one one of my female neighbors up at the office. She had asked if I lived in the Airstream next to the two brothers. Yeah I sure did and they seemed nice enough. She then proceeded to tell me that one of them, had stopped her at the dumpster to tell her that he had just gotten out of prison and had been watching her for weeks. Oh great, two women living next to a man that stalks women and who just got out of prison for who knows what. I had just assumed it was a drug charge or a DUI, could I have been wrong? So Wynn decided to call the office and the office security decided to tell the brothers that their neighbors had called about the threats made to one of the other neighbors. Nice confidentiality there security guy.

Eventually the older brother moved out so that the younger brother could move in his "Old Lady", classy. She was very nice and so was the younger brother. They eventually moved not long after winter thawed to spring and I didn't give it much though.

A few weeks later I noticed that the office kept moving the trailer out and back in to the slot next to us. So I happened to be talking to our neighbor the Harley mechanic and his wife and found out that it was a roach trailer. Yay! Just what I always wanted, happy spring to me.

After that I was reading the news paper at the end of my shift waiting on my relief to show and noticed a mug shot of a beat up man. You guessed it, the nice younger brother had been arrested for assault. I'd hate to know what the other guy looked like.

Breaking Bad... Southern Style

2010-07-30T10:37:00.002-05:00

So if you've seen the show Breaking Bad you know that RVs can seem like a good place to cook meth. Thanks a lot Hollywood as if my neighbors needed any help thinking up ways to do things illegally. In theory an RV meth lab does sound pretty legit. You know you can drive it off into the middle of nowhere and run everything off of a generator. Once you've finished you just clean it out and park it in storage or your suburban driveway. Okay sure, I understand how a screen writer can think this is a genius idea. Let me just say that if something is on television there will always be someone who tries to make life imitate art, they will inevitably fail miserably.

One morning after working an overnight shift I pulled into the RV park ready to let the dogs out and go to bed. I was not expecting to see a plethora of cop cars and news vans haphazardly parked across from the park office and I was certainly not expecting to see cops wondering around in hazmat suits. I knew what it all meant as soon as I saw them. Someone had been watching way too much Breaking Bad, but apparently they had not been paying attention.

Renting a stationary RV in an RV park right across from the office is not the same genius idea as buying a motor home and driving out into the middle of nowhere to cook meth. Accidentally falling asleep and letting it all catch on fire isn't either. Oh, and having your kids with you, yeah nice one genius. If you happen to do all of these things and the police show up don't try and start a stand off with a small calibur handgun. Just surrender, unless you really want that Darwin Award. Let's face it, you certainly deserve it.

I will say right now that no one was seriously injured or killed in the above incident and the news coverage was mercifully discreet about the whole thing. Our genius went to jail and I assume his kids went to social services or to a relative. By the time I woke up that afternoon, the trailer had been towed off by the police and there were no signs of what had gone on that morning. Life went back to normal and so far this hasn't happened again.

Roach Trailer

2010-07-30T10:12:00.001-05:00

No, I'm not talking about the kind you find in ash trays from time to time. That's what I was hoping it meant too. No such luck, I'm talking about the nasty kind, with six legs. You know the ones that could survive a nuclear holocaust. Yep, cockroaches. So apparently you have to look out for "roach trailers", generally these are the rentals that stay at the park permanently. Sometimes you can just tell by looking. There are signs. Just living next to a rental trailer is cause enough for alarm. I've heard horror stories about how the walls in some of these rentals have been black with roaches and no one could understand how the tenants could sleep inside at night. The worst part is the fact that the park used to fumigate the trailers where they sat, which would mean that the roaches would flee to the neighboring trailers. Now at least they pull them off somewhere to do it.

Cats

2010-07-30T10:03:00.001-05:00

There are cats everywhere at our park. I've never seen so many cats in one place. Apparently just before we moved the tent camper here there had been a crazy cat lady living in our original spot. She was an older woman and from what we could tell she had started to deteriorate mentally at some point while staying here. From what I could gather she had about seventy cats living in a very small RV. These weren't your well manicured Fancy Feast eating cats either. These were your mangy feral type cats that would do anything to survive. They had somehow worn holes through the floor of the trailer and would come and go as they pleased. None of them were spayed or neutered so they multiplied exponentially. So eventually animal control and the police department were called out to remove this poor soul and her cats. The cats did not go quietly. Sure they were able to catch some of them, but the rest escaped into the wooded area a few feet away.

In the aftermath we have roaming cats everywhere. Things are better than they were two years ago however they are still there and sometimes you can hear them fighting in the woods. The biggest sign that they are thriving is that each time I go to the shower house there is a new kitten that someone has rescued. Let me put that into perspective for you. Two years ago there was one shower house cat, now there are five.

Rear Window

2010-07-29T23:36:00.000-05:00

The window in the bunk gives me a perfect view of the neighbors. It was a lot more entertaining when it was a rental slot, but also quite unsettling. Our first rent-a-neighbor was a middle aged hard partying couple and a kid that didn't seem to be theirs but did seem to be underage. They had people over at all hours and it made it difficult to sleep during the day. I work third shift so sleeping during the day is essential. The couple looked like they had started partying at a Van Halen concert and forgotten to stop.

They were loud and they fought a lot with each other and their guests. Towards the end of their stay we were convinced that they were making meth. It wouldn't have been their first time in this RV park. I remember one cold fall night they had their heater screaming at full blast and their windows and roof vents open. I'm not sure why they would need so much ventilation if they weren't cooking. When I say cooking I'm not talking about dinner.

They left quickly the next morning.

Neighbors

2010-07-29T23:31:00.000-05:00

All in all we've gotten pretty lucky with our neighbors during our time here. I've mentioned Susan and her husband, I can honestly say that they were the best neighbors that we have had in two years. I still miss them sometimes. We also had a traveling insurance man and his pet corgi who lived on the other side of us, he was very nice also but he didn't stay long. After he moved on we then had a young couple from Alabama, they were also quite nice. The wife was from I believe Germany and from time to time you'd hear her sobbing on the phone to her family, I hope by now the longing has lessened for her a bit now that they have also moved.

Once we moved into the fenced slot our neighbors changed a bit. There was the guy who just stored his fifth wheel next door for a long time. When he finally came back he moved slots, we thought at the time he didn't appreciate living next to the lesbian couple, he certainly gave us some odd looks and was unfriendly enough. On the other side of him lives the Harley Davidson mechanic and his wife, both very nice people. They always keep an eye on our place when we are out of town and they always talk with us when we see them.

Our old slot became a place to park rental trailers for a while. Our RV park rents RVs to tenants without background checks so you can get some really nasty people. I have checked the sex offender registry and well to be honest, it's not pretty.

Summer Breeze Makes Me Feel... Tense

2010-07-29T23:11:00.000-05:00

So we started having issues with the air conditioner. The biggest problem with having things repaired on an RV is that you have to have them towed into a shop. Yeah, that wouldn't work for us, we live here and I don't think they'd have let us live in the shop. So we checked around and found a mobile RV repair man. We also found out that unfortunately he was the only game in town and he could charge whatever he wanted.

I've noticed that as a woman when I take my car to a mechanic I can tell if he's a crook just by how he treats me. If he treats me like an equal and seems to quote fair prices then he's not a crook and he can work on my car. If he talks down to me and treats me like a "mark" then guess what I can get in my car and drive somewhere else. If I use this technique enough I eventually find a mechanic that doesn't treat me like I'm a moron just because I'm a woman. That works great because generally there are many mechanics in any given town.

So we called the mobile RV repair man. He showed up in a box truck with a cherry picker attached, which was good because he was a really large man and I didn't want him crawling around on the roof of my Airstream. The Airstream roofs have weak spots and if you don't know where they are or just don't care you can do some serious damage. This guy didn't seem like the type who would care.

Wynn and I knew he was going to be trouble. The second he saw that we were two women we could see his eyes light up. He had that look in his eye like he could empty our wallets and we'd thank him for it. To him we were "marks" just because we weren't men. He was the type of man that scratches and snorts and spits while talking to you. He was all pit stains and beer belly. An utterly disgusting and chauvinistic man. I wanted to vomit just being near him, you could smell the misogyny wafting off of him like B.O.

He had a helper and it was the helper that did all of the work. The chauvinist stayed on the ground while telling us how we needed an new unit and how much it would be and that he could install it. All this without actually looking at the unit itself. His helper quietly took off the air conditioner shroud and removed a very large mud dauber nest and a ton of fall leaves. He then replaced the shroud and turned on the now working air conditioner all while his boss gave us outlandish part and labor rates. $1000 for a new air conditioner, they only run about $600. $1000 for the labor. Seriously? Come on man, we're not stupid.

We ended up paying for the debris removal and sending him on his way both of us needing a shower after just being near him and vowing to never use him again for anything.

Sorry, I Can't Hear a Damned Thing!

2010-07-29T22:47:00.002-05:00

Spring melts quickly into summer in Oklahoma and living in an Airstream is like living in a beer can. When it's cold inside the shiny aluminum skin even sweats like one. Also if it's over 75F outside it's around 90F inside. It's not really a problem RV air conditioners will freeze you out. In fact I'm freezing right now under a blanket and the current temperature is almost 90F outside after dark. Though that might be attributed to the fact that the air conditioner is almost directly above me in the bunk. I'm sure Wynn who is in the living room would tell you that she's still a bit warm but I haven't asked her.

The problem with RV air conditioners is that even though they are very good at what they do, they are also quite loud. The older they are the louder they are. Our air conditioner during our first summer was original to the Airstream so it was approximately 37 years old. We live near an airport and when I say it sounded like an airplane taking off I'm not kidding. It was cool though because it ran on a thermostat like the air condition in a house and would kick off once it got to a certain temperature, though it sometimes had trouble kicking back on.

That should have been our first sign that it was on it's last leg and it was but we couldn't afford to do anything about it at the time, so we babied it as best we could and prayed to the air conditioning gods that it would just make through the summer. Which it did, sort of. Let's just say the air conditioner that is freezing me out right now is not the same one that came with our Airstream, but that's another story.

Sleeping Arrangements

2010-07-29T22:07:00.000-05:00

Before I move on I think it's best that I go over the layout of our Airstream. As I've mentioned it's thirty-two feet long, which is quite large as RVs go. It doesn't have any slide outs nor is it very wide. It's sort of like a large hallway with a living room at the front and a bathroom at the rear. There is a joke among Airstreamers that Land Yachts come with a bowling alley. I use the term living room very lightly as you'll soon see. There were many different layouts for Airstreams and still are our's is a rear bath with a midship twin bunk. Here's the problem Wynn, myself and the dogs cannot fit in a twin bed, so the living room is essentially another bedroom. I sleep in the bunk just in front of the bathroom, which has some interesting consequences and Wynn sleeps on the goucho or fold out bed in the living room. The goucho is also about the same size as a twin bed. Suffice it to say Wynn and I have not slept in the same bed in a very long time, it's taken some time to adjust after years of sleeping with someone next to you.

In the bunk area is an amazing amount of storage. There is a huge closet, an abundance of overhead storage that remind me of an airplane and a very deep built in dresser. It's quite nice and all of our clothes fit, with a little work. There are also closets on both sides between the bathroom and the bunk, oil heaters are hidden very nicely in them.

Between the bunk and the living room is the kitchen with a huge pantry, so huge in fact I'm not sure what all we have stored in it after two years. The furnace takes up some of the under cabinet space but there is still plenty of room. We have a double stainless steel sink and of course the refrigerator and the little dorm sized freezer.

You've noticed I've left out the bathroom. The bathroom is quite spacious and everything works together nicely. It also has an amazing amount of storage. You wouldn't think that a couple of butches need a lot of bathroom storage, but we do.

The problem with sleeping next to a bathroom aside from the obvious "traffic" that can occur is the fact that with any RV human waste sits in a holding tank until it is emptied. Some RVs can be used with the tanks open but Airstreams at least ours tend to clog up if you do that. So especially during the summer there is a smell, it's not too horrible but it's there. As long as you empty the tank as soon as it needs to be and you keep pouring your eco friendly chemicals down the toilet it's not really that bad. Trust me I know exactly when the tank needs to be emptied, even in my sleep.

Spring Fool

2010-07-29T21:50:00.000-05:00

Eventually winter thaws to spring and the blanket of snow melts to reveal wild flowers and new life. We made it through our first winter and I was happy to store the oil heaters and turn off the furnace for good. With spring comes pollen and even as allergic as I am I can't help but open the windows while I'm sleeping, though I regret it when I wake up. I love spring, I'm a spring fool. I've never appreciated spring as much as I do living in an Airstream. Spring is a time when it's cool enough that you don't have to run the air conditioner and so it's comfortable and most of all quiet inside the tin can. The original air conditioner did work and ran on a thermostat but I for one wasn't looking forward to turning it on. I don't know I guess I'm just not comfortable with things that run full time on electricity. I've never been. I'm not too comfortable with things that run on propane either which is why I was ecstatic when I could turn off the furnace and not have to worry about it blowing us sky high. It's perfectly safe, however I'm just weird about things like that.

Spring for me is reassuring because most things happen without incident. It feels safe, it feels like peace.

Current Events

2010-07-29T19:16:00.000-05:00

Wynn is taking a half day off tomorrow so that we can go see about a home loan. It has taken a long time for us to decide to stay here and quite a few false starts. Last night we sat down and did some figuring and realized that buying a home would save us a lot of money even with us keeping our other house. It's a nice relief to know that we probably won't be spending another cold winter here in the Airstream but I will miss some aspects of living in such a unique way. I will break in with updates to this process as they come along and when we know for sure that we are moving I will post the Airstream for sale. We would love to keep her but there just won't be room at the house we are looking to buy. I hope that we can find her a good home with someone who takes her places and keeps her well maintained. They day we move out and the day she is sold I will probably shed a tear or two. If it weren't for her I wouldn't have been able to finally appreciate the things I love in life.

Look Out Below

2010-07-29T18:36:00.000-05:00

At the end of our first winter we had a bit of an ice storm it was beautiful and also unnerving. We were glad that we had purchased a 4wd truck a few years before, as were our employers because neither of us missed a day of work.

Our slot is actually quite pretty it's fenced, which I have mentioned before and has a bit of grass. There is also a very robust vine that has taken a liking to the chain link fencing and provided us some much appreciated privacy. The focal point though is the large tree that sits in the middle of our slot and provides shade for us as well as our neighbors. It's wonderful during the summer and it's beautiful during the fall especially since our park has a raking service that takes care of the thousands of leaves that carpet our yard.

During the ice storm the tree was glazed like everything else, we only thought to worry about a branch breaking loose and coming through the roof. Who knew we'd have to worry about anything else? The ice storm finally broke and the tree started to thaw. I had just come home from an overnight shift, as had Wynn and we were both sleeping soundly with the dogs, when suddenly we were jolted awake by what sounded like branches hitting the roof. I was freaking out thinking that either our beautiful Airstream would be dented beyond repair or that one of those branches would fall through into the trailer.

Wynn was brave, she is always brave. She opened the front door and peeked out. It turned out that the ice that had glazed the tree was now falling in hard jagged chunks onto us and the ground. It was as if someone was pouring big heavy chunks of broken glass out of the sky. It lasted for hours, during which we couldn't leave the Airstream, nor could we let the dogs out to do their business. Somehow we were able to get some sleep through all of it and our furry kids had any abstained from using the bathroom while we were stuck inside.

That's One Huge Icicle

2010-07-29T18:18:00.000-05:00

For almost the entire two years we've been in the Airstream we thought that we had a slow leak in one of the pipes near the shower. We kept saying we'd get to it later and we didn't think much of it. We noticed the leak during the first winter when there was this massive icicle hanging off of the side of the trailer and attached to the ground. It would drip on occasion when it was warm out also. Our first assumption was that the cold made the leak worse and we'd deal with it later. It was clear clean water so it wasn't the black water take leaking so there wasn't any human waste on the ground. Awesome, so we just ignored it. It was strange though it even built up when the pipes were frozen. Yes pipes freeze but they don't always burst, thankfully.

It was a leak but not in the traditional sense. There is no gray water tank on the older Airstreams so everything goes into the black water tank. This was easily remedied you would just open a valve and your gray water would run onto the ground. This worked fine unless your plumbing in the bumper had been rerouted, you guessed it, ours had. Unfortunately we had no idea where the valve would now be. So every time we did dishes or ran the sink for too long tank water would back up in the shower, eww. We got accustomed to running out and dumping the tank before it got too high. It was annoying but it was also something we could live with.

I'm skipping ahead a bit now but it's to explain the leak. So about three months ago I happened to actually look at the plumbing and discovered just how the changes had been made. There is the Thetford valve that keeps the black water tank closed and a new valve on the bumper where the hose attaches to drain the sewer. I had just assumed that since the Thetford was old it was leaky and hence the new valve. I was wrong. The valve on the bumper bypasses the Thetford and is only for gray water and the Thetford seals nice and tight on it's own. Suffice it to say the big icicle and the two years we spent dealing with back water were solved once we started keeping the bumper valve open full time.

Is That Saran Wrap?

2010-07-29T17:36:00.000-05:00

I came home from work one evening the winter before last and there was this coating on the inside of the windows. Wynn had been home from work all day and she is known for her creativity. So I being a bit daft from time to time asked her the following question. "Is that Saran wrap on the windows?" and the answer was obvious. "No, it's to keep the cold air out." No it wasn't Saran wrap it's actually something sold at home improvement stores to keep the cold air out if you have leaky windows. I was surprised but it did actually work quite well, I'm not sure why we only used it for that first winter. I guess it had to do with me tearing it down to open the windows when the first hints of spring arrived.

Cold! Did I Mention it Was Cold?

2010-07-29T17:27:00.000-05:00

Okay so I won't sugar coat this for you, winter in an RV is cold. Even with a really powerful forced air furnace it's still cold. They just weren't meant for this. RVs are for fun summers on Route 66 and vacations by the lake, not snow and certainly not ice. Our first winter we swore we'd never do it a second time, but we did. We found that if we supplemented the forced air furnace with those electric oil heaters that looked like radiators we were much warmer. We had used the oil heaters for several years in our home due to the fact that it had a floor furnace that kept the house quite warm, unless you wanted to sleep in the master bedroom. So we just brought them to the Airstream.

A note of caution, an Airstream of this model only has two breakers so you have to get creative if you want to run to two oil heaters and trust me Wynn and I can get creative especially when we are freezing at night. So what to do? Run one oil heater off of a surge protector from the outlet in the kitchen, okay cool. Now how do we run one for the bunk and the ice cold bathroom without tripping the breaker? Because it will trip the breaker and the breaker is in the back of a deep dark bathroom cabinet where spiders could be lurking. Remember the afore mentioned phobia.

So here's the cheat folks, run an extension cord out the trunk to the shore power, most shore power set ups will have regular outlets on a separate breaker from the plug in for your RV. There is a nice gap that lets in cold air next to the toilet, but it is also just the right size for an extension cord plug to fit through. Close the truck lightly and don't lock it. Now plug you heater into the extension cord and eureka, heat. Do not run the heater any higher than medium or you will trip the breaker and have to go out in the cold, usually at night to turn it back on.

This trick has kept us fairly warm through two really cold Oklahoma winters and it has saved us a ton on propane.

Propane Pain

2010-07-29T16:59:00.000-05:00

Let's count how many things run off of propane in our Airstream, ready?
1. Furnace
2. Refrigerator
3. Oven (Yes it has a Magic Chef oven that makes wonderful cookies.)
4. Stove
5. Nope just kidding no hot water heater.

So you can imagine how much propane you can actually go through during the winter. It's inevitable that you eventually have to stop using certain appliances like the stove and the oven. I mean it's cold, really cold in the winter and you need the furnace and you've got to have food so you have to run the refrigerator. It's not so much about the cost of the propane it's more about how quickly it's used up and how often the refrigerator defrosts without warning (there's no way to really tell when you're out of propane on this model).

So some concessions have to be made. There is a microwave so we use that a lot but in addition to that we have been using a hot plate and a toaster oven for more home cooked meals, it works and it's not as bad as you think. I love summers because 90% of the cooking is done on the Smoker (BBQ or Grill for you non southerners). We can go to the farmer's market and Whole Foods once a week and really eat quite well. I say once a week due to the fact that there is limited freezer and fridge space even though we have a small dorm sized freezer to supplement the Dometic freezer/ fridge that came standard on these in the 70s.

Too Much Time on My Hands

2010-07-29T16:44:00.000-05:00

Alright so I started this blog today and I have been posting like crazy. I am on vacation at the moment and watching Dakota Benson recover from surgery. I will probably never have this kind of time on my hands again. I go back to work in a few days and I'm going back to Uni in a few weeks. Wynn and I are also starting the paperwork and stress filled process of home ownership and purchasing a second vehicle. I will be lucky if I have time to post once a week after all of that starts up again. But I will continue to post, just be patient with me if I let long periods of time go by.

Also photographs, I have them on my IPhone and I'm working on getting them incorporated into the previous posts. Please be patient I've never used this format before so it will take me time to figure it out. I'm a bit of an anachronism and technology is not one of my strong points, I am getting better but it's a slow process.

Thank you for your patience,
Elaine

Not Every Dog Can Be an Airstream Dog

2010-07-29T16:24:00.002-05:00

So in addition to Wynn and I when we started living in the Airstream we had three awesome schnauzers Penny Dawn (1995-2009), Dakota Benson (Penny's son), and Robert Asta (Dakota's son). You know, the dogs with the beards. We love our dogs, they're like our children and when we decided on the Airstream we took their comfort into consideration. We got lucky is all that I can say. Right before we bought the Airstream our neighbors who had dogs of their own decided to move back to Kansas. I do miss Susan and her husband. I can say that coming home and going to sleep after an overnight shift while Susan sang hymns to her dogs next to our tent camper was very peaceful. The plus side to them leaving was that they were in the only fenced lot in the RV park. We had made friends with them, I had long hair at the time because I had started working with teenagers and thought that if I looked too butch I wouldn't get the job and Wynn had her normal short haircut and well we let Susan assume that Wynn was a man. I digress, anyway they were moving and had taken a liking to us, so when they left they told the office that we were to move into their spot. Not a week later we found the Airstream. So the Airstream dogs were ecstatic to no longer have to go out and do their business on a leash. They had a yard, even if it was mostly gravel and not as big as what they were used to at home.

Robert Asta, and his mohawk

Robert- Asta in the bunk giving me the "I'm cooler than you mom" face.

Wynn, You're a Braver Soul Than I, and I Love You

2010-07-29T15:14:00.000-05:00

So I promised I would leave the messy parts of the toilet repair for this post. You may skip it if you wish, but keep in mind this is a cautionary tale about... toilet paper.

The title says it all really. She is braver than I am; much, much braver. I'm squeamish and I have an embarrassing phobia of spiders, but I digress.

Okay back to the mess and the dangers of heavy ply toilet paper. If you're an RVer you know that there special brands of toilet paper just for RVs and boats and eco friendly chemicals to dump down your toilet to make the waste breakdown more efficient. You might be thinking that this is a way for these companies to make money off of you. It's not, trust me, use the RV toilet paper and the eco friendly chemicals, you'll thank me later.

So we took the toilet off to put on the new part. And yes, out of courtesy and decorum we emptied the black water tank before removing the toilet. Well we thought we had emptied it. Surprise! Nothing is ever quite what it seems.

From what we could tell, since we were using the appropriate chemicals and toilet papers, the previous owner's son had not been. That fact alone makes this tale much, much worse. Once the toilet was off we could see into the black water tank and we could see that there was a problem, a big clogged up nasty problem. Apparently when we thought we had been draining the tank during the previous month or so only the liquid waste had been draining out.

We had to do something and no one involved wanted to do what had to be done. My father's hand and forearm were too big. I was trying not to vomit from just the idea of what must be done. So it fell to Wynn, the love of my life and my hero to do the deed.

From what I could tell from carrying the trash bags to the dumpster afterwards, it was the least I could do. She must have pulled out TEN pounds of toilet paper from inside the black water tank to clear the clog and yes if you're thinking she was up to her shoulder in it, she was.

Wynn I love you and to this day, I'm sorry you had to do that and I thank you because I couldn't have done it in your stead.

I Hear Something Dripping... That Can't Be Good

2010-07-29T14:38:00.000-05:00

A few weeks after settling in we noticed a leak in the bathroom. The fresh water intake for the toilet was leaking, and it was leaking a lot. It's a tight space back there, I could feel where it was leaking from but I couldn't see it. Luckily I was able to take a blind photo with Wynn's camera phone and take it to the local parts store. Luckier still it was clear enough for the parts guy to make out what the part actually was. Was it in stock? Of course not, but they could order it. Okay, fine, I'll put a towel back there and hope for the best. Hey at least we didn't need a new toilet to fix the problem. We could afford a part and we could wait for it to ship, we couldn't afford a new toilet.

So the part arrived and we removed the toilet to put it on, with help from my father, he's retired and he gets bored. This is about to get a bit messy so I will continue this in the next post. Suffice it to say once the part was installed and the toilet was put back in place it worked like a charm. It still does in fact, two years later.

Working Hot Water Heater You Say?

2010-07-29T14:29:00.000-05:00

After a few weeks and some tinkering we found that the hot water heater was a total loss. Okay, so boil water to do dishes and cold showers in the summer, we can live with that. Actually those cold water showers in the summer feel pretty good and if you are patient and you scrub hard enough, dishes aren't really that bad. The reality of it is that we couldn't afford a new hot water heater and the fabrication of a hot water heater door. New RV hot water heaters do come with a door, but it is white and I feel that it clashes with the aforementioned shiny aluminum exterior.

So we have lived without a working hot water heater all this time and really we don't miss it much. It's summer as I write this and if it's a scorching hot day the groundwater warms up quite nicely by evening time and makes for a pretty good shower.

Don't try it in the winter though...

Halloween Airstreamers

2010-07-29T14:15:00.000-05:00

On Halloween my father backed our newly purchased Airstream into the fenced slot that it sits in as I write this from the bunk. He helped us hook everything up and took a look at that possibly working furnace. The blower worked great and there was definitely propane going to it, however it wouldn't light. Crap, what do we do now? So he took apart the furnace and found that it was the "sparker" as he called it. We were able to find a place that could order the part and waited patiently hoping that once in place, the "sparker" would fix the problem. A week later and a furnace sitting on the picnic table later, he and I put the furnace back in place and fired her up. I'm not a religious person but I did contemplate a prayer to whomever is in charge of making furnaces work.

First the blower kicked on, great we knew that worked, and then click, click, click... success. The smell of burning lint never smelled so sweet. We had a furnace, we were good to go, almost.

So we had the furnace and the fridge running off of propane, by the way that's a lot of propane, but we made it work. We still didn't have a working hot water heater, but our RV park had a really nice shower house with heated floors and good hot showers. No harm no foul, who cares, we were out of the tent camper and warm at night, with the help of an electric oil heater or two.

Yes, Craig's List

2010-07-29T14:02:00.000-05:00

Wynn set out to find an Airstream for as little money as possible while I set out to find a job. She perused local RV dealerships and the RV Trader and yes, finally Craig's List. We wanted something that was big, big enough for our things and for us to live in without killing each other, but we didn't have much money. Finally near the end of October, just after I landed my dream job, she found a 1972 Airstream International Sovereign Land Yacht, it was thirty- two feet long and had lots of storage, but most importantly it was cheap. The seller's son had been living in it on his property and it sounded like a good deal, that and it was starting to get really cold at night.

So we drove out to a small town I affectionately call Hooterville to take a look. At the end of several winding washout dirt roads, there she sat in all of her shiny aluminum glory in the driveway begging us to take her home. We did a quick walk through to get a feel for the layout and Wynn asked all sorts of questions, while I was too enamored with the idea of owning an Airstream to ask questions of my own.

Did the fridge work? Yes, but only on propane.
Did the forced air furnace work? Yes, well maybe.
Did the air conditioner work? Yes.
Did the hot water heater work? Yes, definitely. (Um no, it actually didn't.)

Sold! For $3,500, what a deal, and yes it was a very good deal and actually still is. In fact that is the selling price when we sell it, hopefully soon. I will post when we put it up for sale.

The Beginning

2010-07-29T13:44:00.000-05:00

In June of 2008 my partner took a job in a city 190 miles away from our beautiful 1925 Craftsman home. I will say for the sake of full disclosure that she took this job for me. I was supposed to start working for a medium sized software company in the same city doing technical writing and project documentation. Unfortunately due to a buyout by a larger company and the subsequent down sizings that took place my job did not pan out, though it was too late to go back home. We were going to stay with my parents until we found a place here, but that didn't really workout either. So, we found a slot at a nearby State Park and moved into her grandparent's tent camper. Yes, I said tent camper. We kept the house 190 miles away and still visit every month or so to this day.

After a few weeks at the State Park we realized that we needed to be closer to a metropolitan area so that I could now find a job. We then moved the tent camper to the RV park that we are currently residing in. As summer turned to fall we decided that we could not live in the tent camper through the winter so we began the search for an RV. We both have always had a fascination with nostalgia, old homes, old cars and old RVs. So we decided to buy an Airstream.

The End of an Era

2010-07-29T13:00:00.000-05:00

I should have started this blog two years ago the day we backed our 1972 Airstream International Sovereign into it's fenced slot at the RV park, but I didn't. So now that we are nearing the end of our stay I've decided to take the plunge and document what we have gone through over the last two years or so. Living full time in an RV hasn't been as bad as it could have been but it hasn't been wonderful either. I can say that since we were full timers in an Airstream we did it with class. There are some things that I will miss about Airstream living and somethings that I don't want to remember. I know that my partner and I have grown from this experience and I can safely say that it has made our relationship that much stronger. I mean if you can share thirty-two linear feet with another person for two years and still love them at the end of it, your love can survive almost anything.