Busy, Busy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

*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

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...

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.