113 - American Badass

So Mike is in Pittsburgh again. We got up this morning and he drove to the airport... since we couldn't afford the autopilot module for the truck, guess who drove back? Guess who was not a happy camper? Guess who had to get over it? Each leg of the trip was an hour and a half... that's a lot of driving when you're nervous. The worst part is that when I get nervous, and especially when I'm nervous and cold... I end up having to pee. It comes on suddenly, and it is almost immediately urgent. So about ten minutes out from the airport I'm already feeling like a potty break, and then once we got to the airport I had to get past the hospital district before I could find a place that I was willing to stop at. I decided to get gas while I was there but the pump was so dang slow that I cut it off at $15... about four gallons... which means I will have to get gas again if I go anywhere. There's a station just up the road so it's not bad, just sucks that I couldn't fill up while I was there.

Actually the airport itself was easy - there was no one there; hope it's that way when I pick him up. There were bits and pieces of the trip home that made me nervous, but all in all it wasn't bad, there's not a lot of traffic on 85% of the route. There were some pretty narrow roads, but the speed limit was 40-45 mph in those parts so that helped. Actually the worst part for me was the last few miles because even though the roads don't get any narrower, there is a soft shoulder with a steep dropoff into the water... and that makes me nervous because it feels narrower. There are also a lot of twists and turns which might be fun in the Mini or the Green Machine, but not so much in the truck.

Stopped off to get groceries on the way back since I saw a Publix. They carry arugula. You just don't know... I love arugula. I don't even make it fancy... arugula, lime juice, salt and a little shredded parmesan... Heaven. They also had the good ginger ale... Buffalo Rock. If you can find it, get you some, it actually tastes like ginger, not that lame sprite-with-a-hint-of-something-spicy that passes for ginger ale where we're from. It's very spicy. And good for your tummy.

Then I came home and rearranged everything. I moved the couch in front of the tv and put the recliners where the couch used to be. I like it. It's warmer and the windows are easier to get to, there's more light. I figure we don't have to put the slides in any time soon so we have options now. Now we can both sit on the couch. :) Rearranging the sofa meant I had to find a home for all the crap around the dining room table that was bugging me anyway, which led to laundry, which led to moving things around on the counter, which led to putting things in the truck, which led to vacuuming the floor, which led to rearranging the truck, which led to washing dishes... It just wasn't as simple as moving furniture... It never is, is it?

Tomorrow the adjuster is supposed to come by and evaluate the damage to our RV. Glad to finally be able to get that going. I hope I can find a mobile RV repair person here, it's not only convenient, it's kind of necessary. We really can't take the RV in to have it repaired. That last stint in the shop was horrible, if it hadn't been for friends I don't know what we would have done, and I refuse to go through that again. I want to be in my own home with my own stuff, comfortable at last. We deserve that after everything we have been through. The only thing that makes me sad is, I thought my computer was damaged by the surge because the speakers kept buzzing and the music would hang up every few seconds, but it only happened at grandma's house so I guess it was something related to her plug. Phooey.

Doing a lot of thinking lately. I've come to the conclusion that Mike and I get too wrapped up in trying to make things happen. It's hard to be patient, we both feel like we got a late start on our life together and I think we're trying to make up for lost time. But you can't. You have to start where you start and face the consequences of each decision you make, sometimes decisions you made years ago. It's frustrating to find that we are no closer to where we want to be than we were last year. Feels like we're further away in many respects.

I used to believe things would fall into place if they were meant to, and to be honest, that approach seemed to work. It's hard when there are two of you, each trying to please the other and sometimes both misunderstanding what the other actually wants. That's kind of what happened in April. Mike thought I wanted him home at the end of April, he planned on staying through June, I thought he was staying through the end of May... it got all confused and we both got it wrong. As much as we talk about things, as well as we think we communicate, sometimes we miss the mark. I think this last year has taught us to really think things through, to step back and look at the big picture, because instant gratification isn't always so gratifying long-term. If only there was a rewind button...

112 - Things that made me laugh today

First off - we made it to our new temporary home without incident. That's reason enough to celebrate. We also found an end spot at the park which means I get a nice view of the lake to gaze out at, and no one can block that except people driving by. They even sell propane here, so now when we run out, we don't have to find a Tractor Supply or some other place to get it refilled - plus they purge the air so we actually get a full tank, which helps immensely. Don't get me wrong, I love me some Tractor Supply, but just to get propane it's much more convenient to drive to the store here at the park. It's kind of a hike to get to 'civilization' but they have a lot of conveniences here... a store with decent stuff in it... the propane... a small cafe that has catfish dinners on Friday and ribeye on Saturday. So far, so good.

Now to the things that amused me today:

Curl Harbor. That's right. Name your hair salon after something bad. "Your hair's a mess, where'd you get that hatchet job?" "Curl Harbor..." "Girl, you should have known..." "I know... I know..."

A series of signs pointing down a side road. One sign was for a drag strip. One sign was for a funeral home.

A commercial for someone whose last name was Pippin. Which I heard as Pimpin'.

So tomorrow Mike heads to the airport. I get to drive the big beast back from the airport. Like it's a treat or something... more like I have to drive it. Not looking forward to either of those things... Mike leaving, or having to drive that truck through Huntsville. I'm hoping by nine traffic calms down and/or is headed the other way, and that most of the roads are as lightly trafficked as the ones we drove in on today. I don't think I'll have a problem with the last few miles of road to get here, I just have spatial issues with Rammy. He has a very large ass. At least it's daytime so I can use the cheat mirrors to make sure I'm in my lane. Driving at night sucks because I just have to trust that I'm between the lines.

I'm glad we're here. It's nice to settle for a while. To take a break from making plans and just let things fall into place for a while. We need a reset period to figure out which direction we want to go, and almost all offers are on the table. So I'm looking forward to exploring our options, and maybe finally attempting to write again. In the last couple of days I've started getting random ideas and feel like maybe I can start to play around with them and see where it goes. All this time I've had off up to this point has been about survival and I haven't really been able to relax and enjoy it like I was supposed to. Hopefully that tide is turning now that we have a homebase and money is coming in again. Fingers crossed.

After I drop Mike off my next step is to call the Allstate inspector so we can get our RV repaired. Microwave... that'll be nice to have again... Fridge... will be good to power it with electricity instead of LP... Self-leveling jacks... they're acting up... My laptop... the speakers are screwy now... couple of other little things. I think all the electronics on the right hand slide need to be looked at since that's where the microwave and fridge are, and they got fried. That's just my thoughts. I've used the washer/dryer to do three more loads of laundry and it seems to be working, no more weird burning smells so I still want someone to look at it, but I think it's okay. And I have to send the satellite off to get it repaired, which sucks, but at least we can get network tv through the antenna in the meantime. Having no tv really sucks... paying for cable and not being able to use it also sucks... They have wi-fi at the park so I can at least watch the online cable channels like HBO and Encore. Better than nothing...

Alrighty, time to head to bed and try to sleep.

111 - Warm fuzzy

Just returned from Walmart. Oh how I love Walmart.

Oh how I love sarcasm.

Nonetheless, I did make unnecessary purchases, which is the primary basis for my dislike of Walmart, but there are others (bases that is... basis-is... reasons y'all). Item number one - I usually don't leave the house much if Mike isn't around, so I tend to wear "comfy clothes"... lounging clothes... yeah, okay, they're PJ's. I was going to buy another bra, but truth be told, when I'm at home I don't generally wear one of those so... no point. And something about Walmart bras just screams broke stripper... maybe it's the zebra print, I don't know... I just can't bring myself to buy them. Item number two - Who has two thumbs and loves her some Lucy? This girl. And there are movies she is in that I haven't seen - I don't know how it happened. Walmart is working hard to win me over so I was presented with the opportunity to own five more Lucy movies than I currently do, all in one lovely package. Now I own two copies of DuBarry was a Lady, but honestly, that group of guys at the beginning who do instruments with their voices? So worth it. Item number three - My warm fuzzy. My new precious. My fuzzy-on-the-inside-so-you-wanna-keep-slipping-your-bare-arms-into-the-sleeves-cuz-it-feels-so-good hoodie. Does anybody know why are hoodies so awesome?

Mike is "training" Gracie to do tricks. He is of the opinion that she does not have a job, and will not do chores, so she needs to earn her treats. He doesn't scoop her poop so I'm not sure what he's all wound up about. :/ He is devising new and interesting ways to antagonize my baby. I also hear him talking smack in the mornings as he feeds her and it kinda cracks me up. It's cute really, but I'll never say it out loud. Anyway, she'll eat a treat out of his hands, so now he has gotten her to stand on her hind legs and she'll put a paw on his hand as if to make sure he doesn't pull it away, then she'll get her treat. This evening he put the treat on the ottoman and she hopped up and knocked it to the ground instead of trying to eat it off the surface. She's wily that way.

Before I forget... grandma-isms. She's got a sense of humor, my grandma. The night we ate at Country Squire, the evening ended on a sour note after my five'ish year old cousin barfed all over the table (thankfully I was allllllllllllll the way at the other end when it happened, but it sounded like someone knocked a drink over, it was epic). On the way out I told grandma she threw the best parties... almost like a frat party... we were loud and obnoxious, we had a good time, and at the end of the night someone threw up. She laughed and said, "Yeah, because he drank too much." Now you know, and I know, that this fits perfectly with my frat party scenario. But what she meant was... he had three glasses of coke and was working on his fourth. She meant that he literally drank too much. It was so deadpan when she said it though that it took me a second to realize we were on two different wavelengths... that were eerily similar...

A couple of nights later we're at the house trying to find a movie to watch. Grandma's DVD player was broken - a fact that was verified by no fewer than three people... they plugged it in... it didn't work... therefore it was broken. So our choices were now limited to that of the VHS variety. My aunt chose Mr. Magoo with Leslie Neilsen and then proceeded to narrate the entire thing, so I went to the kitchen to do something else. In the meantime, grandma was trying to persuade everyone to watch "The Bad Girls" (which I think is just Bad Girls). She kept telling everyone, "They're bad girls, you see... but they're good girls in the end." Something about her delivery made me smile a little on the inside, as if they were hookers but in the end, their virtue had been somehow restored. My mind is a bit twisted.

Don't get me wrong... it's good to see family, the park is nice (when it's not raining), but we're ready to move on. I'm looking forward to getting settled in for a nice long stay in one spot, and Mike is anxious to return to work... where he is supposed to be now actually. We both assumed the sunroof would be a quick fix. We completely underestimated the Goober Gas Station-like qualities of the local body shop. They actually called us to ask if we had the frame because they were missing two screws... there is a parts desk down the hall... seriously. Then came the weekend, then the guy took a vacation day, then it was New Year's Day. Seriously hoping he's working on it TODAY and will have it finished by the end of the day so we can head out in the morning. Not getting a warm fuzzy about it, but really hoping.

And now... I'm going to play me some Walking Dead. Took me all night to download it so it had better be worth it! I decided to buy some games for my PC so that when I get bored I have another option that will keep my mind active. And when there's nothing on tv, or Mike wants to fire up the X-Box or PS3, I can also kill things. Plus Walking Dead is on hiatus right now and I miss it. It's a sickness. And sometimes things just need to die. So I got The Walking Dead, a game called Amnesia, a CSI game, and Dragon Age: Origins, because I'm not a D&D nerd, but I still wish dragons were real.

Hope everyone is having a great 2013 so far. Thank you to all of you who read this and cheer us on or sympathize with our plight. As I said before, when things get bad, your encouragement can be all that helps us keep it together sometimes.

110 - Happy 2013

Well, we made it through the last year of 2012 without incident. Had lunch. Refilled a propane tank. Attempted to get a replacement cord for our satellite - most depressing RV dealership in the world... was a nice building, but all the people inside just looked like they wanted to wake up dead rather than work there another day. Then grocery shopping to get our New Year's supplies and movies. Oh the horror...

I cooked dinner... crab cakes and steak that we bought from Certified Steaks earlier, with a baked potato and pan-fried mushrooms. Mike wanted to try prepping the steaks by salting them first (kosher salt), the salt draws water out and then the liquid sinks back into the meat and tenderizes it... some sort of chemical goodness happens with the protein fibers that makes the steaks nice and tender. Then you rinse the steaks, dry them really well, and fry them in a pan. I think it was good, they were indeed tender, but the cut and quality of the meat also probably had something to do with it. Then I made chocolate bread pudding for dessert. Too much food, too much yum.

We watched the latest Resident Evil... I never watched that series before because (while I know it's odd given my borderline obsession with The Walking Dead) I don't like zombies... at all. It was kinda dumb. I guess if you play the video game it makes more sense and holds more entertainment value. All I can say is, when the zombie apocalypse happens... it had better be TWD kind of zombie and not the RE kind of zombie or we're done for... the latter can shoot guns, operate motor vehicles, and they have some crazy cognitive skills for dead things... Then we watched Neighborhood Watch. Not at all what I was expecting. It was decent but I wouldn't recommend it to my parents because of the orgy scene... for a minute there I thought we rented Eyes Wide Shut. This morning we finished watching The Raven. It was pretty good, kinda gory in spots. I wasn't sure about John Cusack in that role, but I think he did well. He's one of my favorites in a quiet sort of way... he doesn't come to mind when people ask who my favorite is, but when I see that he's in a movie, I'm pretty much going to watch it.

For lunch we had cabbage, cornbread, black-eyed peas, and hog jowls. I am determined to adhere to the guidelines so we squeeze all the good luck we can out of 2013. I had never cooked the peas before, or cornbread for that matter but they turned out pretty good. The hog jowls were the surprise hit. Instead of pan frying them like mom does, because I remember the last time I attempted that my house was filled with smoke, I put them in the toaster oven for 20 or 30 mins on 400. They came out perfect, crispy and light but not tough, almost like a pork rind but more dense. I don't think Mike expected to like them, but he snarfed them up and said they'd be perfect with couche-couche. So... guess what I'm making for dinner? I've never made couche-couche before... sounds kind of like grits... cornmeal and oil stirred together with milk? I think. I'll have to go over it again with him.

Last night it was pouring when we went to sleep. It made me a little nervous... flashbacks of Ike I think, can't really say because I can't figure it out. There's no real chance of it flooding here since there are hills for it to run down. Anyway, it was still raining this morning when we woke up, not nearly as hard, but dang... I didn't know it rained this much in Mississippi! The ground is just saturated at this point. Once again reconsidering adding pontoons to the side of the RV so that if we ever do encounter high water, we're set. :p

All in all, good New Year so far.

109 - Lowkey

The last few days we've kept a low profile, mostly due to my inability to be more than 15 minutes (if I was lucky) from the nearest available toilet. Good times. Last night was especially fun for me. If I never experience anything like that again I'll die a happy woman. You remember the house from Up? If the gas I was producing had been helium instead of some noxious form of methane, we would have been floating somewhere near Neptune. On the upside, not being able to sleep has enabled me to spend more time reading...

So, today was better. So far I haven't suffered an attack, and my stomach isn't distended nearly as bad. Night's not over yet. I'm watching a horrible movie, one of those gory, slasher flicks... one I call a torture fest... it makes me nervous, which is not good for the tummy. Not my cut of tea... I meant cup of tea and would normally correct that, but it was appropriately Freudian. In some ways I'm watching to see how the survivors avoided death... but, it's a movie... it doesn't go down like that in real life. In real life this movie would never have happened at my house... I would have shot the bastard. That applies to the first and second victim, who actually stood a chance... not the dog, the child or the girl who was kidnapped. Anyway... here's hoping it's almost over, he has a circular saw out now, and that's way beyond my comfort zone.

So I figure now is a good time to get back on my IBS regimen. I have been battling gut issues for the past few months and this recent bout of unpleasantness brought it to a head. I can't take it anymore. So back to the Heather's Tummy Fiber, and peppermint capsules. I also got some peppermint, and fennel, teas for Mike because his gut is still recovering from the gall bladder removal. The fiber helps give bulk to... things, and the peppermint oil helps with gas and bloating, so does the tea but I don't do tea.

Here's a segue for you... Last night as I went to fill the fresh water tank, and empty the black tank, I was being all vigilent and stuff... had the flashlight ready to shine if I heard movement... had my back to the RV so nothing sneaks up on me from behind... door flush with the side of the RV so I can see both sides... I stepped away to turn the water spigot off and when I came back to the control panel, here comes a kitty cat from underneath the RV... which was, only a moment ago, behind me... so much for vigilence. He seemed friendly, but I don't want to make friends with any stray cats so I just said hello and left it at that... then comes another cat to join the first. I squatted down to see how many more there were and saw a calico. Poor things, I felt bad for them... it wasn't raining or freezing last night, but they were obviously huddled under the RV to keep warm. The first cat was eyeing our storage compartment so I had to keep an eye on it, and when I went inside, it tried to follow me in. They were all still there this morning and will probably be with us until we leave. I wonder if they were dumped here. My heart breaks when I run across a stray, but there is nothing I can do short of telling the park about them.

Well... tomorrow we're hoping our truck will be ready and we can head out by Tuesday morning, so we will probably be celebrating NYE here at the park. We crazy. And you best believe we're going to grab some cabbage, some black-eyed peas, and some hog jowl to eat on New Year's Day. I'm going to have me a good 2013 y'all...

108 - Christmas

Well, Christmas Eve was a semi-success. My cousin Jamie and I spent most of the day cooking and arranging food, as did her daughter, Ashley, and my mom. People started to arrive around the scheduled time and the party got started. I made buffalo chicken dip, jalapeno poppers, sausage balls and salsa (I call it chunky salsa but I guess it's really pico de gallo). The salsa was the biggest success, everyone wants my recipe... problem is, there really isn't one. I eyeball it, I taste it... there's no known quantity as everything depends on the ripeness of the tomatoes, the amount of juice in a lime, the size of the jalapeno, etc. I attempted to explain it, but it's just something you have to play around with. Jamie made onion dip, banana bread, and took a recipe for cookies off my hands which helped immensely, plus she helped in many other ways when I needed it. She even bought me an apron. The girl gets me. Everyone contributed in some way... grandma still didn't relax though, I don't think she sat down until everyone went home... 87 and still ticking.

The last three days were not the best for us. So far nothing horrible has happened today, but the night is still young, and until the day is over I refuse to call it good.

The day we arrived was definitely not good. The roads surrounding the RV sites at this park are not user-friendly. As we were attempting to back into our reserved spot, the front passenger wheel dropped off the asphalt and onto the shoulder, which is probably an inch or two difference. Because of the angle the RV was at, it connected (solidly) with the driver's side of the truck bed and dented it. I heard a loud crack, but I thought it was a large branch giving way under the tire, and when Mike started to yell, I thought the wheel had gotten bent. We thought it was the straw that broke the camel's back but we were wrong...

The next night we met up with family for dinner at The Country Squire, originally one of the nicer restaurants in the area, which has kind of fallen in the ranks in the last few years. They used to bring a slab of beef when you ordered a steak, it was on a cart, covered in a towel, and a cook from the kitchen would uncover it and ask you how thick you wanted your steak; you paid by the pound. It was really cool, but they don't do that anymore. Anyway, it was chaos. Our waitress was overwhelmed by us, and the layout of the table was not conducive to conversation. Catfish was good though. Afterward we planned to head to Walmart to grab what we needed for the Christmas Eve party instead of waiting until the absolute last minute. The GPS pulled a fairly common stunt and took us in the wrong direction, so Mike pulled onto the shoulder to double-check the address, and that's when things started to go wrong. It had been raining, and Mississippi is made of red clay. Our back end is so heavy that when he cut the wheel to get back on the road and we started to move, we started to slide down the embankment. The harder he tried to get us back up, the further down we went until we finally settled into a low point. We couldn't move forward, we couldn't back up, the wheels were digging further into the muck. He has offroad skills and says he's been through worse... it's just the ground here... wet clay is unforgiving, even when you have 4-wheel drive.

It was amazing how many people stopped to see if we were okay. At least seven. The second person tried to pull us out, but his truck didn't have enough power. Of course it rained the hardest when Mike was outside hooking up the tow cable... he was drenched, muddy and cold. I tried to call roadside assistance, but the signal was weak, and just before someone answered the call was disconnected. I tried both of Mike's phones (work and personal) but they wouldn't even ring. Finally I got a signal and was just about to have a truck sent out when another guy in a truck stopped. He turned his truck the other way and pulled us from behind instead of from the front. At first it seemed hopeless, like a repeat of the last guy, but finally we got traction and he pulled us out. Mud was flying everywhere, I could smell how hot the tires had gotten, but we were out. If that hadn't worked, there was another guy who stopped earlier that was going to come back with a truck, and another guy took our number to call when he got home to see if we'd gotten help or if we needed him to call someone. People like that deserve good karma for their willingness to help. It sure helped us out... but I was already drained from the previous night, and everything else that has happened to us recently so I had a mini-meltdown and decided Walmart could wait.

I say that Christmas Eve was a semi-success because we almost made it through a night without something bad happening to us...

Grandma's house is fairly rural, and therefore, pretty dark at night. Instead of attempting to back up in the dark, we were going to pull forward, and turn around so we could drive down the driveway and be able to see. Mike had vented the sunroof, which put the back of it up at an angle. At first we thought the antenna caught a tree limb, but then our sunroof came tumbling down the windshield and down the hood. Grandma has some low hanging electrical lines coming from her garage to the house, and we couldn't see them in the dark. We had walked underneath them several times before when it was light outside, but didn't give them any consideration that night... hell, even if I had I probably would have assumed we could fit underneath them with no problem, but we couldn't... and the sunroof caught them as we were backing up. It's a wonder that the wires didn't come down on top of our truck, or snap and take out the power at grandma's house.

We were pretty much in shock at that point. I mean... how does that happen?

It doesn't.

It can't.

But it did.

So we headed for home, and by the time I thought about calling to make sure everything was okay at grandma's, we were about ten or fifteen minutes down the road... and my phone was dead... battery was drained. So I had to wait until we got to the RV to make the call. Mike was done, it was all he could take and he ended up on the floor, exhausted. I called it in to Allstate and did what I had to do for the night (filling the fresh water tank so we have water if it freezes, and scooping the litterbox). I tried to cover the sunroof with a trash bag... wasn't long enough. I had some thick plastic sheeting with me that NASA issued after hurricane Ike. It was a bag, but I cut the end off and cut one side so that it was one big sheet. I tried to make that work, but I was tired, it was windy, it was dark, and I couldn't get it to cooperate so I was going to lay it across the seats... it ended up in a wad because I kept hearing noises and didn't know if there was an animal nearby, or a person... I spooked myself. After that I pretty much collapsed onto the couch. I was exhausted and wanted to sleep, but I was too wound up, and then the stress collected in my gut and I felt nauseous so that prevented me from sleeping. I think I finally passed out sometime after 3 am.

Today, it didn't rain... it poured. Mike got the plastic snug over the top of the roof about an hour or two before the rain started. It still leaked a little bit though. We have an appointment with a claims adjuster tomorrow morning. Allstate has drivethru claims centers where you take your vehicle in, they ask you what happened, they write a damage estimate and issue you a check on the spot (minus your deductible). When I used it for my Mini it was painless. And they cover rental cars for the duration of the repair, or up to 30 days. It may have to be done in Alabama though, because we're set to leave here on the 27th or 28th.

So... another $500... plus the hassle of taking the truck in for repairs... again... and the scar all these things leave on your psyche. You start to wonder if you're a bad person. What did you do to deserve such a shitty run of bad luck? Why is this happening? Most importantly... when is it going to stop? Seriously... a person can only take so much and we've reached the end of the rope.

On the upside, we continue to be awed by our friends and family. People who haven't seen us in years have offered to help us if they can. They also deserve good karma, and maybe it helps (them) to know that gestures like that do make a difference to our mindset. It may not be outwardly apparent, but each gesture is like a rope to grab onto and pull ourselves out of the muck.

We're hoping that by parking the RV at one of our home parks, where we stay 'for free' 21 days out of 28, things will improve somewhat. Less travel means less opportunity for damage, or so we hope. It sucks that Mike will be staying in hotel rooms, eating out every day on the job, and I will be in the RV where transportation can be complicated... but something's gotta give, and it's better than having him in the middle east and us being apart for months at a time. I'm trying to wrap my head around how we could get my car to Alabama... I am all for that, but the issue I have is that if we do pick up and move, we have to be able to put it somewhere.

Anyway... here's hoping 2013 is an improvement. And I hope everyone else had a merry Christmas and enjoyed spending time with friends and family like we (mostly) have. :)

107 - Grateful

We have recovered from our disasters, at least for now - and the world didn't end today... something I'm not sure how to feel about, sometimes I think it would be better if we got to start over, but I digress.

We picked the truck up this afternoon. It was down to the wire. It went from, "It should be ready Wednesday by lunch... possibly Thursday morning," to "We're trying to have it ready for you for the weekend." We decided they probably closed at 5 pm, so we headed to Athens, pinning our hopes on them having it ready. They closed at 5:30... I think we checked out at 5:23, and $1,200 later, we drove off. I suppose I should stop grousing and focus on the positives, we have the truck and will be able to head to MS where we plan to celebrate Christmas. But can I talk a second about the traffic? Hot damn there is a lot of traffic in Athens. And while I'm at it, driving to the Atlanta airport was no bed of roses either, and if it hadn't been Mike... forget about it.

Our receptacle and cord were replaced a couple of days ago. $700, but I think our insurance covers it and our deductible should be $250. The microwave never came back on and I think our washer/dryer was damaged. It works, but something smells hot, and I'll be damned if I saved the RV from burning down because of the cord, only to have it burn down because of the washer/dryer. Once we get settled into another RV park for a while I'm going to set up a time for an adjustor to come out.

Christmas is going to be lean this year. I got small gifts for mom and dad, and small gifts for Mike, a gift card for grandma (sounds like a movie title doesn't it... "A gift card for grandma"). That's it. Other than that, we're bringing food to Christmas Eve.

On the other hand, our friends have been really good to us and I have cried a couple of times because of their generosity. One of my friends is sending us a goody box of wine. One of my friends offered to let us stay at her house rather than remain in the RV. One of my friends offered me a spa day or a trip to India to meet up with her or a flight to MS to see my cousin. One of my friends was thinking of coming to MS to see us. And one of my friends would have driven here from Tennessee to come get me if I was stuck. How awesome is that? It's gestures like that that keep us going.

And is it weird that I want to see the new Tom Cruise movie? I don't want to like him, but dammit I can't help myself... his movies are good.