Remember how I said the planning and prep work of a trip was fun? That’s only half true.
I can consult one of my legal pads and report what we’ll be having for breakfast on travel days or show you the cute, miniature bottles of condiments and our new “RV Queen Short” bedspread adorned with cardinals–that’s fun. Organizing the silverware drawer with an old set of flatware and designating a cabinet for games and decks of cards–fun.
Spending weekends scrubbing the thing from top to bottom, inside and out, reading the instructions and acting as safety supervisor while BF installed a ladder to the backside of the camper, going to Camper World for the third time to purchase a 10 ft. extension of “black-water” hose, or anything to do with the idea of black water–not fun. Well, that’s not completely true either. Belly laughs are difficult to come by these days and I enjoyed one the night I innocently asked our neighbor how long his poop hose was. Yup. I just cracked myself up.
And then there are the non-camper-but-trip-related preparations. Getting my hair cut short to alleviate the need of a blow dryer–fun. Labor Day spent pre-loading on October’s landscaping tasks–not fun. Packing a Rubbermaid tub with our hiking gear–fun. The Talk–not fun.
The Talk, you ask? It has to do with serial-tail gaiter, BF, and his scary driving habits. I’ll share the short version.
Him: “I can’t drive all over the country with you gasping, slamming your foot through the floor of the truck, and grabbing the dashboard.”
Me: “Fine. You’re gonna need to find a way to not wind up 3 inches from the bumper in front of you before you slam on the brakes.”
There was discussion of how my depth perception is probably off and how we’re never really that close. And how passenger screaming impedes safety. And about the time we went bouncing through the grass in the median to miss smashing into the rear end of a car. (He says we were never in the grass, only the rumble strip). And how we’re really, really just not in a hurry. Stuff like that. But in the end, we came to a true hearing of the others’ plight, a place of empathy, and a realization that to make this an adventure rather than a disaster, we’d both have to ease up a bit.
For now, I continue to listen to happy camper podcasts and line up cans of black beans in the tiny pantry and drag trimmings from bushes to the compost pile and dead tree limbs to the firepit and figure out a Hotspot and count the days till we leave and research a place to store the Freedom Express when we mosey back home. Sometimes it’s fun and sometimes it’s just really-hard-no-fun work. And that’s the whole truth.
What an adventure! You and your husband are rock’in! I drove a shuttle bus for Special Needs students that I took to train on jobs from the high school and back. I told my husband that if we ever got a small RV it would have to have multiple mirrors similar to the school bus! The mirrors look like overkill but believe me it was wonderful to be able to see everyone everywhere.