Just before Thanksgiving we went under contract on a new construction, almost finished house. We had them re-do the shower/bathtub in the master bath and then we were able to pick out all the finishes. You can find more about all that, plus some pics, here. What I really want to talk about in this post is actually living in the trailer vs. just camping in it. It has been quite the experience and for the most part very enjoyable. We have also learned a lot. For instance I now know what things have to be turned off when I use the blow dryer! And how taking a shower reminds me of the airplane bathroom scene in Tommy Boy! My husband is finally used to the colorful language coming from the bathroom on my "shower day!" That's right, I no longer shower every day. It's a good week if I shave my legs once and I find it's just a lot less stress to just whip my hair back into a ponytail rather than go for my usual sleek bob! I just hope Larry doesn't get used to the new, less maintenance me. I'm finding things that didn't bug me when we were just out camping that drive me insane on a daily basis. One thing is the over the door towel holder I use for the kitchen towel. That thing comes off all the time. When we get our hands on some decent tools that thing is getting screwed on permanently. Our cheap coffeepot is sooooo slooooow. We are hoping Santa might think we deserve a new one. I can't get over how dusty the trailer gets. Not sure where the heck it comes from. But it's a daily job if one were of a mind and all. Me...not so much anymore. We have had a couple catastrophe's. The morning we were to head for Idaho for Thanksgiving we discovered we had the dreaded Tower of Poop! Turns out we had been pooping wrong all along. I thought we were supposed to conserve water at all cost! So we weren't filling up the bowl real full before going #2. I have been very conservative with the toilet paper however. The other thing we were doing wrong was dumping the black tank every time we dumped the gray tank. We didn't know it was supposed to be full before it got dumped. Luckily we got it taken care of and have not had a repeat. Larry has been doing his #2 business at the park bathroom. Then there have been the misc. thrown breakers and blown fuses. But then there was the night we woke up at 1am and realized the furnace wasn't working. We got both space heaters going and thanked our lucky stars both could be on without a breaker being thrown. Tried all the usual things and realized we needed help. Our biggest fear was having to take the trailer in to be worked on and basically having to move out of it and either into a hotel or in with our daughter and her family. After about 15 phone calls (seriously) we found a mobile repair guy who did warranty work but he couldn't get to us for a couple days. But he wanted Larry to try a couple things in case we got lucky (his words) and it was a quick fix. So we did get lucky and it turned out to be a limit switch. We found one in stock locally and Larry fixed it fairly easily! That was our last little disaster and with maybe just 2 more weeks to go we hope there won't be any more. We have also been happy with the trailer in general for long term living. We bought this trailer with living in it in mind. If I could do anything different it might be to get the table and chair configuration vs. the bench seats. This area has become our home office for the most part and the cushions are getting a lot of use. I will be replacing the cushions before next season for sure!
Otherwise it's been pretty nice for just the 2 of us and Sage.
There were a lot of things I should have brought with us that I didn't. I had to buy an electric blanket! There have been a few kitchen things we needed too. But the main thing was lots of important papers, like tax returns, and documents we needed for buying a home. We also bought a really cheap HP (less than $20.00! )printer and let me tell you, that printer has been a little powerhouse. Still on the original ink it came with and I even did 50 Christmas newsletters! One thing that got brought by accident was my big Dyson vacuum. It accidently didn't make it into the last trip to our storage unit so it came with us. Thank goodness because the cheap sweeper I bought at Kohl's won't even touch Sage's dog hair! We store it in the truck and every few days I kick Larry and Sage out and do some serious dog hair removal.
When we went to my mom's for Thanksgiving we brought back a little Hallmark Christmas tree that used to be my son's. It fits perfectly on the console between the chairs in the "living room!"
In the same box I found these which work really nice on the bathroom shelf.
So you can see we are all ready for our trailer park Christmas. There are lots of long term folks staying here and several have outside lights on their rigs. Once very fancy Class A even has what looks to be a full size tree inside! We are getting down to the wire now with our closing on the new house on the 28th. Larry and our son in law hope to head to Hood River, OR., the next day to get our things out of storage. The weather has beed so mild and hope it holds until they get back down here. I hope to post again before Christmas but if I don't I want to wish all who come to this page a Merry Christmas!
