Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Lookit the bad poster…
Again, I am ashamed. I am a bad poster. Not a poster like the ones you put up, but a poster, as in “to post”, meaning I suck at finding the few minutes of time I need once in a while to update this damn thing!!
I take it back, this isn’t a “damn thing”, it’s just a blog, geez, get it together already.
So lately, Rob and I have been passing the time waiting for our trailer to come in (see last post re: trailer). Rob had a birthday, and I was sneaky enough to throw him a surprise bowling birthday party. Usually, I’m not that sneaky, and birthday parties will get “mentioned” somehow, sometime before the event, as in “oh, Saturday? Um… I think, maybe… well, let’s just say we’re “busy” on Saturday, ok?” Which gives away the secret. But this time around, I had the help of some of Rob’s friends, and I put on the invitations that this was a SURPRISE, so for god’s sake, don’t ask Rob anything about it…, and it all went off without a hitch. He figured it out in the car on the way, of course, but that was good enough for me. You can’t just sneak someone into a bowling alley, for crying out loud, with their eyes closed. It’s winter here, and the slip/trip-and-fall risk is just too high for that sort of activity.
Lots and lots of people came, and a good time was had by all. The one thing, of course, that I didn’t want to have happen, happened, which was that most of these people all ended up at our house after the bowling, which was a little annoying, not the least because I was sick with a horrible cold/’flu ailment. But whatever, Rob had a great time. I went to bed early and watched the end of Jaws, and some other crap on TV, and finally passed-out under my electric blanket.
The reason I don’t really want a ton of people over these days is because the house is a total and utter disaster, cleanliness-wise. Like, it’s abysmally bad. There are little fur dust-bunnies all over the place, and a lot of dogs everywhere, and junk and clutter as far as the eye can see. I’m trying really hard to minimize the clutter, but it’s very much a losing battle. It consists of: Flyers, mail, knick-knacks, a pair of scissor-clippers that Rob though was neat on sale at an auto place, dog grooming implements, candles, plastic bags, receipts, one Calgary Co-Op calendar, a box of Christmas fancy chocolate cookies (yes, this is clutter until it is empty and I can re-use the box for other, equally clutter-y things), plastic containers, a cake plate, empty cat food cans (until they are licked clean by the various dogs and placed into the recycling bag), spoons (which the dogs knock onto the floor off the counter), pens, pads of paper, ribbon off a Valentine’s day chocolate that I got for Rob, and whatever Beau shredded that day.
You’d think it would just be a matter of throwing stuff out, or putting it away. But see, people, we live in a small-ish house. Not a small house, really, but since I was able to fill up my own house completely to the rafters with stuff, and we subsequently moved all of that stuff into Rob’s house last year, and then went on to acquire MORE stuff, Rob’s house is now full of stuff, too. The cabinets and cupboards and closets are all full. Really. And so is the “office”. And so is the spare room, which also contains a feral cat, so it’s not really “usable” space.
Ugh. Cleaning. Clutter. Yuck.
Speaking of the feral cat, his new name is Fearsome. Because he’s so fearsome and wild when you try and pick him up!! Fearsome is doing amazingly well. I had been reading all these sites just before or after Christmas about how you can’t save an adult feral cat, the only hope lies in getting them as kittens, and it’s a tough process even at that. Fearsome is an adult, full-on. He’s not “old”, per se, he’s still young in cat terms (like, I’d say about a year old or just over), but he ain’t no kitten, that’s for sure. And he’s already figured out that people are bad (which I can’t argue with much). He’s been in the house now for three months, in the spare room, and he’s probably bored out of his tree.
Recently, like in January, we started going into the room and catching him to pick him up. I figured that there was no way he was going to get used to people if we left him alone. And as controversial as it is to flood a wild cat with attention, there’s really no other way to negotiate his fear. So we’d catch him periodically and I’d sit with him (with his head covered or stuffed into a sweater sleeve) and then pet him for a good fifteen minutes or longer, talking to him in a low voice and trying not to be threatening (any more than I already was). And he’d always run under the bed when I’d get up and let him. Which is fine, you can’t blame him for that.
But shortly after we started that, he started talking to us under the door of the room. He probably never really had the occasion to meow before – cats meow mostly as a response to human interaction, because we’re blabbing away all the time, and meowing is as close as they can get to that. In the wild, cats have a limited vocabulary – they chatter in response to excitement about potential prey. Mother cats call to their kittens in a sort of chirping tone. They hiss at one another and at threats. They growl, as well. But they don’t go around meowing all the time, that’s for sure.
Fearsome makes little rrt-eee sorts of sounds. And when I say “little”, I mean it. His calls are very soft and squeaky. But he started making these sounds one night just as we went to bed. I thought it was Smudge, at first, because she has a small voice, but sure enough, it was Fearsome, and he was talking to the other cats under the door. The crack under the door is pretty high, about an inch, and if you get right down and lie your head on the floor sideways, you can see under the door and mostly what I see when I do that is Fearsome’s nose and paws, sitting right on the other side, talking to us. He started out talking to the other cats, but he talks to me now, too.
He really likes the other cats. The Mac says that maybe he lived in a cat colony or something in Louisiana, and is used to other cats. That’s a good theory. About three weeks ago, I took Caspar into the room with me one day to see what Fearsome would do, and man, he was so excited, he came right out from under the bed, right up to Caspar, talking all the while! He wanted to get to know Caspar, to rub faces the way cats do, but Caspar didn’t know this strange cat – he was taken aback, and bopped poor Fearsome right on the head. Fearsome, disappointed, ran back under the bed.
I didn’t give up, though, and bring Caspar into Fearsome’s room quite a bit of the time. Caspar is a great ambassador cat – he’s the friendliest cat you ever could meet. He’s always great with new cats, and even with dogs, and is extremely friendly with people. My biggest fear with Fearsome was that he’d be aggressive with the other cats, and try to fight. That fear is now gone, and I can bring all three of my guys into the room with him. Smudge hissed at him the first time, even though he was being friendly and talking to her. Tobey is still afraid of him, because Tobey is afraid of everything, but he’ll go into the room and have a look, and then leave. Caspar will go into Fearsome’s room for hours at a time, and just sleep on the bed. He knows Fearsome isn’t a threat.
Fearsome is also getting braver when it comes to me. He’ll sniff my fingers under the door, and play a sort of catch-type game with them, although I’ll have to switch to something else because his claws are pretty sharp, and he’s gotten them a couple of times now! And he’s just started to let me come into the room and NOT immediately run under the bed. He doesn’t come up to me quite yet, and I still have to catch him to pet him, but I think there’s a big part of him that enjoys being touched, and he doesn’t seem quite as afraid of me as before.
I have a lot of hope for Fearsome. I hope that he can become confident enough for us to let him out of the spare room, loose into the house. I hope that he can relax, and that the other cats will become his friends to play with. And I hope he’ll accept me enough that he’ll let me pet him and pick him up without being afraid I’m going to eat him!
Our other rescue, Beau, is doing very well. Beau is a terror, though. And Beau’s list of destruction is starting to get as long as Cooter’s. Beau also likes to bark at things, although we’re working on that. It’s hard to teach him not to bark at everything that moves outside the front window, but I think we’re getting the other dogs to the point where they don’t react as much to that. And Beau is coming along – he loves Rob to bits and pieces. He was supposed to be MY dog, because the traitorous NoodleDog jumped camp to Rob’s side, and I feel a little left out when all the dogs are milling around Rob and begging for his attention… But Beau doesn’t care. Beau follows his rotten little heart, and capers around charmingly for Rob’s attention. He wants to play with him so badly!! He’ll pounce, and jump around Rob’s ankles. He’ll mouth Rob’s hands, and feet. And he loves to lick Rob’s face… I get nothing! So yeah, I’m jealous. But then again, I have all the cats, so it almost evens out.
This week is going to be a tough one at work. One of my properties has legal issues, and I have to go to various lawyers’ offices this week to be examined on a couple of affidavits I swore out, by the bad guys. I’m also having a lot of the bad guys’ junk removed off the property, which means I have to involve the RCMP, and attend in person along with the Board President, get a towtruck with a flat-bed, and find somewhere to put it (it’s all lined-up). It’s not going to be pretty – I’m expecting the bad guy to block the removal somehow, and I’m sure he’s going to be there, all yelling and being an asshole.
And this week is a lot of work because I’m catching up from last week. It was a holiday last Monday here, but then I was sick on Tuesday and Wednesday, and couldn’t catch up on Thursday and Friday last week, so there is still work to be done. You can see it’s not that pressing, or I wouldn’t be blogging, but it’s still there, hanging over my head.
And finally, the 1atatime fundraiser is happening on March 11th – just over a week away. It’s coming together, sure, which is great, but man, I can’t believe how close it is to the date now. Time flies, eh? I still have so much to do – make a list of the dogs that are going to be in the fashion show, and get them to the boutique to get their costumes fitted and whatnot, contact the last sponsors and get their money in, make a schedule for the volunteers, and finally try and see if there will be any media support. We have other people helping now, which is great, but it still seems like there is just too much to do. I hope the evening is a success…
So it might be a while before I can update again. I hope everyone out there is well and that you’re all doing fine… Remember to come to the Fundraiser on March 11th – you can find details at www.1atatimerescue.com.
I take it back, this isn’t a “damn thing”, it’s just a blog, geez, get it together already.
So lately, Rob and I have been passing the time waiting for our trailer to come in (see last post re: trailer). Rob had a birthday, and I was sneaky enough to throw him a surprise bowling birthday party. Usually, I’m not that sneaky, and birthday parties will get “mentioned” somehow, sometime before the event, as in “oh, Saturday? Um… I think, maybe… well, let’s just say we’re “busy” on Saturday, ok?” Which gives away the secret. But this time around, I had the help of some of Rob’s friends, and I put on the invitations that this was a SURPRISE, so for god’s sake, don’t ask Rob anything about it…, and it all went off without a hitch. He figured it out in the car on the way, of course, but that was good enough for me. You can’t just sneak someone into a bowling alley, for crying out loud, with their eyes closed. It’s winter here, and the slip/trip-and-fall risk is just too high for that sort of activity.
Lots and lots of people came, and a good time was had by all. The one thing, of course, that I didn’t want to have happen, happened, which was that most of these people all ended up at our house after the bowling, which was a little annoying, not the least because I was sick with a horrible cold/’flu ailment. But whatever, Rob had a great time. I went to bed early and watched the end of Jaws, and some other crap on TV, and finally passed-out under my electric blanket.
The reason I don’t really want a ton of people over these days is because the house is a total and utter disaster, cleanliness-wise. Like, it’s abysmally bad. There are little fur dust-bunnies all over the place, and a lot of dogs everywhere, and junk and clutter as far as the eye can see. I’m trying really hard to minimize the clutter, but it’s very much a losing battle. It consists of: Flyers, mail, knick-knacks, a pair of scissor-clippers that Rob though was neat on sale at an auto place, dog grooming implements, candles, plastic bags, receipts, one Calgary Co-Op calendar, a box of Christmas fancy chocolate cookies (yes, this is clutter until it is empty and I can re-use the box for other, equally clutter-y things), plastic containers, a cake plate, empty cat food cans (until they are licked clean by the various dogs and placed into the recycling bag), spoons (which the dogs knock onto the floor off the counter), pens, pads of paper, ribbon off a Valentine’s day chocolate that I got for Rob, and whatever Beau shredded that day.
You’d think it would just be a matter of throwing stuff out, or putting it away. But see, people, we live in a small-ish house. Not a small house, really, but since I was able to fill up my own house completely to the rafters with stuff, and we subsequently moved all of that stuff into Rob’s house last year, and then went on to acquire MORE stuff, Rob’s house is now full of stuff, too. The cabinets and cupboards and closets are all full. Really. And so is the “office”. And so is the spare room, which also contains a feral cat, so it’s not really “usable” space.
Ugh. Cleaning. Clutter. Yuck.
Speaking of the feral cat, his new name is Fearsome. Because he’s so fearsome and wild when you try and pick him up!! Fearsome is doing amazingly well. I had been reading all these sites just before or after Christmas about how you can’t save an adult feral cat, the only hope lies in getting them as kittens, and it’s a tough process even at that. Fearsome is an adult, full-on. He’s not “old”, per se, he’s still young in cat terms (like, I’d say about a year old or just over), but he ain’t no kitten, that’s for sure. And he’s already figured out that people are bad (which I can’t argue with much). He’s been in the house now for three months, in the spare room, and he’s probably bored out of his tree.
Recently, like in January, we started going into the room and catching him to pick him up. I figured that there was no way he was going to get used to people if we left him alone. And as controversial as it is to flood a wild cat with attention, there’s really no other way to negotiate his fear. So we’d catch him periodically and I’d sit with him (with his head covered or stuffed into a sweater sleeve) and then pet him for a good fifteen minutes or longer, talking to him in a low voice and trying not to be threatening (any more than I already was). And he’d always run under the bed when I’d get up and let him. Which is fine, you can’t blame him for that.
But shortly after we started that, he started talking to us under the door of the room. He probably never really had the occasion to meow before – cats meow mostly as a response to human interaction, because we’re blabbing away all the time, and meowing is as close as they can get to that. In the wild, cats have a limited vocabulary – they chatter in response to excitement about potential prey. Mother cats call to their kittens in a sort of chirping tone. They hiss at one another and at threats. They growl, as well. But they don’t go around meowing all the time, that’s for sure.
Fearsome makes little rrt-eee sorts of sounds. And when I say “little”, I mean it. His calls are very soft and squeaky. But he started making these sounds one night just as we went to bed. I thought it was Smudge, at first, because she has a small voice, but sure enough, it was Fearsome, and he was talking to the other cats under the door. The crack under the door is pretty high, about an inch, and if you get right down and lie your head on the floor sideways, you can see under the door and mostly what I see when I do that is Fearsome’s nose and paws, sitting right on the other side, talking to us. He started out talking to the other cats, but he talks to me now, too.
He really likes the other cats. The Mac says that maybe he lived in a cat colony or something in Louisiana, and is used to other cats. That’s a good theory. About three weeks ago, I took Caspar into the room with me one day to see what Fearsome would do, and man, he was so excited, he came right out from under the bed, right up to Caspar, talking all the while! He wanted to get to know Caspar, to rub faces the way cats do, but Caspar didn’t know this strange cat – he was taken aback, and bopped poor Fearsome right on the head. Fearsome, disappointed, ran back under the bed.
I didn’t give up, though, and bring Caspar into Fearsome’s room quite a bit of the time. Caspar is a great ambassador cat – he’s the friendliest cat you ever could meet. He’s always great with new cats, and even with dogs, and is extremely friendly with people. My biggest fear with Fearsome was that he’d be aggressive with the other cats, and try to fight. That fear is now gone, and I can bring all three of my guys into the room with him. Smudge hissed at him the first time, even though he was being friendly and talking to her. Tobey is still afraid of him, because Tobey is afraid of everything, but he’ll go into the room and have a look, and then leave. Caspar will go into Fearsome’s room for hours at a time, and just sleep on the bed. He knows Fearsome isn’t a threat.
Fearsome is also getting braver when it comes to me. He’ll sniff my fingers under the door, and play a sort of catch-type game with them, although I’ll have to switch to something else because his claws are pretty sharp, and he’s gotten them a couple of times now! And he’s just started to let me come into the room and NOT immediately run under the bed. He doesn’t come up to me quite yet, and I still have to catch him to pet him, but I think there’s a big part of him that enjoys being touched, and he doesn’t seem quite as afraid of me as before.
I have a lot of hope for Fearsome. I hope that he can become confident enough for us to let him out of the spare room, loose into the house. I hope that he can relax, and that the other cats will become his friends to play with. And I hope he’ll accept me enough that he’ll let me pet him and pick him up without being afraid I’m going to eat him!
Our other rescue, Beau, is doing very well. Beau is a terror, though. And Beau’s list of destruction is starting to get as long as Cooter’s. Beau also likes to bark at things, although we’re working on that. It’s hard to teach him not to bark at everything that moves outside the front window, but I think we’re getting the other dogs to the point where they don’t react as much to that. And Beau is coming along – he loves Rob to bits and pieces. He was supposed to be MY dog, because the traitorous NoodleDog jumped camp to Rob’s side, and I feel a little left out when all the dogs are milling around Rob and begging for his attention… But Beau doesn’t care. Beau follows his rotten little heart, and capers around charmingly for Rob’s attention. He wants to play with him so badly!! He’ll pounce, and jump around Rob’s ankles. He’ll mouth Rob’s hands, and feet. And he loves to lick Rob’s face… I get nothing! So yeah, I’m jealous. But then again, I have all the cats, so it almost evens out.
This week is going to be a tough one at work. One of my properties has legal issues, and I have to go to various lawyers’ offices this week to be examined on a couple of affidavits I swore out, by the bad guys. I’m also having a lot of the bad guys’ junk removed off the property, which means I have to involve the RCMP, and attend in person along with the Board President, get a towtruck with a flat-bed, and find somewhere to put it (it’s all lined-up). It’s not going to be pretty – I’m expecting the bad guy to block the removal somehow, and I’m sure he’s going to be there, all yelling and being an asshole.
And this week is a lot of work because I’m catching up from last week. It was a holiday last Monday here, but then I was sick on Tuesday and Wednesday, and couldn’t catch up on Thursday and Friday last week, so there is still work to be done. You can see it’s not that pressing, or I wouldn’t be blogging, but it’s still there, hanging over my head.
And finally, the 1atatime fundraiser is happening on March 11th – just over a week away. It’s coming together, sure, which is great, but man, I can’t believe how close it is to the date now. Time flies, eh? I still have so much to do – make a list of the dogs that are going to be in the fashion show, and get them to the boutique to get their costumes fitted and whatnot, contact the last sponsors and get their money in, make a schedule for the volunteers, and finally try and see if there will be any media support. We have other people helping now, which is great, but it still seems like there is just too much to do. I hope the evening is a success…
So it might be a while before I can update again. I hope everyone out there is well and that you’re all doing fine… Remember to come to the Fundraiser on March 11th – you can find details at www.1atatimerescue.com.
Monday, February 13, 2006
So long overdue…
No, I didn’t mean “so long” as in “goodbye”, but as in “it has been SO LONG” since I updated. I suck. I know. I have just been busy!
So as it turns out, I have this life thing, and it keeps popping up in various ways. Like Rob and I bought a trailer together. Heh. Not a trailer park trailer, but a travel trailer. It’s neat. It does not mean I’ll be growing dope in my car and selling hash in the local community college. This kind of trailer means we’ll be traveling and towing our little home all around with us.
Rob started out with a camper he bought many years ago. It’s a great camper, don’t get me wrong. It’s pretty fantastic, really. For a girl who thought “camping” meant you get out your tent, you cram your car full of stuff and food, and then you tote it all out to a site far, far away, and then set things up, hang your food up a tree, shiver through the night, and then go home (if you’re lucky and the trip is a short one…), going to a camper was a huge difference. A camper means going camping… sort of. It means you cramp the camper full of stuff, you fill the camper up with water and possibly a generator, and you drive out into the forest in your truck, and you… just…. Camp there. You get out of the truck, arrange all your stuff, and hang out with the other people who have done the same.
The camper, though, is small. And I only say this in comparative terms, because it’s way bigger than a tent, and it has a dinette, and a bed. And a stove and an oven, and a fridge. You totally don’t have to hang your food in a tree at all when you camp in a camper. But it’s small compared to our friends’ vehicles, because our friends have trailers, and trailers are like campers, only way, way better. Trailers have all the stuff campers have, only you can move around in them without having to squeeze by the person standing at the sink to get to the bed. You don’t have to L-shape extend your arm when you’re at the dinette to get into the fridge. You don’t (if you’re a dog) have to shuffle up onto the bench and then launch your furry body up into the bed above the truck roof.
Having a trailer means you pack you house into a smaller version of your house and go camping. You can still (theoretically) just drive into the forest and camp (provided you have a high trailer, which involves flipping an axle or something to get some extra height to clear bumps and small shrubs and slow-moving forest creatures). The trailer has a nice big fridge and a freezer (yay, ice cream and smoothies!). The trailer has a dinette that you can probably seat four people in (if you smoosh) AND a sofa! And the sofa flips down into a bed! And so does the dinette! And we got one with bunks! Because we might have kids someday, and heaven knows you don’t want to have to trade in your trailer for a bigger one later…
And our trailer has a pretty decent kitchen, with good storage space for dishes and cutlery and pots and pans (yes, it has a real pots-and-pans drawer beneath the oven!), and a pantry. A serious pantry, that means you can bring cereal (which we don’t really eat, but we could if we wanted to now), and big boxes of stuff, and many cans of tuna and beans, and a lot of other stuff. If the apocalypse comes, we’ll be well-set with our trailer, I tell you.
Our trailer also has what is close to a full-size bathroom. It has a toilet and a sink and a medicine cabinet, and a bathtub and shower. Sure, the tub is a little small, but if I crouched down, I could sort of sit in it. It would be handy for washing off small children, that’s for sure.
And our trailer also has those bunks – for extra storage now, but for children later on. And our trailer has a bunch of storage in all sorts of handy places. Like the queen-sized bed (in its own separate bedroom, mind you) flips up on hydraulics and lets you store all sorts of crap beneath it. And there are two closets in the bedroom so his stuff doesn’t get all mixed-up with mine (heh). And it has space for not one, but TWO TVs. Because when you’re camping, you need TVs. As many as possible.
The actual purchase of the trailer was quite exciting. We knew that the RV show would be coming to town in February, so we started shopping before that. We went around to the dealerships and looked at stuff. And until you start looking, you seriously don’t know what you want. I mean, all trailers are trailers, but some trailers have stuff other trailers don’t have. Like space for dishes. And storage. And accessible bunks that don’t make you feel claustrophobic. And “slides”. Not the fun kind of slide you slide down, but these sections that pop out, to give you more room inside. So our trailer has a pop-out (which is what I prefer to call them), and that means our sofa pops out to give us more floor space for living area.
So while looking, I concerned myself with the aesthetic details, while Rob made a list of all the technical stuff the trailer had to have. Like a big enough furnace, power conversion stuff, thermal pane windows… And I looked at things like “will we fit into the dinette, or is it made for small people?” and “man, this couch fabric will make me want to vomit whenever we go camping…” and “Hmm, I like these cupboards, but they’re awfully small…” and “Man, my kitchen needs more counter-space”.
And we looked a lot. It wasn’t until we actually got to the show that we were able to really decide on what we wanted. We looked at lots of trailers. And man, some are really, really fancy. There were a bunch we could have gotten, if our yard was bigger. See, we have to also store it in the yard, so exterior length was of paramount importance. We cut ourselves out of 80% of the market right there, by needing something shorter than 30 feet, with bunks and a slide, and a separate bedroom, and good storage. We finally narrowed down the list to three or four contenders, and then the fun began.
The dealers are like little two-legged sharks. And man, they can wheel and deal. And some, I didn’t like, so we didn’t talk much with them. I was mostly interested in what we could get for the price we were going to pay. And the ceiling was a monthly payment amount, because you can now finance trailers like houses – over 20 years on a mortgage. Yes, you pay a lot more for it in the end, in interest, but you don’t have to cough up $20K all at once for a trailer, which really helps people like us buy things.
Basically, we got the trailer at the right time, when they were motivated to sell, knowing that if they didn’t sell us something, we’d go right next door at the show and get something else – we had money to spend, and we were going to get something, by god, and it was going to be THAT DAY, so make us a deal, pal. We actually ended up getting the trailer from a dealer who wasn’t at the show (because of “politics” or something), and they threw in pretty much all the options for just a shade over the sale price, so I feel good about our purchase.
Of course, the trailer has to come from the factory, which means waiting. Waiting for, like, 8 weeks. Two months. That’s a long time, when you’re me. And Rob is even more eager to get it. We cleaned up the camper, and it’s for sale now (so if you want to buy a very cool camper…) and when it sells, we can buy a Suburban.
And the story behind the Suburban goes as follows: We need something bigger in order to be able to keep three dogs, because Rob doesn’t think it’s fair to take only two with us at a time, and the back of the Jeep gets crowded, and Cooter doesn’t like it when the other dogs are near his feet. So we need something big to transport the dogs. And we need something that has towing capacity for the trailer. And parents of friends of mine just happen to be selling a Suburban that fits the bill, so we made an offer, contingent upon our camper selling, that will get us exactly what we need. Yay!
It seems we’re in a bit of a spend-cycle at the moment. We bought the trailer. We bought the Suburban. We also bought a Giant TV on Boxing Day. We are now totally, totally broke, which is just great, which means we can’t afford to have kids to fill up the bunks, but we have a lot of cool stuff.
So as it turns out, I have this life thing, and it keeps popping up in various ways. Like Rob and I bought a trailer together. Heh. Not a trailer park trailer, but a travel trailer. It’s neat. It does not mean I’ll be growing dope in my car and selling hash in the local community college. This kind of trailer means we’ll be traveling and towing our little home all around with us.
Rob started out with a camper he bought many years ago. It’s a great camper, don’t get me wrong. It’s pretty fantastic, really. For a girl who thought “camping” meant you get out your tent, you cram your car full of stuff and food, and then you tote it all out to a site far, far away, and then set things up, hang your food up a tree, shiver through the night, and then go home (if you’re lucky and the trip is a short one…), going to a camper was a huge difference. A camper means going camping… sort of. It means you cramp the camper full of stuff, you fill the camper up with water and possibly a generator, and you drive out into the forest in your truck, and you… just…. Camp there. You get out of the truck, arrange all your stuff, and hang out with the other people who have done the same.
The camper, though, is small. And I only say this in comparative terms, because it’s way bigger than a tent, and it has a dinette, and a bed. And a stove and an oven, and a fridge. You totally don’t have to hang your food in a tree at all when you camp in a camper. But it’s small compared to our friends’ vehicles, because our friends have trailers, and trailers are like campers, only way, way better. Trailers have all the stuff campers have, only you can move around in them without having to squeeze by the person standing at the sink to get to the bed. You don’t have to L-shape extend your arm when you’re at the dinette to get into the fridge. You don’t (if you’re a dog) have to shuffle up onto the bench and then launch your furry body up into the bed above the truck roof.
Having a trailer means you pack you house into a smaller version of your house and go camping. You can still (theoretically) just drive into the forest and camp (provided you have a high trailer, which involves flipping an axle or something to get some extra height to clear bumps and small shrubs and slow-moving forest creatures). The trailer has a nice big fridge and a freezer (yay, ice cream and smoothies!). The trailer has a dinette that you can probably seat four people in (if you smoosh) AND a sofa! And the sofa flips down into a bed! And so does the dinette! And we got one with bunks! Because we might have kids someday, and heaven knows you don’t want to have to trade in your trailer for a bigger one later…
And our trailer has a pretty decent kitchen, with good storage space for dishes and cutlery and pots and pans (yes, it has a real pots-and-pans drawer beneath the oven!), and a pantry. A serious pantry, that means you can bring cereal (which we don’t really eat, but we could if we wanted to now), and big boxes of stuff, and many cans of tuna and beans, and a lot of other stuff. If the apocalypse comes, we’ll be well-set with our trailer, I tell you.
Our trailer also has what is close to a full-size bathroom. It has a toilet and a sink and a medicine cabinet, and a bathtub and shower. Sure, the tub is a little small, but if I crouched down, I could sort of sit in it. It would be handy for washing off small children, that’s for sure.
And our trailer also has those bunks – for extra storage now, but for children later on. And our trailer has a bunch of storage in all sorts of handy places. Like the queen-sized bed (in its own separate bedroom, mind you) flips up on hydraulics and lets you store all sorts of crap beneath it. And there are two closets in the bedroom so his stuff doesn’t get all mixed-up with mine (heh). And it has space for not one, but TWO TVs. Because when you’re camping, you need TVs. As many as possible.
The actual purchase of the trailer was quite exciting. We knew that the RV show would be coming to town in February, so we started shopping before that. We went around to the dealerships and looked at stuff. And until you start looking, you seriously don’t know what you want. I mean, all trailers are trailers, but some trailers have stuff other trailers don’t have. Like space for dishes. And storage. And accessible bunks that don’t make you feel claustrophobic. And “slides”. Not the fun kind of slide you slide down, but these sections that pop out, to give you more room inside. So our trailer has a pop-out (which is what I prefer to call them), and that means our sofa pops out to give us more floor space for living area.
So while looking, I concerned myself with the aesthetic details, while Rob made a list of all the technical stuff the trailer had to have. Like a big enough furnace, power conversion stuff, thermal pane windows… And I looked at things like “will we fit into the dinette, or is it made for small people?” and “man, this couch fabric will make me want to vomit whenever we go camping…” and “Hmm, I like these cupboards, but they’re awfully small…” and “Man, my kitchen needs more counter-space”.
And we looked a lot. It wasn’t until we actually got to the show that we were able to really decide on what we wanted. We looked at lots of trailers. And man, some are really, really fancy. There were a bunch we could have gotten, if our yard was bigger. See, we have to also store it in the yard, so exterior length was of paramount importance. We cut ourselves out of 80% of the market right there, by needing something shorter than 30 feet, with bunks and a slide, and a separate bedroom, and good storage. We finally narrowed down the list to three or four contenders, and then the fun began.
The dealers are like little two-legged sharks. And man, they can wheel and deal. And some, I didn’t like, so we didn’t talk much with them. I was mostly interested in what we could get for the price we were going to pay. And the ceiling was a monthly payment amount, because you can now finance trailers like houses – over 20 years on a mortgage. Yes, you pay a lot more for it in the end, in interest, but you don’t have to cough up $20K all at once for a trailer, which really helps people like us buy things.
Basically, we got the trailer at the right time, when they were motivated to sell, knowing that if they didn’t sell us something, we’d go right next door at the show and get something else – we had money to spend, and we were going to get something, by god, and it was going to be THAT DAY, so make us a deal, pal. We actually ended up getting the trailer from a dealer who wasn’t at the show (because of “politics” or something), and they threw in pretty much all the options for just a shade over the sale price, so I feel good about our purchase.
Of course, the trailer has to come from the factory, which means waiting. Waiting for, like, 8 weeks. Two months. That’s a long time, when you’re me. And Rob is even more eager to get it. We cleaned up the camper, and it’s for sale now (so if you want to buy a very cool camper…) and when it sells, we can buy a Suburban.
And the story behind the Suburban goes as follows: We need something bigger in order to be able to keep three dogs, because Rob doesn’t think it’s fair to take only two with us at a time, and the back of the Jeep gets crowded, and Cooter doesn’t like it when the other dogs are near his feet. So we need something big to transport the dogs. And we need something that has towing capacity for the trailer. And parents of friends of mine just happen to be selling a Suburban that fits the bill, so we made an offer, contingent upon our camper selling, that will get us exactly what we need. Yay!
It seems we’re in a bit of a spend-cycle at the moment. We bought the trailer. We bought the Suburban. We also bought a Giant TV on Boxing Day. We are now totally, totally broke, which is just great, which means we can’t afford to have kids to fill up the bunks, but we have a lot of cool stuff.
