Month: January 2012

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Am I Glad This Week is Over!

Next week won’t be any less trying than this one has been, but at least I’ve got two days to recuperate before the next battle!

I promise to share this whole story in the spring, once it has reached some sort of conclusion. I am learning a lot about being a leader, maintaining respect while being disliked, and living with yourself when you have to make impossible decisions.

In happier news, I had another appointment with my doctor this week and he’s fairly certain he has nailed down what has been ailing me! It wasn’t easy getting him to listen to me (I’m now firmly convinced that all but three Canadian doctors have no business being in medicine since they don’t actually want to practice medicine), but he finally came to a conclusion that makes sense. If he’s right, that I am simply suffering from sleep apnea, I will rejoice! I’m waiting for the sleep clinic to call me to get the ball rolling on getting a firm diagnosis and treatment plan. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get this wrapped up by April because I’m ready to get out of here. The road’s siren call is very loud these days. 🙂

I am shocked by just how homesick and tired of this apartment I am. Living in a single room that isn’t my home is getting more and more intolerable. I am fed up with the loud refrigerator, hearing people come up the stairs, knowing that people in the hallway know what I’m listening to, and having to traipse up three flights of stairs with my groceries. All that said, I’m impressed that I’ve lasted this long before cracking. 😀

The weather is supposed to be warm on Sunday, so I aim to spend the afternoon puttering in Miranda and using my new jigsaw! There’s a home store literally across the street, so I just may find the motivation to knock a few items off my to-do list.

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A Shattering Morning

This morning, a careless swipe of the elbow sent my French press to the floor where it shattered into a million pieces. I’ve never taken any special care with it. When traveling in the RV, it just goes into the sink and rolls around in there.

One of the most common misconceptions about RV living is that it doesn’t allow for anything fragile. Well, I use fine china, ceramic, porcelain, and glass in my RV kitchen and I have never had anything break as a direct result of living and traveling in an RV. I don’t do anything special in storage either. My dishes get stacked in the cupboards just the way they did in my fixed home. I just don’t see a need to put padding between the pieces. The only concession I make for my mobile lifestyle is that I use shelf liner to keep the items from sliding around.

So, my French press was gone this morning and I hadn’t even had a cup of coffee yet. I let coffee brew in one cup, poured it carefully into another to leave as many grinds as possible behind, rinsed out the cup with the grinds, and then repeated the procedure thrice. It worked and the coffee was delicious, but that was tedious! Needless to say, a new French press was in order!

I had gotten my French press at the Winners in Thunder Bay back in the fall of ’08. Since then, I have casually looked at the selection of French presses available, thinking that I might want to upgrade to a bigger model since mine only makes a single mug of coffee. I’ve discovered that the small size is actually pretty rare. So when I went to Walmart this evening and saw that they had only the larger style (4 to 6 cups, which is actually two or maybe three mugs) and it was competitively priced at $20 I decided it wasn’t worth my effort to shop around. The bigger one isn’t going to be as easy to sneak into an overnight bag, but it’ll be nice to only have to heat water once on the weekend when I usually have two cups of coffee.

The loss of my little French press is irksome in that I had its use down to a science, knowing exactly how much coffee and water to add and how long to steep. I’m hoping that my proportions will stay the same and that the size of the vessel won’t matter for those days when I just want one cup.

I can’t wait to get back to my RV and its cushioned vinyl flooring!