Author: Rae

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Order and Chaos

This entry is about organization.

I wanted to attend one last writing group meeting last night and decided at the last minute to just go for the whole thing even though I had said I was just going to pop in. I therefore wanted to be on time, but I needed to change first. I became incredibly frustrated, even angry, that I couldn’t quickly find what I needed to get out the door quickly.

I had just spent a year where I was almost perfectly organized, especially in regards to my wardrobe. To go from sorted drawers to piles everywhere was depressing. My home hadn’t always been neat. *laughs* There were often piles everywhere. But I could, whenever I wanted to, restore order very quickly. Everything in those piles had a home. If there is anything I learned over the past year it is that neatness is physical state while organization is a mental one. Someone who is very organized isn’t necessarily neat, and someone who is very neat isn’t necessarily organized. I had been disorganized AND messy my entire life until I realised just how much of my life had been wasted because of this. I finally clued into the number of things I had missed out on because I had more important things to do… like procrastinating on getting myself organized and neatened up. I decided that, once and for all, I would purge what needed to be purged and organize the rest. I succeeded. And then I moved into the RV where, that first night, it seemed that I would have to start all over.

A friend said to me that she wouldn’t worry about getting the RV all sorted out before leaving; that she would just chuck everything into a big bin to deal with later. I’ve been doing that my whole life. I’m tired of living like that, in a sort of organizational limbo. The last thing I wanted to do was spend my month on the road ‘getting organized’ again! My things had been organized in the house; it was just a matter of reorganizing them to suit the setup of my new home.

So, Tuesday’s order of business was most definitely clothing. The load done at the laundromat on Monday and dried outside was ready to be put away. I looked at my wardrobe and realised that perhaps it isn’t suitable for a bank of drawers, but that’s okay. I prefer to hang my clothes! 95% of my clothes are hangable! I like sliding open a closet door and seeing all my clothes hung neatly with like colours together. Why try to reinvent that system when it has worked so well for me? So, I hung up everything again. It’s a bit tight in there, but everything fits since I’ll rotate out of season clothes. I then used the drawer underneath for under things and sorted the rest of the stuff into the extra Ikea Kassette boxes. Since I don’t have more clothes than I actually wear, I only needed one box per category: scarves, shawls, camis, summer pjs, winter pjs, regular socks, cold weather socks… It’s not as nice as opening a drawer, but the boxes can only stack two high, so it’s not a huge hassle to take a box out of there. I filled a larger see through bin with pants. My running wear went into a basket. I used what I had and it worked! Today, I was able to go to work without having to pull an outfit together frantically on Tuesday night.

Tonight, I don’t have anything to organize. Put away, yes, but not organize. I still have a ton of stuff to do, but it won’t be as overwhelming as the last few nights have been. I started with several loads of laundry (one nice thing about laundromats is that you can do several loads at once!) and then move on to putting away the last odd bits left so that I can drive off safely tomorrow. I still need to carve out more space for groceries, but I can find everything now. So, I’m good to go.

What I am most surprised to discover is just how much I have come to need that sense of control over my life. Having lived in chaos for most it, hiding it relatively well from my peers, the new organized me found a lot of free time once she wasn’t dealing with stuff.

To have gone from the mess on Saturday to this is absolutely astounding. I found room for everything. Go figure.

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Trials and Tribulations

I don’t have any pictures to share at this time because my desktop computer isn’t set up and hooking up the camera to the laptop is too fussy for the short time frame I have. So, enjoy all the bla bla bla and come back later for pics. 🙂

Oh, I’ve written soooo much about the last almost week, but I need to save some material for a book! 🙂

Here are some highlights from the past six days.

Friday August 29, 2008

  • I successfully backed up into a busy street at rush hour as I couldn’t very well sleep at my mechanic’s. No one was injured during this impressive feat of driving. Thank you to David for stopping traffic!
  • After spending several hours loading STUFF into the RV, I took off for a sports arena a few blocks from the house to spend my first night as an urban boondocker. The cats took to the RV immediately and slept good nights. Mom was too exhausted to fuss and had a good night, too. The arena wound up being quiet and dark. I didn’t suffer for lack of 120V current and I really, really, really enjoyed being able to take a hot shower!


Saturday August 30, 2008

  • Up at six, worked non stop, got the house emptied and the RV stuffed by noon, right on schedule.
  • Was screwed over by Vidéotron one last time.
  • Arrived at the campground absolutely drained and overwhelmed.
  • Circled my loop, planned my entry into the site, came back, pulled straight into an empty site, and unhooked my toad, which is where:

Rae learns a very important lesson about towing

Watch where your feet are. The tow bars are heavy and purple toes are NOT a fashion statement.

Toes weren’t broken, so I ignored the throbbing pain down there and moved the toad out of the way. Moved the RV back, forward, and back again, getting it into the campsite in one shot. Eyewitness testimony states that I seemed to have been doing it my entire life. Which is where:

Rae discovers that backing up perfectly (in one try) into a campsite is actually not the most important consideration at that time

As it turned out, I had circled my loop and reentered another one. I was in the wrong site. But, in my defense, both sites had neighbours with a blue tent AND both sites were of the same shape as I’d been told to look for!

A very nice park official checked to see if the site would be available for the five nights I was staying. It was. I could stay.

The RV was stuffed to the gills, I was overwhelmed, and just about burst into tears when I saw how much work I had ahead of me. So, I said *expletive deleted* that and went out for a nice dinner during which I formulated a plan of attack.

I slept the sleep of the dead. Never mind that the mattress is really too thick and that I can barely roll over. I was on my own mattress with my feather duvet and pillows. The cats were by my side. I could hear crickets outside. The wind was whispering a lullaby. I was home.

Sunday August 31, 2008

I slept so late I was disoriented upon waking up. I mean, the day is half gone by the time 9:30 arrives!

I hadn’t been able to plug in my RV on Saturday since the prongs on my cord didn’t match the holes in the electrical post. So, I just dragged the coffee maker and toaster out onto the picnic table.

A few hours later, as order begins to emerge from the chaos that was the basement:

Rae finds something that no longer makes it necessary for her to run an extension cord from her electrical post to the coffee maker set on a picnic table.

She believes it’s a ‘cheater adapter.’ Possibly. Whatever it is called, it’s an adapter. She now has 15AMP service!

One of the most useful things I did on Sunday was label a tote TOWING and put in it all the odd bits that I use for towing.

I took the afternoon off to get organizational stuff at Wal-mart, then I head off to a friend’s for a Labour Day BBQ. Her mom gave me a hibachi she had lying around in the shed and I am now able to char my own barbecue sauced bird!

Monday September 1, 2008

I was spending the day with a friend so I woke up early and attacked the basement. I got it so well sorted and organized that it is no longer stuffed to the gills!

At some point during this day:

Rae has a real light bulb moment involving a too highly chlorinated fresh water holding tank

“Gee the water is caustic. I can’t wait to empty the tank and put in fresh water. Waitaminute. The tank is only a third full. Maybe I can use the new hose I bought yesterday at Walmart at a major discount and top up the tank with fresh, unchlorinated, water and dilute what’s left?”

Tuesday September 2, 2008

WORK! I finalised all my files and opened cases and packed since I knew Wednesday would be a wash.

A separate entry will follow about the evening.

Which brings us to today, Wednesday September 3, 2008

I did some real work, spent some time on line, shed copious tears, received and gave a ton of hugs, and left the way I’ve always dreamt of leaving a place, with a tug of regret.

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Settling In

I’m going to have to start to compose posts that I can just cut and paste into Blogger during my stolen moments of online time!

More about the last few days will follow, but I will say that I’m settling in nicely, learning A LOT, eager to get on the road, already nervous about how the winter is going to be, and collecting lots of amusing anecdotes.

Topics to look forward to:

  • Rae learns a very important lesson about towing.
  • Rae discovers that backing up perfectly (in one try) into a campsite is actually not the most important consideration at that time.
  • Rae finds something that no longer makes it necessary for her to run an extension cord from her electrical post to the coffee maker set on a picnic table.
  • Rae has a real lightbulb moment involving a too highly chlorinated fresh water holding tank.

And more!

Stay tuned! 🙂

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Doin’ the Moho Slalom

I got the tow pins tonight. All I will say about that is that I’m surprised that I’m surprised about how that went down.

Anyhoo, I arrived at Miranda’s parking spot for the last time around 7. I took perhaps fifteen minutes to unload boxes and empty as many of them as I could.

Then, I looked for the magic battery button, but I don’t seem to have one, so I positioned Pommette for a boost. Once I got Miranda going, I manoeuvred her into place for hooking up the toad behind her.

Hooking up was surprisingly easy!

My tow bar is a Blue Ox Aventa II. I would have bought an Aladdin, which is a high end model suitable for towing a small car, but much cheaper than the Aventa II. The Aventa II, also a high end model, could probably tow a Hummer. It’s really huge and heavy, but I like knowing that I could upgrade Pommette to a pickup or SVU one day and still have a tow bar I can use.

The Aventa II is a self-aligning bar. I can’t figure out what’s ‘self-aligning’ about it, but I can say that I was completely hooked up, safety cables and all, in less than 20 minutes. The hardest part was getting the toad lined up perfectly with the coach and at the correct distance. Then, it was just a matter of attaching safety cables and electrical wires. I figured out the wiring on my own. As it turns out, I had to open a thingy under the rig, push in another thingamabob, and then plug the cable into the thingamabob. I’d seen the thingamabob in the rear pass through and had offhandedly guessed that it was part of the towing system, so I was already one step ahead of the game when I couldn’t find a skinny rectangular outlet for the wire.

I’m surprised by how easy it was to hook up the car on my own. There is no way I could have done that with a traditional ‘fixed’ tow bar, the kind with a ball coupler. The only thing I wasn’t able to do was confirm that the brake lights were working on the toad, but since the turn signals were, I didn’t worry.

Then off we went, the very picture of freedom and the antithesis of the current economic climate, LOL!

The drive back to Ottawa was very emotional. I was pretty sure it would be my last time driving up the 416 into a beautiful orange sunset and watching the pastoral landscape slowly become the skyline of the adopted city I will always consider to be my hometown. For all that’s found, something else is lost….

I let Majel the GPS pick the best route to the garage where I would drop off Miranda. She had me go down a narrow residential street that had cars parked down it. The parkers were smart and alternated which side of the road they were on, so I was able to take a serpentine route all the way down. Maybe I’m just tired, but I really got a kick out of doing the moho slalom.

Towing was a piece of cake. It really helps that I could see the car in the backup camera monitor, as well as all the connections. I didn’t notice much of a difference when stopping and starting, even on hills.

I feel positively drained and have to keep reminding myself that this time next week, the first day of my adventure will be just about behind me.

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Pleasant Surprises

I was just playing around with my cell phone and managed to lock on to a signal that took me to my account where I could check the balance. I was curious to see if I would still have 100$ on it, or if I would have been dinged for some unexpected tiny print charges.

Neither.

While all the other cell companies charge you 25$ or so to activate your phone, Virgin Mobile pays YOU money to activate your phone! They gave me a 15$ credit for activating on line!

Even at 30 cents per minute for local calls, 115$ is going to last a long time!

This reminds me of ten years ago, when I bought a £5 phone card for my month in Scotland and got a ludicrously generous £3 bonus. I still had so much money left on the card at the end of the month it was worth giving it to another traveler!