Homemaking

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Battery Monitor, Laundry Day, and Friends

The battery monitor at present is claiming that I have about 5A coming in, which matches what the solar array monitor is claiming. It’s taken me a while to understand how the monitor displays incoming amps, even though it is very obvious. If I am using amps, there is a minus before the number. If amps are coming in, I get a positive number. I’m going to hook up the truck again tonight and see what the number is like so I will know if there really is any point to running the truck for an hour a day or not.

I now know that in the high part of the day, with more than 5A coming in, I can charge my computer without taking anything out of the battery bank (it draws 4A), but I only get 1A coming in. So what this tells me is to get that battery bank charged out to the max and then only charge my computer in the middle part of sunny days. This is a best case scenario, of course.

I’m heading out shortly to do laundry, having found a laundromat on the road into Port Lavaca. A wash is $1.50 and drying starts at 25 cents. I do believe this is only the second time since I hit the road that I am going to be putting laundry in my toad and driving to a laundromat. The first was in Eugene, and only because my hosts requested a lift to one, so it made sense to do mine at the same time.

I suppose I could set my Wonder Wash up on a picnic table near the public bathrooms and haul water, which I have done before, but since I’m not paying for anything here, I’m loathe to look so settled and use up so much water. I am just about out of water on the on board tank and will be filling a four gallon jug for the week, but it would take more than that to get through my current mountain of laundry. So the laundromat makes sense. I’ll bring the iPad and get some work done on my ebook.

As for friends, I got an email from my Colorado neighbours, R&S, asking me to call them so we can square away my little road trip to Port Aransas, Corpus Christi, and Nuevo Progreso. I made sure that they were not coming back just for me and then we agreed that they would watch the rig Thursday and possibly Friday night. The plan is to leave early Thursday, spend the morning in Port Aransas, the afternoon in Corpus Christi, and then drive to near the border to spend the night. Friday, I will cross early-ish, do some exploring and possibly shopping, have lunch, then go to my appointment at the dentist. If the border crossing is less painful than the one I had in Tijuana, I will drive straight home Friday evening. Otherwise, I will sleep en route and return Saturday morning. The plan at this point is to sleep in the truck, but if I find a motel under $50 I am going to splurge so that I can get a nice long shower!

Saturday evening, there is a concert at the Indianola Marina, which I have promised to attend with R&S. So the week’s schedule is filling up nicely!

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More Paint Touch Ups

Today, I decided to push ahead with the paint touch up project. The green in the office was the most pressing as there was a lot of damage to the walls from the installation of the new desk. I gently sanded the worst of the marks, then applied a couple of coats to the bad spots. There is still visible damage, but at least the colour is uniform.

Then, I pulled out the pink paint for the dressing room. Incidentally, that’s the pink that made me fall in love with pink. Until I fell upon that colour, I loathed pink. You’d never guess that now! I would love to repaint the dressing room in a shinier finish paint, but I’ll never be able to match the current colour exactly, so I prefer to do touch ups, most of which involved painting some of the new trim my mother installed. Most of the trim in the rig is brown, but if it’s on a coloured wall, then I paint it to match the wall.

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Muuuuuuuch better.

The next colour I’m pulling out is the golden brown. That will be a rig-wide job that will warrant taking out a roller. And then priming the new wall. And then, the biggie, which is the yellow. I want to completely empty the front room, wash the walls really well, and do two coats over what’s already there and four coats over the new wall. I’m not touching the loft, however!

It’s only 1:30PM, so you’d think I could take the brown out today, but it’s just too dark in here to do a good job. The rain hasn’t come and I doubt it will, but the sky is very overcast. It’s windy out and quite cool. My after lunch beach walk was short!

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The clouds were very dark this morning, but have lightened up.

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I don’t think I’ll ever find anything more random washed up on a beach anywhere.

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Never Give Up, Never Surrender

“There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by.”

There wasn’t much worth noting about today. I stayed in, did a little cooking and housework, and caught up on some computer related things that earned me a little money.

But I was also parked in the dead of winter on a gorgeous beach with the weather sunny and warm enough to go out in just a light skirt and tee-shirt and walk in the surf without freezing my toes.

Moreover, my battery bank was working as I’d hope it would, so I was able to spend a normal day following my usual routine and I really didn’t feel like I was boondocking beyond watching my water conservation.

It all sounds so mundane, but this is what I’ve always imagined RVing in winter should be like. This has been my grail, the vision I’ve worked so hard for in the last four and a half years. I’ve had some amazing days on the road, yes, but none that were more perfect than this because all the pieces have finally come together.

I’m going to go out on a limb and declare today to have been the best day of my life.

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QUIET

I forgot what quiet sounds like… this morning was the first in way, way, way too long (months? years?) that I was able to wake up under my own steam: no cars racing by, no leaf blowers by the rig, no truck reefers, no birds chirping, nothing. Just blessed peace and quiet.

It was really foggy this morning, but the sun has come out and the batteries are charging. Gina requested a video of the surf, but there isn’t really much of it here on this quiet bay. I have made note of the request, though. 🙂

The water is surprisingly warm and with sunny highs in the low 20s for the next few days, I may actually take out my bathing suit. I’m Canadian. I can swim in 50 degree water if I have to and this water is warmer than that!

I had hoped to just stay in today, but I really do need more computer charge than I have, so I may go for a drive and check out the environs.

Saturday, I’m looking forward to a meetup with blog reader Pam, who was kind enough to accept some packages for me. “Sure, I’ll gladly accept mail for you” is one of the best gifts you can give a full-timer on the move. 🙂 Of course, general delivery is always an option, but with a house address, I can take advantage of Amazon Prime free two-day shipping.

I so wish I was American and that I didn’t have to feel on the move all the time, even when paused. In the back of my mind, I always have that little voice reminding me that there is a very long slog to make back to the border.

But I may end up going just a little further south with the rig this winter. Nuevo Progreso, Mexico, a safe border town, is just four hours away and I’m overdue to see a dentist. So I may get the rig a little closer to the border, drive there with the truck, and walk across for a day, like I did in Tijuana. At any rate, that wouldn’t be well until the end of February. I’d like to sit mostly still at home for a few weeks, rest, and let the coffers fill up again. So I don’t know how exciting the blog will be in the next few weeks, but I will share the projects I’m working on.

Reader poll, what should I do with my new wall?

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– leave it as it is
– paint it yellow
– paint it golden brown
– stain it
– some other option

I was leaning towards stain, but there is a lot of wood filler and it’s not staining as nicely as it should. So paint seems like the best option. The more I look at the wall, the more I think the side panels should be yellow like the other walls in the room and the door should be golden brown like the other solid doors. Hmm, I think I have my answer! But I’m open to suggestions. 🙂

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Wrapping Up A Louisiana Sojourne

Today was all about homemaking and getting the rig spruced up for departure tomorrow. I took advantage of the free laundry facilities again and did a few tasks that are made more pleasurable thanks to the abundance of water and 120V power hookups bring.

The package I have been waiting for should be here tomorrow morning. When I ordered it on January 10th, I did not get a shipping confirmation in the days following and made the mistake of not questioning that. By Saturday, I knew something was amiss as priority post should never have taken that long, so I emailed the seller. He apologized profusely that the order had been missed and not shipped!

Now, I’ll admit that I was actually glad to have an excuse (waiting on the package) to prolong my stay here so, really, I wasn’t that displeased to have paid for all those extra nights for ‘nothing.’ But I do want to get a move on to Texas and am quite tired of being here (mostly because of four days in a row of listening to kids shriek all afternoon and into the evening in the playground directly behind my rig).

So with checkout being 1PM tomorrow, I asked the seller if he could overnight courier the package to me first thing Monday (since courier companies work on MLK Day) to arrive Tuesday morning. Yup. They covered the Fedex charge AND refunded me my original shipping cost. So I have nothing bad to say about them (and look forward to reviewing the product they are sending). I believe it’s partly my fault for not checking with them sooner.

Fedex claims the package will be here mid-morning tomorrow. I have no idea how exactly it will get to me. I gave the street address for the park and my site number. In the past, I’ve had courier companies come straight to my site (or my RV in the driveway!), but the park here is gated so the package may end up waiting for me at the office. I didn’t feel I needed to bother asking about having things delivered here since I mentioned waiting for mail to the front desk clerk when I checked in and she automatically assumed I had had the mail sent to them rather than General Delivery.

I had made a loose schedule for this winter with definite milestones to hit to keep me on track and moving towards Saskatchewan. Arrival in Texas was slated for late January or early February so I’m very much ‘on schedule’ and not fretting about not being in Texas yet!

There’s only three or four hours to my planned stop tomorrow (in Texas!) and the same distance to my final stop for February. So a late departure tomorrow is going to be just fine and I should be settled again for the longish haul by this time Wednesday.

By the way, today was a light-weight summer skirt, camisole, and flip flops kind of day!