We are midway through our second week, the project we are camped at has been put on hold as other projects take more precedence over this one. Which means I have to leave every day and Dracomama and Munchie are cooped up and stir crazy when I get home. On the bright side some good friends of ours live near by and have invited us to camp out in their yard. The wife stays home with their child, and dracomama and munchie would each have daytime cohorts. Hoping the cold weather will stay away!

Sunday morning silence

Munchie and Papa have gone off to the store for supplies, so I am left here alone in our Little House in the Big World. After living here for almost a week, I was able to reorganize some items to make it a little easier to function. I put away the laundry, re-made the bed with the extra blankets we picked up from the house yesterday, folded up the blankets we borrowed from Munchie's God-Papa (thank Heaven for those blankets!), and put away the clean dishes. Then I went through every cupboard and made sure that the items in those cupboards actually belonged there. 

Now I'm sitting here, alone (The Mutts - who we have been remiss in introducing until now* - are stowed away in the garage of the house for the moment so I could clean), listening to the spring winds blow in, occasionally accompanied by the trill of a meadowlark or punctured by a passing flight of killdeer. 

The house we are fixing up is parked in the middle of a field/marsh area that, at one time, was a horse farm. It is obvious that the house - built in the 1970s, was built to be state-of-the-art at the time, but never, ever updated.

Never.

On the bright side, where there is wall paper, there is only one layer. The woodwork hasn't been painted over a dozen times. It's a rather WYSIWYG home. 

The land around it was sold off, maybe 5-10 years ago, and some McMansions sprung up. Fortunately, the lots are a reasonable size, and this house remains on a fairly nice chunk of land itself. 

It's very peaceful here, and I'm glad that this was our first stop on our new journey. It's been a fairly low-key, yet challenging enough start to keep things real for us (Have I mentioned that the house isn't hooked up to city water yet, but has its well capped? Yeah, so we have to drive to town to refill our water tanks.. kind of a pain...). Yesterday we checked out a nearby RV Park to see if we wanted to live there and have Wilderheart commute the few miles to the house every day. 

We decided - firmly - against it. 

First of all, the reason we're in an RV and not in an apartment or on a friend's couch is so we can keep the family together. Second, the park was far away from town with no easy access - unless I wanted to ride my bike along a highway. And if Chris needed the car to get to work, we'd be stuck. Finally, I had a bad feeling about the place. That is always enough reason for me to stay out of a place. 

Well, since I started this post, my two great loves have rejoined me, and I've been feasting on coffee and doughnuts with Papa while he helped Munchie eat some yogurt and crackers. Oh, what a life!

*We will post about our other two great loves soon!

Ground hog's day...Ground hog's day...Ground hog's day...

Ahh what a week we had trying to escape our home town. We had planned on staying in the rv for a couple nights to get used to it before we left. The furnace heated things nicely, the leaks were fixed (mostly) half of our road gear was packed. I decided to go get propane as it was low, and maybe wash some dirt off as it was pretty dirty from sitting for so long. At fleet supply they told me they couldn't fill rv's, only portable cylinders.  No problem, I would just head across town, but first I would stop and use the truck wash. I put in my $3.00 in quarters the pressure washer sprang to life and then coughed and died. It pissed water for the entire duration of the clock. There are no attendants and no numbers to call for help, so I cursed and left with a wet, dirty rv. Filled her up with propane, went home and I decided I didn't like the soot stain by the furnace exhaust. The furnace had been sitting in the back of my mind for a couple days. It lit fine and heated nice. The CO detectors were ok with everything, but I had an itch. So I called the local rv dealer and begged them to do an inspection and maybe a cleaning. Bad news, the furnace was filthy and burning poorly for starters. We also discovered that the main burner gas valve was defective and deemed a safety hazard by the manufacturer. It wasn't available for replacement, or even legal to put in if we could find it. Long story short we had to delay over the weekend our departure, and pay $160.00 to have the furnace taken out and put in a cardboard box in pieces. No Heat! I found 2 nice heaters at fleet farm, figured they would do the job nicely. Turns out we can only run one at a time because they blow the breaker where ever we are plugged in. I want a 30 amp hookup!!! On the up side I discovered that my halogen work light puts off enough heat to keep the water from freezing up. BONUS! 

Leaving day at last, all our stuff is packed. Myself and the dogs in the rv and Dracomama and Munchie in the car following. The engine makes a squealing noise if I try to go over 50 mph, I pullover and determine that it is the belts. I think if I drive easy we can probably make it to our destination 60 miles away. We make it 10 miles and stop at a gas station as the squealing is unbearable, and still can't get over 50 mph. I break out the tools and get one set of belts tight, but I break my rachet trying to get power steering adjuster loose. I also crush a finger breaking the nail so it's pushed into the nailbed, Yay! I hope the one adjustment is enough, go wash up and come back out to talk to Dracomama and notice the engine of the car smoking. I look at the dash, temp is redlined! I ask her to shut the engine off and pop the hood. Coolant vomiting everywhere! Great! We all pile into the squealing camper and return home. I take the spare car and run 30 miles to get parts and the electric heaters I spoke of. On the way back I stop and put a new thermostat in the broken car. Then go home and lay on the shoulder under the rv and change belts. The adjuster for the power steering is useless, so I have to pry the belt off. The others came off fine but I discover that the weenie at the parts store has given me one wrong sized belt. I put on what I can put on. I put the old power steering belt back on as the new one is too tight. We camp out in the rv as that is where all our stuff is. heater works ok, but this is where we kept blowing breakers. Frustrating!  We head out the next day and only make it a mile. it becomes obvious that the culprit is the power steering belt I can't adjust. Laying on a dirt road I used strong vocabulary, my german stubbornness, and some ninja like reflexes to get the belt onto the pulley. We then pick up the repaired car and made it to our destination.

We are on the road... finally!

I will let Wilderheart get around to updating everyone on the adventures of the last five days, and the Groundhog's Day-effect that took place as we tried to leave town.

This morning we woke up after our first full night's sleep in our new location. It was a bit chilly - it's only 28'F outside the camper, and while it was 62'F inside when we first awoke, it dropped down to 58'F due to the fact that we can't run the heater and the coffee pot at the same time. We will have to resolve this issue!

Life in our Little House in the Big World has thus far been rather lovely. We rolled in here at about 3pm on St. Patrick's Day, and the first thing Munchie did when she stepped outside was bolt around giggling and exploring the various leaves and twigs and dirt clods. We pulled out her umbrella stroller and got the dogs on their leashes, and we went for a family walk. Munchie spent half the time just giggling at the two waddle-butts waggling in front of her (if I was at that height, I'd probably laugh at dog butts, too).

After our walk, Munchie and I ran to do some quick shopping for Wilderheart, which included a celebratory 4-pack of Guinness, since after all the chaos of getting here, we wouldn't be able to go out and celebrate. I bought some groceries and some Baby Chow and we went back to the camper.

Munchie and her Papa cooked chicken together on our mini-grill outside:



...while I quickly vacuumed inside and cooked some Mexican rice. Then we all sat down together for our meal. Okay, W.H. and I sat down - Munchie squirmed and wriggled and wandered. We need to get her portable booster high-chair back so we can keep working on those table manners!

Munchie asking for "more"

And our favorite - her turtle face:

Then I told W.H. to take the night off - he'd been running so hard for the past few days that I thought he deserved a rest. Munchie went to bed around 8pm (I think the fresh air really helped!) and W.H. and I sat at the table and watched two episodes of Battlestar Galactica before turning in for the night.

Certainly not the most wild St. Patrick's Day we've ever shared, but definitely one of the best!

The RV

We put out a call to the many faire friends and others that we know for the renting or borrowing of an rv or trailer. We were surprised by getting several immediate offers. The one we took was for an rv approx 24 feet with a rear tent pop out much like those little pop up trailers. It's from 1976, so it's well loved, but everything more or less works. The problems being that it was well loved by mice and water. I patched up the leaky skylight, and my lovely wife and I took turns cleaning up the mouse presents. We steam cleaned and washed everything. I stripped the cushions from the cab-over where we are going to sleep, and soaked them in the tub with detergent and bleach. They are now nice and clean and 4 days later still wet. I took them to the laundromat and stuffed them into huge dryers and $10 later, still wet. The steam cleaner was able to suck moisture from them but I couldn't drag the wand over them, you had to stab it into the cushion and hold it there. This also has the added bonus of making both he inside and the outside wet. So now they are draped over radiators all over the house. My other half has been making new curtains to replace the worn ones that came with the camper, and seat covers to render the interior somewhat modern. Sitting in the camper after all the work feels pretty good, it's homey which of course is a good thing. We can't wait to move our stuff in and move out of the house. The house still has alot of detrius floating around, I think it might be easier to deal with if we aren't cohabitating with our junk.

Garage sale fever

There were people sitting in their cars waiting for us to open up on saturday. They came crowding in and bought piles of stuff.  We had a very busy day. Today, being sunday was slower, I actually got out to the rv to do some repairs (will post about that later) between customers. We had a few pangs watching people haggle over our belongings and cart them away in their self satisfied "I just got a deal" sort of way. But we managed to make a fair amount of money in the process. I highly recommend to every young family starting out, that once you get to that point (and you'll know) sell everything, its liberating! We obviously kept our keepsakes and treasures, some useful things for our next place. More later

Tired. Just... tired.

I can actually feel myself getting meaner as the night wears on. We are so close to our big sale. There is a lot left to do, but we have come so, so far. We have touched nearly everything in the house. That's a lot of touching, and a lot of reliving memories (or, searching for memories, as the case may be!).

I can hardly write. In fact, I'm going to quit while I'm ahead. I'm just TIRED!

No rest for the weary.

We are finding ourselves quite weary these days both mentally and physically. Tonight marked the final destruction of the attic, where everything we didn't want to deal with in the past was placed. Again with the hand down the ladder, move to the landing and carry the rest of the way down. Sorting is almost as heavy, there comes a point where items you once prized as useful or interesting become an annoying thing you have to dispose of. Living day to day, you don't really think about how much we accumulate living in a house. When you finally move stuff seems to multiply out of the closets and storage areas like so many demonic rabbit hoards. We will both be glad to have this part over.

Where is God in our blog?

One thing we did notice about other blogs written by families shaking off the harness of materialism and heading out on the road is that many of them have a very strong, passionate relationship with Christ, and talk of this in their blogs.

Wilderheart and I are not those people (edited to add: we are not those people that talk a lot about our faith! Hehe - after a re-read, I realized how that phrasing sounded...). He is Pagan. I am Catholic. We have a blessed and loving marriage. We believe that the Divine works through us if we pause long enough to listen. We feel that we are on the path that was set out for us, and that we will arrive at greater spiritual awareness because we are listening to the Divine in this venture.

While we are both strong in our faith, we are also quiet in our faith. Should the Divine ever lead us to be otherwise, we'll let you know. But until then, we will continue to quietly develop our relationships with the Creator as a family.

Cardio and weights

Tonight we tackled the attic. Wilderheart handed things down, I caught them below and stacked them, and Munchkin (our 14-month-old) stood barricaded in the bedroom watching with intense interest.

After we had a substantial pile, I then carried boxes to the landing and Wilderheart carried them the rest of the way down. This process went a lot faster, and resulted in both of us wheezing and heaving. I have knots all up and down my back, bruises in place I didn't know could bruise, and an overwhelming urge to drool on myself at the end of the day. We are certainly paying for our sin of materialism!

We emptied many, many boxes - some items were combined into other boxes, some items thrown out, and even more landed in the sell/donate piles. I really am dreading pricing all of these things, but hopefully the sale will prove fruitful and we'll 1. have more money when it's over and 2. have less stuff when it's over!

Oh, and on a side note about that open-house sale: I posted a listing for it in the paper today. We "won" two free garage sale yard signs for being the first of the season :) hehe!

Doing without, growing within

Today has been quite the blitz day! Wilderheart sorted and packed the kitchen items, keeping in mind that most cooking will be done in a tiny space with a small stove. When he made lunch, he even made sure to use a recipe that would be good for on-the-road cooking. We're making this transition as thoughtfully as we can.

As a matter of fact, we have now been living without running water for over a week. Our water was turned off last Monday. In the midst of everything else, we simply forgot that our payment was due that day. The fee to turn water back on would be an additional $70. We chose to leave the water off. The first night (we got home around 9pm to find the water off), Wilderheart scooped up buckets of snow to melt on the radiators overnight. We bought some drinking water, and made plans to haul water from another source.

Thankfully, our neighbor - who has been having ups and downs right along with us - saw our water being turned off and called us to let us know that we could get water (and showers!) at their house. That has simplified things a lot, and I cannot tell you how grateful I am to have that family in our lives (we WILL be taking them with us on the road - in spirit if not in body).

What are the things we have to give up without running water? We don't flush the toilets as often. We have to take our laundry elsewhere to wash. We don't get to wash our hands as often, but we have antibacterial gel and baby wipes. I don't get to take bath on a whim (which is one of my great weaknesses in winter - I could live in the bath tub!). When Wilderheart needs to do dishes, he just hauls water back from their home hot (why is he doing dishes? because the kitchen is His Domain).

But things weren't instantly this easy for us. The moment that we discovered our water was turned off, Wilderheart became quite agitated. He paced around the house almost like he was looking for something that he'd lost. Finally, he calmed down and admitted that he was more upset that the choice was taken out of our hands (not really - we COULD have chosen to have the water turned back on, but having it turned off in the first place wasn't our choice).

After the first couple of days, we adjusted to the new lifestyle. It really hasn't been that hard. We will likely be living without running water in the RV until the weather improves and we don't have to worry about anything freezing overnight (hopefully by April!). However, we should be able to get water and indoor plumbing at the houses that Wilderheart is fixing, so that will make things easier, too.

Wildeheart just announced that dinner is ready. I'm going to go join my family for a meal, and make the next list of things to do before we can leave.

Sorting our lives into boxes

We have decided to make a hasty (yet well-planned) exit from this home for a few important reasons:

1. Wilderheart's new job is starting soon, and we want to keep the family together as much as possible.
2. The fate of our home is unknown at this point, except that one way or another it won't be ours in a few months. We have no reason to cling to it. In our hearts, it is no longer ours.
3. It's been a long winter and we figured that turning our lives inside out and disposing of 3/4 of our belongings would break up the tedium.

We had a one week mad dash to store, donate, sell or trash everything we own. Well, we made it about 50% of the way on that, but Wilderheart's start date was moved back a week, so we also have an extra week to make things happen.

We have a storage unit here in town so we don't have to drive far. Since we'll be mobile for the next several months, we figured that this was as good a place to store things as any. And we aren't storing a whole lot. The only pieces of furniture we are keeping are an antique dresser and Morgan's crib. Everything else we have has been handed down to us or purchased second-hand. We don't have any strong attachments to any of it.

Clothes? Not a problem, either. Books? Somewhat more difficult, but we promised each other we'd buy a Kindle as soon as we can save for one so we can carry a library on the road with us. Books that really mean a lot will go in the storage unit.

The real difficult items to sort are those dozen or so boxes of odds and ends that we have kept through out our lives to remind us of moments in our past, like a box full of bookmarks that refer back to a chapter we may want to revisit some day. The space shuttle pencil sharpener from my visit to Orlando at age six. The hedgehog dog toy we took photos of against the backdrop of various tourist attractions on our trip to New Mexico. The keychain from my senior prom.

Those are the little treasures with which I cannot bring myself to part. They don't take up much space, but some day, after a lot of living and a lot of travel, my children will ask me about my past. Those bookmarks will come in handy.

The journey begins

We are family comprised of 2 adults one toddler and 2 large dogs. Due to poor location and the down economy we are losing/giving up our house. We have acquired through a generous friend the free use of an RV for our little family to travel from place to place while I work. I currently am a jack of all trades and master of a few. I am using my many talents to repair (Ironically) foreclosed homes for banks. I invite you therefore to follow along with our family's adventures.