Off the road

Last night we slept indoors.

While our RV was parked in the drive, we slept inside a warm house. Munchie and Wilderheart slept in the guest room on a twin bed, and I slept on the couch in the living room amidst a pride of kitties. And I slept very, very well.

Almost seven months after getting "on the road" we are going to be off for the winter. And five of those months were spent in one location anyway, so there was very little road seen through our front window. In fact, I'd be surprised if we put more than 300 miles on the RV in all that time.

Am I disappointed that our Free & Easy Life didn't turn out as we planned back in March? Of course not. We have had so many plans change and so many unexpected things happen in the past year that I tend to keep my mind and soul open to other possibilities.

We are blessed to have the friends and family that we do. I still ache for the connections I have back in our old home town, and I am sad that it isn't a quick drive to see my parents.

As for our new home? We are very, very blessed to have friends who have lent us a helping hand through this time. We have rebuilt old connections here, and strengthened our relationships with our performing family. It has been an incredible summer - one in which not only Wilderheart and I have grown, but our loved ones around us have grown as well. I am humbled by the kindness and generosity we've encountered.

And our Munchkin - the light of our lives - has grown a great deal, too. She is simply amazing. Motherhood is a tough job, but I can't imagine a more rewarding experience.

I'd write more but my laptop is about to run out of power. I just wanted to get in a quick update on where we are. We are safe. The snow fell on an empty camper last night. Our family is warm, our bellies remain full, and our hearts are overflowing.

Blues

So we have given up on the free camper, I got a chance to go and really look at it. The roof structure is all rotten, it's full of black mold and mice. It needs to be striped to the frame and rebuilt. That is way beyond where we are willing to go.

PLANS:

We had been planning to get another trailer and head south for the winter, sadly money has not been forth coming. I recently hurt my hand, and can barely use it at the moment, so future work is a problem. Dracomama is looking for a writing job so we ca get back on our feet again, that means we will probably be getting an apartment for the winter. The RV just isn't warm enough, or big enough to be snowbound with a toddler and two large dogs. We will probably have a place by Nov, and hopefuly be settling in close to some friends so we can stay social and avoid the winter blues.

THOUGHTS:

So we recently met a road family traveling on the Renaissace festival circuit. We took to them right away, as they were living on the road and had been doing it for years. They were sadly all crammed into a not very large tent, as they had lost the yurt they had been living in. Mom, dad and three kids, pretty cramped, but happy. As we have had time to get to know them and learn their story, our similarities diverged. They are running from problems in their lives, living on cash jobs so that their problems don't catchup with them. None of those are the reasons we want to be on the road, we want to travel and see what's over that hill, experience different climates. Find the piece of land that says "HOME" so we can settle down and build our lives on it! Our lives have tried to change drastically in the last couple months, we went from struggeling to maintain the "American Dream" to trying to free ourselves from it. Now free, we wanted to explore and run free, experience life differently, we found that we are still bound by our need to keep our family safe, have backup plans, money for emergencies. We don't want to find ourselves traveling in a broken down vehicle, living in a crappy tent be cause we have no recourse. We want to be able to buy that land that screams "HOME" when we find it. That means we have to live differently in the system. Work for a couple years, save a nest egg, travel when we can, eventually we will get what we want. I want my familly safe and healthy first and foremost, adventures and travel will come when it can.

Trials and tribulations

So the plumbing in the borrowed RV is fixed, and we are once again self contained!!! We do not however have the title for the new Trailer, and no money to fix it if we did. I think all the people with money went on vacation this month. Work dropped off to nil and we had to use up our savings, back to square one. At this point, we are going to save up the required fix it money, and if the title is not available, we'll buy something ourselves. We appreciate our friends giving us the trailer, but I'm not touching it unless we own it. Needless to say we are frustrated. On the other hand, the borrowed RV is for sale, the owner apparently liked having his yard back. We still want a trailer, as this is a little on the small side for a growing family. Worst case scenario, we can buy this really cheap and resell when we have what we want. We basically have this thing on permanent loan, so I doubt we'll have to goto those lengths.

Patch work

Have we mentioned that our current RV has been without indoor plumbing since late May? No? Well, it has. Whee!

There was a crack in the septic (apparently a previous patch that unpatched itself) and in anticipation of getting the new camper up and running, we just haven't bothered to fix it.

However, after two months of no indoor plumbing - which means walking into our Dear Friends' house e-v-e-r-y time we want to wash a spoon, get water to boil noodles, or use the bathroom - we have given in and decided to patch the septic.

I can almost hear the sound of running water just anticipating this change!

Doing dishes! Washing my hand! Peeing! OH, the simple things in life bring the most joy!!

A note on the safety of our family

We do have a plan. We always have a plan. As much as Wilderheart and I love spontaneity, when it comes to our family's well-being, we thrive on planning.

Unfortunately, in the world of self-employment, paychecks tend to be more... spontaneous. And plans must constantly be rewritten as circumstances change.

We have weathered a great many changes in the past year. Last year this time, Munchkin and I spent a lot of our time weeding our garden, harvesting vegetables and watching traffic pass by out in front of the house. We took family trips to the lake, visited family and friends for summer cook outs, and had a relatively low-stress existence. We could see the dust cloud of uncertainty on the horizon, but I don't think that either of us truly knew how far things would spiral or what tough choices we would be faced with making.

Having just written that, however, I do have to laugh at the concept of "tough choices." Wilderheart and I have never had to chose who would go without dinner so our child could eat. We have never had to chose who will move a thousand miles away for work while the other tries to eek out an existence alone. We have been blessed over and over, and know little of true suffering.

When it comes to the adventure we are currently enjoying, we do have a plan. We have benchmarks and limits and structure to this plan. We will not abandon everything and go willy-nilly off the deep end. Through our great deal of experience having plans go awry, we have B-Z in back-up plans. We put Munchie's welfare first above all and our family's safety second. Our sense of adventure and free-spirited prancing across the countryside is somewhere down on the list, but it would certainly never trump #1 and #2. Ever.

And quite frankly, I would and do take great offense to anyone who would even bring that into question. I am Munchie's Mother. I AM Dracomama. You don't want to see the Dragon come out. It is my privilege to provide her with safety and comfort and entertainment and knowledge. I am blessed to have her in my care.

No decision about our existence will be made without taking Munchie's well-being into account. ABOVE ALL.

New trailer at last.

We get to go clean out the new trailer tomorrow, and start cleaning up in anticipation of the repairs and changes we will be making. The rest depends on how fast the money comes in. Rv parts aren't cheap. I found a good source for scratch and dent new stuff, hopefully that will make the difference. I have up coming job that should make us enough to replace the water and waste systems in the trailer. Then we can move into it, and finish any other improvements as we go.

A sense of home

I've been feeling displaced lately. We moved the remainder of our belongings into the storage unit this weekend. Swept and cleaned the old place, then locked it up and left town.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't sad about it all. A lot happened this weekend. Unloaded two cars and a house. Rather drastic for a 48-hour span. We visited with friends, which was bitter-sweet. People we love dearly, who we won't be seeing as often as we'd like. People who have drastically impacted our lives for the better, and to whom we owe much gratitude.

I've never been one to really mourn leaving a place, but I suppose most of the time we've left with a firm plan and a place to move up. And now, for the first time, we've moved.. not down, not back, not up, not forward. We've just moved to a whole new reality, really. We parted with SO MUCH "stuff." We pared down to what really mattered, and without those blankets of "stuff" around us, I feel a bit naked sometimes. Not that I need all that stuff, nor do I want to be burdened by it again. It's just so very different. I haven't had this little in so long. I used to be able to move from apartment to apartment in the back of a station wagon, then a van, then a small moving trailer, then a truck, then a semi.... now, with three of us, we're back to only really needing a small U-Haul. It's so very unconventional, yet so very practical.

I am ever-grateful for the friends we have been staying with these past few months. They have offered us security, family, fun, love, comfort, a bathroom ;), and so much more. I doubt I'll ever think of them as anything but my family. We have gained brothers, sisters, nephews, and kittens :)

It's amazing to be going through this process of moving onward. It is not a simple process, but it is a life-altering one, and I think our family is approaching it in the healthiest way we can: together, with integrity and love.