The Red Light Game

I think we all used to play a game when we were kids where the leader kid yelled out, “Green light!” and we all ran full-on until that kid yelled, “Red light!” when we skidded to a stop. It’s basically what Tracy and I’ve been doing the past year, either moving or stopping or starting. Which has meant that our stuff has been packed away for travel, to be pulled out in dire need only.

Now that we’re still for a while, seems like everything about our stuff changes.

Bring on Glassware

We each started three years ago with one special beer glass for me and two for Tracy (for different kinds of beer) and two low-ball glasses. By now I’m drinking out of a stainless steel cup, and Tracy’s reduced to a stein. This is standard for nomads, but, look: here we can let glasses sit in the kitchen cabinet all we want and we don’t have to find room in the bins for them (we’ll probably donate them when we leave).

So Tracy bought this stemware for New Years, but they work great for margaritas, which I’m trying to remember to ask my bartender (aka Tracy) for seeing as how limes are cheap and plentiful here.

For beer glasses, we’ve been waiting to buy them at breweries, but I swear there is only one brewery around, and it’s a touristy place on S. Padre Island where I’m holding no hope for good beer. So I have glasses on order from Amazon.

Oh, Amazon, You Tempting Thing, You.

The driver pulls right up to our trailer and even compliments us on it! I’ve bought so much stuff it’s sinful.

But I do need a new outdoor sofa; after three years, the old one is torn, has lost screws, is sagging and stained—with beer and sunscreen. I like the lifestyle that implies, but I’m happy to start all over with a one, to be delivered today. God, I love my outdoor sofa.

I Have Jewelry?

I packed it, but why would I ever pull it out? Here, in the bathroom I have out my sister’s lovely pearlescent tray holding random jewelry and my mom’s glass bluebird.

It’s almost like a real bathroom! Except it still smells a little and it’s too small to change clothes in. But look, jewelry! Now I just have to remember to put it on.

The Return of Purgatory Clothes

I pulled out my tiny, upright hamper (it’s in the corner buried by clothes and next to the dehumidifier), and put it to use for my purgatory clothes. You know, the ones that are too dirty to put back with the clean clothes but not dirty enough to wash. Sometimes the pile will get so big, I’ll put a few pieces back with the clean clothes, which is why I call it “purgatory.” Those clothes have to prove themselves to me.

I can walk to do laundry, which you know how much that means to me. It wasn’t that long ago, in New Orleans, where I had laundry facilities that I could walk to, so there’s not a huge backlog, but still. I’m washing everything again. It has to be truly dirty, though. The nomad in me is still alive and well.

Sweating and Showering

What else can I walk to? A hot shower! The showers here aren’t fabulous, but they’re clean, free, and the hot water runs and runs.

So I turned the trailer shower back into a semi-permanent storage area (mostly for crafts), and I dug out my bathroom kit bag to carry to the park shower. Turns out the kit bag was covered in mold from our time in Olympic National Park, but I soaked it in bleach and now it’s good to go.

I’m not going to do anything drastic like shower every day (I think that will forever be behind me), but every third day or so seems about right. We’ll see how that changes as I work out more, which I started this very morning in the tent, because my walks along the bike trail haven’t been enough, and we haven’t found a place to kayak.

Decorate!

I finally peeled off the window clings I had installed on the clear cabinet slider doors way back when we first started out. They were getting pretty shabby.

These I l bought from, you guessed it, Amazon, and think they look pretty spiffy. I have a long wish list for decorating, but we’ll see how much I can push the budget-minder of the couple here. I want to install a standing desk instead of the bedroom TV; I want to replace the stainless sink in the bathroom with a white one; I want to I want to I want to.

Random Weirdness

Because we’re in place at an RV park (or whatever I’m calling this), we see people every day. So I have to wear a bra. The injustice!

And I’ve been trying to keep our campsite neat instead of letting the detritus spread from all our projects we’re catching up on.

And, sadly, I’m unable to blog about our neighbors the way I like to do when I’m in a campground and get all Gladys Kravitz-like. I might get to know someone here well enough that they find out about the blog, and then I’m in deep shit if I’ve mentioned them.

I’ve done that before: spent a week making up all kinds of wild stories about the people in the campground, only to have to go back through posts and search for anything that might seem insulting and edit it real quick before whoever I just mentioned the blog to gets online. Here I’m just gonna keep my big mouth shut.

Well, time to shower in a real shower and pick out clothes from the purgatory pile. I’ll look at the jewelry but, with the exception of when I sat in a lawn chair looking at fireworks with Finn on New Years Eve, I’m not ready for that.