Category: Uncategorized

Thursday I got invited to a white elephant gift exchange next Thursday. Do minimalists own white elephants? Am I going to have to go buy one?!!! Guess I don’t get to keep those new earrings I just bought but have not yet worn. Wonder what I will do with what I get in exchange? Ah, the price we pay to participate in community.

One woman was missing the Christmas preparation. She persuaded staff we should get to decorate. So they put up a tree and gave us bins of decorations and we spent Friday evening decorating the lounge area and listening to Christmas music. It feels a lot more like Christmas here now.

Tomorrow afternoon there is a wrapping party where we get to wrap our white elephants then place them under the tree. I plan to sneak peeks to see if I can figure out what is in which package. That will be followed by a sing-a-long around the piano.

The gift exchange is scheduled for Christmas night. Should be interesting. Everyone who brings a gift gets to pick a number from a hat. Then number 1 gets to choose a gift from under the tree. Then number 2 gets to choose, etc. When all the gifts are distributed we go around again and you get to swap your gift for someone else’s if you want to do so. Only then do any of the gifts get opened. I think I won’t swap my first choice because I would probably wind up wishing I had it back. Maybe I should pick the package I wrapped so I get to keep my earrings? Nah, the fun is in seeing what you did get.

And there will be a special menu for Christmas dinner. Beef tenderloin with shrimp, parsley potatoes, roasted asparagus, and chocolate pudding. Does that sound like Christmas to you?

TTYL,

Linda

I arrived safely back at Structure House on Sunday after a good flight and I am already losing more weight and getting stronger. I keep surprising myself at what I can do now.

I don’t understand, though, why TSA took my child-sized scissors out of my checked luggage. The paper they inserted said they opened the bag and repacked everything but my scissors are missing. So I can’t cut the scratchy labels out of the necks of the shirts I brought.

I just tell myself that since that’s the worst thing that happened on the trip I should consider myself very lucky indeed. And I am. Very lucky.

TTYL,

Linda

http://www.sportsmobile.com/inventory-details/?inventory_id=325

My heart is still breaking but the van is now offered for sale. See the link above for the listing.

They chose not to use my version of the write up so I will answer questions you might have about the van itself but all sales questions need to go directly to Sportsmobile. Thanks for understanding that.

TTYL,

Linda

Some RVers, especially those who stealth camp in small vehicles, differentiate between day camps and night camps. I very rarely hang around one place during the day that is not the same place where I spent the night. But I recently did that.

I spent a Saturday night at a Cracker Barrel. Sunday morning is a very popular time for locals to eat there so I felt a need to vacate their parking lot. But, I was too close to my destination to want to move on there so early in the day. So, I moved to a Cabela’s parking lot to spend a few hours.

I don’t know if you are all familiar with Cabela’s. It is a huge sporting goods store. With huge parking lots. Most of their customers are, of course, sports people. Some of whom arrive with dogs. So Cabela’s offers dog pens where you can leave your dog outside your vehicle since we all know leaving them locked in a car while shopping is not a good plan in most weather.

Some of them also offer horse corrals. I’d never seen a horse in the corral, though. Until this stop.

Maybe it’s because I am in Texas?

Linda

My good friend Tammy, of http://peanutonthetable.com, said she needs an update so I thought you all might want one as well.

I am parked for the night in a rest area along I-10 in Texas. Not all states let you do that but Texas does. Since I was driving west when the sun dropped below my windshield’s visor and right into my eyes I decided this was a good place to call it a day. This will be my last night of boondocking in this rig.

Tomorrow I will take it to a truck wash for the last time so at least the outside is all shiny and new looking.

Then I will drive to my last RV park where I will spend the next couple of nights.

In the meantime, Dave is driving the car down from Minnesota to meet me. We will stay in a motel while we pack some of the things to take home into the car. Then we will ship home the rest of the things from the RV. I had hoped to sell a bunch of it when I spent the last week at the Escapee’s RV park in Livingston, Texas, but they said no yard sales–no commercial dealings of any kind. I never thought of a yard sale as being commercial but it is what it is.

Then the RV will go in for one last service appointment. It does not quite have 20K miles on it which is when the next service is due but we prepaid for those checkups so we might as well get the thing into the best shape we can for the next owner.

Plus we will do what we can to clean the interior including dumping and flushing all the tanks before we turn it over to Sportsmobile Texas to sell for us. The ad is, of course, not up yet but when it is ready it will appear here: http://www.sportsmobile.com/preowned-sportsmobile-texas-inc/

While they are doing that, we will drive the car back to Minnesota where I will stay just long enough to get caught up on laundry, prescription refills, computer updates, hugs from Dave, and similar items.

Then I will fly back to Structure House to begin the next phase of hiding out from winter in one of their apartments while doing my best to get healthier.

So that’s what I am busy doing right now.

Along with grieving the loss of the RV way of life.

TTYL,

Linda