Life on the Road

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National Security is not my friend.

At least, the “new positive identification” requirements effective January 1, 2010, courtesy of the Department of Homeland Security aren’t my friend – nor the friend of anyone living full-time in their RV.

Nick finished his online Driver’s Ed course, and we prepared to head over to the DMV so he could take the test and get his Learner’s Permit.

When I made the appointment online, I filled out the online application, and perused the requirements to determine what documentation I needed to bring.

Birth certificate. Check. (AHEM, of course he has one, and of course I provided it as required by law… Why do you ask??)
Social Security card. Check.
Proof of address.

Uh, oh.

I have most of the documents availble that they suggest as possible proofs of address, and they all have the same address on them. My bank statement, phone bill, and governmental correspondence. It all goes to the Post Office Box.

But the DMV won’t recognize a P.O. Box, and insists that you must have a “physical address.”

I’m happy, of course, to tell them where my RV is currently parked… At the moment, we are hooked up by the grace of God and a local church in the RV parking they have in the field out behind their facilities.

But it’s not like I’m getting mail here, or changing my address with the banks.

I spoke with the DMV Supervisor of Field Services on the phone. After some discussion, she said that it would be acceptable if we had a letter from the church saying that we were currently residing on their property, and then the usual Affidavit from a parent (me) certifying that the minor lives with them.

So, with eveything in hand, we went.

Our appointment was at 3:15 pm.

I freely admit that, after a bit of a false start, we didn’t arrive until 3:25. Despite this, we were the first 3:15 appointment to arrive.

We had to go through a lengthy conversation with the receptionist (also a screener) before being assigned a number and told to wait until were were called.

The time ticked away…

Around 4:40 pm, we were finally called to a window.

The lady at the window, let’s call her Tiana, took our papers, looked everything over several times, and finally said, “Uh, uh, we cain’t take dis.”

When I informed her that I had spoken to the Supervisor of Field Services, who had assured me that it was acceptable, she said (I’ll spare you further transliteration of her dialect), “Well, if you had something on the church’s letterhead, then we could take that. This is just a form from our site.”

First of all, I was confused that “a form from their site” was not, in fact, preferred… After all, it was specifically designed for that purpose. And for the other required Affidavit, and several other uses enumerated on its face, they will only accept that form.

I asked what the difference was between a letter from the church, signed by the pastor and saying that we lived there, and this form, which was signed by the pastor and stated that we lived there.

Tiana then went off in an entirely different direction, and said, “Well, if you had something from the outside, like a bill or something, that would be awright.” (Ooops, sorry. The dialect was the only entertaining part of the entire encounter, and is hard to ignore).

I responded, somewhat exasperated, that the church was not going to randomly give me their mail.

She replied, “Well, you could just go to the office and get them to type you up something on their letterhead.”

So what is the real requirement here?

Is it “outside” verification, or their affirmation? And what is magical about “letterhead”, if all the requirements are met without it (and on the agency’s own standardized form, no less!)?

And most importantly, why had the Supervisor of Field Services given me such erroneous information?

*SIGH*

This went back and forth for several minutes and then she went in the back to talk to her supervisor.

When she came back, she said, “Yeah, we cain’t take dis.”

Upon seeing my exasperated look, she said, “Okay, you just go stand over there, and I’ll get my supavisa to come talk to you.”

So we stood there. And stood there.

Time ticked away…

Eventually, she emerged. No dialect, but she simply restated that “we can’t take this.”

We went back and forth a number of times, re-covering all the ground I had been over with Tiana.

Finally I asked, giving in to the stereotyping that was obviously going on anyway,

Well, what do homeless people do? Can they not get a Driver’s License?

This seemed a great relief to Ms. Supervisor, now on familiar ground.

She explained that they simply filled out one of the Affidavit forms, and listed their address as “General Delivery” with a ZIP code. Then in the “Comments” area, they listed their customary location, “Something like, ‘Under the big tree on the corner of the park on 23rd St.’”

So… I could just do that?

Sure.

And… We can just do that… Right now?

Sure.

*AHEM*

With General Delivery papers in hand, we returned to Tiana’s window. “Oh, yeah, we can take dis. You took de test online, right?”

Um, no. We weren’t even aware that that was an option.

“Oh, dear, you gonna have to come back tommorow, we don’t give tests after 4:30.”

No, seriously.

It was like a bad joke!

I tried, quite reasonably (I checked with Nick later, and he assured me I was calm), to ask what time we would actually need to show up… After all, we had a 3:15 appointment, and that had not been early enough.

Tiana brushed me off, pointing out that the paperwork had not been “in order,” missing entirely the point that even if everything had been perfect, we were not called up to her window until well past the testing deadline.

Yes, we did go back the next day – with a sort of “get out of jail free” pass that reduced our wait time to about ten minutes.

Nick passed the test with flying colors (of course), and is now the proud owner of a Florida Learner’s License.

The address reads only,

General Delivery
Homestead, FL 33032

Which, clearly, is much better for Homeland Security than having my verified and usable Post Office Box address…

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In case you haven’t heard the news, Wolf got a civilian job offer up at Keelser Air Force Base in Mississippi, and we’re going to be moving in just over a month.

As we prepare to go, we’ve already had our share of triumphs, and frustrations. Let me share a few, for entertainment value, if nothing else!

Moving & Storage

After some debate, we decided that having our belongings shipped up in containers was by far the best way to go. We have the RV for travelling, after all.

Everything except our daily necessities is already boxed up and packed into a storage unit, so it should be easy to load and unload (without the “packing” stage that accompanies moving out of a house).

Also, if we tried to get it all in a U-Haul truck (assuming it would fit in one truck, which I doubt), that would mean that Wolf would have to drive said truck, and I would have to drive our truck pulling the RV. That’s stressful for me, for long periods, since I haven’t done it much; it would also mean a much shorter drive-able day, since we couldn’t trade off driving for breaks and kid-distracting parent switches.

So we called and got a quote from PODS, which seemed lke the best option.

At some $3,300 for two 16′ containers (including the pickups and deliveries, moving it to Mississippi, insurance, and up to a month of storage) it sounded like a lot of money… But then again, so did the U-Haul truck, and fuel for it – and it had all those other issues.

Luckily, a friend suggested a competitor of theirs, saying her mom had gotten a great rate from them. I called, and was amazed to get a quote that was ONE THIRD LESS – right around $2,300.

If I’d been excited about that company, I might never have thought of it, but there were a few things about PODS service that I preferred, so I called them back.

The phone rep said there was nothing they had the authorization to do at that level, but that if I would give them half an hour someone from another department would call me back and try to keep my business. Okay.

After a brief wait, the call came. We discussed the other quote, and I was put on hold. When the gentleman returned, I was given a new quote that was essentially a match for the competitor’s – allowing me to stay with the PODS concepts I preferred.

This was such an unusual adjustment, apparently, that he couln’t even send me an automated email with the prices, since it had to be adjusted by the Accounting department. (I did have him send me a manual email to confirm!).

But they did, in fact, come a full $1,000 (a THIRD!) off their price, which had already been discounted and adjusted in our previous negotiations. Thank you, Lord!

A Place to Hang Our Hat

Looking for a place to “land” when we get there is a trickier proposition.

We’ve found some great places to search for rentals, some of which are specific to the Military (and Dept. of Defense) community. There seem to be any number of places listed that fit our basic criteria, which are something like:

• 3+ bedrooms, 2+ bathrooms (even 1.75 in a pinch)
• 1500+ square feet (we’re considering a couple closer to 1300, but space is SUCH a nice feeling, after the RV!)
• Allows cats, with no “pet rent” (an extra deposit is expected, but not throwing money away every month!)
• Convenient distance and location from Wolf’s job
• Parking for the RV
• Garage. Not for the car, for Wolf’s tools and workshop
• Washer/Dryer hookups (typically found in a house, but I made sure it was enumerated!)

Beyond that, being geeks, we’ve made a spreadsheet of the features we’d like to have, weighted by importance. We fill it out to find an overall rating for each candidate.

This has features on it such as…

• Jacuzzi (hey, I can wish!)
• Size (points for 1500 sq. ft. and over, more for 2000+)
• Convenient to shopping / library / etc.
• Appearance
• Spacious / Redone kitchen
• Cost (more points for less money)

But, the problem is timing.

Because we will have to see Nick off to camp, we won’t arrive in Mississippi until probably the 14th or 15th. That leaves us just a few days to look at places before Wolf starts work (and some time that weekend will be spent fetching Nick from camp, or meeting them, or whatever scheme we can work out).

Anything that looks great to me probably looks great to a lot of people. So if it’s available now, it’s not likely to still be available over a month from now.

Unless I’m willing to rent a place sight-unseen… And I’m really not.

Aside from potential issues with the house itself, you just have no way of really knowing what the neighborhood is like. It’s not like we know someone there who can give us the inside scoop!

So when do I start looking? It rubs my temperament the wrong way to be packing and planning a move with no forwarding address, and no idea at all where we will live.

For me, this is a whole new kind of “stepping out in faith”…

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I am extremely grateful that God provided us with this RV, and a living option for this transitional time in our life. This isn’t to take away from that in any way.

But from a lot of conversations I’ve been having recently, it has become more clear than ever that people just have no idea how small our space really is, and what challenges we face from that issue alone.

I guess when you say “we live in a 29-foot RV trailer”, it sounds big. About 30′, that’s a lot, right? Some houses are only 30′ wide, after all.

Let me try to paint a more realistic picture for you.

It’s 29′ by 8′, exterior dimensions. That means that the inside space is probably just a hair over 200 square feet – or roughly the size of a typical house’s 20′ x 10′ living room.

So, visualize your living room.

Now, take all the furniture in your house, and put it in there. Everything. Yes, including the kitchen sink… Also the toilet and shower. Beds for everyone. Couch, dining room set. Everything.

Notice that there are no closets in your living room. This is about right. You still need to put all your family’s clothes, shoes, dishes, school supplies, diapers, computer and office stuff, books, games, tools, food, laundry… ALL of that in there.

Did I mention the low ceiling? Hope you’re not claustrophobic!

The “patio”, you say? Since the awning broke, anything outside is simply sitting outside – exposed to the elements, and the possibility of theft. Up to you, of course, but we have only our porch swing and Jewel’s spring horse out there, and only because there’s literally no other choice.

And we have cats. Four cats. Plus two litter boxes, their food and water dishes…

Got a lot of space left, have you?

Yep that’s where we live.

Five of us.

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Is a bedroom make-over from the TwitterMoms and Vision Bedding Contest!

So, ummm… Did I mention that we’re going to be living in our RV again?

No exciting travel this time – it’s a Park and Play sort of thing.

But my bedroom?

About 18″ wider than our Queen-sized bed. And 18″ longer.

Seriously.

All our clothes in the tiny strage above the bed, and the tiny hanging closet bar (open) that Wolf installed for our last go-round of RV life. Oh, and storage under the bed.

With that kind of cramped quarters, a little decor would go a long way towards making it feel a little more like a home!

Look at this pretty sage and brown pattern! It would look lovely with my sage paint (yes, we’re planning to paint inside the RV with the leftovers from the paint we chose when we moved into the Berry Farm house)…

My paint is Behr Promenade, which apparently was “Seen on HGTV $250,000 Challenge”, but which looks nothing like this dull, gray swatch looks on my monitor:

You can have your chosen design put on bedding, wall murals, or whatever. Very cool idea!

So some nice sticker art borders to put over the cheesy-with-extra-cheese borders that are in the RV now? Maybe a Duvet cover to transform into a hanging “closet” to cover up the exposed clothes? An of course a comforter and throw pillows to make the bed inviting…

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Fay slipped up the West Coast, but was fairly weak and “disorganized”; Gustav went pretty far west.  They say we got wind and rain from both of them, but from an end user point of view it really wasn’t any different than our regularly-scheduled daily wind and rain.

Hannah is going to stay out in the ocean to the East as it (she?) travels northwards, and will probably be similar for us to Fay – extra windy and rainy, but really nothing to write home about.

Then there’s Ike.  Ike is a Category 4 Hurricane, and it looks like Ike is coming:

Of course, there’s still a chance that it will die out before it gets here, or head far enough north to miss us entirely, or who knows what.  But…

I guess it’s time for mama to make sure that the beds in the RV all have sheets in them, that the generator and gas can are stowed for travel, that the important documents are all in one place, and that I know where the cat carriers are.  It beats earthquakes, of course, since we have plenty of warning time in which to accomplish everything we might want to.

Growing up in Los Angeles meant you lived with that hanging over you all the time.  There was a big quake that I was too tiny to remember, then another big one when I was pregnant with Nick (Jan ’94), and I lived just a mile or so from the Northridge epicenter.

But even if we don’t expect the house to blow down, we have to leave in the RV to protect the RV!  I mean, what is it really but a lightweight box with a nice airspace underneath to get lift?  Hmmmm…

On the one hand, it seems silly to be trying to take everything we’d miss if the house vanised off the face of the earth.  On the other hand, I’ve been chiding people for years when you seethem on the news saying, “The house was flattened and now all we have to our name is the 2 changes of clothes we brought – we thought it was just another evacuation drill like all those others we’ve been through, and we didn’t bring anything else…”

How do you decide when to leave?  Obviously waiting until the last minute means you’ll be in wall-to-wall traffic with the other million folks down here heading north.  But leaving too soon may mean you go to all that trouble for a false alarm, or the kid misses a day of school that doesn’t get cancelled, or who knows what else that I haven’t even though of – not to mention the expense of the trip.

And where will we go?

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A small miracle happened this week…

We arrived in Florida Sunday evening, and got our first look at our winter home.  We’d been warned over and over not to get too excited, since it was “just a little, old house,” etc.

It is fairly small, true, and an older house – but’s it’s an adorable Art Deco bungalow, and has a huge sunroom that adds tons of space.  We’re thrilled.

The owners decided to tent all the houses in this area (three of them) for termites, so Monday the pest control guys showed up.  During their inspection of the third house, which has been empty over the summer, they reported hearing kittens under the house.

As we pieced the story together later, the family knew that there were kittens… somewhere.  And, in fact, they had been trying to find them in earnest since Friday, when Mama cat was killed. 

Only one of the family was around at the time, so he and our family became the Cat Rescue team.

The first pair came out without too much difficulty.  One pale orange and sweet, the other a feisty tiny calico.  The other pair hid deep in a hole in the cinderblocks, and gave us all a bit of a fright.  Eventually they were located, but getting them out was still a problem.  Two feet straight down in a small hole, and the one on top was mean!  She hissed, spit, yelled, clawed, and bit right through the gloves of anyone trying to reach in and grab her.

A hose was the next gambit… surely spraying some water on them would flush them out.  But it only made them madder.

Finally we arrived at the desperate solution: he took a hammer and began banging.  Although we hoped the noise would scare them out, he was willing to – and eventually had to – break a hole in the bricks to get to them.

He dragged out the one on the bottom, the only long-hair of the litter, and a sweet calico girl.  It still took a bit of doing to drive “meanie” up and out (another calico).

Three colorful girl, and a cute orange boy.  Saved from starvation because the termite exterminators happened to come, and now living happily in a big kennel on our dining room table.

I have been saying for a while that I’d like to get a couple of kittens, since I’m already concerned about the age of our two Old Ladies.  What a blessing to have this litter delivered up into our laps!  Looks like we’ll be keeping two, and one of the sisters will take the other two.  Of course, we’re not sure yet which two… 

It’s been a bit of a challenge, of course, since we can’t go in the house yet.  I assure you, the RV was quite small enough with 4 of us, my growing belly, and 2 cats – who, by the way, are furious about the interlopers.

Luckily one of the sisters is a cat person.  She loaned us a great big kennel (now occupying our entire dining table!), and ran to the feed store to get some kitten formula and food.  Fortunately they have taken to drinking the formula from a saucer, so we didn’t have to go as far as bottle-feeding.  They aren’t mch interested in the solid food yet (soaked nicely in their formula), though.  They really are tiny things.

In a way, of course, the timing is ideal.  I feel for them losing their mother at such a young age.  But by all accounts she was truly feral, and would have raised them to be little wildcats as well.  As it is, within an hour of their rescue they were snuggling up and sleeping in the crook of our arms, and after a day of TLC they are happily playing and roughhousing with us and each other equally comfortably.

Of course we have pictures…  Just… Ummm… I don’t know where the camera interface cord is…  LOL  So much stuff got shoved around to make a place for this gigantic cat castle, the RV is in even more chaos than usual!  Ack!

Anyhow, the termite treatment is done today, so we’re going to start fixing and prepping the house for paint!  And I’ll find those pictures…

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Well, today’s the big day.

We’re leaving our ant-ridden spot in Ohio, and heading out to our new digs in Florida.  Tonight we plan to be in Knoxville, KY, and we won’t actually arrive in Homestead until Saturday.

Today would have been my preferred day to start our homeschool school year – the old-fashioned way, it seems – but we decided to give Nick the week off since starting a whole new program is challenging enough without trying to do it in the car.  So theoretically we’ll start next Monday.  (I hope that’s not too optimistic as we’re trying to get settled into the house and all…)

Poor cats.  By now they probably thought we were here for good and they weren’t going to be subjected to any more travelling!  Too bad they don’t understand that that’s at least what we’re headed for.

We’ll, I’d better get busy.  Everything we’ve been carelessly sitting around the RV these last few weeks needs to be “stowed for travel”…

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We are on our way to Florida. I have landed a very interesting job working about seven months out of the year. It’s starting out as a labor job and could develop into something really cool. If everything works out, I will be there every season for as long as I’m able. This works perfect for us because we can still grow our AmeriPlan business and we can have about five months of the year for the RVing lifestyle. We’ll have to figure out the new baby thing as we go along. I think this seasonal work gives us the best of all worlds. We have something stable during Tiffany’s pregnancy and the birth of RT and we will still have a few months for the RVing thing. The RV life was a very interesting experiment. We learned a lot and I think we are much better equipped now. (Remind me to do a blog entry on that.)

May God bless your efforts in life.

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I have in-laws who are from Ohio. I know, that doesn’t say a lot for the state, but they’re nice in-laws. Or more precisely, I have ex-in-laws who are now good friends and an extra set of grandparents for the kids. I guess you can never have to many grandparents to spoil the kids. Anyway … so I know a little about the state. I don’t think I ever thought to myself (much less said aloud), “I want to move to Ohio.” But here we are in Ohio and we are only a couple days from maybe owning a place here. We really thought we would be on the road full time for a year or two, but we just found out that we were expecting another little Holley. Now we’re thinking it might be a good idea to settle down for a while. In the search to find a settling place we found that there were plenty of cheap places in Ohio for sale, lots in the Dayton area. Yes, a lot of them are not very nice places, but things might be working in our favor here. It started when we came to a trailer park in Middletown, OH that we found on the Internet. We are parking our RV for $15 a day with full hookups. It’s a great little park south of town on state highway 73. A bunch of retired or soon to retire folks who lived here all their life. This was our first little thing that made us start thinking things were going our way.

Then we went into Dayton. Screech … put the kibosh on it. I don’t like the big city. I didn’t imagine Dayton would be that city like. This made us start looking at other areas. There are several small towns around the Dayton area. Well, as God would have it, we ran into some plain folk at the local Cracker Barrel (one of our favorite restaurant chains). They live in New Lebanon and love it there. So, we’re off to check out New Lebanon. A quick call to our new found friends and we are in touch with a local realtor, Mark Miller. He drops everything and spends the evening giving us a three hour tour. (The weather started getting rough). We actually had a great time. The sun was shining with not a cloud in the sky and we told him all about our situation. He didn’t think it would be easy to find a home in our price range, but he was more than willing to help us search. He made a few calls to his broker partner with no answer. We said goodbye and went our merry way. After we parted company the family made a pit stop for dinner and we said a quick prayer like, “God, please help!” As we were driving back to our RV we got a call from Mark. “I told my broker about your situation and he said he has a place for you. You can move in with no money down and he’ll carry.” We are going to go check it out tomorrow.

Chalk up another one for God’s plan in action … in OHIO …

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I keep asking myself that, but I’m not entirely sure how we ended up here.

We’re in Middletown, which, aptly named, lies in the middle of Cincinnati and Dayton. 

There are a lot of gret opportunities for our business around this area, so we thought we should check it out.  It also looks like an affordable place to buy a fixer-uper house – something we’re considering for the next year or so due to Baby Blessing (due in March).

We were originally thinking of Dayton, but driving around there yesterday quickly nixed that.  At some 200,000 population, it is far more “city” than we want to deal with.  After living so long in Los Angeles (me) and San Diego (Wolf), we understand all the benefits – and don’t think it’s worth it.

Now looking for a bargain, obviously one doesn’t end up in the most upsacle parts of town…  but, really!  One neighborhood we were looking at, Wolf stopped to chat with a man standing outside his home.  The man proceeded to explain how there were lots of nice people in the neighborhood, but the house next door belonged to a peddler of illicit narcotic substances, and there was a man shot in the yard last week…

Ummmm…   No.

So we’ve moved out to the middle ground.

Trivia:  Did you know that Ohio is the only state whose flag is not a rectange?

Might be fun to live in Ohio, just for that! 

Unfortunately, with all the heat warnings and what-not, we aren’t able to fly by the seat of our pants quite as much as we often do.  Boondocking isn’t an option, since our generator won’t run the a/c in extreme conditions.

So we’re actually parked at a mobile home park, where they are willing to rent out their vacant lots to RVs on a daily basis.  What a friendly bunch of people – the man across the street even came over while we were getting parked and gave us each a cold water bottle!  Quite a change from the unwholesome image “trailer parks” often conjure.

Well, off to look at more neighborhoods – and of course put out more business flyers.  It’s nice to be able to get our work done without ever having to go out of our way…