Life on the Road

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?

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…

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”…

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.

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 …

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…

I just got an email from Tupperware that my favorite containers are on sale at 35% off right now… So that makes it an ideal time to tell you about them!

They’re called “Flat Out”

They come in a variety of sizes, and they fold flat for storage, then accordian out for use (and you can open them all the way, or any size in between - see the photos on the left, above).

Let me tell you, in the RV having them store flat is not just handy, it’s a NECESSITY!

I was skeptical at first about the durability of the “pleats” - but we have put them to hard use over the last six months, and they aren’t showing any signs of wear at all. And of course, being Tupperware, they have a Lifetime Guarantee if anything ever did go wrong…

There are a number of sets, but my favorite is the one pictured on the right, above. It’s an 8-cup container (pink), 2 4-cup containers (blue), 2 3-cup containers (green), seals (lids) for all of them, PLUS the cool storage rack that hold all of them (sit on the counter or hang on the wall).

There’s lot of other great stuff on sale right now - it’s “Back to School Sale” time until August 31st. Check it all out HERE…

It’s that time again…  My little combo of Thursday Thirteen (my Second Edition), and Thankful Thursday - ususally at Sting My Heart, but Guest-Hosted this week at Laurel Wreath.

There is SO much to be thankful for this week!  Wow!

1.  Baby Blessing - I am so thankful that the Lord has blessed us with another little one, and I pray for his/her safe and healthy development.

2.  God - Always, right?  But particularly for His strength right now.  With the robbery, the miserable weather, and the pg symptoms, I’ve been leaning a lot…

3.  Wolf - My amazing husband who is out there in said miserable weather working himself to exhaustion to take care of us.

4.  Family and Friends’ Support - Thanks to everyone who didn’t say, “You guys live in an RV, why the heck are you having a baby?”

5.  God’s Grace Through the Kindness of Strangers - He does, indeed, work in mysterious ways!

6.  Fellowship - It’s a little stressful going to a different Church every week, and not feeling that “home” feeling.  But we’ve been so warmly welcomed (and even fed!)…

7.  Opportunity - Even though we’re feeling “stuck” here in Memphis (we’re ready to go, but waiting on the insurance check that’s coming here), God keep providing opportunities for our business to grow right here.

8.  My Kids - Nick is working hard to get onboard with a new chore checklist system, and Jewel has been just as sweet and cuddly as can be.  They can always bring a smile to my face.

9.  General Delivery Mail - LOL  I just had several folks send things ahead to the Bowling Green P.O.  I’m so thankful I don’t have to wait until we’re back in Mississippi or California to get everything!  And who even knew such a service existed?

10.  The Magic of the Internet - I have an incoming link from the Wall Street Journal online page “The Juggle.”  How crazy is that?

11.  Our Safety - As much as I’ve stressed about the theft, I’m so thankful that we’re all safe.  This is definately a town where you can’t take it for granted.

12.  Extended Family - Wolf’s Aunt and her tribe have been so kind to us during our stay here.  Everything from an extension cord and a place to park, to the occasional meal and showers inside.  We didn’t plan to be here this long, and appreciate their patience.

13.  Playmates for the Kids - It’s been really fun for both Nick and Jewel to have Hannah and Carson to play with, even if the ages are a little “off” (they’re 5 and 7).

What about you?

We just got some unexpected, wonderful news - we’re expecting a baby!

The newest little Holley is expected on March 9, 2008.

For us, this raises some unusual questions:  Where will we see a doctor, and plan for Baby Blessing to be born?  When (and where) will we “settle down” to make sure we’re “there” in time?  Wow…

In spite of the fact that we weren’t thinking of this as an opportune time for a pregnancy, we are delighted that the Lord is blessing us with another little one.  Please keep us in your prayers!

Do you ever feel like you are struggling to get through every little thing? It’s like scientists were right when they thought the ether surrounded us all. Now somehow the ether has thickened and every move becomes a struggle. Or like we imagine sometimes that the humidity in the air is too thick to move through. Your mind gets bogged down and everything moves in a surreal haze. This is my life …

When we got our RV we knew a 3500 to 4000 watt generator was the best thing to have. We got a 2000 watt Honda. With this one we could add another 2000 watt Honda at a later day to boost our power up to 4000 watts, since they make a parallel kit just for that purpose.

Great plan … or maybe not.

Yesterday we were swimming in our own sweat. It’s been around 100 degrees here in Mississippi for the past few days. And we all know what the humidity is like in the south United States. We drove to Jackson, en route to Convention in Dallas, and I was ready to enjoy the cool, refreshing AC when we stopped for the evening, but my plan was thwarted.

Every time I started the AC, the generator would trip its breaker. When we first got the generator our air conditioner would run fine. Now we are having problems from time to time with it tripping the breaker. It improved as the temperature dropped a little, or the barometric preasure changed, or I changed my shoes, or who knows why. Anyway, after a while, our generator decided it would run the AC, and it was fine all night.

Well, we have already purchased the parallel kit for the Honda generators and we are going to buy another one, but I really wish I knew what was going on with the AC on the one 2000 watt generator. The Honda generator is about $1000, so I wish the one alone could do the job for a bit longer. If I only knew the secret formula to get it to run every time.

Maybe I can contact Batman and he can run it through the Bat-computer …

Everything fits into God’s plan for His glory.