Month: December 2025

The things I forget each time we start a trip

I know I said I didn’t plan on posting again, but I thought this topic would be a good one to write down so I can look at it before our summer trip. Of course, I’ll probably forget, but I will attempt it anyway.

1. The clothes hangers in the close need to be hung backwards. If I hand them normally they fall off with the first big bump. I am not sure why the direction is important, but it is. Maybe my physicist son could tell me, but I sure can’t figure it out.

2. The things you think should stay on the counter won’t stay, but the things that seem movable will stay exactly put. This is another thing I don’t understand at all. I will put two items on the bathroom counter, one of the most stable spots in the motorhome because it is over the back wheels. One of them will stay exactly where I put it, and the other one will be on the floor. Can’t figure this one out either.

3. It takes a lot, lot, lot longer than you think to rinse the RV antifreeze out of the water lines. Kevin tried to do it at home before we left, and he swears he left each faucet on at least 5 minutes. They all still taste like antifreeze! Luckily RV antifreeze isn’t harmful, but it sure doesn’t taste good. We really do need to plan on staying in a full hookup campground the first night so we can get the lines really flushed.

4. Don’t be in so much of a hurry to start on your trip that you say “I’ll put that up when we get to our first overnight spot.” No, no you won’t. You will be tired and thinking about those water lines. Put things in their place first.

I am sure I will think of even more things soon, but this is a good start.

Oh, and I re-sized the pictures I got of the cats that I didn’t have available for the last post.

Look at the pouch on Luna! She is 11.5 pounds
Minnie loves her treats. She is just 7.5 pounds.

As for where we have spent the nights, we spent Boxing Day (26 December) at the Elks Lodge in Cameron, MO. The advertised electric sites were no where to be found, and the two other rigs there had obviously be there a long time. Not a fan. The second night we spent at the Elks Lodge in Chickasha, OK. It was a long day since there was a big storm coming in behind us. This was another dry camp, but the parking lot was big enough we didn’t have to unhitch. No drinks at the lodge because they allow smoking – ugh. Tonight we made a 400+ mile drive to get to Monahan, TX, staying at SJ Family RV Park. It looks like we outran the storm at least. We wanted to spend the night at the Monahan Sand Dunes State park, but they were full. This place is a real dump, but it is also only $25/night. I would gladly have spent twice the amount for a nicer place, but Kevin had already arranged this one. It is the first time in a long time that we have locked everything up tight! Tomorrow’s plan is to be at the Elks Lodge in Las Cruces, FHU hopefully. We want to do laundry before arriving in Quartzsite, so I am hoping we can get that done tomorrow.

Now back to practicing the ukulele. I still have trouble transitioning to an F chord.

And we’re off!

We had a lovely Christmas get-together with most of the Iowa family. Lots of good food and lots of fun. After all the practicing I did with the ukulele and Christmas songs, I lost the book of the songs! So not really much music which was disappointing. We did have a really lovely Lessons and Carols Christmas Eve service at church, so I got to sing a bunch there.

But let me back up. I finally recovered from my sinus surgery only to find out my pre-diabetes diagnosis got moved to real, true, gotta take medicine-type of diabetes. Sigh. Since this was just a few days before Christmas and our snowbird trip, it was a real hassle getting things with my PCP and the pharmacy. My PCP gave me a choice between Metformin, a pill, and Mounjaro, a GLP-1 injection. Since my A1C has always been related to my weight, I chose Mounjaro because I should lose weight on it in addition to being good for the diabetes. I took my first shot on Monday evening, and my fasting blood glucose went from 160ish (pretty high) to today’s reading of 102 (normal!). No side effects so far, so I am hopeful.

Back to getting out of Iowa… We packed yesterday, Christmas Day, after pulling the motorhome in front of the house. Our town allows such parking only for 48 hours, but that wasn’t going to be an issue. Our weird weather patterns continued, and we were above freezing the entire day so Kevin was even able to fill up the water tank and flush all the lines free of antifreeze. We then went to Camping World and used their dump station to get rid of the gray water from flushing. Took the rig back home and re-filled the water tank. We finished packing everything except toiletries yesterday, and we were on the road by 9:00 this morning. We are spending this first night in an Elks Lodge parking lot in Cameron, MO. We still have quite a few things to put in their correct locations, but everything did fit LOL! Tomorrow we will have a long day trying to get well southwest of Oklahoma City to miss a storm coming in on Sunday. No matter where we end up, we will still need to be on the road by 6:00-6:30 in order to not get held up by wind gusts. If we make it past the wind, we should be good to get to Quartzsite by New Year’s Eve.

The cats are doing great! Shy, hesitant, anxious Minnie is happily exploring everywhere. She even sat on my lap for a while, and she is demanding lots of cuddles. I think Minnie thinks the small quarters are less frightening. Luna is Luna; nothing much bothers her, and she is behaving quite normally. I took a couple of cute pictures of the two of them with my iPhone, but the photos aren’t syncing quickly for some reason. Here is at least one of them.

Ignore the mess and look at the kitties!

See how they are both just strutting around?

I probably won’t post again until we get to Quartzsite unless something weird happens. Let’s hope 2026 is a LOT better than 2025.

Not much going on

It has been a slow time around here. We had a fabulous Thanksgiving dinner with my oldest son’s family. I ordered a fresh turkey from our local meat-specialist grocery store (Fareway, for those in the Midwest), and they even spatchcocked it for me for free! They really do have great service. Good thing I had them do it, because even on a small turkey the ribs are strong. Cooking it that way was really a good idea – faster, gave lots of crisp skin, and even the breast meat was lovely and moist. We also had an Amana smoked ham. You can never go wrong with an Amana ham, and it gives us lots of leftovers. Leftovers are a critical part of Thanksgiving!

We did have dinner on Friday instead of Saturday as planned due to a huge snow storm that hit us Friday night into Saturday. We got 14” of snow, a huge amount for us. Sadly it has been added to significantly since then, and I doubt it will thaw anytime soon. The kids are all happy for snow sledding and snow boarding, but Kevin and I are not nearly as pleased. I have basically just been hibernating. I had some sinus surgery a week ago, and it threw me for a real loop. I had no idea I would feel as bad as I did, and it didn’t help that I had terrible insomnia for the first two days. The surgical center just said, “Well, that happens sometimes with general anesthesia.” I just wish someone would have warned me. I am hoping it eliminates the horrific sinus infections I get on a regular basis. I go back for a post-op appointment tomorrow, and I am expecting more antibiotics since the pathology report identified there were a lot of bacteria still around. Note I already had one full course of Augmentin, based on the culture and sensitivity from a swab taken a month ago.

The ukulele practice is going well. I still have trouble holding it correctly so I strum the lower neck rather than the sound hole like I did for a guitar, so I bought a ukulele strap and pulled it tight. It does help my positioning, so I guess I will keep using it. I also bought a page turner for my iPad. I have some PDFs and some Kindle books, and it works fine with either source. It is a Lekato brand, and it runs off Bluetooth. The most recommended brand is Donner, but it doesn’t work with the Kindle books. I hope this one lasts for a while.

I did get my 830 Record into a local Bernina shop that has a great repair guy who loves older machines. The buttonhole mechanism was really seized up, and I was just too lazy to keep working on it. While he had it, he also worked on the electrical system so the light wouldn’t keep burning out. It runs like a charm now. I also took my DILs 1031 in for just a clean and adjustment since it hadn’t been done since I gave it to my DIL 15+ years ago! He said it was in great shape too. I used it to sew some lovely lavender sachets that will be a stocking stuffer this year, just to make sure I remembered all its quirks.

All this snow and really cold weather is quite depressing. I re-followed the Quartzsite FB groups I have joined, and the fact they are having 70 degree days is really rubbing the weather in my face. The below zero weather and the snow depth is something Iowans would expect to see in January, not November and early December! I just hope it warms up a little before Christmas so we can get the motorhome packed more comfortably.

Regarding the lots behind our house and the HUGE swale for water, I finally got hold of the city Planning and Engineering groups. The lots behind me will have a 25’ wide easement for the swale, so they will have to mow it and such. I am slightly worried it is too abrupt at the edge of my lot, but we will have to wait until the snow is gone to see what needs to be done. It is supposed to be graded to a 4:1 drop (4’ linear, 1’ drop), but it sure seemed much steeper than that to me. However I have registered my concern, and I am pretty sure the city will make sure the developer follows the plans.

We are firming up our plans for next summer’s RV trip. We hope to head to western Canada, spending 6 weeks or so there. But since the US government seems firmly determined to piss off every ally we used to have, we will have to keep an eye on the border crossing situation. We do have some plans for this winter other than Quartzsite. We are going to the FRVA rally at Indio, CA in early January, then at least one rally with the Anasazi chapter of FRVA we joined. That will be in Benson, AZ at a spot with lots of astronomy action. We decided to not go to Death Valley for their Dark Sky Festival since the US government has also decimated the public relations budgets that funded the speakers. We will still get there (it is one of my favorite parks), but we have more flexibility of timing now.

I don’t anticipate any more posts until we are on our way to the Southwest.