The day I dreaded has come – I told my mom our timeline.

If you haven’t figured it out, we also have news on the job front, so here is the latest.

I plan to give notice at the beginning of March and work through the end of May. Then I will have a few weeks to recover. Church job will continue through most of September at least, so I won’t give notice until June or July.

I will be the musical director at Jean’s Playhouse this summer. I was looking forward to working with Scott Severance, but they let him go, so I will be working for a surprise Artistic Director. I will probably oversee the camp too. Ross will play guitar when he isn’t teaching. Speaking of which, he gave notice at NHPR so as of April 1 he is just teaching and such.

On September 20, a week after finishing at Jean’s, I will begin a gig as the band leader and pianist for the Carpenters tribute tour with Judy Pancoast! Ross will play guitar, and we will be able to book gigs when we aren’t performing with her! Should be really fun. I hope it goes well!

Beyond that is anybody’s guess. Let us know if you know of places we should work, cities to visit, etc. Sponsors are also welcome. 🙂

One day at a time. Life is what we make of it, right?

I should have written this post a week ago, but life has been really busy as we have prepped for and then performed the final concert in our series. It is interesting to realize that chapter has ended – and by Mid-February, I don’t anticipate adding many new dates so that may feel even more permanent.

But back to RV-Ing. Ross has been working his butt off driving the RV to various driveways and prepping it for storage. Unfortunately when he and his dad tried to winterize it, the plumbing leaked. We were hoping for an easy fix, but after taking it to a professional, we now know that there is indeed a problem with the plumbing. In addition, Campers Inn recommended we consider a new engine due to its age rather than fixing the exhaust leak in isolation, so we will need to shop around and get different opinions.

Oh the joys of ownership! But we have registered it, stored it, and come spring we will brace ourselves and see what we can do to get it drivable and usable. Worst case we will prioritize the engine over the plumbing, so we can get by at campgrounds and in driveways if we have a shower and a toilet to use. One step at a time!

I spent a morning parked at Mario’s with the generator running to run our lovely electric heater in case the leaks might have caused dampness or mold. (I didn’t find evidence of ANYTHING but better safe than sorry.) I cleaned the RV quite well – kitchen, bathroom, random left behind items, etc. – so while it isn’t perfect, I felt quite confident leaving it. I did forget about mouse traps though, so we may want to pick up a few and leave them as we get deeper into winter.

The good news? Since I spent a morning in the RV, I made sure to take lots of photos. It is a small RV so keeping it clean will be really important. Fun stuff? We don’t just have a spice rack- we also have a wine rack!

Enjoy the pictures, and thanks for stopping by! (I am still learning how to do this on the iPad, so bear with me!) And if you know of an RV mechanic interested in music lessons for their kid, let us know!

I have been debating writing this entry because I am simultaneously excited and scared of disappointment.

Last week, I passed an RV in a driveway in Derry that was for sale. It looked like a decent, small class C and had a posted asking price of $5,000. I knew enough from all my research (hard to believe, but we have been RV-shopping on some level for more than six months) to know that I would be extremely hard-pressed to get a working RV without really high mileage at that price. I also knew that our goal of only spending $10,000 on an RV would be really tough in NH – there doesn’t seem to be many selling for less than$12-15K on the private market, and dealers are usually asking $20+. So I told Ross about it, and within a couple of days, we made time to stop by.

First off, we are wusses. It is so nerve-wracking knocking on strangers’ doors and asking for something! Billy seemed like a super nice guy, helping out his friend by letting his RV sit there in the driveway for sale. He didn’t know much about it- for instance, he quoted us 1998 as the year of this Minnie Winnie, but I was convinced it was from the eighties and looking at a few pictures of paint jobs confirmed that. But he couldn’t have been nicer and told us his friend Rainy was the second owner, had bought it to go to a music festival this year,and everything worked great.

After the research I have done, phone calls with Rainy, etc., I think this is a Minnie Winnie with a 24R floor plan from 1988 or so. It is 24′ 1″ long according to Winnebago, and it should have an A/C in the truck, heat and cold air, enclosed shower, marine toilet and little sink, dinette, chair, captain chairs that swivel and a full bed. It has fantastic storage, including a spice rack and a magazine rack, but it is really tiny of course so even having a few wardrobe spaces can’t make up for that. No slide outs, which makes it easy, over cab storage, which is where most of our gear would need to live, at least while parked, and it has a new fridge, an oven, microwave, stove etc.

It is smaller than the RVs we have preferred thus far, but that simplification may mean better gas mileage, and more importantly, it means if we find it isn’t practical to travel with a car, it will be manageable in cities. Not easy, but it can be done. I am sure that we would ditch the dinette and replace it with a compact desk for the two of us – perhaps something that can double as a table if needed, or perhaps we buy a folding table. Other extras I forgot about include a grill, a Honda generator, and I think he might be throwing in camping chairs and such too. There is also a CD player that has been added, tire replaced recently, etc. Some sort of exhaust manifold leak needs fixing.

We can really see ourselves in this for year 1. We know we would eventually want to move up, but by all accounts RV repairs are inevitable, old or new, so this price point is really appealing. We would spend another 1.5K for covered storage this winter – a good chunk of change, but given the fact that I haven’t found any vehicles I would remotely consider in NH under 9K and the fact that once we have our RV, we can stop wasting time/money/gas looking for one, I think it would be worth it.

So we are trying to go into this open-minded, but it is really hard to keep perspective and not get our hopes up. It is a really old vehicle. If my mechanic finds other issues and wouldn’t recommend it, I don’t want to be hassled with it for sure given our plans. If we take it to the campground and things aren’t as we had been told, ditto. I said to Ross, “Wow, this is like buying a house!” And he said “Yeah, it kind of is”. Duh, as we used to say!

I am thankful our mechanic will humor me and take a look. I am also thankful my dad was so supportive of our plans when I called him – he and hopefully his wife Karen, who has owned trailers, can join us to check it out. I have transferred 5K to my account so it will be ready to go. Just need Ross to confirm if we are going cash, check or what. And I need to research and calculate – already found the manual – to figure out how much we can load this thing up without killing our tires or RV.

Wednesday is the day. Stay tuned and keep us in your thoughts!

I haven’t written in a while. For months this spring and summer, I felt like I was in a groove. After getting a church job to make extra income on Sundays, I was also regularly picking up voice students and taking on vocal coaching. Plus I have been working on transcribing vocals for a local performer. All fun work that pays reasonably well and helped me to set aside money each month, even if Ross was short on cash, first for Disney and NYC trips and then for RV-ing.

But after doing everything I could to fight fatigue, and finding I had other odd health symptoms as well that wouldn’t go away, I went to the doctor. This led to a string of appointments with my doctor’s office and specialists, tons of blood work, and ultimately a diagnosis of mono. Yes, that illness I had at age 19 is back with a vengeance, and has probably been deactivated for two years – with the symptoms mostly hidden due to medication.

So now while working full time plus extra jobs and a theater company, I need to kick mono. Oh – and keep getting tested for other issues, like maybe lady problems or auto-immune diseases.

Also, our cat Gus died, after a noble fight with kidney disease. And Uncle Sam has us paying far more in college loans now that Ross married someone with money. Right.

So in addition to being sick, we miss our cat and are in the hole for many thousands of dollars – probably 4K or so but who wants to count!

It’s depressing, when I let it be. But I think in a lot of ways this is perfect timing. I don’t want to hit the road with a mystery illness. So we will do what it takes to figure things out, even if we have to adjust our plans a bit. And frankly, it is much easier to deal with these financial setbacks now than it will be once our income drops, or at least becomes less predictable.

I am so thankful to have a warm house, supportive family and friends and most of all a husband with my best interests at heart. Farm fresh produce has also been a blessing and a real treat. Is this a challenging year? Sure is. But if we can get this stuff straightened out, we can totally handle an RV!

I have been making strides. Tubs have headed out to Goodwill and to the local animal rescue, which even has a pet pantry for local families. So happy to know our pets’ leftovers are going to those who need them. And slowly but surely, I weed things out and get more organized. Plus, I took the step of reaching out to our families this year to let them know that we prefer to skip physical gifts as we are working on downsizing. They seemed to be very receptive, but we will see how we do at Christmas!

I think that is it for now. Death is always a reminder of the fragility of life. We need to get out there now because who knows what the future holds.

Till next time!