Closing is set for Friday, June 10. We’ll be looking at an RV payment of $211ish per month plus whatever we pay for insurance (expecting a quote by the end of the day)…and we are so excited! It’s beautiful and it’s very us and we can’t wait. Keep those fingers crossed that all goes as planned and that we can find a cheap (to us) car under 2K to keep us on budget. Hoping to have her moved in to her summer home (is it a her? Ross, any thoughts?) by the following Sunday!
I’ve drafted so many blog posts in my head recently. Blogs about dealing with the extra levels of stress of planning combined with chronic illness & the related battles to figure that out. Blogs about how hard things are. Blogs about simplicity. Blogs about pulling through adversity. Blogs about the fact that Ross was rear-ended and now on top of RV repairs, we have to car shop, but I am really uncomfortable buying a car when we don’t know the status of our RV.
But I finally have some good news to share, so that’s more fun, right?
Jean’s Playhouse agreed to allow an ad trade for a discounted or free campsite for us this summer. Part of the compensation when we work there is housing, but the idea of living in dorm style housing, presumably single-sex and with other people, didn’t seem that appealing to us given that we’re married and much older than many or most of our co-workers will be. So finding a campground seemed like the perfect thing – we get a place for our RV and can try things out and learn with less pressure, and Jean’s gets to save money by not having to house us.
So I sent out a bunch of emails, beginning with the campgrounds in Lincoln and North Woodstock (the next town over), about housing us for a few months. Two out of my three top choices replied – one was positive, but didn’t have any space left (maybe next time); another just couldn’t accommodate a longer-term visitor (KOA). So I emailed our other choices, who were 20-30 minutes away but mostly great options. One of our top choices in terms of livability, Tarry Ho Campground in Twin Mountain, called me within a day or two of sending the email. I was so excited! The more we talked, the more we realized we’d met at a networking events a couple of years back, she knows my father, she had fantastic memories of our conversation, etc…
So after meeting her in person with Ross and touring the campground, I’m thrilled to say that we have a home for the summer! God willing our RV will be drivable and livable so that we aren’t tenting it. Keep us in your thoughts and prayers. As soon as our RV is ready (or as soon as we want to move in), we’ve got a campsite with our name on it. And get this – we’re working for our site! No cash at all. Their seasonal sites rent for $1,950, so between Ross and I, we’ll be putting in 195 hours before the season is over on November 2. (We hope to leave by the beginning of October, but it’s awesome to know we can stay longer if we want to.) We’ll be doing a mix of marketing/social media work (me) and music/working the new food truck (Ross) and possibly whatever else needs to be done. We know it’s a lot of hours to fit in, but we’ll be coming up with a plan to make it feasible, and we can absolutely stay for a couple of weeks at the end to knock out the rest. (After all, if we each put in a couple of 40 hour weeks, the work would be almost complete!) Although there’s a 30 minute commute to Jean’s, it’s only 11 minutes to Ross’ studio, which is great for him and great for us if we need to escape camping for a bit.
We hope some of you will come up and visit us. They have gorgeous river front campsites with water and electric as well as other sites for tents and RVS, plus bath houses, a pool, an ice cream stand, a food truck as of late June and supposedly great wi-fi. They’re also being super-nice about accommodating both of our vehicles. So besides metered electric, which I think we’ll be paying for, we will be living rent free this summer, which will really help justify our 30 minute commute on a tiny salary. 🙂 My goal is to keep saving money even on our tiny income. Whether that’s possible or not will largely depend on what our health insurance costs are. Really hoping they’ll go down significantly when our income changes at the end of the month!
My last day of work at my current job is May 27. I’ll be so glad to be able to move on. Thanks so much for reading, and please send us happy & inspected quickly RV vibes, as well as a good cheap car for Ross!
It’s out! The word, that is, about my departure from the Arts Alliance. I am also deeper in the planning stages of our tour. After some dramatic back and forth with Judy, I have learned that the Carpenters booking hasn’t gone as planned. So we have two gigs in September, hopefully followed by a performance at Contact East, a booking showcase in New Brunswick. After that, we leave New Hampshire. Whoo-hoo!
Our itinerary is purposefully loose right now. My brother lives in Kalamazoo, MI, so if it isn’t too cold yet, we hope to drive through upstate New York (or maybe Canada) and visit him. After that, we will head toward Iowa to visit our friends. Depending on the weather and our mood, we will stay for a few weeks or even a month. After that, we continue south. We will stay in Arizona for December, primarily the Phoenix and Tucson areas if everything aligns, and then I’m thinking the San Diego area for January, which is typically the coldest month. Plus my sister lives there! After that our options open up as it warms, so our exact path can be adjusted based on booking and our interests. We also may need to visit Florida to become residents there at some point….time will tell. We’d like to make our way towards CO, OR and WA in the spring or summer as we think there are a lot of towns with potential there.
This adventure requires a lot of faith…particularly in my own abilities to pull this off. It’s a good thing I have never lacked for self-confidence….
In the coming weeks, we need to start pitching ourselves to local campgrounds…discounted site for program add at Jean’s and maybe a bit of work is the hope. Keep us in your thoughts, and thanks for reading!
It’s January 2nd, which means we’re in the season of New Year’s resolutions. I don’t normally make resolutions – although the idea of them is appealing, I’m definitely of the school that feels like they’re hard to keep, so I prefer to set goals on my own terms – and often privately – to avoid disappointment.
But there is something to be said for accountability, and I have a ton of respect for those who can make, and keep, resolutions. And given that one of my clear resolutions is to make more frequent updates to this blog, it feels appropriate to make the time to talk about my resolutions, as ethereal as I may feel they are in some cases, today.
#1 Take the time to practice thankfulness.
This is something I used to be awesome at. First of all, I’d thank God or whatever power there is at least once every day, almost without fail. I never in a million years thought I’d get worse at that, but I have – I tend to get caught up in my own thoughts and worries and not necessarily take the step of pausing and giving thanks.
One of my friends posts five things he is thankful for on Facebook every single year. I believe he’s entering year three of this discipline, which was intended to last a year only. It is so lovely and inspiring to see his thoughts in my feed each day. I don’t need to copy him, necessarily, but I want to do more to call out my own thankfulness.
As someone who is truly an optimist at heart, I have never struggled to acknowledge all that I’m grateful for. But being sick is really challenging me. If someone asks how I am doing, it is very hard for me to say yes and not feel like I’m lying – if I feel “good” today because I only had to lay down for a break once, does that mean that people will think I’m back to normal? And God forbid we find this is the new normal – I flirt with those ideas but I REALLY am not ready to accept that. So for all of these reasons, I need to be better about practicing thankfulness. I know that as our income drops and RV challenges begin, we will have some VERY challenging days. Better get in the habit now!
#2 Make the time for meditation and exercise.
When I had mono – which I have apparently officially kicked by the way, although a mystery chronic illness (involving fatigue) or two hasn’t been identified yet – I did as little activity as possible. Although I might stretch my legs or my arms, I chose to sit instead of stand, and to lie down instead of sit, as much as possible in order to get over the illness. But now that mono is behind me, exercise, at least gentle exercise, is probably good for me.
For instance, if I have endometreosis, exercise would be good – it actually can lessen the symptoms. And if I had chronic Lyme, for instance, gentle exercises like yoga would be good for me, although running or other more strenuous activities probably should be avoided.
What is crystal clear is that whatever I’m dealing with, my symptoms get infinitely worse when I’m dealing with high stress levels. And what’s my highest stressor currently? Work. Although I’m relatively stress-free playing the piano, just sitting at my desk to work I notice changes in my body. Since I’ve got at least another five months or so before I won’t be doing this job, I need to build in meditation, yoga and some gentle exercise so that I can get through all of this and be the better for it on the other side. This will be a good practice for the new stressors to come, of course.
Making the time to get outside is definitely a part of this – Ross and I took a nice walk yesterday and we both felt better afterwards. When we’re on the road it will be even easier to build the outdoors in. Can’t wait.
#3 Find the time and the energy to keep setting goals – and then make the time and space to work toward reaching them.
There are so many unknowns in our lives right now as we look forward. I’ve got a few possibilities on the horizon for this summer and fall, but so much is still a big ? as I plan. But despite the temptation to sit back and just wait for the time to pass, especially when I’m not feeling well, I know that that would be really foolish of me to do. Just a quick brainstorm tells me I have beanie babies to give away/sell (thanks Gram!), belongings to sort and give away, scores to scan, tour locations to scout, websites to write, set lists to create, and much more. So if I don’t keep setting goals, and perhaps even more importantly, working to reach them, June will arrive and we won’t be ready for it. (I bet a lot of you can relate in your own lives too!)
I’m sure I could make many more resolutions, but I think these are three great ones. And if anyone reading this wants voice or piano lessons, an accompanist, a baker or cook, or anything else that will help get us closer to our goals (resolution #3), please don’t hesitate to reach out.
Let’s all go kick some ass.
We did it! We totally are homeowners now. I was waiting to share the news until we had great inside photos, but that hasn’t happened yet so I will just go for it. (The photo below is of Ross and the RV – his dad took it.)
It is a 1986 model, and overall things went quite well. My mechanic had good feelings but couldn’t give it 100% without us getting a tuneup, but since those take weeks and Rainy didn’t want to wait that long, he offered us another $400 off which would probably cover a tuneup according to our mechanic. So for $4,600 we have an RV that is almost ready to pass an inspection. 🙂 And once the manifold leak is fixed, our mechanic will slap a sticker on it.
My dad and Karen loved it and were super-supportive, as have been our friends. (Thanks for letting us driveway sit, Nat, Anja and Mario!) Next up we register it – would have loved to wait, but the storage facility wants to see our registration – and then winterize it (Ross and dad gave it a shot but screwed something up…hopefully no damage was done, and the RV will be fine in the cold for a few more days) before we tuck it away for the winter. Wish we had more time to play with it, but we are allowed to visit it. 🙂
So if all goes according to plan – which it may not, of course – it goes into storage Saturday afternoon. It will be really nice to have all this complete and be able to move on. Planning what to pack will be so much easier knowing what our RV looks like!
Well, that is it for now. We have SO much to learn and because we did this as a low cost private sale, we will have to depend on RV repair places, friends and research to learn about our new purchase. But we are both so excited and I kind of feel like we could live in it without power if we had to. Just having something that is ours is so cool.
I also need to investigate insurance. I think it will be okay in storage empty but I should talk to the storage facility just in case.
Unfortunately my health is full of unknowns at the moment, but at least we have something to be excited about.
Until next time!
I was really excited to attend the annual NH Camping & RV Show. Given that we’ve gotten serious about touring with an RV over the winter months, we knew we wouldn’t have a lot of options (and it wouldn’t be under ideal conditions) to look at RVs locally. And unfortunately from what we’ve found, there is only one “nearby” dealer that carries RVs we would be interested in (presumably small class Cs and class Bs, Â up until yesterday) – and that dealer is still over an hour’s drive from us, so with our crazy schedules, even that will take some planning.
So it didn’t take too much convincing for me to convince Ross that we should catch an RV show. We’d already missed the big ones nearby like Portland, but we figured the NH show, while likely on the smaller side, would be a good start. I had a pretty clear idea in my head of what RV shows would be like (lots of people, lots of booths, pretty chaotic and less than ideal parking), but apparently Ross had no idea what he was getting into.
Since I just got a church job, Ross and I drove separately to the show. Kind of a mistake. The poor guy was kind of traumatized at the crowds, so he left to grab cigarettes (and something relatively healthy for us to eat) before braving the crowds. Ross is not a crowds person. I’m not particularly, but for Ross, they incite anger and panic attacks, so it’s a bit more problematic. And in his defense, I really should have thought to warn him about the crowds.
I’m proud to say that Ross handled things extremely well, articulated clearly when he needed to get outside, etc., and it was a very pleasant visit!
What I liked about the show: It was straightforward to navigate. We didn’t bother looking at our maps. Turned out the show was in two buildings, but it was clearly indicated that way. They also had a nice variety of vehicles, so we could look at everything from the A-lines without a toilet or shower (yeah, not really an option for the long-term for us) to the gargantuan toy haulers that made us feel like little people.
What I didn’t like about the show: $10 each was worth it, given our predicament, but would have loved if the fee was more like $5. Ross doesn’t believe in fees for stuff like that, but I do understand that the campground association needs to get their costs back. We were also really disappointed that there weren’t any class Bs, or class B+s, at all! So we’ll need to visit one in the coming months to make sure we don’t need to consider those as well. If we found a nice one with good mileage at a good price, I would love to consider it, but I think realistically for us, we’ll need more space than they can provide so we’ll need a second vehicle (or some sort of trailer) if we go with a class B – which would eliminate a lot of the fuel efficiency, but not all of it.
So what came out of it? Well, we kind of fell in love with a Minnie Winnie. 
Turns out we were looking at a larger one, which had a super nice outdoor kitchen setup, but we liked their layouts overall and if we can afford it and can afford to upgrade to a tow vehicle (MAJOR ifs at this point), I think we’d happily take their smallest model or whatever we could do. It would make us pretty long with the tow vehicle, longer than I would prefer, if we went with the fancy one, but the shortest versions are about 19″ in length, which isn’t too shabby! We also really liked a smaller Winnebago class C that we looked at, which may make more sense for us. We’ll definitely be on the prowl to find these guys used or to make some megabucks in the coming year so that we can afford one new!
Biggest takeaway, besides that, is that it really bugs us when RVs don’t have incredibly efficient storage built in. Upper space should get used, and if there’s a couch, we’ll probably take it out and use the space as side by side desks.
Here’s hoping we’ll have enough banked to look at purchasing one next year, maybe even at the show!
Crafting The Life You Want: A Practice in Living 