SEPTEMBER and OCTOBER 2010

Help arrived in the form of my Mom, who came to visit me from Holland for 3 weeks! She loves to have something ‘to do’ and especially to decorate so while she was here we managed to paint the inside of the RV.
I always painted my walls in all the houses I’ve lived in, I just don’t like the white so we painted some of the RV’s walls an ochre-ish yellow and some of them a nice mossy green. It came out beautiful with the carpet and tiles being a chocolate brown. 

I had read about an interesting moderation to give the cats access to the down'stairs' basement where we could place their litterboxes and food dishes so they'll be out of sight and 'smell'.

James cut a hole for a cat door at the side of the steps to the bedroom, into the pantry of which he closed of part of the bottom area. He than cut a hole through the back of the pantry into the basement and built a ramp to get down to it. He even installed a little light that comes on with the same switch as for our night/foot light in the bedroom so they have a light there at night.

 

The ramp going down in the 'basement'

During the day we leave the door to the basement on a crack so they can come and go as they please and we don't have to open and close the front door all the time. The litterboxes and food dishes are easily accessible through the basement doors.

I think it's absolutely ingenious!

We did some shopping for new linens and stuff to go with the new color scheme and picked up a lot of other items that I had on my list. It was nice to have somebody there to help me choose since I’m hopeless in that department. Off course we took some time off to do some fun things too!

At the Country Club



Lake Arrowhead

At the 'Getty'.

                                                                       

After she left we planned a couple of garage-sales and sold our bigger stuff like chairs, tables, the bed etc. and everything else we didn’t sell on Craigslist. We ended with an ‘open house’ weekend after which we put the rest out on the street marked ‘free’ and gave some away to the neighbors.
I must say, I never felt better in my life! It felt…free, free from all clutter, from all ….stuff. Not that I am a pack rat to begin with but to not have to fuss or worry about anything is just great, let alone not have to clean it anymore!

We bought some new chairs on Ebay and the cutest electric heater in the shape of a wood burning stove at Wal-Mart.
Since the oven/stove was beyond cleaning we took the whole thing out and installed in its place a small dishwasher that I found on Craigslist and an induction cooking plate for on top.
We bought a (very) flat screen TV (3/4 inch) and somehow installed it on the pull-out shelve of the entertainment area and also got a new surround system since both were taken out.
We needed a new mattress and got ourselves a nice memory foam one with a seperate plush pillowtop cover.

The 'splash tiles are vinyl self-sticking floor tiles!

We also worked on the truck. James, together with his friend Joey, cut off part of the overhead rack and turned it around,  put in a dividing panel behind the hitch so we could lock up the truck bed again, repaired some damage on the left back storage door and patched up the paint. 
I cleaned the inside of the cabin and all storage compartments, painted the inside of the truck bed and we put rubber on all floors so the tools wouldn’t rattle around.
We also had all the upholstery of the car, the truck and the ceiling of the RV, professionally cleaned.

                                                                       

In the meantime I had stumbled upon something that changed the nature of our ‘adventure’ in a big way. I read in the ‘blogs’ about Workamping, a way of ‘paying’ for your RV site, including hook-ups, by ‘volunteering’ as park hosts for a season.
Since that sounded very attractive we wrote up a resume and got ourselves ‘out there’, on the web, that is. Lo and behold, we were contacted by San Diego County for a park host job at Vallecito Stage Coach park, east of San Diego close to the Anza Borrego Desert State Park. They'd like us to start somewhere about mid-November.
We were ‘pre-approved’ in a telephone conference call and after sending back the paperwork and going through a mandatory medical and background check-up and fingerprinting we were ‘cleared’ and asked to report for ‘duty’ on the 10th of November.