surprise dinner plans
salmon encrusted
with spicy cajun tartar;
cat had other plans
aluminum foil
cooler than summer and fur;
unsupervised cat
kitty barbeque?
dare not, methinks, feline love.
new foil, fish dinner
by Angie Quantrell
BEWARE leaving the cat alone to her own devices in the RV while I’m out trotting around the pasture.
How has your cat (dog, child, husband, wife) surprised you? Share by penning a haiku!
When I go to bed…
When I get up…
Sometime during the night, someone has a party in the RV. Someone short, furry, wild, and nocturnal.
Monet? Was that you? That was quite some fun you had last night. Just look at that couch! How many toys did you leave tossed here and there? Was that thuh-dump duh-dump duh-dump duh-dump I heard? Were you galloping up and down the hallway? Climbing the window shelves? Leaping from the counters?
Oh, my.
It’s a nocturnal Kitty-Cat RV Party!
Tonight, we put away the breakables.
Tell me. What happens at your house during the wee hours of the night?
Monet, sleeping during the day.
Funny how life choices change your thinking.
While on a motorcycle ride over Memorial Day weekend, my husband and I saw numerous (read: hundreds) of campers heading to the mountains and other recreational locations around the northwest. Roads were more crowded than usual, grocery stores were packed with shoppers filling up ice chests and RV refrigerators, and every campground we passed had RVs and tents slotted side by side.
I’m not sure how much fun all of those cozy camp sites were, but I was not interested in the slightest.
BECAUSE. We are camping. All. The. Time.
We live in our RV. Not permanently (please, God, not permanently), but while we research, plan, and build our small home.
Our family used to love camping at the beach. We’d use the old Prowler, load it with supplies, and drive five hours to our favorite beach locations in Ocean Shores. Those were the good old days. Dog, kids, junk food, sand, toys, rain, shells, campfires, …
Now?
No. Since we are camping 365 days a year, give or take an overnight visit with family or friends, hooking up the RV in which we stay all the time and heading to a different place to stay in the same RV does not sound appealing.
Plus. We LIVE in the RV. Full-time. There are many extra things in our RV that do not relate to travel and camping. And as we are not retired, we can’t hit the road for months at a time.
For now, we shall enjoy motorcycle trips and staying at hotels (which include HUGE showers and sometimes even bathtubs). After we move into our future home, we’ll strip the RV clean and load it up with camping supplies.
Then we will need to go camping.
Just before Christmas, our family was devastated to discover neighborhood dogs had destroyed our precious love-love (my nickname for her) Mabel. It was pretty awful. We still miss our little gray girl every day.
No more “Which one is this?” from the grands (and everyone else). No more help working on my writing projects. No more kitty tracks on my printed papers. No more head butts and lap cuddles.
Monet, her twin sister, was lost for quite a few weeks and is now just finally starting to come into her own as an ONLY cat. There are times she quite enjoys the attention. The rest of the time she’d rather be out mousing or birding. She was always the more independent wild thing.
To combat future attacks, we put up a gate on our driveway to discourage any other dogs from wandering in to check out what trouble they could get into. As Papa and Hayden finished up the gate, they decided it should be named after Mabel, a tribute to her short, cuddly, furry life.
Perfect! In honor of our Mabes, Mabel, love-love, gray girl, kitty baby. The MABEL gate. Ta-da!
What can I do in 5 minutes?
Undecorate the RV. Seriously!
Make lunch for my honey.
Make the bed (it DOES take that long…just try making a bed in an RV).
Wipe down condensation from the windows. In the RV, this is a thing.
Vaccuum the RV. Yep.
Brush my teeth. It does take a bit.
Write a thank you note.
Put on make-up.
Call my mom (though we often chat longer than 5).
Reserve books at the library.
Snuggle a kitty or a kid.
How about you? What can you do in 5 minutes?
It’s been a rough year for my family, so we decided to switch things up. This year, we went off the charts for Thanksgiving.
We chose to:
-travel to the beach (off-season is awesome)
-cook our own little turkey breast
-decorate for Christmas
-begin our annual Christmas movie countdown
What really happened:
-beach plans were cancelled due to health issues
-went on a drive to the mountains to collect pine cones for art projects
-soaked by pounding rain
-did a little off-roading to travel up a steep, rocky, bumpy, muddy path
-met a wolf
-the wolf turned into a Husky, lost VERY far from civilization
-he loved us. And jumped eagerly into the pickup
-had to figure out what to do with a huge lost dog (wearing a collar, but no tags)
-Did you know everything is closed (pretty much) on Thanksgiving? Unless you are shopping.
-which was good, since we needed dog food
-by the time we got home, it was very late when our little turkey breast went in the oven
-spent all afternoon taking photos, hanging out, searching for lost dogs, and contacting friends and social media groups in efforts to find this handsome boy his family
-nowhere to keep a large, very large dog in the RV
-our daugther and family took Mr. Handsome home to sleep
-Mr. Sweetie (SO good with kids, pets, noises, crowds) hunkered down in exhaustion
-turkey dinner became our traditional leftovers meal: turkey, cranberry sauce, cream cheese, sliced red onion sandwich (I had a salad)
-actually had a six-course meal. That’s what I told Kevin as we ate and drank different courses while waiting for the turkey to get done
-nearly sugar-free crustless pumpkin pie is delicious!
-decorated the RV. Put up our tree in less than 5 minutes. Done.
-put up the outdoor tree. Less than 5 minutes. Done.
-finished the Harry Potter movie marathon. Next, Christmas.
Our day was totally nontraditional. But we liked it.
Who knows? Next year we might go back for pinecones.
Or another lost dog.
P.S. More about our Mr. Handsome later.
by Angie Quantrell
dead stuff
every. single. day.
dead stuff is delivered.
fur. teeth. tails. tiny feet.
feathers. skulls. wings asunder.
the odd beak.
legless bugs. drips of blood.
eerie green body parts.
dead stuff. in life. in dreams.
felines hard at work.
freeze. winter. come soon.
put to ground the endless corpses
delivered as gifts.
pause the need for caution
when opening the door or
placing feet along the body strewn gravel,
blending in, creating traps for thoughtless tread.
drop. temperature. ice-over.
to sleep. to fly south. to hibernate.
what happened to lumps of fur nested
in front of roaring fires?
rest, kitties, rest.
August 20 was our one year anniversary of moving into the RV. And guess what? We made it!
I haven’t taken him (my honey) out, though I’ve sent him out when I need to clean (or write, cook, organize, read . . .).
He still loves me even if the heat factor in an RV – during summer – is higher than my happy tolerance level.
He survived record-breaking snowfall and freezing winter temps regardless of how close I came to helping him build his own snow igloo far far from the RV.
I managed not to throw out the superfluous (not for him) heating items – throw, bed blanket, heat lamps, floor heater – and we were both able to speak in civil tones. Most of the time.
Long-time RV living is not for the faint of heart, but definitely for the adventurous!
Let’s pretend you just arrived for a fancy cooked-mostly-by-BBQ meal. We’ll fill you in on some observations and interesting events that came about from our inaugural RV year.
– It is possible! One can live without piles of stuff – and survive!
– Storage? Premium. If we don’t use it, it has to go. To storage, to someone, to the thrift store…
– Less is more. Truly. The less we have inside the RV, the more space we have to move about.
– Cooking is a bit tricky. Too hot in the summer for the stove. Very humid in the winter.
– Humidity is an issue. One chore I never dreamed of having? Wiping down windows on a daily basis.
– Electrical circuits can and will be blown. Until you figure out which items can be used at the same time.
– The electric skillet will most likely blow the fuse if anything else is plugged in and going. Anything.
– Do not use the skillet and the AC at the same time.
– Splurge on the skirting. We only experienced one tiny freeze in a waterline. That’s saying something when we were below zero several times and hovered in the frozen zone for months.
– Cats. Litter. Fur. Toys. Cat tree. A bit crowded. Now that they are free to roam, we are all much happier. The catio is disassembled.
– Mice. Peek before letting cats back inside. Trust me on this.
– Company. Things will be different when guests arrive. Say, for instance, seating. Or standing. Finding room to maneuver. But that’s what makes entertaining exciting.
– Breezes in the bedroom. This is awesome. Open both windows and the wind just blows across our bed. As does dust, smoke from fires, and stinky skunk fragrance, but still!
– My office. A drawer. Half the dinette bench plus the table. That’s it. Sometimes, I’ll admit, I yearn for a bigger creative area.
– All of outdoors. Right here.
– We have everything we need. Running water, electricity, internet, laundry facilities, bathroom, bed, fridge, grands in and out.
– Our home moves. We can hitch it up anytime we want and hit the road.
I’d say our inaugural year was pretty successful. So you’ve seen me wear the same clothes over and over again. I am dressed, right?
Happy RV anniversary to us! Come on by, we’ll cozy up and share a seat. Maybe even throw in a meal or tour of the facilities. Feeling up to the challenge? Either the visit or the RV living? Love to hear about it.
photos and poem by angie quantrell
orange plus pink
sweet hues of sunset
and dessert
taste yummy to my eyes
and gift me
a smile
Originally blogged on 12-9-2015, this post gives you a glimpse into the life of a writer. Sheer amounts of paper, paper clips, organization, unfinished housework, and crazy messy office.
Meet the completed project.
And . . .
I miss my huge office! Writing in an RV is challenging, inventive, exciting, and sometimes inspiring. Oh, desk in the storage unit, I’d love to be able to snap my fingers and pop you back and forth to the RV – as needed.
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The completed manuscript with sources, sketches, and documents ; Rather, I should say 1/2 of the completed project |
(Read below from 12-9-2015)
This is what I’ve been up to. Instead of blogging.
There is not much time left in my days (weeks, months) after planning, writing, editing, printing, sourcing, compiling, emailing, packaging, and mailing this baby.
Oh, yes. This is my baby. The first half of a 12-month activity book for preschoolers and missions has been delivered (emailed and mailed) to my faithful preschool resource team at Woman’s Missionary Union.
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The completed manuscript package and its twin – the emergency copy that can be mailed if the PO loses the original |
Now they get to do their huge part.
And I will continue on with the above steps for the second half of the book.
The writing life is grand.
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A glimpse of the chaos that is my office, including desk, side table, and floor |
Love, Laughter, and Life 