...but change is!!
Remember when we were in school, and got to the ages where we started signing things for our friends before school was out for the summer? I think it started around 5th or 6th grade when we'd hand out the little wallet-sized prints of our school pictures to our friends and classmates, and we'd write cute little messages on the back and stuff. I'm sure that practice is long obsolete thanks to digital photos, smartphones, and social media, but back then, sharing school pics was a vital tool in documenting our year, before we had yearbooks.
*blows dust off rocking chair*
And back when I was in school, we didn't get yearbooks until the 7th grade, which was known as "junior high school". And they were paperback, not hardcover. And our junior high school was only two grades, 7th and 8th. Before that, we were in elementary school, and after that, we were in high school. It was a simpler time. We didn't need to be told we were in the middle; we already knew.
😄😄😄
If we wanted to have "yearbooks" before 7th grade, we might've taken what was left of a notebook and had our friends sign it. Of course, we'd tear out the pages of actual, like, notes and stuff, first. Maybe we'd even go buy a brand new, cute notebook for the occasion, but likely not because school supplies were expensive during the off-season. Maybe we'd use a folder or our Trapper Keeper or something other than a notebook for our friends to sign, instead. Regardless, no matter what it was we were signing, or when, someone would undoubtedly write: "Stay as sweet as you are!"
Gag me with a spoon! :P
There were other variations: Stay as nice as you are, stay as smart as you are, Stay as cute as you are, Stay just the way you are, but the sentiment was the same: don't ever change. In fact, those words were used sometimes, too: "Don't ever change!" At the time, that seemed like such a nice thing to say. But now? WTAF!? Why would you tell me not to change?! What made you think I wanted to be a quiet, nerdy, shy little pipsqueak rule-following teacher's pet with crippling social anxiety who was afraid to stand up for herself for the rest of her life?!?
Sorry, then-friends. I did not stay as sweet as I was. Life happened, as it does to the best of us. I didn't stay as smart, either; I got SMARTER! Ha, ha, ha. Alright, whatever. This is not what I intended to sit down and write about.
The house hunt continues. I need to come up with a better name for it than "the house hunt". Something will come to me soon. It's kind of scary: as I write this, sitting just out of arm's reach is a stack of paperwork that declares our intentions to make our little home sweet home the property of someone else. This place where we've lived for the last 17 years, that up until recently I thought was going to be our home forever. I'm not going to lie and say that moving from here has ever been an easy decision, and we're only in the very beginning processes! But taking these first few steps to make it REAL are making it seem, you know...real. So real that it's making me teary-eyed while typing this. Dammit! This isn't even the hard part yet. The hard part will be packing up our things and leaving one day.
I don't think I've mentioned yet that my workplace is also moving, very soon. In about a month, to be exact. From downtown St. Paul, to Roseville. From the 2nd floor of a 5-floor medical specialty building on the campus of a busy medical area (seriously -- 2 hospitals and 3 medical specialty buildings (maybe more, I'm too lazy to actually count them all right now) in a busy metro location, to the first floor of a 2-floor suburban-like brand new medical building, surrounded by mostly retail and chain restaurants. It will be interesting, but truth be told, I'm scared as hell. Change is scary. When we moved from the city out here to a small town, I was scared that we would hate it once we actually got here. When I left the hospital for my current job, I was scared that I would hate it once I actually got there. So you can guess how I'm feeling about the upcoming clinic move. It's a longer drive for me. A different work environment. It'll be like starting a new job, except we'll all be starting a new job at once. And I won't have my own office anymore, pout. I mean, it'll still be the same job, with the same people and the same patients. Just a different place. It'll be fine. But it's change.
Speaking of change...I was going to share a few more things that other people should know (if they don't already) about house hunting that I've learned recently, mm-kay?
1. If the basement is semi-finished, but has recently had the carpet pulled up and the drywall removed, it probably flooded.
2. Likewise, if the drywall on the basement walls is missing the bottom half, it probably flooded.
3. When looking at online listings, cross-reference everything. If you find something you like on a site like Zillow, go to the originating site to double-check the status.
4. Do NOT, under any circumstances, get your hopes up about anything, ever.
5. And if you're buying a house from your parents, try not to talk about all the changes you plan to make as soon as your parents move out because it might make your mom sad because she's a sap like that sometimes, ok Stone?.
And one more topic change, because I seem to be typing awfully fast today, we FINALLY got our camper back! I don't think I wrote about that in here, did I? *pause for review* Egads, I did NOT! Well, sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip...
Road America 2021. Yee-HAW!! 4th of July weekend! Road America is this awesome racetrack located here in our very own state of residence where, long story short, the NASCAR Cup Series returned to race this year after a looooong absence (crap, I can't remember how long now! 58 years? 59 years?) and we were there! We went to Road America (or RA for short) last year for the first time for the NASCAR, um, "other" series (alright, it's the Xfinity Cup Series but I still want to call it the Busch Series even though it's been the Xfinity Cup Series for most of my adult life) and had the time of our lives. RA has kick-ass campground facilities as well as being a truly unique place to watch a race, and before the race was even over last year we'd decided we had to return again. So when we found out shortly afterward that the Cup Series was returning this year, there wasn't even a question as to whether we would go or not. We love us some NASCAR, and we love us some camping, so BAM! Bring it on!
And so, RA brought it, and we brought it, too. We packed it all up in our trusty little Forest River Wildwood X-Lite camper and our trusty little Chevy Silverado crew cab pickup, and headed east. Road America or BUST!! (I so wanted to write that on the camper windows. I can turn into a crazy NASCAR fan on a dime. You wouldn't believe it. And no alcohol is involved!!)
As you do when travelling whilst pulling a camper (or any trailer, really), whenever you stop for gas, or "rest", or anything in between, you get out and check everything to make sure it looks good. You make sure everything is still attached and nothing is falling apart, that the doors are still closed and the tires are still inflated, etc. etc. I've been doing this since I was little. I don't always know what I'm looking for, lol, but sometimes I know when things don't look "right". Kind of like when I open up the hood and look at a car's engine compartment. But, I digress.
Everything looked fine the whole way there. The trip was uneventful, but long. 5 hours or so. We finally got there, and waited in line to get in (which wasn't too bad), and the hubby got the camper backed into our spot (which also wasn't too bad, says the person who can't back a trailer to save her life) and it was when we were getting the camper settled and leveled that I noticed It. One of the wheels on the left side. The hub cap was missing and it looked...wrong. Again, I couldn't say exactly what was wrong with it, but I knew it was wrong, and the fact that it's got dual axles so it was literally right next to a completely normal wheel helped proved my point: it looked very wrong. So I called my hubby over to show him.
The fact that he didn't say anything at first scared me. "Is that bad?" I asked.
It was probably a good thing I couldn't see his face. "Yep."
"How bad?"
I don't remember if he didn't answer, or just didn't answer soon enough for me.
"Are we stuck here?"
"Yep."
And that, boys and girls, was the official Beginning of the Story.
To sum the rest of it up, it turned out that we lost the wheel bearing and were very blessed that we didn't lose the tire! And the last time we had stopped and checked everything was about 20 minutes away from the campground, so....WHEW! God was watching out for us!!
There are a few side stories to this. The camper is still under warranty, so the hubby called that day (mind you, this was the Thursday before the 4th of July weekend) and the nice lady he talked to made arrangements for a tow truck to pick up the camper on Monday and take it to a local dealership to be repaired. No problem, we could either stick around and wait for it, or come back the next weekend and get it, depending on how long it would take. Not ideal, but not the worst thing to happen. Frustrating, yes, but we were there to have fun so we were going to have fun!! (Eventually!)
So, Monday morning came around, and when the tow truck driver called to confirm they were coming, they said that they weren't sure they could tow a camper. They thought we had a motorhome, not a travel trailer. They'd call back and let us know. In the meantime, hubby tried calling the dealership where we were supposed to be taking the camper to confirm that they knew we were coming. At first there was no answer, but it was also just before 8am -- still, we weren't sure if they were open or not, since it was the Monday after 4th of July and a lot of places were observing the holiday that day. After some tense moments, hubby confirmed that no, the dealership was NOT expecting us; and oh yeah, by the way, they also did not service travel trailers, anyway. Nice! So, while waiting for a call back from the tow truck people, the hubby found a local RV repair shop and confirmed that they could take a look at our camper. Sometime that week. In the meantime, the tow truck people called and said they were sending out a different truck.
The other truck got there, and instead of being a flatbed truck like we'd thought, it was just a service van. Turns out, the guy just kind of chocked up the bad wheel so we could still tow the camper, and we limped it along like that to the shop. But wait! We went to the wrong shop at first. Because the place had two locations. One is the showroom and parts center, and one is the shop. The website wasn't totally clear on that. Since the number we called was the showroom and parts center, that's where we went. The shop was another half hour away. Fun, fun, fun!
We FINALLY got the camper to the shop and dropped it off. And headed home without it. Later that week, the hubby got a call letting us know that they'd need to replace the whole frickin' axle. Apparently, it got so hot that the axle welded to the wheel (?) and they needed to replace the whole axle. The hubby said Of course, do it, we're not driving it home the way it is. They said it would be about 6 weeks to get the axle in stock. What were we going to say?! We had no choice.
The problem was, we were planning on going camping in South Dakota in about six weeks. Who knew if we'd have the camper back by then? At that rate, it didn't seem likely. So, we cancelled our camping reservations and changed them to hotel reservations. I was bummed. It's just not the same!!
BUT, and now I really have to wrap this up....last Friday, the hubby got a text that the camper was finished! So he went the next day and picked it up, and was able to cancel the hotel reservations and find a couple of campsites, and South Dakota camping trip is BACK ON!!!
And here's another thing we learned: you CAN leave the black and grey tanks half-full (or so) for about a month in the summer without being dumped without any permanent damage!! No solids, though. Just liquids.
TTFN!
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