Ageless In Lamortriel
More flash flood warnings arrived on my phone. That night, October 24th, 2018, there was thunder, lightning, rain, and hail. The storm didn’t last long, and the heat of the desert the next day quickly removed all evidence of the rain.
That same week, I was featured in Devon’s comic, The Librarian Arachnid Slayer, for my birthday. If you haven't read it, start at the beginning and enjoy it. Jamie tried to make my birthday a special day, but I made it tough for him because I was in a funk. I only had Jamie to celebrate with. I was missing the days of the Three Amigos when Devon was there to celebrate with us.
Looking at the title of this post, are you wondering what Lamortriel is? It’s the kingdom where Alice, The Librarian Arachnid Slayer, is taken, and I will be forever young there buying Dragons Dew. Best gift ever!
We did our first load of wash in our new Basecamp washer on October 24th. If you’ve been following this blog, I’ve mentioned a number of times that doing laundry in public laundry rooms has been difficult for me. Now I had a machine that would help me enjoy doing laundry again. We did that first load inside our trailer, the Coffee House, sitting the Basecamp in the bathtub. I found it awkward because the plug from the machine wasn't long enough to reach the outlet. We moved everything outside, and using an extension cord, continued with another load. We found the perfect folding table with a built-in basin from Camping World to use with the washer. There is a time-lapse video on our YouTube channel if you want to see how our Basecamp works.
Jamie flew his drone in the field beside the campground. He took aerial photos and practiced his flying skills. Jamie also filmed the goats in front of our neighbour’s trailer. They look so innocent. Don’t be fooled! These goats also climbed onto the neighbour’s truck and dented the hood.
I was having a hard time syncing my working documents in the cloud. My time was spent watching screens and waiting for the WiFi to connect, and reconnect...and reconnect. This made getting blog posts and email campaigns uploaded and scheduled a very time-consuming project. My exhaustion and frustration during this time was high. I was staying up long into the night hoping there would be less internet traffic. It turned out to be the service provider, not the amount of traffic fighting for bandwidth. It was a downward spiral for us. We did less and less activity as the WiFi deteriorated.
Jamie started using the hill behind us for cardio. The road from the RV park continued past our site and was private and marked off limits. Jamie was respectful of how far up the hill he would go. At the very top was a monastery, and along the way, there were a few driveways leading to a couple of homes. The incline of this hill was very steep. My FitBit recorded me doing over 50 flights of stairs when I did the hill walk with him. We would go up and down seven times and then walk around the park so we had at least 40 minutes of activity recorded.
We finally put up 3M Command Hooks on our walls. Now we had a place to hang our keys. We mounted a few more hooks for a phone charging station, another for a dustpan. This was an act of acceptance of the Coffee House as our full-time home.
Many kids were living around us in the RV park. Some went to local schools, and some were homeschooled, I imagine. There wasn't any barrier to block the sounds of play. The kids were being kids, but why were they playing outside our trailer and not near their own? I asked myself why we were living like this. I didn’t want my life to be complicated. Hoping that the situation would change wasn’t a good strategy. I had to do more than hope. I also couldn’t look at every improvement we made as just the gateway to another problem. I wasn’t going to fix anything by worrying.
We started taking inventory of the items we had stored in the truck and trailer because we’d forgotten where we had packed everything. Jamie couldn't find an extra phone he thought he had brought. The search was fruitless, but that inventory list, invaluable. I’ve used it more than once when I needed to find an item we’re sure we’ve tucked into a plastic storage box somewhere.
On the 30th we went into Anthem for Starbucks and WiFi. Anthem is within the metropolitan area of Phoenix, AZ. The population of Anthem is over 30,000 people. It took us approximately 20 minutes on the freeway from Black Canyon City to drive there. We had cake pops since I didn’t have any birthday cake. I felt like it was a celebration for WiFi too. Why had I been fighting with the free internet back at camp?
Back on Vancouver Island, I would be skating at the local arena at this time of year. I missed skating. I began to miss the rain and the smell of cedar trees. I missed my library card. I love being able to buy books, but I missed having even more books on loan to read from the library.
On the 31st, Jamie put a deposit on a spot in an RV park in San Diego. We wanted to be in a new location where we could ride our bikes and go kayaking, and be closer to grocery stores. That night, we prepared a bowl with Halloween candy, but no kids came trick-or-treating to our door.
We watched hours of YouTube to learn how influencers combined their travel and their business ventures on the road. I thought we would be hiking and doing fun things all the time, just like the adventuring these influencers did in their videos. What I was seeing was an edited scene to motivate and inspire us to enjoy our life. Once I realized that critical distinction, that a video is only a snapshot of events, then I knew I could make better choices when I felt I wasn’t active enough. I didn’t need to entertain worry or other negative feelings.
Only about 2% of the average person’s worrying time is spent on anything that might be helped or improved by worrying. The other 98% is spent on things that never happen, that can’t be changed, or that turn out better than expected. Worries are not real. They are the “what ifs” we imagine.
Relaxation is the ability to do absolutely nothing and feel good about it. It’s necessary to relax to combat the effects of stress.