Check, and check.

The inverter and automatic transfer switch installation was completed yesterday.  The same day, Annie ordered our generator (a Honda EU2000i), on sale at Camping World for $100 off.



This marks the last of the planned major projects for the Duck before it flies south.

Clarification.

• My lovely bride suggests that I made three typos.
• My reading glasses, not my readers, need to be stronger.

Everyone's an editor!  Thanks, hon, for pointing out my errors.

What He Said.

One of the bloggers I follow is J.D. at Get Rich Slowly.  His overall aim is building personal wealth, which is nice, but not in my 12-month plan.  I do like his philosophy of frugality, though, and I use it to remind myself that it's not a ridiculous concept.

The post I linked resonated with me.  Annie and I are lucky, because we live in a community and have personal community that supports and embraces simplicity.  Still, I felt bad for this guy who is swimming upstream against a river of want.  I responded, and am posting the response below, not because it's a great comment but because it's really how I feel.  And, I don't want to have to write real twice. 


Ditto to all this.  We shut off our satellite and gave our TV away years ago.  Before very long, we realized that neither of us wanted nearly as much stuff as we once had.  Rob's co-workers are buying the hype, and their TV-advertising habits just feed the hysteria.  We still watch what we want, but on Hulu or on-demand with the minimum Netflix subscription.  Or we actually wait for the DVD to be released.  Sometimes we read books in the evening, or read to each other.


Because we "live big, spend small," our finances weren't devastated when I was laid off, nor were they crushed when, three years previously, I had decided to work only part-time.  Now, we are both in a position to try something completely new with our lives - live a dream - because we didn't need expensive toys or an oversized house.


I think the hardest part may be the low blows about "depriving" the family;  it would be for me.  Plus, kids always think they'll be happier if they can watch all the TV their eyes can suck in.  SO not true.  Rob should keep in mind that his kids will remember the time they all spent together.  They will grow to be people who know how to be with other people in a satisfying way.  They will have social skills.  They will learn to be happy people, and that's just not something you can buy for a kid.

Not an ad. [Roxi]

If you read this blog by feed, you are not exempted from content-based advertisements, usually one, and always at the end.  This is what I read this morning when I checked the feed:



What luck!  Now you can send me a tasteful bereavement card for the loss of my stuff.  I'm touched.  You shouldn't have.

Synchronicity. [Roxi]

I tagged along with some talented women who were lunching at Moosewood today.  One of them just returned from a sabbatical on the road in a Class B;  she has a blog.  Hi Barbara!  I'm so glad I accepted the invitation.  And spoke.  I need to remember to keep doing that.

And the others:  mashed mud?  Hardly.  Just not RVers.  I'll talk more about them in my other blog, Great Therapists and Town Clerks I Have Known.

I'm going back to see if there are interior shots of their B.  Annie and I are still tempted by the smaller rigs, but we were won over by a B Touring Cruiser we cruised at Camping World.  Really more of a tiny Class C, but more spacious than the B's we've looked at.  That's all harmless envy, because we've got the rig and it's loaded for duck.

So, I've got to just say it here and be done with it.  I'm grieving my stuff.  It had to happen, I knew it would happen, I expected it to happen, and it happened.  I can say it here because you people won't chide me for mourning, even if the grief is for mere stuff.  Grief is not always what it looks like.  My therapist would say that I'm not really grieving a carload of unnecessary possessions, but a little of every other loss I've never completely grieved.  Don't pshaw;  you do it, too.  Have you ever said, I don't know why I'm crying.  It's just a stupid vase?  You may have shattered a vase, and you may have liked the vase.  But, it's also the dog you lost this summer who was 14 and your layoff you thought you were over and the fight you had with your husband when he stormed out and for a while you thought it might really be over.

My son is 23 today.

And ... you just witnessed my epiphany.  Stop averting your eyes.  

Whew.

Well, that's (almost) over.  A few items were "distributed" to friends while they were not at home, a pile of stuff went to the curb and mostly disappeared before bedtime, and our Prius is loaded with boxes for the Salvation Army.

Getting rid of stuff drains me.  It's an archaeological dig through the strata of my life [cue music].  Unearthing memories that get stuck in each layer is too much and too hard.  This morning I'm trying not to picture the things in the boxes;  by next week I really won't remember them at all.

Holy cow, did my back hurt last night!  I inflated my side of the bed as far as it would go just so I could turn over.  It created a precipice in the middle and twice I rolled down it and crushed Annie.  Sleep is dangerous.

Now the living room seems gloriously empty!  I can stop thinking about how I'll get rid of the stuff I was looking at, because I have. 

Sale!

Who knew a yard sale could be a spiritual experience?  You would think a yard sale was root canal, the way we've avoided having one all summer.  We are so excited to have stuff out of our living room that we actually talked about dancing there.  Next step:  getting it out of our front yard.

The gaps in the house have made me feel a little more like we can progress with getting the house on the market.  New least-favorite conversation:

When are you leaving?

We want to sell the house first.

Is it listed?

[sheepish] No.

You might want to do that!


This is not a conversation I can blame on the inquirer!  The question is legit, the answer is lame.

Winter Eyes. [Roxi]

Annie mentions winterizing the Duck every so often. I finally realized that I was mounting a fierce internal resistance every time she talked about it. My guts were puttin' up their dukes. It's not such a big deal, now that I'm talking myself through it. "Winterizing" sounds like what you do when you've given up for the season. It's a sensible thing to do when you're no longer going to use a fifth wheel for the winter, and you'll pick up having fun in May. NO! those pesky viscera kept saying. We're leaving soon! We're not giving up!

I'm letting Annie talk me down from this ledge of irrationality. She won't even use that orange stuff in the lines, she'll just blow the water out. Meanwhile, we're still winterizing anyway by running the furnace. Cheaper to blow than to heat up, as Granny used to say. [I don't know what that means.]

We're doing some little things out here this morning. I say little because Annie's doing them, so they seem really easy.

We slept out here last night, after watching a couple episodes of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (great series). Boy, oh boy, was it cold! Until we turned the heat up. And the bed is still aces in my book. I get warmer faster than I do in the hosue with our heated mattress pad.

I told a new acquaintance about our plans yesterday. She was very kind and said we were brave (instead of crazy). We've been lucky to have in our circle only brave-sayers instead of a lot of crazy-sayers.

The Duck - Unplugged.

We towed the Duck to a friend's house in Groton and boondocked there overnight.  Since we don't have an inverter yet, we had only propane and DC power; that runs heat, stove, refrigerator, some overhead lights, water pump.  Now that I say it that way, it's a lot of stuff. 

I love our new comforter. With the trailer heat set as low as it would go without being off, I had to kick my socked feet out from under to release some body heat.

Annie found a good inverter set-up for us online.  It was a 2500 watt modified (square) sine wave inverter, along with an automatic transfer switch.  As soon as she ordered it, though, she got a call from the company.  The inverter is out-of-stock.  He asked if he could substitute a Xantrex 2000 watt pure sine wave unit in its place for the same price.  Oh mister, can you!!


The power that you enjoy in your house is more or less pure sine wave.  If you could see it, it would look something like the red line:



The squares are what modified sine wave power looks like.  Output, on the average, is equivalent, but while PSW output is smooth and pretty, SSW power is clunky and awkward like a 13-year-old boy.  Square sine inverters are okay for most things, but have a few drawbacks.  Fluorescent lights may hum.  Sensitive electronics (like desktop computers) will revolt.  Most things are fine.  We use laptops, which can be disconnected from AC while in use, and shut off during recharging.  We figured that's not a problem.  Fluorescents might be a problem, but not a huge one.

Pure sine wave inverters produce grid-quality-and-better sine wave power.  Not surprisingly, they cost twice what their adequate-but-inferior half-siblings run.  So, ratcheting down the power output a little and upgrading was a good surprise.

Gave our brand-new Farberware stovetop percolator its first run.

Nice-looking, perks well, and was broken right out of the box.  Amazon provides free return shipping, and has shipped out another (hopefully intact) unit.  Shame on you, Farberware.  You used to be my shiny, stainless steel hero.