If you wanna make an omelet...

So I realize that I haven't written in a long time. That's because there hasn't been much to report. We just moved about a month ago so a lot of our energy has been (and is still being) spent on that. But we have moved things along with the RV slightly...

So with the help of Joe--remember Joe? Here he is: 

Anyway, with the help of Joe, we got an idea of what needed to be done about the rotten wood and stuff, and got more supplies. Unfortunately, we also found out from Joe that one thing that we actually did, by ourselves, that we were so proud of, had been done in vain. Totally futile effort. It turns out the peel and stick tile we used to cover the bathroom floor isn't working so well because the floor is uneven (among other reasons) and needs to be fixed. So the tile we put down is gonna be pulled up, then Joe has scored some free tile for us to use--real tile, with tile glue. So that's gonna happen. In the meantime, Joe has pulled the toilet up out of its spot and put it in the shower, and we have filled the RV with the wood, carpet, and various other supplies we're going to use, so this is what it currently looks like:

So yeah...it's looking pretty awesome right now. But then, I have been referred to as Kali, the Hindu goddess who destroys so that things can be reborn. So I think with a little more destruction (which is clearly where my strength lies), we can recreate this thing into the beautiful RV it's meant to be.

On a mostly unrelated note, I had mentioned in a previous post that I was going to begin taking my cat on walks. This has now happened multiple times. I thought it went pretty well for the first two times--she would initially just lie down or try to wander off into foliage and if we wanted her to come with us, we'd have to carry her, but by the end of the walk we had managed to get her to walk kind of along with us. She'd only take a few steps at a time, then lie down for a moment before taking a few more steps, but still, it was something. But the most recent time I walked her she wouldn't even do that. So it would seem we are not progressing as I had hoped. But I'll probably try again a few more times at least. Because look how cute she is on her little leash:

yep. I love my kitty.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly...

so the good...hmmm, I don't know. let's not start with good. let's go straight to the ugly: the wallpaper on the ceiling and in the bathroom of the RV:

 

definitely ugly (the picture doesn't really do it's ugliness/blandness justice). so the plan was (note that I said "was" as that will be significant later) to scrape off the wallpaper and then paint the ceiling and walls this pretty sky blue color. I even have a huge, yellow vinyl sun decal to put on the ceiling. and if that went well, I was going to maybe paint the trim a pretty light spring green color (I guess I just want the inside of the RV to look like outside on a pretty summer day). anyway, I bought the stuff for painting a few weeks ago but before we could get to that, we had to get rid of the wallpaper.

so last Saturday, that's what we decided to work on. that brings us to the bad. two bads, in fact. first of all, we went to Lowe's (which we find ourselves doing on like a weekly basis lately) and spent $40 on stuff to get the wallpaper off. we bought a scorer, a scraper, a shaver, and a spray gel that's supposed to help dissolve the wallpaper adhesive (notice I said "supposed to").

 we set to work, following the directions carefully, scoring the wallpaper first, then spraying it with the gel and waiting 15 minutes. after that, we figured it should be easy to get the wall paper off. no. nope. uh-uh. no way. we scraped and shaved as hard as we could but could barely manage to get anything at all off. 

although the little bit we did manage to get off told us some very bad news: a lot of the wood (as in the wood that makes up the ceiling) in the RV is rotten. yeah, water damaged, or something. gonna need replaced. yay.

peeling off wallpaper and painting are things I at least have an idea of how to do. replacing wood I have no idea about, not to mention how much more it's gonna cost us. :( not good. not good at all. I guess we're gonna talk to some people who might have an idea of what to do and go ahead and fix it. at least if we take all the wood out we won't have to worry anymore about scraping off the wallpaper that refuses to leave.

so that was a disappointing day of working in the RV. we couldn't get the wallpaper off, we found out the wood was rotten, and we were feeling discouraged, so we just gave up, left everything where it was, and came inside. which brings us to the good, because that's where I saw this:

it cheered me up immediately. apparently the rats had decided that they loved the curtains and wanted to chew on them, so they pulled them into the cage. now, I know Cameron doesn't think it's "good" that the rats are chewing on his curtains, but I have to say I thought it was totally cute. I love those guys.

so I guess the story has a happy-ish ending. the RV is being a problem, but at least I have rats. hey, yeah, that's the moral of the story: if you're going to buy an old RV that may need a lot of work, make sure you also get some pet rats to cheer you up when you find out there is more wrong with the RV than you expected. :)

hopefully next time I'll post, I'll have good news to report!

Reasons Why We Should Not Own an RV

1.) the first time we (well actually Cameron, let's be clear here) drove it, we (again, Cameron) ran out of gas on the side of the road.
2.) when we went to put more gas in, we couldn't figure out where it was supposed to go. finally I smelled the place we were thinking of putting it, and after confirming it smelled like gasoline, we put it in there. (at least we were right)
3.) I was thinking I could just go to Lowe's, buy some kind of long extension cord, and plug the RV in. nope. wrong. completely wrong. turns out, we need  a very high amp extension cord (higher than what they sell at Lowe's), and a special circuit put in where we can plug it in to. probably people who have never owned or considered owning an RV in their life would have at least known that a regular extension cord was not going to work--but me and Cameron, noooooo. no idea.
4.)  despite the fact that Cameron owns a house, neither of us have ever really done any home improvement/building/fixing type stuff, so our plans to fix up the inside of the RV may be a little...ambitious.
5.) both of us barely understand how our cars that we've had for years work, much less a more foreign and complex vehicle like an RV.
6.) we have no idea how and where to empty the thing that holds the water/bathroom stuff/etc.


so that's all a little scary. but you know what? it's okay. because we are going to make this work. Also we have awesome friends like Joe :

And Olivia:

...who are good at/knowledgeable about the  things we need help with. Joe has promised to make (!) us an extension cord that works, and put in a circuit so someday, we can actually have *electricity* in our RV. and Olivia has offered to help us with the carpeting, as well as check the bathroom floor from water damage and act accordingly from there. and maybe even help us with the painting, which is next on the agenda....hopefully we'll get to some of that stuff tomorrow!

Fixing Up the Bathroom, Part One

So it was finally warm enough (in the mid to high 50s--may have even gotten to 60) to get some work done in the RV (which we still have no way to power, so we have to rely on sunlight to see and outdoor temperature to keep us warm). We tore up the carpet in the bathroom, pulled out nails, and laid down some peel and stick tiles. We're not quite done and it doesn't look perfect, but we did it. And we're happy.

 

 cutting up carpet and pulling up nails--that's how we roll. 

BATTLE WOUNDS

so neither of us ended up cutting ourselves with the box cutters, but Cameron managed to cut himself on...something in the bathroom. 

and I somehow managed to hurt myself on a piece of vinyl tile...? yeah, I don't understand it either. 

So we still need to tile around the toilet (the wood is raised there, so we have to use scraps to get that part done, and tiling behind the toilet is going to be a pain in the ass for sure) and then caulk around all the tile and sand down the caulk, but this is really the first thing we've done to spruce up the RV and the first time either of us has really done a project like this on our own, so we're both pretty excited. :)

Brief Interlude for Cute Pet Photos

my pets are super cute. enjoy.

my cat Layla. the most awesome cat alive. she pretty much always looks like this; her eyes are huge and always wide open.

our hedgehog, Pasta Batman. she's such a ham in front of the camera!

when P Bat is put under running water, she "swims," it's awesome

and yes, like any other hedgehog, she's constantly getting herself stuck in toilet paper roles.I love how pissed off she seems in this picture, like, "hey, I'm trying to have some private time with my tube! well, excuuuuuse me, Miss Batman.

Pasta Batman has many nicknames. P Bat, or if you want to go the more hedgehog-rapper route, P Bat da Hedge. Saucey or The Sauce, The Bat, Miss Batman, Batsworth, Battington, Little Bug (I call her that because she looks like a bug when you see her running around on the floor), and many more (including a few that have to do with her tendency to be covered in poop and smelly).

 my first rat ever, Plink (short for Plinklenose.) he's the sweetest. he loves to cuddle up and be petted.

 but he hates baths. never trying that again.

but he looks so cute all wet!

 

I didn't want him to have to be alone, so I got another rat a little over a week ago. his name is Sweetpea (aka Quagglebar).

their first meeting was so cute. Sweetpea was in love and Plink was oblivious. Sweetpea, bless his heart, tried everything he could to get Plink to notice him. 

 

he's so cute.only 6 weeks old when I got him. ridiculously tiny.

by the way, the Plink/Sweetpea story ends happily...they're totally best friends now. :)

so, I guess now the question is, will we be traveling/living in a 24 ft long RV with 2 people, a cat, 2 rats, and a hedgehog? and the answer is, quite possibly. will it be easy and comfortable? that remains to be seen.
and by the way, if my cat is going to live in the RV with us, I want to try to train her to use a toilet. I think she could learn, she's very adaptable. I also want to start trying to walk her on leash--I think of all the cats I've had/met in my life, she's the most likely to go for it. I'll probably start that experiment around spring so I'll keep you guys updated. :)

"I'm trying hard to love you, you don't make it easy babe..."

Ah, the trials and tribulations of buying an RV for the first time when you know nothing about cars. We had a hell of a time just getting Jeero's Ride from the place we left it, in a city 40 minutes away, to our driveway.

So we bought the RV in a small city about forty minutes from our house.This proved to be a problem, because technically we needed to get it registered and licensed before driving it home, and the place we left it to get it all fixed up and in good running condition didn't do inspections. We couldn't figure out how we were gonna get it taken care of because we obviously needed two people to go pick it up and get the stuff done, and Cameron couldn't do it in time during the week, and everything was closed on the weekends.

Finally, after trying to figure out a good way to work it out, we just said fuck it, let's do it illegally. So after weeks of not having the RV, we took Cam's license plate off his car and set off to pick up the RV. We were both nervous about driving it home, seeing as neither of us had any experience driving an RV, especially me, who really has no experience driving anything bigger than a Honda Accord. So we were discussing who was going to drive it home as we were driving, when it started flurrying. Which was annoying but we figured it was no big deal and we could still pick it up. Then it started snowing harder. And harder. And harder. Until we finally decided to turn around (after getting about halfway there) and go home RV-less. So yeah, that was a bummer, especially after putting it off for so long.

Going To Pick Up the RV Take Two happened the next week. It was a sunny day, which we figured was a good omen. But apparently it wasn't. We picked up the RV without too much issue, but as we were driving it home (illegally, with Cam's license plate), it ran out of gas. About 30 seconds down the road from a gas station. Cameron and I took my car to the station and got some gas. Which we then couldn't figure out where to put. Yeah, I was thinking, we are definitely two people who should be owning an RV. But we did eventually figure it out and put it in. But still, the RV wouldn't start. At all. The battery had needed to be charged before we left the mechanic's, so we figured that was probably the problem, but still, we didn't know what to think. For all we knew, our RV that we had just spent almost $700 in repairs on was unable to run.

We didn't really have any way to jump it (because I am stupid enough to not have cables), so eventually and at a loss, we called AAA. It turned out that even though I have the highest level of membership, you need a special RV membership  for RVs. Yeah, nice, AAA. So we got a tow truck (and had to lie about it being registered) but it cost like $70. And apparently it was kind of illegal for him to be towing a vehicle that big with his tow truck, so it turned out we were being extra illegal. Yay.

Well we finally got it home, parked it in front of the house, and went inside, vowing not to bother with it any more that day and to do something less stressful for the remainder of the day. But we still needed to get it into the driveway.

So we put that off for a while until we decided to do it like a half hour before we were supposed to leave to go up to Cameron's parent's house for Christmas. Yeah, we are awesome planners and super-organized people who never put things off and then get really stressed out by the things we put off. No, we would never let that happen. Anyway, so we're like, "Shit, we need to get this thing jumped and into the driveway." So we pull Cameron's car in front of the RV, and prepare to jump it, but to no avail, because his battery is too corroded to fit the cable on to it. So we moved our cars around until my car was in front of the RV, but then it turned out that my battery, for some inexplicable reason, has no indications of which part is negative and which part is positive. None at all. I even went online to try to figure out another way to tell but didn't find anything useful. So finally, we played musical cars one more time and got our friend/roommate Elana's car in front of the RV. Despite the fact that we were actually able to attach the cables that time and attempt the jump it, the RV still. Would. Not. Start.

We didn't have time to mess with it any more so we said fuck it, left it in front of the house, and got on the road. And we tried to forget about it for the time we were home over Christmas.

This story, does, in fact, have a happy ending. When we got back to town, we jumped the RV again, this time for about 20 minutes, and finally got it to run long enough to get it into the driveway. So while it is still uninspected, unlicensed, and unregistered, it is at least in the driveway and we have at least proven it is capable of running.

So for now, we're gonna leave it in the driveway and just work on renovating and fixing up the inside. After that, maybe someday, it will be road legal and we can actually practice driving it, then, maybe even, I don't know, take it somewhere. We shall see.

"I'm trying hard to love you, there's got to be an easy way."
you don't make it easy babe

Jeero: The Ugly Doll, The Legend

So the RV, and therefore this blog, is named after our road trip buddy Jeero. He's been our road trip buddy for a few years now; we bring Jeero every new place we go and try to take pictures of him everywhere.
There is a story of how Jeero became our road trip buddy....
Cameron (my boyfriend) and I were in the early leg of a road trip in July 2009 and were visiting a friend of ours who lived outside of Chicago. She had a Jeero doll and a Chuckanucka doll in the back of her car, and we enjoyed reading and laughing at the vaguely incomprehensible description of Jeero on the little card that came with him. I started getting kinda attached to Jeero. Then one day when we took a day trip to Madison, Wisconsin with our friend, I steered us into a toy store that carried Ugly Dolls. I looked at the key chain sized Jeero wishfully, but ended up not getting him because I felt guilty spending money (of which I had little) on something so frivolous. So I sadly left the Ugly Dolls and wandered around the store for a bit. We finally left the store and were walking down the street when Cameron gleefully presented me with Jeero. It turned out he had sneakily bought him as a gift for me when I wasn't paying attention. I thought it was the sweetest thing ever and Jeero pretty much became our road trip mascot right then and there. :)

So here are some of the many places Jeero has been:

Lake Michigan, the first place we ever photographed him

 

this is Jeero at a free Dark Star Orchestra concert we went to in Ohio. the town (I can't even remember what town it was now) was pretty boring, but the show was awesome! (for those who don't know, DSO is, like, the best Grateful Dead Cover band ever) I apologize for the crappy quality of this picture; I had a really crappy camera back  then

 

Forsyth Park in Savannah, Georgia. amazing city. Cameron and I grabbed a bunch of Spanish moss and started tossing back and forth. we later found out that it has lots of parasitic bugs in it and you shouldn't ever touch it. oops. 

 

at a farm in PA. we had gone to the Rainbow Gathering this past summer (2010) in the Allegheny National Forest near Sheffield, PA. on our way to the gathering, we passed this farm, which we noticed because it had a large sign out front saying "Goat Milk Fudge." we knew we had to check that out, so on our way out of the gathering, we stopped at the farm where not only did we get goat milk fudge, but we ended up talking to the woman there for quite awhile. she was really friendly; she showed us around the farm and when we told her we were on a road trip, she suggested we go Watkins Glen, New York and stay in these cabins they rent for cheap. which we totally ended up doing. and it was awesome. as was the goat milk fudge.

But before we went to Watkins Glen, we stopped in Buffalo NY where we decided to indulge ourselves after spending a few days being dirty in the woods. so we got pedicures together (which we sneakily drank during) then had a delicious dinner. 

the cabin we stayed at in Watkins Glen. can you make out Jeero in the picture? he's the tiny green object on the left. :)
we loved that cabin. it didn't have TV or air conditioning, and the shower looked more like a mix between a bug morgue and an abandoned supply closet, but still. it was so cute and vintage looking.
everyone who worked there kept trying to talk us out of staying there because it didn't have air conditioning. I was like "we don't have air conditioning. and we live in North Carolina." they finally gave in and let us stay there, and we never once wished for a/c. AND it was $40 a night.

Jeero, with my superhero alterego, Seaweed Head Girl, at Seneca Lake in Watkins Glen. 

 there were a ton of wineries/vineyards in/around Watkins Glen, and Jeero went to a lot of them. but here's him in front of his favorite, which was a meadery.

                   Jeero loved the Ben and Jerry's Factory in Burlington Vermont. yay for free ice cream!

on a sunset ferry tour of Lake Champlain in Burlington, Vermont. it was so beautiful.

 Jeero toured the Magic Hat Factory with us. that was his and my first brewery tour, and it was totally awesome. luckily they didn't ID Jeero, because he doesn't have an ID.

 these three pictures were from an awesome farm in Vermont. Jeero had a lot of fun in Vermont.













Jeero enjoying the company of a wise and friendly goat.









                                       The three of us together at a Bethany Beach in Delaware.

Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum in Ocean City, Maryland. if you've never been to one, I *highly* recommend checking one out. they're all over. 

in front of the statue of Neptune at the Neptune Festival in Virginia Beach.

you can't stop Jeero because he's on a boat!
out on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, on Cameron's parents' boat.






Jeero chillin' with his buddy Captain Cream Cheese at the pool at Spring Cove Marina in Solomons, MD.