From Here to Eternity...or the Beach (whichever comes first)

by Jody Worsham
All rights reserved for plane tickets

A family vacation is supposed to bring a family closer together and it does; especially  if there are two grown-ups, two children at the warring age, and a shih zu that lives up to her name packed into a car with enough electronics to launch a sattelite.  Still, the children wanted to go to the beach so that's where we headed.

The original plan was to leave on a Sunday and I had been packing the RV accordingly.  On Saturday afternoon Dr. Hubby decided it would be nice to break up the long drive by leaving on Saturday
in an hour.-   I went into overdrive and started throwing the rest of the last minute items into the trailer...leaving the hot dogs still frozen in the refrigerator freezer.  One mile down the road we had to stop to see if my hormones had been packed.  Finding that they had been, it was safe to continue our journey.

Nine miles down the road I had finally untangled all the earphones, assigned chargers to the various i-pods and i-pads, and negotiated a peace treaty for the next ten miles, when I saw pieces of rubber flying through the air in the side mirror.  A blow-out!  Dr. Hubby managed to steer us into an RV park with a semi-level surface to change the tire.  A contruction worker took pity on an old man, a fat wife, two kids, and a dog and changed the tire for us.

With no spare tire, I confiscated the i-pad, dialed up On Star and began a search for a set of four tires or at least a spare.  It was 5 o'clock on a Saturday evening.  Who was going to be open?  No one.
We made it another 120 miles and stopped at an RV camp.


The next morning our ever faithful Wal-Mart had 4 tires.  We drove there and an hour later we had four new tires.  The plan was to keep the  other 3 tires as a back-up.  Where we were going to put them hadn't been decided.  The point was moot since the other three tires were all cracked as well.
We headed out for the remaining five hours of the trip.

We gave the tween-ager the TomTom (gps) .  "What's a POI?" "Point of Interest."  For the next five hours she discovered more apps on the TomTom than we ever imagined.   We heard "Four hours and fifty-two minutes to destination.  Traveling at 61 mph, legal speed 70, crossing an intersection just...about...now.  Four hours and fifty minutes to destination.  Traveling at 66 mph, legal speed 70, and we are making a slight curve to the left,  right about....now.  Four hours and 48 minutes to destination.  Traveling at 82 mph, legal speed 70 and there is a lake immediately to your right."
If this weren't enough, Dr. Hubby was discovering all the buttons on the car.  His favorite was the miles per gallon feature.  "We are averaging 6 miles per gallon.  That's awful.  No wait, that's 99 miles per gallon."  "That's because we are going downhill, Honey."  Actually, we were getting more like $50 per hour.  Every hour we stopped to fill up with gas and to check the tires.

A normal seven hour drive to the beach took us two days, four tires, three game chargers, an on going conversation with On Star, a constant miles per gallon up date, and a cartographic description of the route by the Tween-ager.

In self-defense, I lapsed into a coma at 8 miles per gallon, four hours and 32 minutes to destination with a slight bend in the road right about....now.

1-800-U-R-N-H double Hockey Sticks!

By Jody Worsham

All rights reserved for plane tickets to the Artic

I knew this past weekend was going to be hot. I live in Texas. It's hot in the dead of winter.

Our favorite and only RV camping spot has shade trees but none when the sun hits the side of the trailer in the afternoon when they are needed the most. This time we thought we were prepared. We arrived at the campsite straight up high hot noon. Dr. Hubby proceeded to set up the trailer and then to unfold the six windshield reflectors for eighteen wheeler trucks he had bought. He began placing them on the roof of the slide-out. He used 2x4 blocks and bungee cords to hold them down. Then he attached more windshield reflector things to the outside of the windows using those suction cups things for holding Christmas wreaths. I had already applied tin foil to the inside of the windows before we left home. When he finished we looked like the Beverly Hillbillies.

I'm sure the people next door expected to see us emerge with tin foil wrapped around our heads so our brains wouldn't be sucked out by the aliens. I will say, however, that the TV reception was the best we've ever had.

We turned on the AC and set it for 45 but it couldn't keep up with the increasing heat. Inside the trailer with two children, two dogs, and two adults was like living inside an Easy Bake Oven. We went outside where there was a breeze. Outside the trailer with two children, two dogs, and two adults was like living in a convection oven, hot air blowing hard!

We had the Scalped Yelp with us and a black lab puppy we were "holding" for the new owners until they returned from the cool mountains of Oregon, assuming they would, indeed, return. Anybody who has ever had a puppy or tried to potty train a two-year-old knows that when they "have to go", they have to GO, right then no waiting. When the lab puppy yelped at 3 a.m., Dr. Hubby yelled for him to "HUSH". I, on the other hand, knew that sound meant "I need to go potty and I have a really bad tummy ache." Any mother of eight (ten if you count the dogs) knows that sound so I put the leash on the puppy and took him outside. Yes, he HAD to go and yes he had a tummy ache for good reason.

The heat and the puppy tummy ache continued for the next two days alternating with puppy throw-up. I gave the puppy Pepto Bismal but that did not buy me enough time to get him off the bed before we had major poopage. I stripped the bed linens and headed for the nearest wash-a-tiera. Dr. Hubby tried hosing down the trailer to cool it off. When that didn't work he turned the hose on himself, the children, and the dogs. I was still washing bed linens.

Sunday afternoon word came down that the fireworks scheduled for that evening had been cancelled due to the high fire danger. The six-year-old, I think delirious from the heat, chose that moment to confess that he had given the puppy a Snickers and animal cookies on Friday as a treat. "Did you give the puppy a lot of Snickers and animal cookies?" I asked. The future politician evaded the question with "Well, how many is a lot?"

I Googled puppy diarrhea plus Snickers and animal cookies overdose. The recommendation was to keep the puppy cool, no stress, and hydrated. I thought that made pretty good sense for us as well so we cut our long weekend short by two days. Dr. Hubby readied the tin-foil-alien-non-heat-repelling RV for travel and we headed for home.

We arrived home by midnight. The children slept all the way as did the dogs. It helped that we had the air conditioner turned so low it was spitting ice. Once home as I slid between the icy sheets of our bed with the air conditioner set on a comfortable 62 and the ceiling fan blowing just short of hurricane force winds, I turned to Dr. Hubby and said "I don't want us to turn into one of those old couples who are content to just sit on their front porch sipping mint julips, but dang, it feels good to be home and in our own bed." He snored in reply.

If you need to get in contact with us our new number is 1-800-C00L-DUDES R-HOME. We are no longer in Hell.

Noah and the RV

By Jody Worsham

All rights reserved to fund Fire the Weather Widget!

Since the kids were out of school today, we took advantage of the long weekend and went to Shreveport with our RV right after the kindergarten Olympic basketball game on Saturday. According to the Weather Widget, it was to be warm and sunny for the weekend. IT RAINED NON-STOP FOR 2 DAYS. I don't think the kids have ever watched so much TV or played so many video games.

At one point they asked if they couldn't please do something else. I gave them some tin foil I had removed from the windows so I could see how close the rising water was to our RV. They began making boats out of tin foil followed by 30 minutes of rule interpretation before the Tin Foil Regatta began. I was enjoying all this until I heard the five-year-old ask where the motor would go. Water? Electricity? Motor? Fortunately the nine-year-old said motors weren't allowed.

They put water in the bath tub and had a competition to see whose boat could hold the most coins before sinking. I was promised by the nine-year-old that she would return my $2 in change, which never happened. She claimed coin sinking victory but I think she cheated. She gave him quarters and she took the dimes. After two coins, his boat sank but hers was still afloat after four dimes.

I would like to think that they were learning something about water displacement and weight with this experiment but I think the nine-year-old just learned how to bilk me out of my change, cheat the five-year- old, and claim Tin Foil Regatta Championship for herself.

With these skills, I fear she may be headed for a career in politics.

Hold Down the Fort!

By Jody Worsham July 2010
All rights reserved for Sumo Wrestling

Whenever my husband or I would leave our house, there was always the admonition to the other to “Hold down the Fort”. With six children, you had to or there wouldn’t be a fort when you got back.

I’m not sure how the phrase originated, possibly from some of those “Rent-a-Party” places that rent you those net enclosed inflatable forts. I’m sure the instructions included “Hold down the Fort for maximum propulsion through the air.” It could have come from pioneer days, but I doubt it.

This past weekend we went camping at our favorite spot; that place being an RV park with a cement drive-through pad, water, sewage, electrical, cable hook-ups, a pool, and a McDonald’s within two miles.

After setting up camp, hooking up the air conditioner, hot-water heater, and pulling out the awning, my husband was off to Sears for some serious tool shopping. “Hold down the fort while I’m gone”, his parting words as he spun out of the parking lot.

This was not a problem. The first six children were now grown and I only had the latest two children to contain in order to hold down the fort. The children were inside the trailer and I was sitting at the picnic table reading. If I tried to read in the trailer with the two children, I would soon get sea sick from all the rocking. Sixty-four jacks under the trailer cannot stop the trailer from bouncing and swaying under the pounding of their feet.

I noticed the storm clouds gathering. I gathered up card tables, lawn chairs, assorted towels, roller skates, fans, and bicycles and stored them next to the trailer under the awning. Then the wind hit.

The awning began trying to imitate a Kansas twister as I frantically, in my best imitation of Dorothy looking for Toto, alternately lowered first the left awning brace and then the right one. By the time I had gotten them down as far as I could, I was drenched and the awning was still trying to get to Oz.

The lightning was cracking overhead so I decided not to touch the metal braces anymore. The wind was trying to flip the awning over the top of the trailer. There was only one way to hold down the fort. I grabbed the flapping web strap used to roll up the awning and held on. For once I was glad I was packing a few extra pounds and could keep the awning in place.

Because the awning was now six feet from the trailer door, you couldn’t open the door. The children climbed up on the kitchen counter and were yelling at me through the window. I couldn’t hear what they were saying so I just smiled through my dripping hair to reassure them as I did battle with the awning.

The wind was picking up. From my 4-H training in handling horses, I remembered you were never to wrap the lead rope around your wrist in case the horse bolted dragging you along with him. I could just see a gust of wind ripping the awning off and sending me airborne with it through the trees.

I could see the next day's headlines “Senior Mom and Awning seen sailing due North during Storm”. I quickly unwrapped the web strap from my wrist and looped it under my rear using both hands to control the slack. I think I had seen this on a National Geographic Mt. Everest climb.

All the campsites and streets were now standing in six inches of water. The lightning was still cracking so I edged away from the aluminum picnic table although I don’t think it would have mattered since I was ankle deep in water anyway. I stood there grinning like an idiot (the children were still looking through the kitchen blinds every five minutes) soaked and hanging onto a strap in a hurricane and wondering why no one came to help.

After fifteen minutes the wind died down and it was just heavy rain. I tied the strap to the aluminum picnic table and waited for the rain to stop still being unable to raise the awning due to continued lightning. After another twenty minutes the rain stopped. I untied the strap from the table and raised the awning back to its pre-storm position, set the chairs back out to dry, and put on dry clothes.

A few minutes later my husband arrived back from Sears.
“Boy, that was some storm! I saw an awning flipped completely over a trailer just down from us and another one was bent completely into two pieces. I was surprised ours was still in tact.”

I don’t know why he was surprised. I said I would hold down the fort…and I did.