Back to Normal (Almost) - Jul 2010

After a couple of months of living with my folks (George & Gracie), it was time to get back on the road. We are so very grateful that we have such wonderful parents who welcomed us home when we really needed a break from traveling. Thank you both -- for everything -- your love and support in our time of need was such a blessing. We always treasure our time together, but this time was especially sweet.

Our dog Scotty also loved staying there. He had endless amounts of Gramma's attention and affection, plenty of room to run about, access to the back yard, an abundance of delicious homemade dog food and two "cousins" to play with. Here he is smilin' because he's so happy at Gramma's.
And here are his two favorite playmates -- Yoshi and Zoey -- enjoying lounging on one of their favorite spots -- the dining room table. Can you tell that they are not terribly spoiled -- ha ha!
And they were kind enough to let Scotty share the space.
They were good companions for Scotty after losing his brother Rudy.
As I wrote in an earlier post, we had to put our dear, sweet dog Rudy to sleep in June. It was very painful as he was our baby and we were heartbroken to lose our little guy. My Mom (she's such an angel) created a page on The Rainbow Bridge website [click here] to preserve his memory.


She also arranged to have his likeness painted on a small rock so that we could keep the spirit of him with us. She contacted an artist (Lou Ann Knight) and sent her a photo of Rudy (see above photo.) Lou Ann did some preliminary work, sent us photos back for approval and then mailed the finished work -- all in less than two weeks. She did an excellent job capturing Rudy's essence and now we have our little sleeping baby with us always.
My Mom had a second rock made -- this one of Rudy's profile -- so she could have a little memorial site in her garden. We picked a shady spot, sprinkled some of his ashes, placed the rock and arranged some flowers. Then we had a goodbye ceremony while we all hugged and cried. It's a beautiful little spot and Mom says she talks to him every day when she's out working in her yard.
In between healing, visiting, resting and relaxing, we did accomplish a few things. George is a very competent woodworker and he helped us with several projects for the RV. The first was a wooden handle for the screen door -- one that was sturdy and would let us open/close the screen. Our old one was pretty flimsy and only lasted about a year.
He sanded and painted a 3/4" dowel and attached it with some U-clips. Then, with the leftover piece of dowel, he made a towel bar that attached to the cabinet door under the sink.
Another project that George completed was to design and build a pair of side rails to hold the blind in place -- the one that is in the back window of the RV. Years ago, we had replaced all the standard RV shades with insulated, cellular, blackout blinds. The blinds have a top down/bottom up feature but, in order to keep the rear blind pressed next to the window (which is not vertical and slopes away at the bottom), we had to attach the blind at the bottom -- rendering the "bottom up" feature useless. I asked George to design a set of rails to install on either side of the blind so that it traveled along the rail (and hugged the window.) Now, the blind can be raised up or lowered down as needed. He did an excellent job of designing rails that are sleek, functional and attractive.
Our favorite project that George worked on was to install open grillwork in the cabinet doors in the front entertainment section. We keep a lot of our electronic equipment behind those doors (satellite TV receiver & DVR, speakers, modem and wifi router) and all of that builds up a lot of heat. For much of the time, we had to leave the doors open to keep the air circulating. In addition, the satellite tv receiver has a line-of-sight IR remote, so we used to have to open the door when watching tv in order for the remote to work. Lastly, we had located our Bose speakers up there and so listening to music meant keeping the doors as well. With all of that, those doors stayed open a lot.We decided that by removing the center of the doors and installing an open grill, we could solve all three issues. George boldly cut out the middle of the doors (yikes -- that was hard to watch), and then cut and attached the new grills, painted the insert black and attached new handles. When we reinstalled them -- they looked great and have solved all of the above issues.One more handy item that he made for us were boards to sit atop our orange Lynx Leveler blocks. We've used various designs of this concept for years and they really help when leveling. The boards do wear out over time, so about every two years we have to replace them. The boards are slightly wider than the blocks and span three blocks. The board has a cross piece underneath that aligns between the block spaces -- that keeps the board from shifting. The ends of the board are beveled and we added a top coat of paint mixed with sand to keep it from being slippery when wet. The longer/wider platform really makes it easy to "hit the target" when getting up on blocks. Plus, I think it's better for the tires to sit on a flat surface.In addition to all of these projects we also installed new Aero-flo vent covers as the old ones were getting very brittle (and good thing we did as we were in a recent hail storm -- see next post.) We sanded and stained several drawer and cabinet fronts that had gotten chipped and dinged from 5 years of use. We ordered a second layer of latex foam for our king-sized bed. We cleaned the RV from stem to stern -- inside and out. We reorganized bins and got rid of a bunch of stuff, sanitized our fresh water tank, installed new indoor/outdoor thermometers and generally got everything in tip-top shape and ready to travel.

After a tearful goodbye, we left Mom & George's house at the end of July and took three days to get back to the higher (and cooler) elevations of New Mexico.