2/16-2/17/2012 Hitch Itch Has Set In

It’s official! Hitch itch has set in big time. We just can’t take this weather much more. Rain and clouds and it just seems never ending. The forecast for the next four days is rain.

Speaking of hitch itch, Bob has our route planned out. I told you a little while back that he was working on it. Well, turns out he must be reading my mind because the places I wanted to go, but we hadn’t talked about, are the cities he’s plotted for our trip east. I can’t wait to get to some of these places! We’re not visiting new states but new cities in those states. It’s going to be quite the journey with lots of sights to see in each state.

I got something in email the other day that really brought something forth that I had no idea about. I think its important enough to share it here. I hope that if it isn’t circulating in your email list then you’ll copy and paste this and get it started.

Here it is:

Dr. Oz had a show on the fastest growing cancer in women,
thyroid cancer. It was a very interesting program and he mentioned that the increase could possibly be related to the use of dental x-rays and mammograms.

He demonstrated that on the apron the dentist puts on you for your dental x-rays there is a little flap that can be lifted up and wrapped
around your neck. Many dentists don't bother to use it. Also, there is
something called a "thyroid guard" for use during mammograms.

By coincidence, I had my yearly mammogram the other day. I felt a bit silly, but I asked about the guard and sure enough, the technician had one in a drawer. I asked why it wasn't routinely used. Answer: "I don't know. You have to ask for it." Well, if I hadn't seen the show, how would I have known to ask?

We need to pass this on to our daughters, nieces, mothers and all our
female friends and husbands tell your wives.

Isn’t email a wonderful thing?

12/15/2012 The Mattress Pad Story

I have been saving my plastic bag from HEB (my grocery store here in Mission, Texas) Walmart and the tomato store when I go there.

I have other bags already bagged up and ready to go.

I had heard about this project that takes place on the Mission Bell side of the park shortly after we arrived and I was excited about it from day one.

Today, I joined about 40 other men and women and did something so worthwhile, so important for the recipients, so fulfilling, so….needed.

Lets start at the beginning. Back in 1996, the children in St. John’s Vacation Bible School (Nebraska) made mattress pads for the homeless as a mission project. For fifteen minutes each day, each Bible School group, or class, would work by stuffing plastic grocery bags into the tubes of the mattress material that was previously sewn. Usually denim, or a heavier upholstery material is used as the mattress covering.

How exactly this project made its way to Mission Bell is unclear to me. I do know that it started back in 2001 with eight or so women gathered in a motorhome to stuff the approximately 510 plastic grocery bags into the tubes.

The finished mattress pads were then donated to Hidalgo Mission, which is just a mile or so from the Mexico border, and they would be given to anyone who had no bed. In addition, every week people would walk across the border with a list of 8 – 10 clothing items they needed for their family, they would have a meal, attend a church service and be given a sack of food before they journeyed home. When they returned the following week, their clothing needs would be met and given to them. Every Thursday about 160 people would make the trek. Ten years later, I would imagine the number is higher now for those who come every week.

The Winter Texans of this park save their plastic bags all year round. They make sure room is left in the RV or the trunk of the car to transport all the ones saved in the spring, summer, and early fall.

So today was the first of two days that the mattress stuffing will take place.

I really didn’t know what to expect when I walked in the room over at Mission Bell. I certainly didn’t expect to see huge black leaf bags stuffed to the brim with plastic grocery store bags, plastic sleeves that newspapers are delivered in, bread bags, bags from Sears, Penney’s, Old Navy, Target, Kohl’s and the list goes on. Bags of every size and color.

Here the ladies start fluffing the bags. Since they are all mashed together in bags when they arrive each on is fluffed.

The mattress pads are constructed from 56 to 60 inch wide denim, sailcloth or other firm material. For an adult size mattress pad it takes 2 1/2 to 2 3/4 yards of material. I was told that the material is bought by the Winter Texans here in the park. They are always looking for high dollar coupons and clearance on end bolts in their fabric stores at home. The material is folded in half lengthwise and the ends sewn. Then the tubes are made by stitching every four and a half inches leaving nine inches at the end for the pillow.

Let the stuffing begin!

Jeannette from Iowa has joined in this worthwhile activity for several years now.

Ladies, and gentlemen, came and went all day long, Delivering bags they saved, fluffing bags, stuffing, , sewing the mattress pads themselves. Some stayed for a half hour, others stayed all day.

After each tube is filled, and all the bags pushed as far as they will go with a stick, then the end is pinned until it can be sewn shut.

Note: When kids do this project, the tubes are made first so that kids can fill with bags from each side at the same time.

Shirley getting more bags for fluffing.

This one is coming along nicely.

Busy bees…..

My sweet friend Phyliss came over and fluffed for awhile.

Much determination goes into getting those bags in there nice and tight.

I didn’t lay on one of these mattress pads but I did lean across one and they are surprisingly comfortable. Light enough to be carried and comfortable too! That’s a good combination.

There was a good mix of men and women helping out today.

Gerald, of Iowa, was just tickled to be able to help with such a worthy cause.

The completed mattress pads will be picked up tomorrow by a gentleman from His Hands Ministry. In the most recent years this group here in Mission Bell has been donating them to this organization.

If you have a youth group, Scout troop, church group, senior citizen group or anyone at all that needs a project, I have the written directions on how to make these pads. I would be happy to share them with you. Leave me a comment with contact info. (I won’t publish your information)

I’ll close this with these thoughts. This was a very rewarding day in more ways than one. I met and got to spend time with some wonderful men and women I otherwise would not have. I got to fluff many bags that will give comfort to a man or woman who has no bed. I went home thankful for my soft sheets and warm blanket. Given the chance, I would do this again in heartbeat.

2/14/2012 Valentine’s Day

Happy Valentine’s Day!

2/10-2/13/2012 Four Days of CLOUDS & RAIN!

A few things….

First and foremost welcome to new Frequent Reader, MVP8439. I wonder if we know you, your picture looks familiar. If not, welcome anyway and we hope you enjoy the journey.

I thought I had posted a picture of the ice maker we had for a day. I know I did but somehow it got lost somewhere between Live Writer and Blogger. So here’s a picture of the icemaker that we are now waiting for to be delivered. Again.

Bob cut off the eight inches of cord including the plug and peeled the sticker off the back and attached it to the invoice and I took it to the post office to get this replacement process started. Now remember what you just read here, this is important.

I never thought an icemaker with no means of plugging it in would make my blood run cold and make me think of a 1958 Plymouth Fury. I was in the house looking up something on the computer when I heard this very familiar noise. I knew the noise and I had heard it recently but I just couldn’t place it. For the sake of argument lets say the noise level was that of…oh,say… a washing machine in the wash cycle. I sat there and I listened and suddenly my blood ran cold. I actually shivered. I heard the icemaker! (Insert Twilight Zone music here) How could that be? I took the cord/plug to the post office! It was like Stephen King’s Christine all over again! The icemaker had grown a cord and come back to life! I jumped up and went outside only to find Bob standing before our outside table with the icemaker sitting there with the cover off and it was running! How can this be???? As it turns out Bob had another plug with some cord attached to it and he spliced the two cords together. He wanted to see if he could figure out what was making the noise and if it was fixable. If it had been we would have taken the original icemaker to the park model in Arizona. It seems as though the compressor was the problem and a replacement was just not cost effective. Darn thing scared me!

The rainy season has hit the Valley. We are so ready to move on now. It has rained so much that we couldn’t even move our truck for a few days. Our parking space on this lot is in a little valley if you will and rainwater settled in this area and our tires were sitting in about two inches of water. Our truck is sitting on dirt, or in this case, in mud, and we’ve seen the deep ruts other trucks have made trying to get out of their spaces. Luckily, Toni was kind of enough to run me to the store (and post office) to stock up on a few things, think beer and Crystal Light Iced Tea, until we could get our truck out without making a mess.

This rain has cut down on our work hours too. One day when everything was soaking wet we did what we could do and called it a day. Another it rained most of the morning with short breaks. On that day Bob went out alone to do what had to be done during those short dry spells.

We really need to get out of this park and go do SOMETHING. I’m even burnt out on games. As much as I enjoy the company it’s the same thing every day and its just gotten old so I’m taking a break from the game playing for awhile.

When we’re off for the next four days we were hoping to get out and about and maybe even take a daytrip to South Padre Island. Then Bob looked at the forecast, Rain.

2/9/2012 Ice by the Bucketful…or Not

Yesterday afternoon our new portable ice maker arrived thanks to our friendly neighborhood Fed Ex driver. It seems like we all know him, he’s in the park everyday.

I was excited to rip open the box and pour the water in to get those ice cubes churning out. Not so fast Bob told me. We have to let the coolant settle. We did take it out of the box and it fit nicely where we wanted it until we noticed the fan/vent on the side next to the wall was an intake vent instead of an output vent. Well, this spot wasn’t going to work. Regardless, since it was only sitting anyway we left it there overnight.

After a pancake breakfast that Bob made for us it was time to check our new ice maker out. We briefly looked at the directions to make sure we knew what we were doing as far as set up was concerned. As I read them out loud we determined that we were good to go, GET THE WATER!

Water tank filled, its time to plug ‘er in and get those ice cubes started. We should have the first batch in 9 minutes.

Bob plugged it in and we just looked at each other. Whoa, this is LOUD! Really loud. We have several friends who have these portable ice makers and I didn’t ever recall having heard theirs at all unless they dropped cubes. This is strange. I called LaVon and asked her if hers was loud when they first started. Nope, not loud at all. Oh great!

I can equate the level of sound coming from this table top ice maker to a washing machine in the wash cycle. Much too loud for an ice maker.

We gave it a few minutes and I called the company. Press one if you want to speak to someone in English. Press two for French. Press three for Spanish. Press for Chi,,,I pressed one. Press one if this is your first time calling this company. Press tw….I pressed one. Press one if you are calling about an air conditioner, a room air conditioner or any other cooling device. I had to listen until I could press 4, for all other small appliances. Press one if you are calling to check on your already placed order. This time I had to listen to five options until I got to Press five for all other questions. What happened to the days when you called a company, a real life operator answered and you said, “Customer Service please”? A click of her finger later and you heard a ring and Voila’ there was a customer service rep. I want those days back! This press one, press three is not progress to me.

“Hello, this is Giselle, thank you for calling Haier today, I hope your day is going well” is what I heard in an unmistakable French accent. Oh great, I called France. “Hi Giselle, my brand new out of the box ice maker sounds like a washing machine.” Quickly, too quickly, she responded, “Yes, it will be noisy for 24 hours and then will settle down.” Really? Really Giselle? “Uh, ok thanks.” Click.

I went through the instructions booklet again and couldn’t find where it said our brand new out of the box was going to sound like a washing machine and that it was perfectly OK for it to be very loud.

Nah, I’m not buying it will be noisy for 24 hours and then settle down. I called back. Luckily I remembered the order of numbers that had to be pressed and didn’t have to listen to all the instructions again. This time I talked with Rinald. I told him what it sounded like and he said right away that it wasn’t supposed to do that and that they would be happy to replace it. All we had to do was peel the sticker off the back of the icemaker and attach it to the invoice and include 8 inches of cord starting at the plug, pack it all up and send it to New Jersey. In 15 days they’ll ship us a new one. Hmmmm,,,,we don’t have to return this one?

That didn’t sound right. I made a third call. This time I got Lisa. She did confirm the sending the eight inch cord length, the sticker and the invoice. So, that’s on the agenda for tomorrow.

In the meantime, we put the ice maker in the basement because it was making ice. Yes, we could still hear but it was muffled so we let it go.

So, ice by the bucketful? For a day anyway.

2/7/2012 We’re Off and It’s RAINING!

Rain is in the forecast for every day of these next four days that we’re off. We are not happy about this as you can well imagine.

So we hung around the house today, playing games on the computer, watching TV, cooking, eating, reading, willing the time to go fast because we are bored out of our minds! We’ve promised each other that the first sunny day we have that we’re outta here! Out of this house on wheels, out of this park. We’re going somewhere where we’ll spend the day outside. In the sunshine.

We are in dire need of new pots and pans. Well, new pans, the pots are still certainly serviceable but they will be taken to the park model in Arizona.

Our local grocery store, HEB, has a chef that works in the store doing demonstrations every day. Since I almost always partake of his treats that he shares, I’ve spoken to him on several occasions. One day I told him I was in market for new cookware and asked what he recommended. He said that he would meet me in the cookware aisle and he’d show me what he likes and dislikes. HEB has quite an extensive kitchen area where all kinds of small appliances, kitchen gadgets, dishes, serving bowls, cookware and anything you could possibly imagine in a kitchen is sold.

He went over each type of cookware they had in stock from aluminum to stainless steel to anodized to Teflon coated and went further and explained the brands and which ones to stay away from. I had decided on a KitchenAid anodized ten piece set. Just my luck, they were out of them.

I researched and read countless reviews of this set on Kohl’s and JC Penney’s web sites. I checked these sites daily for their sales but this set never seemed to have the price discounted. Since it was the same price as the grocery store there was no advantage to buying from them.

I kept checking back at the store and the pots and pans were never re-ordered. I’m tired of waiting for HEB to get them in. So today I did some serious comparison shopping and found the exact same set for $30.00 less on Overstock.com with free shipping and no tax! That works for me!

While my mind was on pots and pans Bob’s was on red and blue lines on the maps he was using to plot our travel east when we leave here. He’s made a preliminary plan but it will change a half dozen times between now and when we leave. How do I know that? Simple, he didn’t ask me if there was something I wanted to stop and see or do on the way home. I do!

2/6/2012 Thirty One Years Ago…..

Thirty one years ago Bob and I went to my parents home to tell them some big news. Only my mom was home. We told her we had gotten married a few hours earlier and she didn’t believe us. Nope, she didn’t believe us. It wasn’t until she took notice that Bob was wearing a wedding ring that it really hit home for her.

My dad was at the Officer’s Club and I called him and asked him to come home that I had something to tell him. Having not been anywhere except home and the hospital (for my mom) for the last three and a half weeks he wasn’t ready to come home yet as he hadn’t been there long at all and really needed to get out of the house. I didn’t want to tell him over the phone so I told him to stay there that we were on our way. Since my mom had had some health issues and was still dealing with it, he insisted that I tell him what I had to tell him over the phone. I could see where he was coming from because he was thinking something had happened to mom. So I told him, “Dad, I got married today.” He didn’t believe me. Mom got on the phone and told him it was true, Bob was wearing a wedding ring.

I never did figure out why it was they didn’t believe me. I think they were sorry we just went off and got married. I really think Dad wanted to walk me down the aisle and now I had taken that from him.Well, we ended up at the Officer’s Club and we had quite the impromptu party.

Fast forward 31 years. We’re older, grayer, we weigh more, we’ve learned a lot, we’ve seen a lot, we’ve argued and fought, we’ve kissed and made up, we’ve had good times, bad times, rough patches and smooth sailing. We’ve had a marriage.

Through the years I’m sure there were times we both thought we’d go our separate ways. But we didn’t, we stayed and worked it out.

Marriage isn’t easy. Especially, when you stop working at it. We’re both guilty of that. Sometimes we take each other for granted and just figure the other will be there no matter how much we just assume that what we do….or don’t do….is okay.

Marriage isn’t easy. I’ve often thought that marriage should have renewable contracts every 5 years or so. But then that would be too easy to just throw the towel in.

Marriage isn’t easy but if its worth having, its worth working for.

Nope, not easy. Hard work, lots of compromising, lots of forgiving, lots of give and take, but if you stick it out you end up living your dreams,,,,like us. And that makes it all worthwhile.