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About this blog

Living together in 300 square feet (or less) and not losing your mind - or your marriage

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An exercise in insanity

I have been very silent here for the last several months, primarily because my wife and I have not had our motorhome out of the driveway since before Thanksgiving. The reason for this very unusual hiatus has been, we have been renovating our primary house. I have often heard that if your marriage can survive such a project, it can survive almost anything, and now I know what they mean. This has been one of the most stressful, depressing, maddening experiences of my life. Those of you who have d
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A lesson from cats

The day after Thanksgiving the moon and stars and busy schedules all aligned and we got to go camping again with our daughter. This was our first time to take her with us since right after her husband's death in July, so we were all looking forward to doing a whole lot of nothing except being a family. Our daughter has a 3-legged cat (long story there) that she loves dearly and did not want to leave behind, so we loaded her cat, along with our 3, into the motor home and headed out for the local
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A motel on wheels

One of the reasons I don't post any more often than I do is that I still work full-time. Getting away in our SeeYa is usually a real treat for us - one that happens all too seldom. Often, when we get away, it's like last week. I had to go to Hendersonville, N.C., for a convention. An enjoyable place (even with the rain) and an enjoyable "have to." Still, it was work, not pleasure, that dominated the entire trip. As usual my wife, Donna, and I took our motorhome and that became our motel on whee
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Shared joys

One of the things Donna and I most enjoy about camping is the joys we get to share with each other and with others. A great case in point came from this past weekend. We were camping at a local Corps park. James, one of the volunteer attendants, was particularly friendly, so we made a point of talking with him each time we passed on our walks. It was during one of these conversations that James mentioned that he was feeding a doe, and if we would come by at a certain time, we could see her. We
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A band of brothers

Donna and I spent the last week in Brunswick, Ga., at the Golden Isle RV Park. Nice place. But rather than talk about our relationship this time, I want to talk about two men I met there. Both men were camped next to me, which is how we met. Both were Viet Nam war vets. They saw my USAF Retired tag on my toad, and that's what opened the conversation. One completed a full 20 years in the Army. The other served just one tour in the USAF. Both were enlisted when they were in the military. I was an
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Update On Sugar

I mentioned in my previous post that several things had kept me from being as active here as I had planned. One of those was Sugar, the stray we found in June (that post is on this blog). About 2 weeks before Drew was killed, we woke up one morning to find bloody mucus all over the floor, and blood on Sugar's back legs. We took her to the vet as quickly as possible and found out that she had been pregnant when we found her, but the pregnancy didn't take. Instead of miscarrying, everything stayed
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6-wheel, 2-slide Healing

It has been much longer than I ever anticipated since my last post. There are several reasons for that, but the most significant, at least in terms of its impact, was our son-in-law’s being killed in a motorcycle accident on 18 July. He was only 36. After all the funeral and the insurance actions, we -- my wife, our daughter and I --needed to get away. Despite the forecast for a rainy weekend (a forecast which proved correct), we loaded up our trusty SeeYa and headed out. Three adults, four c
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A new member of the family

This past weekend, my wife and I went to a nearby Army Corps park to just relax and enjoy each other. It was our first trip in the motorhome since the family trip to Disney I previously wrote about. This trip was to be just the two of us - no pressure, no schedule, no stress. It all went wonderfully well - with one complication. Shortly after we set up, a cute little white kitty came into the site. I'm a sucker for animals and especially cats. Donna's a cat person, too, so that works well. In f
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Family Camping Update

Well, I am much later posting the update than I thought. The family camping trip went. And there were lots of lessons learned. First, we love our kids, but four adults in a 38-foot motorhome is more than a bit much. Everyone cooperated and there were amazingly few real problems. No drama, nothing that would be worthy of a soap opera. Just 4 adults trying to get ready in the morning, 4 different minds about what the "right" schedule for the day ought to be, four different pulls. Our two adult k
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Family camping

Tomorrow Donna and I leave for a week trip in our motorhome with two of our three adult children. Not their spouses, not any of the grandkids, just two of our three (the third couldn't get off). Despite what I wrote in my last blog about cherishing time alone, I must admit, right now, we are really looking forward to this trip. It has been so long since the four of us have been together - one of the two who is going is our youngest son, who lives in Wichita Falls TX (845 miles away - we know, we
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Trekking Down the Trace

This past week was semester break at the university where I teach, and I really needed the break. After some discussion, my wife and I decided to do something we had talked about for several years. We took the northern portion of the Natchez Trace, from its terminus in Franklin, TN, to Jackson, MS. This blog is about relationships, so I won't give a blow by blow of the trip, except to say that it is a very pleasant drive. But, unlike the southern portion of the route, there's not much to see exc
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Now that's love

Our last camping trip was to Fort Blakeley Historic Park, Spanish Fort AL. The RV sites are relatively recent, and they are quite spacious. The only problem is, the hookups are not well placed. They tend to be uphill and way in the rear of where a motorhome would have to park to be relatively level. I say all that to lead in to why the main point of this post happened. When it came time to dump, I dumped the black tank, and, because I was trying to make fluid run uphill, I "walked" the "stinky s
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Life's little challenges

First, let me say I appreciate the comments to this blog people make. I may not respond to all of them but I do read all of them. One such comment said, if our relationship can survive parking directions it can survive anything. That brought a smile to my face. I can appreciate that. But it also started me thinking. In all honesty, since we got some walkie-talkies a few years ago, parking hasn't been that much of a challenge for us. (It does make you wonder what the backup camera folks are thin
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What makes our relationships good?

If you have been reading this blog, you know that I am doing some research into what makes marriages strong for those of us who RV. I still have a lot more work to do, but I thought I would share some preliminary results with you. So far, I have found 3 themes. These are in no particular order. The first theme is, "Vacation time." Going out in the RV is like going on vacation. People who affirm this theme say that it's the shared excitement of doing something together that keeps their marriage
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Depression can kill you

Here is some news you can use. I just read a study from Sweden that showed that people who are depressed are significantly more likely to have a stroke. Seems that being depressed can literally kill you. Fortunately, we know that having an emotionally significant relationship and being physically active are powerful protectors against depression and against heart disease - and if this study is correct, against stroke, too. As those of you who read this blog know, I am investigating what it is th
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Nesting

Well, we finally received that long awaited call. The local Cat dealer got the starter for our generator, and our SeeYa was ready for duty again. We could hardly wait to get back on the road. It was interesting. The very first trip we did not go far from home, and we hardly ventured out of the motor home the entire weekend, except to take our daily 4-5 mile walk, plus a bike ride or two. Other than that, we both were busy nesting. Making our baby "ours" again. Nesting is something that usually
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Going through withdrawal

Some years ago, when I was still in the active duty Air Force, I was an avid runner. I found out just how avid when I was hit unexpectedly by an illness which kept me from even walking much, much less running, for several weeks. I recovered from the illness and returned to running but I never forgot what it felt like to go through that withdrawal. Lately my wife and I have been going through a similar withdrawal. Our beloved motorhome has been in the shop for several weeks because the starter o
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Welcome to Wayne's World

Welcome to "Wayne's World." As the blog description says, this is all about relationships and RVs, and what makes that combination so special. Let me introduce myself first of all. I have always been fascinated with relationships, all kinds of relationships. The relationships of the earth to the moon, stars, and other planets. The relationships of chemical elements to each other. The wondrous relationships of the various components of the human body. And I could go on, but for the last 37 years
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Our "Fur kids"

Don't get me wrong. Donna and I love our kids, all 3 of them. They're all grown and married, and we're exceptionally proud of all of them. We always have been. But we have always taught them that we believed job #1 for a parent is to prepare kids to become responsible adults, so we were from their youngest days preparing them to leave the nest. When the last one left, we were ready. I often said, "The empty nest syndrome is just a permanent smile on your face." Maybe we were just fooling oursel
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