Diane has spent the last week in Florida visiting our daughter, Jeri, and her family. The care of myself, Joel, the house and last but not least, Teddy Bear, has been left to me.
That means that I need to take a high-energy, long-legged Cocker Spaniel for a walk every day or he goes stir crazy. When that happens he rings the bell hanging by the back door every ten minutes so that someone, me, will let him out.
Getting up from the couch every ten minutes tends to spoil the continuity of the f
Last Friday morning I headed out to Lowes to buy a couple of things. I needed a flush valve seal for the low flow toilet in the bathroom next to our bedroom. I put off getting one for days just because I hate anything to do with plumbing. Plumbing is wet and it leaks and it frustrates me. However, a water bill that is bigger than it should be due to a bad toilet frustrates Diane so I found myself at Lowes buying the seal, some light bulbs (the old fashioned kind). I also picked up a Roman Shade
I believe that I am a pretty good motor coach pilot. I still believe that, even though I hit my mailbox while making a sharp turn into our driveway. Obviously I didn’t pull up the street far enough and turn sharp enough, but no real damage done, except to my pride.
My car driving skills while making service calls … that is another thing altogether. I tend to talk on my cell too much while driving. I get distracted by the radio, the voices in my head, and the vehicles in front of me. The last
According to my outdoor wireless thermometer it is currently 43 degrees Fahrenheit. I am sitting comfortably in my motorcoach listening to two things ... a worship CD and the intermittent sound of ice falling inside the fridge. I am defrosting and so is the fridge. As you may have gathered from my previous blog entries, or lack thereof, I have been pretty much frozen in place at home maintaining my business. Our coach has just been sitting waiting for us to come back to it.
This last Tuesday
Diane, Teddy Bear, and myself are doing well today. It has been a hectic and yes stressful couple of months. Today however I don't want to write about that. I will soon. Today I want to be hopeful, to remember that even during rough times there is a greater power at work. So until I can find the time to write again, I thought it would be good to reprise one of my entries, one that seems appropriate considering the significance of today.
Derrick
Just a few days before I had this dream that Dia
Fire and Rain.
That is the headline of our local paper this morning. I thought of it as the title of my blog entry days ago, but I wasn’t fast enough to use it first.
The headline sure fits our present situation. The Dismal Swamp has been on fire for weeks. The fire has thrown a big cloud of smelly, acrid, blue smoke that moves around which makes being outside an unpleasant experience. The only hope to ending the fire was a time of heavy continuous rain. Well, we are getting that now, as I w
We have been sitting on lot #3 at the Deer Creek Motorcoach Resort (The one in Galax, Virginia) for about 18 days now, give or take a day. For most of the last five it has been raining hard. If there was ever any question about how well our coach roof is sealed, we now have the answer ... it is definitely waterproof. I performed maintenance on it just before the monsoon arrived.
I washed it, resealed some of the seams with self-leveling Dicor sealant, the kind that needs a caulk gun to apply,
I have enjoyed being part of the motor home community. It means a lot to me. More than I can possible say. At this moment I am at Deer Creek Motorcoach Resort in Galax. It has been my refuge for the last few days. I am surrounded by my friends and I have needed them and they have been here for me. Yesterday I lost one of my grandsons. I never got the chance to meet him. Diane had to fly down to Florida to be with our daughter and her husband after we learned that her unborn baby boy who was goin
Before Diane and I became Motorhome owners, and before my son entered college, we were avid cruisers. This is the story of our first one, which took place a bunch of years ago. This story, which I wrote years ago, will take up some blog space until next week when we shall once again hit the road in our UFO and I write about it.
THE TANGO
My wife Diane is always collecting stories and anecdotes from people. For years if she hears something interesting from somebody she will tell me about it. S
My name is Theodore. I have had a lot of names in my short life; Beasley, Bailey and one other one that I don't remember, or maybe I just don't want to remember.
I don't mind the name Theodore, but I like the name Mom and Dad use best ... Teddy Bear.
I am Teddy Bear Parker. Being a Parker makes me happy. Can a dog be happy? Some will tell you that being happy is only for humans.
Someone once said that a wild bird will fall frozen from a tree limb and never feel sorry for itself. How does
Yesterday, Teddy Bear, our Cocker Spaniel, was very ill. We don't know how, but he he picked up a gastro bacterial infection. It knocked him for a loop. He wouldn't eat, or drink anything, on his own. If we coached him, he would take a bit of yogurt, or maybe eat an ice cube, but neither would stay down for long. I can tell you it scared both Diane and myself. I guess we are still a bit raw-nerved from the loss of our Nickolas just five short months ago. Actually, I was more than scared, I was n
My wife tells me that I am a packrat. I consider myself a collector of memories.
I have a lot of wrist watches, including six Disney ones.
I collect pocket knives. Some are quite old and some of those I have had since I was really young.
There are a lot of things in my small home office. Some of the things would be considered junk by most people. Some may be worth a few bucks. To me they are all valuable.
Hanging on the wall in front of my desk is a gold framed shawdowbox with all the pi
It feels good to be writing again. The last couple of weeks have been very busy for me. ….I know, some people don’t have the time to read about my life; they have one of their own. That is what one person told me in the form of a reply after I posted a blog entry. I had to ask myself, why did they read it then?
Well this week has been phone system training classes and meetings of all sorts. Last week Diane and I spent three really great days at our home away from home at the Deer Creek Motorco
In order to christen the new blog format, I feel it is necessary to post a few more of my truisms. These truisms fall under my Rules for Owning a Motor Coach: Part 4.
Owning a Motor Coach is a Never-ending Learning Experience.
I have learned that a clear sewer connection is a good thing to have … that way, you will see the juice box the grand kids dumped in the toilet as it makes its final journey.
My wife still will not let me stop at South of the Border and buy anything.
My wife will n
Diane and I have discovered that living in a motor coach simplifies our life. We don't find the small space to be confining. Quite the opposite, it is liberating. Our motor coach frees us from thinking about so many things. She and I normally operate in two different worlds. Diane's world concerns the house, the two men, the cat and the dog that live in it with her. My world revolves around my business, my computers, and my online friends. Most of the time we are in two different parts of the ho
This subject pops up every now and then in the Internet forums where I hang about on a regular basis. It may be a post titled "Is your Class A a Money pit?" or "A motor home costs a whole lot more than you think it does!" The people who post these kinds of entries may or may not really have a problem with what a coach or any other large RV may cost. They might just be bored. It's Sunday night and the DW is watching "Desperate Housewives", so there is nothing better for them to do than post some
The Night Before.
It will be a day later than we planned but we are going to St Augustine for New Year's eve. We will do our best to make up the time that we lost. We lost it due to ten inches of snow or maybe it was twelve? It will be a long day on the road tomorrow. Hopefully we will pull into North Beach Campground late Wednesday instead of early in the day. Jeri, Tom and Dilly will arrive sometime Thursday Morning.
I think that due to the snow eating the start of our trip, I will add an
In late November of 1990 I received my December issue of Reader's Digest. I read all the humorous parts of the magazine, and one cover story and then promptly stuck it on a shelf with all the other issues that I still had in my possession.
Soon it was Christmas. At that time all of my three children were young. Christine was fourteen, Jeri was eleven, and Joel was five.
It was a tough time for us. I was unemployed. I had been without work for almost two years. The country was in an economi
Two weekends ago Diane, Teddy and I took the coach for a cold, wet weekend to Beth Page campground in Urbana, Virginia. From Portsmouth it is about a ninety minute drive up I-64 to State Highway 17. It would be a lot quicker if not for slow drivers and lots of stop lights. I didn't mind so much because we were not in a big hurry. We left around two in the afternoon on Friday and the nights festivities would not start until five.
The purpose of this trip was to rally up with our fellow Colonial
Or is it Whom? Never mind.
I can't remember the exact quote, but at the end of the movie Seabiscuit, there is a line something like this:
We may have saved a banged up life, but the truth is we found each other and he saved us. The truth is we may have saved each other.
The words printed above are most likely very misquoted, but still, that line describes what has been going on around my house for the last three weeks. Diane and I took a simple trip in the coach, found a dog who has been mov
Skipping Thanksgiving. (A running blog entry)
Wednesday:
Diane and myself are skipping the traditional Thanksgiving this year. We are presently sitting in site 41 at the Anvil Campground in Williamsburg, Virginia. Skipping the traditional turkey dinner with all the trimmings, along with all the work that involves, didn't sit too well with some family members. I say too bad!
Diane and I need some time to ourselves. Time with less stress, less responsibility. We need a time to heal from the lo
It is very quiet around the house. There is no tapping of little doggie nails on the hardwood floor. No tinkling of a metal dog tag against the side of the food bowl. There is no cheerful crunch of the doggie eating his breakfast.
Life continues to go on. Diane will laugh at a joke, e-mailed to her from one of our friends, when it arrives in her mailbox. She will cry when a sympathy card, snail mailed by one of our friends, shows up in the standard mailbox. She also cries after taking a phone c
Nickolas is gone to the place where good dogs go. His life on this earth ended just the way he wanted it to end.
In memory of him I reprise these words:
The Human Whisperer
Nickolas, the family pupster here!
I asked Dad if he would let me post again. Last time, I hijacked his blog and posted on the sly. This time he said okay.
I wanted to leave him and Mom a note. They may need what I write here one day.
I am almost 85 years old now, in relative terms, and so I can say that chances are
This is a very strange thing to report, but Nickolas is back at the small animal hospital at NC State School of Medicine. It has been a long and very weird night.
It seems that the pain pill I gave our dog, a dose big enough to knock out a full grown man, didn't do much to our dog but allow him a couple hours of very deep sleep. Diane who had been keeping vigil beside him, out on the deck the whole time wating for him to finally slip away, came to the door to speak to me. I was looking out the
As I write this our precious Nickolas is fading from this world. I gave him the pill that will allow his suffering to end. It is the hardest thing I have ever done, but I had to do it. He has been sick for five days now. He could not hold down any water or food.
This thing came on so suddenly. We rushed him to the vet where they could not find the cause. It would take blood work, more needles more pain and maybe even more surgery to even begin to find out what is wrong. .
It was impossible to
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