Hello, Goodbye. Come back soon.

Last summer, Wick bought me a fancy new sewing machine that has all kinds of bells and whistles. The sewing shop offered free lessons. I'm all over anything free.
Then I heard that my niece was expecting, so I thought I could make a quilt for the baby, using the quilt project to practice the skills I was learning in my sewing classes.

I couldn't find a pattern that was exactly what I wanted, so I sketched out a little house, complete with chimney, clouds, cartoon sun, flowering trees, and a little red path to the door.

A baby quilt is about 45" by 60", so I was able to handle it quite well.

This became the central panel, a sort of "welcome home" for the new baby. The surrounding panels were patchwork, and I was very pleased with the outcome.

Then my son and DIL approached me about making a quilt for Pie, who would be graduating this year. They had a big pile of soccer jerseys, jackets, shorts, t-shirts from all her years of playing club soccer.

Since she has received a soccer scholarship, what a great way to preserve the memories and look forward toward her college years.

Even though I had almost a year for this project, I had to start right away. I'm slow, and have to take frequent breaks, so I needed to get started right away.

The squares are 12" x 12", with two inch lattice strips. As long as I was working with a square at a time, I was fine. Then I started sewing the squares into strips. The pieces began to get heavy and harder to handle.

By the time I had 5 squares across, by 6 squares down, I was struggling. The top got really heavy. I still need to add the borders, and then quilt it, but I don't think I can handle it alone.

Thankfully, Wick has volunteered to help handle the quilt as I sew.

Two quilts.

One to welcome home a new addition to the family.

The other to say Goodbye, as our eldest grandchild spreads her wings, and begins a new stage in her life.

Yes, she will come home now and then, but she will be different every time, as she grows and evolves into young adulthood.

It's easy to say hello.

Hard to say goodbye.

Come home soon, sugar pie.

Winnebago: Journey Through Hell From Day One. Chapter One

Wick and I have been full-timing for about 8 years now. Full time RVers, to be more precise. We started out with an Alfa Gold, which was about 12 years old when we bought it.

Gold is the top of the line Alfa travel trailer. So even though it was an older model, it had some very nice features, such as a ceramic tile counter top, and a stackable washer and dryer. We sold our house, gave most of our furniture to our kids, and moved in.

Living in a 36 foot travel trailer is a big adjustment, after living in a three-bedroom, two bath brick home. You not only have to love your spouse, you also have to like him. There isn't room to get away and sulk, if you are unhappy about something. RV living requires the ability to talk things out, and come to a compromise quickly.

About 2 years into our RV life, we were staying at an RV park in southeast Oklahoma, which is next door to an RV dealer. One rainy Saturday, for lack of anything better to do, we went over to the RV dealer and walked through some fifth wheels. We were impressed with the improvements in features in the new RVs, compared to our older model.

A salesman began to shadow us, pointing out the various features of each model. We were most impressed with a Big Sky Montana, which had 8 ft. ceilings, lots of windows, even a skylight. The salesman insisted on making us a deal, including a trade-in on our Alfa. We agreed to see what he could come up with. But we went back to our Alfa thinking that there was no way he was going to come up with a suitable deal.

He did. It was such a good deal that we moved from the Alfa into the Big Sky that weekend.

For another couple of years, we were happy with our fifth wheel. Then we started looking at motor homes.

Motor homes are those huge, buslike vehicles you see going down the road, often pulling a "toad"--a towed car for use when the RV is parked. They have all kinds of gadgets and features that are usually unavailable in fifth wheels.

We went to a couple of RV shows. We researched on line. We talked to other RVers. We read RV message boards.

Our conclusion was that if we were going to make such an investment, we wanted to go with the best. Winnebago is the original, and advertises itself as "the industry standard", with the "best customer service record" in the industry.

We planned to pay off the RV before we retired, and then to travel at least half the year every year.

What a huge mistake.

From day one, this Winnebago Journey has been one problem after another.

We ordered the coach from the factory, with all the features exactly as we wanted. We were so excited that we could hardly wait for delivery.

The day we went to pick up the Winnebago Journey, we were told that one of McClain's qualified agents would demonstrate how everything worked.

"Qualified agent." Not hardly. This poor guy was almost as clueless as we were, having to look in the literature for instructions for almost everything we asked about. Wick is pretty good with mechanical issues, so we believed that he would be able to figure things out as we went along.

We immediately planned a trip to San Antonio, from Dallas. On the way, we discovered that one of the tires was out of round.

Someone drove that Winnebago Journey from the factory in Indiana to McClain's RV dealership in Alvarado, TX, with a tire out of round.

We should have seen that as the bad omen it was. It was just the beginning of our problems with McClain's, and Winnebago.

Strange Dreams

We went camping with Wick's brother this weekend. It was freezing cold Friday night, and I just couldn't get warm, even standing right by the fire. So we went into Tommy's trailer, and he turned on the heat pump. Which seemed to me to be blowing cold air. So I went back to our RV. Two quilts, my knitted shawl over my feet, the little electric heater blazing its little heart out, and I was still freezing. I dreamed I was stranded in the Arctic, and our Pomeranian was pulling our sled.
Sat. turned out to be a pretty nice day. Sunny, warmer (for a few hours anyway), so we stayed outside all afternoon. Then it got cold again. Our sons were sitting on the tailgate of the pickup, drinking beer, and our little nephew was begging us to take him down to the water to see a dead fish (again), and I drank so much coffee I couldn't go to sleep for hours after I went inside and went to bed. I dreamed about making coffee and serving it to dead fish.
When we got home this evening, we backed the RV over the water connection. Water sprayed everywhere, Wick used some choice words, and almost ran over Frankie when he repositioned the RV.
Wonder what I will dream about tonight?