Administrivia

Good news! You can now access this blog through www.MyFreeRangeFamily.com. You can still get here through myfreerangefamily.blogspot.com, but I thought I'd save you the nine extra keystrokes.

An unfortunate downside to that change, though, is that I seem to have lost the comments made on previous posts. I'll try to find a way to get them back, but since I'm not that technologically advanced, I can't promise anything.

Neighbors

As we get closer to putting our house on the market (closer in terms of timeframe, not in terms of actual readiness), the reality of leaving is starting to set in.

I'm not one to get sappy or mushy. I avoid showing true emotion at all costs. I don't like to feel vulnerable. But sometimes a person just needs to let it out.

We're really, really sad about leaving our neighbors. We'll miss friends and family, too, of course, but friends and family are never truly gone. Once we move away, our neighbors will never be our neighbors again. Even if we remain friends (and I certainly hope we do), they will never be right next door or just down the street. We can keep in touch via email, but that will never be the same as a wave when we drive by.

I'm not a very social person. I'm shy and I take a while to warm up to people, and I generally like to be left alone. When we first bought this house but hadn't yet moved in, Steve was over here a lot working on improvements. He would report back to me each time he met a new neighbor and would tell me how friendly everyone was. I was a bit underwhelmed, dreading having to socialize with new people.

But Steve was right. Everyone was genuinely friendly. Instead of dreading neighborhood parties, I grew to crave them. I love trips to the mailbox that turn into hour-long conversations. I love answering the door to find a plate of brownies awaiting me. I love the good-natured ribbing and the genuine inquiries into our well being.

Everyone has been so incredibly supportive and generous. When Steve was gone for days or weeks at a time fighting wildfires, neighbors came by with food for me. When Anna was a newborn, neighbors would take our trash cans out to the street and bring them back in if Steve wasn't home. Steve and our next-door neighbor Brent spent months toiling over a gorgeous playhouse for our kids.

(As an aside, that playhouse is probably the physical structure I most dread leaving. I have begged Steve to find a way to dismantle it and put it into storage, but he says it can't be done; it's built better than our house is.)

Before Anna was born, we had an opportunity to possibly buy a house from a friend who lived a few blocks away. The house was much larger than our current one. With a baby on the way, we felt we really needed the extra room (which seems a bit ironic now), and we probably could have gotten a great deal.

We didn't pursue it, though, because we didn't want to leave our neighbors. Even a few blocks away would be too far. We had heard too many horror stories of terrible neighbors and we didn't want to risk what we might find elsewhere. So we decided to stay put and make the best of our little house.

Now, of course, we're getting ready to move into an even smaller house, and we'll have new neighbors all the time. Some will probably be great. Some will be awful. None will be the ones we have now.

I certainly hope we can stay in touch with them, and hopefully we'll be able to visit during a block party. Maybe we can drop by after Thanksgiving to help decorate houses for Christmas. Maybe some flamingoes will mysteriously make their way onto some lawns when people least expect it. Who knows.

What I do know is that whoever buys our house will be incredibly lucky. They'll inherit an amazing playhouse and the best bunch of neighbors in the world.

The First Big Step

You know those really obnoxious pickup trucks? No, not the ones that have monster wheels and sit 15 feet off the ground. There's really no excuse for those.

I'm talking about the kind that almost looks like a regular truck, but instead of having two wheels along the back axle, it has four, causing the truck to have "hips" that stick out past where the truck's side should end. The kind of truck where you think, "Now, why would anyone possibly need something like that?" You know the ones I'm talking about?

Yeah. We own one now.

We also possess the distinction of being the only people in America to have owned a Prius, a minivan, and a one-ton truck within the course of a year. We don't plan well.

It's a Dodge Ram 3500 Mega Cab Dually with a diesel engine. (I think. This is really Steve's realm.)

The thing an absolute beast. In my last post I made mention of the Canyonero because it reminded me of the name Mountaineer. Well, this truck truly is a Canyonero, minus the seating for 30 people.

We don't have running boards yet, so getting in and out of the truck takes acrobatic skill. We were getting ready to leave the dealership and I realized that I hadn't turned off the light in the back. Elias couldn't reach it from his car seat, so I had to get out and do it. I opened my door and put my right foot down...and down...and down...until my right foot was just barely touching the ground and my left foot was stuck on the seat. I stood there in a vertical split, trying to twist my body to free my left foot while pretending that the people in the doorway of the dealership weren't staring at me.

Oh, and getting Anna into the car takes some effort, too. I literally have to lift her over my head to get her into her seat. While standing on the outside of the truck, the top of my head is only about six inches above the top of her car seat. This could be fun...

The reason we need a truck this size is because we need a lot of power to pull the fifth wheel. We didn't need to get the dually (the four wheels on the back axle), but we see it as a safety feature. It offers more stability, plus if a wheel blows out on the back, we have three more on the road. Keep in mind that the weight of the fifth wheel will be concentrated over the back axle of the truck, so that's important.

Here are the "hips" I was talking about:

Now, I had panic attacks for three weeks each time I had to drive our new Odyssey because it was so big. The Ram is even longer (it won't fit in our driveway) and significantly wider. Steve and I are going to place bets on how long it will be before I actually attempt to drive it. I can't see any situations in which I'd need to drive it--short of Steve being mauled by mountain lions--but it's always best to prepare for the unexpected, I suppose.

Despite how big and rugged it looks on the outside, the inside looks like the interior of a nice family car.

I can definitely picture myself being chauffeured around the country in it.

The back seat is extremely spacious:

There's probably enough floor space that I can change diapers on it. Heck, it can practically be a playroom for the kids.

It's called a Mega Cab because instead of the back window being right up against the back seat, there's a little extra space. Not a lot, but enough room for a couple backpacks, a diaper bag, a medical kit, and whatever little things we might need in the car on a long road trip. It also means that the tether anchors (for car seats) are not only metal, but are very easily accessible, something that is a rarity in pickup trucks.

The truck has some pretty neat other features. Supposedly we can download CDs and photos right into a hard drive in the dashboard. The rear entertainment system picks up the Disney Channel, Nickelodeon, and Cartoon Network. (That's not necessarily a positive--we have made it clear to Elias that watching it will be a sometimes thing, not an all the time thing. But on long trips, he'll need some distraction.) It also has a parking assist sensor, so in case Steve is ever mauled by those mountain lions, I can parallel park when I drop him off at the hospital.

Wheel Estate

Several people have asked me (for real this time) about the type of RV we're getting. Since we will be living in this thing--not just vacationing--we need to take extra care in choosing our wheel estate (a term I wish I could take credit for, but cannot).

A few months ago, I knew everything I wanted to know about RVs: absolutely nothing. Clearly, though, if we were going to make this lifestyle change, I would have to show some interest. The process has been overwhelming and yet surprisingly enjoyable for me.

Initially I figured I would worry about the floorplans and fabric options, and I'd leave the technical stuff (Gross Vehicle Weight Ratings, holding tank capacities, etc.) up to Steve. He has owned RVs in the past and understands those things. Somehow, though, even those details started to interest me, and I'm now more concerned with carrying capacity than curtain style.

We have spent the past few months researching different types and models of RVs. We have read books, scoured websites, driven to the Inland Empire countless times to look at more dealerships than I knew existed, and even toured an RV factory (no free samples, though Elias did get to keep his safety goggles):

We still have some more looking to do, but an early favorite has emerged. I took a camera along last time we looked, so I even have photos to share!

This is a Keystone Mountaineer. (As I typed "Mountaineer," my mind suddenly flashed to the "Canyonero." Not so much because of the vehicle type, but because that would be a great name for an RV. But I digress.) It's a fifth-wheel trailer, meaning it puzzles over the back of a pickup and is towed by the bed rather than the bumper. So yes, we're getting a pickup, too. More on that in another post.

This is Elias's room:

No, not really. Elias gets so angry every time we joke about that. He's no fun.

That's the "basement" storage (yes, it's really called that). I refer to it as the "underground storage," because it sounds more interesting and no less ridiculous than having a basement on a moving vehicle.

This would be Elias's real room:

That's a loft bed/small play area. Yeah, the sucker is TALL (the trailer that is--though Elias is, too). Directly across is the bunk that would be Anna's if/when she ever sleeps on her own:

That's a fold-down bunk above it, too, but we would probably remove it. That would free up some weight and would ease my thoughts of the bed crashing down on little fingers. That bottom bunk is pretty low to the ground, by the way. It's not a loft like the other one.

The kids would even have their own half-bathroom:

At first I was concerned about Anna having access to a bathroom unsupervised. The toilet is a drowning hazard, after all. Then Steve pointed out that RV toilets don't have standing water, so I guess we're good. The really nice thing about this bathroom is that you can access it from outside. If the kids are super-filthy we can rinse them off right there. It's also nice if you're outside and don't want to traipse through the rest of the "house" to go to the bathroom.

Here is the kitchen:

See all the counter space??? Ok, it's not much, but it is the most spacious we've found so far. I also like how the counter divides the kitchen from the rest of the living area. I could even set up a baby gate if we need to (and probably will).

I didn't get very good photos of the master bedroom, but here's the bed:

The bed is on a slide-out. For the RV-illiterate, that means that when you're parked, you push a button and parts of the trailer slide out to create more room. When you're ready to move, you just slide them back in. The loft in the kids' room is also a slide, as are the kitchen and living/dining room.

For some reason I didn't take pictures of the master bath, the living room, and the dinette. There's not much to say about them, except that the shower in the bathroom includes a very deep floor that is sort of like a mini-bathtub. It's way too small for me to lounge in with a book, but is the perfect size for bathing a toddler. The couch folds out to accommodate an air mattress, and there is a flat-screen TV, plus enough room that we can probably still play Wii Bowling.

You'll notice there are a few other things missing. Like the washing machine. That's a whole post in itself, for another day...

What amazes me most is that, with the slides out, it actually feels pretty spacious. It confounds me that it can all fold up small enough to fit in a lane. I have spent the past few days staring at cars and trucks in front of me and trying to imagine how an entire home can fit in that same width. It hurts my brain trying to make sense of it, so I just accept that somehow it works.

Why

Several people have asked me why we're doing this.

Ok, that's a lie. No one has asked why, probably because they know my obvious and pithy answer will be "Why not?" Who wouldn't want to go on a never-ending vacation, even if that vacation does require living in a 40x8-foot box and emptying our own sewage tanks?

But there is a longer answer, and like many things in life, it largely boils down to finances.

Steve will be able to retire with his maximum benefits in about two years. We had always planned on his retiring at that point, but until recently we hadn't given much thought to what we would do.

We slowly started to realize that staying in Southern California would not be an attractive option. Don't get me wrong: We love California, and we especially adore our house. However, both require significant amounts of money.

When Steve retires, it's likely that we'd be able to stay in our house, but even with his pension, one or both of us would have to get a job to do so. We could do that, but we want to be able to spend as much time as possible with the kids, especially while they still like us.

We could, of course, move to a permanent house in another part of the country with lower housing prices and property taxes. In fact, for a while our plan was to do just that. We enjoyed some vacations in Prescott, AZ, and thought that would be a great option. As we thought more about it, though, we weren't completely satisfied with that solution. Was it really a good idea to pick a new city based on a few days spent there on vacation years ago?

Eventually the RV idea hatched itself in our minds. We figured we'd spend a year or two traveling around, and maybe in the process we'd find some places we might want to settle down. We could spend a few weeks or even a few months in a place to really get a feel for it. If we don't like it, or just want a change, we can keep moving.

That comes with the obvious benefits of being able to expose the kids (and ourselves) to all sorts of different people, places, and things. What better way to supplement the kids' education than by experiencing history, geography, even science, up close? Needless to say, the history nerd in me is giddy with anticipation.

Although maintaining a full-time RV lifestyle comes with unique expenses (nightly camping fees, for example), the overall costs will be significantly less than paying on a 6-figure mortgage and all its accoutrements. Whatever we save can be banked for when--and if--we decide to settle down.

Astute readers will remember that I said Steve will reach his maximum benefits in two years. Why, then, are we doing this sooner? Well, I have never exactly been known for my patience, and Steve is really looking forward to just being done. Elias is also rather resistant to change, so we hope that the younger he is, the more pliable he will be. Ultimately, we are willing to sacrifice a little bit of money for the extra time it will buy us.

I plan on answering lots of other questions here over the next few weeks, but if you have any specifics, feel free to ask! We look forward to sharing our journey with all of you!

New Ventures

I have always had an aversion to RVs. Part of it stems from my preference for the indoors. Part of it stems from having witnessed the aftermath of an RV capsizing on an interstate. Part of it stems from the hideous beige exteriors emblazoned with cheesy graphics and hideous beige interiors that look like an old person's living room.

Despite all that, we have decided to buy an RV. But it will not be used for weekend getaways or summer vacations. No, instead, we are selling our house and most of our possessions and hitting the road full-time.

I am slowly overcoming my aversions. I still worry that our trailer will tip over, but Steve has assured me that good driving and proper equipment will keep our risk to a minimum. The trailer we are leaning toward (so to speak) has a white--not beige--exterior, and I am willing to overlook the cheesy graphics. The interior might be beige (this is yet to be determined), but some funky throw pillows should keep it looking modern.

As for my preference for the indoors...well, I'm pretty much taking a leap of faith on that one.

Anyone who knows me knows that I don't exactly commune with nature. Sure, I'm a fan of natural things: natural birth, natural ingredients, natural light, natural turf. But nature itself? Eh.

The only time I ever went camping (real, honest-to-god tent camping) was with my friend Laura. We had just left the bathrooms when Laura pointed out a patch of poison ivy. Brilliantly I replied, "What?! Just out here in the open like that?!"

Clearly nature isn't my thing.

Steve assures me that camping--or, in our case, living--in an RV will be more like residing in a brick-and-mortar building than lying in a sleeping bag on the ground. Yes, we'll probably encounter patches of poison ivy, but we'll still have the conveniences of modern life: air conditioning, a stove and oven, a refrigerator, our own toilet (possibly two!), etc. The only thing missing will be the dishwasher, but that's why we have children.

I figure if Eva Gabor could live in Green Acres, I might stand half a chance in an RV.

We're still a few months from our new adventure, but in many ways the journey has already begun. The process of paring down a lifetime of possessions requires emotional and physical fortitude. Selling our house and preparing to say good-bye to friends and familiar places comes with a tremendous amount of sorrow, even if we do plan to return to Southern California on a regular basis.

That is why I have started this blog. I want to document not only our actual adventure, but the experience of getting there. The road to the road, if you will.