A while ago, a non-RVing friend wondered what we do when we're not sightseeing. He said "you can't really sight-see all the time, can you?" Well, of course, we can't. For one thing, we both enjoy down-time, just doing nothing -- reading, listening to music, doing crossword puzzles, watching TV, walking with no particular purpose in mind. (Our joke was that we had to spend three months in London in order to have 45 days to tour. That wasn't too much of an exaggeration. And our rented flat there wasn't anywhere near as nice to relax in as our RV is.)
Our friend wondered what we found to do when we weren't sightseeing. Well, just the everyday stuff of living, pretty much everything that we would do if we still had our stick house. We visit family and socialize with old friends and new -- depending where our house is parked. Whenever we live in one place long enough, we take part in community or RV-park activities.
We use our computers a lot (I guess that's obvious). We do most all of our household finances and bill-paying on line as well as all the fun stuff. I honestly can't imagine doing this without the Internet -- and our cell phones -- to keep in touch.
We shop. Even grocery buying can be an adventure when you're in different places all the time. It's fun to learn about new and regional food favorites. Sometimes it takes a while just to figure out the layout of the stores.
We cook. At times, it seems like we just arrange food, but that would be true if we were still in the stick house. We can cook anything we want in our RV kitchen. Eating at home is a great reason to have an RV. I'm sure we wouldn't feel as well if we stayed in motels and ate out all the time. When we had the house, sometimes we would go out to eat just for something different to do. We still eat out sometimes -- its fun to find new and different restaurants too -- but now it's often just as much an an adventure to eat at home. We have different views from the "dining room" table and different foods to try. Here in Port Aransas, we've been buying fresh shrimp right off of the boat. Yum!
We have to do the same kind of stuff everybody has to do to maintain our home. We clean house (It doesn't take too long!). But there are a lot of mechanical and physical maintenance jobs. "We" probably spend as much time on this kind of thing as we would in the stick house. It seems there is always something that needs to be fixed or tweaked. It really is a good thing that Bill can do so much of this stuff, because visits from RV technicians are expensive. Early this morning, there was a heavy downpour and the outside compartment where our water-heater is got flooded. This of course shorted out the heater. Bill is working on this and I am helping. (My important job is to turn the water faucet on and off while he runs tests outside.) Between the two of us we will get it fixed. He has already fixed the compartment so that it won't flood again.
Really, about the only thing we don't do at all in the RV that we would if we were still in our "stick-house" is mow the lawn and weed the garden. We don't miss those jobs at all. But we do like to look at wildflowers -- and other people's yards and gardens.
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