Mayhem in the Mojave

Mickey riding in a VW Bug full of kids and a
lawn mover in the front trunk?

Road trips can be a real challenge when taking a bunch of kids. Every year, from the time our kids were young, Mickey and I would head out on couple of road trips with our kids.  

When Mickey was teaching school, we didn't have fancy cars or even a comfortable car for our road trips so we certainly did not travel in style.  Our biggest car back in 1990 was a Subaru Wagon.  We had a backwards facing seat installed in the very back just to get more seatbelts in the car. The worst thing about the backwards seat was that the AC didn't reach that back seat very well.  Can you imagine riding backwards for 10 hours in the blazing hot family wagon?  Talk about car sick.

Each summer we'd take a road trip down to Newport Beach.  Our kid's loved the annual beach trip but not a year went by without a mishap. The Mojave desert seems to be the point when things would start to go awry. Perhaps it's because it's the longest stretch of road without gas stations, food and stopping points when traveling from Salt Lake City, Utah to Newport Beach, California.  Maybe the problem is that we were traveling with sundry kids and their schnife.

One of our road trips.  You can only
see 7 of the 8 kids in this car.

During the summer of 1990 we took our annual trip to the beach. We purchased a canvas carrier to put on the roof of the car, loaded 6 kids and 2 adults into our Subaru wagon and off we went.  When we got about an hour out of Las Vegas into the Mojave desert one of our tires blew.  The temps were hovering in the 110's. 

Of course the tire is going to blow. The whole inside of that car was crammed with 6 kids and 2 adults and the outside was stuffed with luggage and things we "needed" for the beach.  Anyway, the best and most important thing that I did when we pulled over to stop and fix the tire, was jump out of the car and start videoing our mayhem.  

The first thing Mickey, Mr Johnny on the spot, decided to do is unload all of the kids into the 115 degree desert.  I asked him nicely why he felt this was necessary in order to change the tire.  He said, "That's where the spare tire and jack are."  I told him that I was positive that there weren't any compartments back there holding a spare tire and jack.  Mickey decided to unload the car anyway.

When he opened the back hatch, the inside of the car immediately heated up to 120 degrees.  Better than that, there was not a spare to be found in the back so unloading all the kids just made everyone very cranky. 

I put all of the kids back into the hot car because it was safer for them in the 120 degree car than it was having them running around in the desert with rattle snakes or playing by the highway with cars and trucks speeding by at 80 mph. Of course we rolled the windows down for their comfort, passed around the water and hoped that Mickey could find the spare and change the tire fairly quickly.  

I suggested that the tire could possibly be under the hood by the engine since I had seen a spare tire under the hood in other cars.  Reluctantly, Mickey opened up the hood and sure enough the tire was right there by the engine. The engine was nice and heated up to about 1000 degrees.  I'm not sure what went through Mickey's mind at that moment but I can safely say that the one thing that didn't cross his mind was that the tire could possibly be a tich hot.

This whole incident is recorded and here it is.  Please notice that the best part of the video is  repeated a second time for your enjoyment and it's in slow motion.  Watch what Mickey does with the tire and his hands after he takes the spare tire out from under the hood.  It's just special.  You will also notice that Mickey finishes his tire changing by giving me a muscle show.  Lucky me!

The next video is of another one of our trips to Newport Beach.  Once again we are in the Mojave desert.  This time we have 8 kids instead of 6.  We are in a Suburban with 10 people. The boys had to ride in the very back because they smelled worse than the girls when in cramped places.  The girls sat on the middle seat and Mickey and I wised up and sat in captains chairs in the front.  Now to make things a bit more dicey, I had ruptured my achilles and had just had surgery, therefore, I was sporting a cast that went up to my hip.  My cast didn't fit well behind the seat so I had to prop it up on the dash board for the ride. Not a comfortable ride especially when I spent the entire trip turning around while doing the splits so I could hand out snacks and gather garbage while refereeing the fights for 10 hours.  Mickey, on the other hand, drove with his hands at 10:00 and 2:00 and pretended to not hear or smell anything that was going on. 

Our Suburban was loaded for bear as we headed for the beach.  We now had a bike rack on the back with TWO canvas luggage racks on the top but when Mickey packed up the two canvas carriers before we left, he didn't zip one of them all the way around. Whilst we were headed down the highway, the wind blew the canvas pack open.  By the time we realized what was happening, all of our duffle bags and beach junk was being scattered across I15 in the middle of the Mojave desert.  Once again we pulled over and watched our stuff get run over by other travelers driving busses, trucks and cars who managed to zip their bags shut.  

I usually double check Mickey's packing and zipping skills but since I was on crutches I couldn't climb a ladder to check the roof top bags. 

You will notice in this video that our oldest kids are teens and that they are running around in the desert, next to the very busy highway, trying to gather all of our items that blew out of the carrier.  The bags and clothes that we did find were either ripped or had tread marks on them.  We even lost a nebulizer machine that my youngest son needed for his asthma. (He could hold his breath for this trip).  Of course I managed to video the whole thing.  I was no help anyway since I was sitting in the car with my casted leg up on the dash. As I sat and watched the kids darting around the desert and highway, gathering clothes, I just thought "safety first" so I made the younger kids stay in the vehicle. Once again it was very hot in the desert.

I'm glad we took all of our road trips with the kids but it's kind of nice to take a road trip where you don't have to unload 8 kids to change a flat tire or put your bags on top of your car just so you can fit inside of it.

  

The beach trip where our
bags blew all over the
highway and we lost half
of our stuff.

Chillin' on the beach with the only clothes we could find.

Sewing, Shopping and Shari Don't Mix

Clothes my mom made.  We had to
try them on and the pins were sticking out.

From the time I was a young child, I've always hated shopping and sewing.  My mom loves both. We were a bad combo when it came to these activities.  I remember my mom taking me on her shopping trips to the fabric store.....the two things I did NOT want to do.   I'd beg her to let me stay home and take one of my sisters instead of me, but no.  My mom was bound and determined to make a shopper and a sewist (Artist with sewing?) out of me.

For those who don't know about sewing, picking out the things needed to make an item of clothing can take forever.  You have to pick out the pattern, then the fabric, elastic, buttons, zippers, snaps, rick rack, thread and other embellishments.  When you go with my mom, each item takes at least an hour to find.  There are walls and isles with more walls of sewing things.  There are big books of patterns too.  Sewing stores cause minimalists, like me, to get twitches.  (For insights about my minimalism issues please refer to my blog "Spartanism.  The perfect psychiatric disorder".) 

This is a pattern for culottes
from the 70's. 

I've had bad experiences when trying to sew.  I've never understood why someone would choose to spend a bunch of time sewing a piece of clothing when you can go to the store and buy it for less.  No offense to you talented people who sew well and love it.  I am not good at sewing and I don't love it mostly because the items I've tried to sew, look like a kindergarten felt project gone awry.  For instance I once made a pair of pants...........my mom called them slacks.  By the time I finished my slacks they were what I'd call bellotes.  One leg was a culotte and the other was a bell bottom. The crotch seam went at an angle across the buttocks area thereby causing a perma-snug.  I put them on once and took them right back off to deposit them in a dumpster.  I'll never get those 41 hours back.

Another time I had to sew a tote bag for my 7th grade home economics class.  I started sewing on this tote thinking "How hard can it be to buzz a piece of material through a sewing machine while a needle goes up and down and sews it for you.  I had a lot to learn.  First, when you push on the sewing machine peddle to make it go, you have to be aware that it is NOT a car.  You don't floor it.  I floored it and the needle zipped up and down like a jack hammer.  The material bunched up and was spit out the other side in a wad. Plus, I nearly sewed my finger up into the wad of material.  I realized that this is a difficult and dangerous hobby.    

The next thing that I learned was that the person whose sewing machine was going the fastest did not win. I had my sewing machine going at warp speed.  I did not win. In fact, I had to unpick the stupid tote bag 17 times.  I looked around the class after a few days of this project and noticed that the other kids in the class had not only finished their tote but most of them had sewed a t-shirt and were moving on to the cooking portion of the class.  They got to make these peanut butter balls which I got to smell while I sat there unpicking my tote bag for the 12th time.  I unpicked the stupid thing so many times that the fabric kept getting frayed. The teacher made me trim off the frayed part of the fabric so many times that the tote bag turned into a coin purse. 

My mom had special things she would do when she sewed.  When purchasing patterns and fabric you have to know what size of pattern to buy.   Every time my mom sewed something for me, she would pull out a sewing tape measure and measure me.  I can't imagine that my size was a mystery.  She bought my clothes so she could have looked at the tags on my store purchased clothes to see my size.  Better yet, couldn't she just eyeball me?  My theory is that she loved to measure and wanted to measure while she held pins between her lips or put a red pin cushion, full of pins, on her wrist like a bracelet. Those are things that you do when you sew. 

The measuring part of sewing was not near as bad as the trying on.  Trying on comes after you go to the fabric store and cut the clothing out and do some sewing.  The bad part about trying on partially sewed clothes is that the fabric is pinned so there are pins sticking out everywhere. It like trying on a porcupine.

My idea of everything one needs
to sew.  No fabric stores needed.
A little duct tape works wonders too.

Still, the worst part of the sewing experience for me as a child, were the trips to the fabric store. Just walking through the door to the fabric store would trigger an urge to go use the bathroom.  I don't know why this would happen but according to my mom, "Fabric stores don't have bathrooms so you just have to hold it." This can't be a good thing for anyone.  To this day, my PTSD from shopping in fabric stores has led to a feeling of instantaneous diarrhea whenever I walk into a store that sells sewing items. 

When my mom and I were at the fabric stores, I would entertain myself by climbing under the long desk where the moms would sit and look at giant pattern books.  On the underside of these desks you could see particle board with a piece of gum stuck here and there. That's how long I was under the desk.  My mom would look at patterns for what seemed like ages.  One time while under the desk I had a stoke of genius.  I looked down to see a pin sticking out of the carpet.  Now if I could get the pin to stick straight out of my kneecap then we would have to leave the fabric store to go get the pin removed and get a tetanus shot.  2 minutes of pain vs. infinity hours of shopping for fabric. I kneeled on that pin and it went in my knee but not very much.  I showed my mom the pin protruding, which was sagging out of my knee cap and she just pulled it out and hit the pattern book again. Done. That was so not worth kneeling on a pin.

My mom used to sign me up for sewing classes in the summer time.  It KILLED me to sit inside and sew stupid things when I could be doing a million other things outside, like having fun.  My sister, who attended some of these classes with me, said she remembers me sewing for a few minutes and then I would disappear from the class.  My sister (along with the rest of the class) would then spot me outside running past the windows like an idiot.  I explained that I was taking a lap around the building out of frustration so that I could come back into class and sit there wasting the rest of the day unpicking my new bellottes project.       

Me in some snazzy bells
No I did not make them because
they are not bellotes.

  

  

Golf, Outhouses and Forehead Hematomas

This week the Masters tournament was played. In honor of the Masters, which is Mickey's favorite golf tournament, I'm going to write about my experiences with golf.  I didn't grow up playing or watching golf so when I got married I was introduced into the golf world by my husband.  Mickey has been golfing with his dad and brothers since he was a young child. 

Mickey decided that I needed to learn to golf so he purchased some clubs for me and took me to a golf course with his dad Dave and his two brothers, Steve and David K.  The first thing I learned is that golf is not as easy as it looks and people that have been golfing their entire life are not that patient with beginners.  Also, the game has a lot of rules of etiquette you should follow.  I learned quickly that you don't chat while someone is getting ready to hit the ball and if you start yapping while they're swinging then you get yelled at.

The next thing I learned is that you always have to hurry because the people behind you are always waiting even if you don't see anyone behind you.  If you are a beginner then you don't get practice swings.  You just have to hurry and put the ball on the T and hit it if you can.  There is no time for dilly dallying in golf even though it takes 8 hours to play a round.

Oh, here's a good one.......if someone is putting and you are standing there watching, for the love of everything holy, make sure your shadow is not near the ball or the path where the ball may go or even in the vicinity of the person putting the ball.  Golfers are very touchy about shadows. 

Don't even get me going about the rules that apply to hitting a ball in the water, out of bounds or somewhere where the ball's not supposed to be. This will happen most of the time when you are learning to golf but you will need a calculator, a tape measure and an official golf rule book to try and figure out the score and where you are supposed to drop your ball.  This is the time that arguments arise and sometimes bodily contact occurs betwixt Mickey and his brothers.

Also, did you know that if you swing at the ball and don't hit it, that still counts as a hit or in golf talk......a stroke.   

There are a lot of these types of rules in golf.  It all seems very strict and like you have to be well behaved on the course but after golfing with Mickey's dad and brothers I realized that etiquette is followed when hitting the ball but the rest of the time, it's a free for all.  

David K, Mickey, Dave, Steve

I never knew that golf could be a full contact sport.  Mickey, Steve and David K loved to bug their dad while golfing.  If Mickey's dad Dave entered the outhouse during a round golf, Mickey and his brothers would jump into the golf cart and run the cart into the outhouse, trying to push it a little ways or knock it over WHILE Dave was using it.  Dave would come out and grab a club and go after his sons.  According to me, his actions were justified.  

Our sons picked up on the fun of bugging grandpa Dave.  Rocky and Whitey, when they were young, went golfing with Dave one day. They happened upon a little blue robin's egg while on the course.  They picked up the egg and threw it at Dave hitting him in the side of the head. With yolk running down the side of his face, Dave picked up his 9 iron and took off after the boys, swinging.   Once again this was probably justified but I started to wonder if golf is a more dangerous sport than it appears.

I also learned that miracles can happen on the golf course.  One miracle that really stands out is the time that Mickey hit a ball into some thick trees.  Everyone knew he would never find his ball and yet he found his ball on the edge of the fairway by the trees.  His dad walked over to where Mickey found his ball and this was the conversation: 

Dave: "Mickey that is not your ball."

Mickey:  "It IS my ball. There it is!"  

Dave: "Nope. Your ball was white and this one is yellow." 

Mickey: "Well it went in white and came out yellow and that's the miracle of it all." 

Sid when she realized
she hit a hole in one

Another miracle was the time my daughter Sid, my son Mickey and I went golfing.  We were on a par 3 hole (That means you should be able to hit it into the hole with three hits). Sid hit her ball and we saw it hit the green but then lost sight of it.  All three of us headed to the green and searched for Sid's ball. We couldn't find it but noticed that the people playing behind us were yelling at us. I thought we had breached something in golf etiquette or we were dilly dallying but realized they were trying to tell us to look in the hole. Sure enough Sid's ball was right there in the hole and we had no clue she had hit a hole in one!  After I saw that, I assumed that everyone hit a hole in one once in a while.  Mickey explained to me that he has never seen a hole in one, in person, in his entire life of golfing.  I learned that holes in one are not that common and that in my short golf career I had already seen something Mickey hadn't.  Shari 1 Mickey 0.

Golf involves a lot of betting.  I've seen more bets made on a golf course than I have in Vegas.  Mickey's bets are very creative.  One common bet is the flicking bet.  So whoever loses gets a flick on the forehead.  You bend your middle finger, hold it back with your thumb, release your thumb and let your middle finger fly, as hard as you can, right into the middle of the losers forehead.  I have seen hematomas form from a well placed flick by a Taylor.  Mickey told me that his brother David K has a weighted finger (he broke it I think).  He said David K has an unfair advantage with flicking because of his special finger.  When the Taylors finish a round of golf, you can always tell who won by who is NOT sporting a red hematoma in the middle of their forehead. 

When you golf with our family it can become quite competitive.  For some reason every time I golf with Mickey I feel my competitiveness coming out.  I just want to beat him.  Mickey is much better than I am at golf so we have to make up rules so I can win.  For instance, last summer we finished out the golf season by playing a round with my two daughters, Madisyn and Maggey and my son in law Matt.   Matt is new to golf and the rest of us aren't that good except Mickey (who, I might add, has been golfing his whole life and plays a lot.)  Matt can hit the ball a mile but we are never sure quite where the ball will go.  

Our five some with the sexy beast in back

We decided to play "best ball" for this round of golf.  That's a game where the ball that is hit into the best position is the position that everyone hits from except Mickey.  Mickey was his own team against all four of us. On the last hole we were tied. Madisyn, Maggey and I all hit terrible shots.  Our only hope was Matt.  We held our breath and watched quietly of course.  Matt walked onto the Tee box, tee'd up his ball.  It fell off. He tee'd it up again.  You could feel the pressure Matt was under.  He adjusted his golf shorts in back, took a practice swing then hit the ball.  He hit it a mile! It landed smack on the green not far from the hole! It was a winner shot!  It was a thing of beauty.  I just lost it.  I was sooo happy and so into the competition that I started jumping up and down.  I actually had an out of body experience.  Before I knew what was happening I yelled out to Matt, "You beast! You beast! You sexy beast!"

Silence.............

They all stopped and stared at me.  Madisyn said, "MOM!  Are you serious?"  

It was in that moment that I realized what I had said.  Oh my noooooo!

Maggey was dumbfounded and finally said, "You know mom, that's my husband and you're  his MOTHER IN LAW!

I had no words.  The only thing I can say for myself is that apparently I have no control of what comes out my yapper in the heat of competition!

Matt just stood there with a blank look.  

I must say that golf can be fun but perhaps it's just not my game.  I don't love it enough to be a good player but I do enjoy the competition and so far I've never suffered from a forehead hematoma.  Lastly, when golfing with the Taylors, just a heads up, never enter an outhouse and when you're not looking they drive the golf cart over your ball and smash it into the grass. 

Pontoons, Airstreams and Backing Up

I love Airstream Trailers. One day after looking at a few Airstreams online, Mickey and I decided to go look at some in person.  I saw giddiness in his face.  He said,  "I'd love one for deer hunting and fishing!  That would be awesome!"  I gave him the look and said, "I'm thinking of a nice bed without dirt clods scattered on the floor, leeches and worms in the mini fridge and remnants of fish guts on the counter tops.  Not sa much a fish gut and hunting thing."  His vision and my vision of Airstream uses were completely opposite.  We decided to go look anyway.   

We drove to a local Airstream dealer.  When we got there the salesman asked us what we were looking for in a trailer.  We told him we didn't know but that we just wanted to look at some.  First thing he took us to see was a very small trailer.  It was called a Basecamp.  I wondered if you could really fit two people in it.  Even though it was tiny it had some really nice things in it.   It had a bed, shower, toilet and little table and bench.  After a quick glance we thought we would want something a bit bigger.   

The salesman led us to a bigger one that was 19 feet long.  This trailer was much larger than the Basecamp but still not very large according to Mickey.  We climbed aboard.  Mickey sat down, shook his head and said, "Nope."  We sat in a 22 foot, 23 foot, 25 foot and a 27 foot trailer.  All of these got a little bigger and a little nicer.  Each time Mickey stepped into the next trailer, he'd look around and shake his large noggin and say "Nope."  The sales guy was a good sport.  He offered to give us a few brochures so we followed him into the show room.  

As we walked into the showroom, Mickey stopped dead in his tracks.  He was speechless so he just pointed to a giant shinning silver Airstream lit by spot lights.  The gleaming missile seemed to softly whisper "Come hither" to him.  He sauntered over to the 33 foot Airstream Classic and went up the stairs into the belly of the beast.  He sat in the lounge chair as he pushed the recline button and announced to all who would listen, "This is the one."

I sat next to him in the adjoining lounge chair, reclined it and said............"Are you nuts?"

Mickey driving the pontoon.
He just can't back it up.

Let me just interject here and say that a few years ago Mickey and I had a similar experience when we went to look at some pontoon boats.  A few hours later we came home as proud owners of a 30 foot pontoon. When we got home he started to back the pontoon down our long, narrow driveway and took out the neighbors mailbox.  After attempting to back the boat up for an over an hour, a small crowd gathered.  I think our neighbor started to worry that Mickey might take out our house or his so he backed it up for him.  We hauled that boat around to a few places, having people help back it up each time and sold it by the end of summer.  

Back to the ginormous Airstream.  I asked mickey if he was nuts then this was the conversation we had as we reclined:

Me: So you do remember our pontoon boat.

Mickey:  Yes.

Me:  This thing is 3 feet longer.  

Mickey: But I have trailer assist in the truck.

Me: That didn't seem to help before when you were backing.

Mickey: That pontoon was wider and rocked more.

Me:  So you think this massive trailer is smaller than the pontoon?

Mickey: It seems smaller.  I can pull this, piece of cake.

Me:  Yes, I know you can PULL it but can you actually back it up.

Mickey:  Check out the huge TV!

Me : We have one at home already.

Mickey: Look at this nice bedroom. (We both walk into the bedroom area).  It's so private! 

Mickey closed the accordion door between us and the sales guy. It felt awkward so I hollered out to the sales guy standing on the other side of the door......... 

Me: We'll be out in a second.  (Not sure why I felt the need to do that) 

Me again: By the way, how long is this bad boy when it's pulled behind a super crew truck?

Sales guy: (He pulls out his phone and types in a few things). I'd say she'll run about 52 feet.

Me:  Crickets (I look like a deer in the headlights)

Mickey:  Shari, I'm not going to just pull THIS!  I'm going to put the fishing boat behind this trailer so we can take the boat too!  

Me:  (.....19+33+21=73 feet). You realize that you'll be pulling and backing 73 feet?  So when you do that, do you have to turn the steering wheel the opposite way that you want the trailer to go then........what?  How are you going do that?

Mickey:  You just go forward.

Me: Roger.

Mickey:  (To the sales guy). So can you do that?  Can you pull a trailer and a boat behind that?

Sales guy: (He shrugs) I'm not sure.  I'm really a mechanic.

Me: Why don't we take our brochures home, we'll talk about this and get back to you.

Mickey and I drove off with our brochures and chatted all the way home.  By the time we got home an hour later we had decided the following:

!. He could back up the trailer with practice.

2. I would pull the boat behind our other car

3.  The trailer was a bit spendy but if we sold our house we could buy the trailer and a nice piece of land to put it on.

4. We could pour a pad of cement on the piece of land to park the trailer on.

5. We could run hookups to the cement pad for the trailer so we have all the conveniences of home.

6. Since we would no longer have a house, we could live in the Airstream full-time. 

7. We would need to build a very large garage/barn next to the cement pad to store the trailer, truck, 2nd car and boat  

8. The barn would also have to have a loft with a bathroom, sleeping area and family room because.......

9. I would take the Airstream every January, February and March to Phoenix so I could get out of the cold and Mickey could visit me on the weekends.  

10. When Mickey wasn't visiting me in Phoenix he could live in the garage/barn.

11. Eventually we would want a house so we would build a house by the garage/barn and cement pad.

It was decided.  We were going to try something new.  We were doing this RV thing.   

Before making the leap we decided to get really educated and watch some YouTube vids about the basics of RV living. The first video told us that it's nice to be handy when you live in an RV because of maintenance and little fix it jobs that can occur while living in an RV.  Mickey said that he's not a handyman so we would have to hire someone to do that stuff unless I wanted to do it.  

Next we watched a video about living in an RV park.  Apparently when you have 52 feet of trailer and truck you have to stay in something called a pull through RV park so you don't have to back up.  These spots are limited thus the cement pad of our own.

The next video was about tips for living in an RV.  Then we watched a video about the things people wished they knew before they started living in their RV and lastly we watched a video was about the Cons of RV living.

We shut off the TV.  Stared at each other and this was the conversation:

Mickey:  I think I've seen enough RV Youtube videos for now.

Shari:  Yep.

Mickey:  We might want to rethink this.  

Me: Yes we should.

Mickey: Do we really want to live in an RV?

Shari: Nope

Mickey:  I'm not a handyman you know

Shari:  I'm aware

Mickey:  I can't take that RV hunting.  

Shari:  I wasn't planning on that anyway.

Mickey:  I don't think I want to live in a garage/barn when I'm not living in the trailer

Shari: Why not?

Mickey: Even though I'm a good backer this might not be our thing.

Shari: Ya sure?

It occurred to me that what we would be doing was similar to living in a van down by the river?

I think we'll stick with the fishing boat and a regular house for now.

Mickey feeding Ty cherries on the pontoon.  Good times!