Trailer Trash Mama: New Town, New Life, New Dress Size

Tuesday, October 5 - 650 Hudson Place, Port Townsend, WA 98368 (write it down then come visit!)
So I finally got internet service after nearly a week without, in case you were thinking I'd been swallowed up by the black hole that is the Pacific Northwest. Everyone has this idea that it rains all the time out here but it's not true. Seattle gets about the same amount of rain as New York - 45 inches a year - and here in PT we get only around 19. That's because it sits in the rain shadow of the Olympic Mountains to the west. It can be gray and drizzling in Seattle but by the time you cross the Hood Canal Bridge

onto the Olympic Penninsula proper, the sun is out. It's been sunny for a good part of each day since we arrived.

That Wednesday evening we drove into town - me in my new minivan which we picked up in Tacoma on the way

and Dan in the RV behind me - was a moment of pure joy, not only because it was the end of a long journey but also because it was the beginning of our new life.

We spent the night in the PT trailer park which has to be the nicest one we ever stayed in in terms of location - right on the beach overlooking Puget Sound, and next morning took the dogs on their first PT beach walk

and then unloaded the RV into our new home.

Dan couldn't wait to retire his yellow gloves forever - he's had enough of trailer life for a long time - but I grew quite fond of our 31 footer.

Yes, standards had slipped quite a bit by the end of the trip.

There are some things about trailer life, however, which I won't miss. Decent lighting, a bathroom big enough for a 10X magnifying mirror (the middle aged woman's cruelest but ultimately kindest friend) and time enough to make diligent use of both. My eyebrows looked like Groucho Marx (and I'm not even going to mention the moustache - waxing and bleaching being two other facts of female life that have no place in an RV) and I was horrified to find out I'd been sporting a veritable forest of nasty black chin hairs all across the country. Ah, menopause. What fun.

And then there's the unavoidable fact that sitting in a vehicle for up to 10 hours a day, eating some great, some mediocre, some downright vile road food has not done wonders for my figure. The one box I hope to never find is the one containing the bathroom scale. Luckily there are no full length mirrors in this house yet or I might well be having a full blown hormonal attack.

Embarrassing Disclosure #2
The ridiculous things I thought I was going to need on a 4 week RV trip:
food processor, pie plates, flour and rolling pin for all the pastry dough, scones and pies I was going to bake; racks for smoking ribs (normally an all day process); heavy Dutch oven for the bread I was going to bake; polenta (and not the quick cook kind); risotto (ditto); and all the food supplies I thought essential, most of which I had to pack up and unpack all over again. What was I thinking? Was I going to be the Martha Stewart of the Trailer Park?

Because you CAN buy food in the rest of America.

So, that's it for Trailer Trash Mama. To my wonderful friends and family who cared enough to sign up as followers and made me feel less like a high school loser, thank you, thank you, especially if you were able to get a comment posted which was not always easy.

To the rest of you who read along and sent me encouraging emails, okay, I still love you but you are so not invited to my slumber party.

And to those foolish people who encouraged me to keep blogging but are really hoping to see how setting up a new life in a new town puts fresh strain on an already travel tested marriage, I'll send you a link to my new blog: Menopausal Mama - get it? Change of life in more ways than one.

And now I leave you with some views from our new home in the hope that you will come and see for yourselves very, very soon. If you don't I may never have incentive enough to tackle the room at the very end.