How Low Points Can Become High Points

As I tell everyone who asks, living in a popup was either really great or really terrible.  There was no middle ground for me.  I worked hard on having a good attitude during the really terrible parts--the days upon days of rain, having to make decisions before the storms whether to put the house down or keep it up, and then enduring said storms (such as hail) at night because they were never during the day, it seemed.  The having stuff all over the place but nowhere to put anything, etc.  Only twice during our year-long popup living did I have a breaking point where I just didn't see how I could go on.  The good really did outweigh the bad, because I would have never been able to choose this life if we only had bad times.  And of course, with time comes perspective and the ability to see the positive through the negative.  

A very sweet couple from West Virginia happened upon me during a melting down point I had last year.  We were still in the popup and it was about this time of year when we had just finished battling cold weather (and the freak ice storm that occurred) and I was trying to re-organize our living space.  One of the passers-through was offering to wash all the campers in the campground (for a fee, of course).  Our camper was disgustingly dirty from living under a pecan tree for several months and it was still too cold for me to wash it.  Keeping it clean was keeping me sane, so I hired him to brighten up the dwelling a bit.  This meant that I had to move all of our belongings that we kept outside away from the camper or stow them inside the camper.  This took quite a while, as belongings seem to accumulate and multiply every time I turn my head.  So my stuff was everywhere.  And I waited.  And waited.  And reflected upon the fact that I had paid this jerkface $100 in advance to do something he was not going to show up to do.

As I opened the fridge to get a snack while I was coming to this awful conclusion, I noticed that the yogurt seemed unusually warm.  As did the cheese, the milk, and everything else I had bought the previous day when I went grocery shopping.  The refrigerator was broken!!!  Again!!!  The very same refrigerator we bought only a few months earlier because of our previous refrigerator breaking. The very same refrigerator we didn't have any documentation of purchasing because where in the hell am I going to put documentation in all this mess?  And I had just gone grocery shopping the previous day, so there was another $100 down the tubes in bad food.  And a new dorm type refrigerator was going to cost about $150.  Not only was the cost troubling me--it was only mid-morning and already I was down about $350!  Imagine what the rest of the day was going to cost!  It was the trouble of it all.  The pain-in-the-ass-ness of it all.

I sat in Lawrence's car seat which was on the porch of the next camping space beside my car, and just cried.  I can say with certainty that this was the absolute lowest point I have experienced in this adventure.  It all was very solvable in hindsight, but I felt beaten down, after so many hard experiences in such short a period of time.  I had no energy left and lost all hope that morning, as I sat there, squeezed into Lawrence's car seat. 

So Rick and his wife from West Virginia, staying a few spots down from us happened to catch me there, feeling very sorry for myself.  I saw him coming, so I quickly got up and went inside my very disheveled popup (because I was preparing for a camper washing that I was now sure wasn't going to happen) to hide.  Then came a knock at the door.  You can't hide and pretend you are *not* inside a popup because, well, of the canvas walls and everything.  And the kids running about.  Kind of a giveaway that someone is home.  So there I was stuck.  I had to open the door.  And there was Rick, who asked to come in.  This was hard for me, because while we lived small, I tried very hard to be organized and clean.  And my camper was neither of those things as I was waiting for Billy, the jerkface camper cleaner to come.  Rick gave me a hug and asked me to tell him about my very, very bad day.  He left and sent his very sweet wife to see about me. 

After she left, I was better, and beginning to accept my circumstances and decide what to do from here.  I was now $350 down, but I decided I would salvage what I could from this day.  I started to reorganize and decided I would clean the tree gunk off of my camper myself for starters.  The white canvas was brown with tree gunk.  Even if nothing else good was happening, I was going to have white canvas again.  

As I was hooking up the water hose, here comes our Mr. Cowboy driving up with a full-sized refrigerator in the scoop of his John Deere tractor!  He got off the tractor and said to me, "Don't you know that cowboys always come to the rescue?"  Rick had told him of our plight.  Cowboy had a refrigerator in a barn on the property somewhere.  He told me not to worry about buying a new one, that I could use it as long as I wanted. I only needed to clean it up and it would be ready to go!  Cowboy and Rick set it up for me on my porch under the awning. The compressor hummed and it was soon chugging out that sweet coldness.  If you were thinking of it in terms of a house fridge, it was on the smaller size, but was perfect for us.  Compared to our dorm fridge, it meant I could grocery shop less because I now had a full-sized freezer for veggies and *gasp* ice cream!  The day was looking up exponentially!  

After Cowboy and Rick left and as I was cleaning my new-to-me refrigerator, guess who showed up????  Billy, the jerkface who was trying to stiff me out of $100!  I think, but do not know for certain, that some of the men in the campground must have strongly suggested he show up and do the job I had paid him to do, because he not only cleaned my camper, but he cleaned my car too, and then disappeared from the campground altogether.  

Good neighbours have a way of turning my very lowest points into high points.  I was sorry to see our West Virginians leave that spring.  Imagine my surprise when they turned up again a few weeks ago!  Apparently, Presley's is on their travel circuit and they come here every December or thereabouts, and stay til April or so.  

They said that our family has been on their minds throughout the year and they were extremely happy and relieved to see us in our new fifth wheel home!  It's funny, I have heard that from a number of people who have come and gone and come back again.  It may be transient here with people coming and going, but it is really great to live in a place where people are good neighbours and they are rooting for the success and happiness of our family!

This is our camper after the addition of the refrigerator.  I told Phillip all we needed now was a sofa outdoors on the deck to fulfill our full redneck potential!  :-)