House-sitting!

 

A couple days ago, we finished up an almost-two week gig of house-sitting for a friend who was doing some international travel. Given that we are close to starting our seventh month of living in a van, staying in an actual house for an extended period of time was a nice change.

 

 

Here’s what I loved:

TELEVISION!!

I have a TV in the camper van, but only have it hooked up to an over-the-air-digital antenna. Which means that I get about 150 channels of crap. One time I was clicking through and there were five stations featuring Dennis the Menace reruns. Not too compelling. Any decent TV I want to watch has to come from one of two sources — either streaming through my Verizon mobile plan, or via WiFi if I happen to be at an RV Park. The former is not a great option because though I have Verizon’s unlimited plan, it’s not really “unlimited”. They can throttle after you reach a certain threshold. And as far as RV parks go, they are generally not a viable option. I don’t like to stay in them because you tend to be jammed up right next to your neighbor — cheek to jowl :-). And when they advertise “WiFi”, it may not work anywhere except in the office. Anyway, unlimited TV was really nice. I got my fill of CNN and Shark Tank.

LAUNDRY!!

Back when I was just a yute and moved into my first apartment that had a washer/dryer, I said that I would never step foot in a laundromat again. Um, yeah. When you make the decision to live in a camper van, the local laundromat is your BFF. The good news is that laundromats are much nicer than they were a hundred years ago when I was patronizing them. Gigantic machines within which I could snuggle and take a little nap if I so chose. But using my friend’s laundry meant that I didn’t  have to raid my  stockpile of quarters.

INDOOR PLUMBING!!

When one lives in a real home with indoor plumbing, you generally only have to deal with the pee and poo once. Flush it away and wave bye-bye. Not so much in an RV/camper. Yes, you can flush it away. But you can’t say bye-bye until later — when you finish up at the holding tank dump station. When I would camp with Charly — he was the master of the poo dumping and I was glad to let him have that honor. Solo camping, of course, means that I do all the jobs –once again, the lack of opposable thumbs on those two dogs renders them useless to help. But the luxury of being able to say “bye-bye” at flush-time for a couple weeks was a nice perk — LOL.

Of course, indoor plumbing also  means unlimited shower availability. I have a shower in my camper, but it’s quite tiny, and I only use it in rare situations when I have no other option. Campground showers are generally adequate, but certainly not the same as showering “at home”. I used the heck out of the shower at my house-sitting gig :-). Hot water bill for homeowner = $$$$ cha ching!

DOGGIE YARD TIME!!

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When we are camping, the doggies get tons of walks and get to run in dog parks when we find them. But they don’t really have a yard that they can play in without supervision. It was super nice to have a yard for fetch and tug o’ war.

When I told one of my pals that I would be doing this house-sitting, she expressed concern that I would be reluctant to leave it. Not to worry — there were some things — important things —  that we missed:

• Sunsets — I didn’t see a single sunset during my 12 days of house-sitting. Since the camper life means that we virtually live outside, I see the sunset every single day. I missed it.
• Dog walks — since we had a big yard to play in, I didn’t focus on taking the doggies for a walk. So for those 12 days, they didn’t see any new areas or smell any other dog’s butts.
• Reading — I was so focused on the novelty of TV that I didn’t really read much of anything.

And lastly, I noticed that I felt kinda lonely. Except for the times that I got together with friends, I didn’t really see or talk to anyone. Just as it was when I lived in my former home, I would come to the house, close the garage door, and stay inside or in the fenced-in back yard. Camping life, even for someone who travels solo, tends to be pretty social. There are generally no walls between you and your neighbors — lots of people to wave to, chat with, and get to know. Dog-walking time is a natural conversation generator. I have met some very interesting people in my travels, and was glad to get back to that.

While the house-sitting gig was a lovely respite, and I would jump at the chance to do it again sometime, I was glad to get back into our little house on wheels. There’s a saying among RV’ers — “little house, big back yard”. It’s very real.

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