How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love. . .

. . . sewer hoses! And their contents.

I've discovered something of an emergency in my sewer line. Here's the long version of the story (because I'm constitutionally incapable of telling the short version of anything):

My brother parked my motor home way forward on my slip, so that the awning (once I decided that the winds had died down enough on a sort of permanent basis to put the awning out, since it's broken and not easy to put out and take down by myself) would shade the picnic table for my site. I think that was a good thing to do because I've heard that, once it gets warmer, it still stays cool at nights so that it's pleasant to be outside (and there are no bugs). So I have visions of taking my (large) laptop out to the picnic table of an evening and writing on a fairly regular basis. But that's another story. . .

Anyway, because I'm so far forward on my site, it's a looooong way from the black water and gray water tanks to the sewer dump. So my brother bought an additional 15-foot length of sewer hose, along with one of those expandable track thingees that you can prop the hose up on, so as to develop a sort of downward angle for the "material to be transported" to travel so that it doesn't pile up in the hose right at the motor home. Well, there are several things wrong with this scenario, it's turning out.

First, 30 feet of hose is about 10 feet too many. And second, those little track thingees, when they're made out of plastic, as mine is, don't hold up under the strain that the "material to be transported" puts on them. Last night, when I got home around 10 p.m., I noticed that my track thingee had contracted in some places, broken in one place, and the hose had fallen off it in other places. I decided not to tackle the problem at that hour, but today, when I went out there to reconnoiter, I discovered that the "material to be transported" had a VERY circuitous route to travel--and, bottom line, it was not moving. The hose at the dump end was very light, while the hose at the motor home end was very heavy--that was my first clue.

Well, I massaged (literally) and cajoled and manipulated and re-positioned that hose for a good half hour today, got it back up on the tracks, tried to convince it not to fall in and make little "U" traps every few feet along the track, and, holding my breath for fear it'd all collapse again, finally decided I'd made as obstacle-free a path as I could with as much of a downhill trend to it as possible.

So, thinking lovely thoughts about the whole process, I then went inside to check things out there. And discovered that there's still a major portion of the "material to be transported" that hasn't gone anywhere and is still sitting in the tank. I've tried flushing it out--my hose has quite a bit of water pressure, since I'm on the campground water system--but that's not very successful. And of course, it's now after 6 p.m. on Saturday night, so I'm going to have to wait until Monday to get plumbing help. I think I can hold out (I use the term advisedly) until then; I've decided I'll use other facilities (why not the casinos? I'm certainly paying enough for the privilege) as much as possible, and then we'll see what's what.

One simple answer (that is, it's simple if there's two of me, but not so simple with just one of me) is to move the motor home back on the site so that I only need one length of hose to reach the tank. But my brother has me up on a pile of orange Lego tiles in the front so that I'm level, and he has me jacked up front and back so that I don't rock, and I'm VERY reluctant to mess around with all of that. As I say, if my brother were still here, I'd do it in a New York second. But he's not, and I don't know anyone here well enough to ask for help. He's coming for the weekend of March 10--but I'm not sure I want to wait that long, if the problem continues. So we'll see how things have progressed on Monday, and maybe we'll call in the troops.

Another (little) problem: I finally connected with the young IT guy for the campground. He's an arrogant young man who knows his stuff but makes it clear that he only works 8-5 and won't answer the phone any other time and, if he works on anything else, it's for $50/hour, dammit, and not a penny less. Well, I finally got him to come and do the IT work (which is the campground's responsibility: getting me connected to the internet, which I was for the first day, and then wasn't for about 10 days). He made the HUGE concession of coming one evening and taking care of that.

While he was here, I told him that I wasn't getting the 28 cable channels I was paying for as part of my site fee. I also wanted to have a DVD player for the living room TV. "Well," he said, "I'd do it for you, but I charge $50/hour and it'd probably take 2 hours" (I could tell he was trying to scare me off)--and I said, "Done. And you get to buy me the DVD player, so that you'll know that it works, fits, and will do the job." "Ah, er, well, okay," he said, and you could see the dollar signs in his eyes. If he wasn't so cute, and so wet behind the ears as far as behaving professionally, and so good as far as knowing his stuff, I never would have pushed him on it.

Anyway, last Sunday, he was supposed to come but blew me off. Then Monday he was going to come, but I told him I couldn't get home until 7 p.m., and he said he had something going on. So Tuesday he finally showed up--10 minutes late, thank goodness, and not unexpectedly, since I didn't get home until exactly 6:30, as I'd promised. He had the DVD player (a $40 number that he'd bought at Walgreens, so I was happy with that--and he didn't charge me for the time he spent finding and buying it--ONLY because he didn't think of it, you can be sure!). And sure enough, he took about 1 hour and 45 minutes to do the job because it was such a mess up in that compartment. Audio had been wired into video, things had been wired to themselves, and NOTHING had been done in a straightforward and intelligent manner. And I believe that was really the way it was, because he showed me a lot of the problems that he found, and I kept hearing him say, "I can't BELIEVE it," as he found the next problem.

He worked very fast and very efficiently, and when the dust settled, I had 28 clear channels in the front (only 12 in the back, because the remote is gone for that TV and the universal remote that I bought won't allow him to set up the TV to accept the channels--which is not a problem). And I could have watched a DVD if I'd wanted to. I was so pleased, I paid him for 2 hours, and gave him an extra $10 to cover the cost of the tax on the DVD player and a bit of his time in buying it. We were both happy--and it was a pleasure to see that HE was pleased because he'd been so reluctant to do the job at the start.

Well, all of that was great, and through the week I've watched some TV. Last night, though, I wanted to watch a DVD, and I pushed all the buttons he told me to--and I can't get the DVD to show up on the TV. DOGGONE IT! I'm scared to call him and leave a message on Monday and say, "Please tell me again what the configuration is so that I can watch DVDs," because he treated me (probably with some justice) as a very slow-learning kindergartner when he was showing me how to get it to work. And of course it'll cost me. But I'm going to be brave and call him--I certainly don't want to wait until my brother gets here in 6 weeks!

Speaking of my brother, he called me yesterday to tell me that one of his friends up there in New Joisey wants to sell his motor home. He used it to go to car races all over the country, but he's not racing any more, and he'd rather have the money than the motor home. His wife doesn't feel the same way about it--she LOVES the motor home--but I guess he's calling the shots on this one, so. . . .

Anyway, for the guys among you who care about these things, I don't know what the make or model is (my brother's going to get me that info next week), but it's a 39-foot (mine's a 32-foot) 2004 (mine's a 1998) motor home with two slide-outs (mine has none), hydraulic levels, a rear-facing TV, and all the bells and whistles that he could get when he bought it. Also it has only 29,000 miles on it (mine had 39,000). Charlie says he's taken great care of it (the plastic is still on the carpets, as was the case with mine last spring), and paid more than $200,000 for it. He owns it out-right and wants, as I say, to sell it.

I'm just drooling over it, especially after I've spent a month in this one. I do have enough space in here, if I get rid of some things (for one thing, the 12 boxes of my mother's photographs and slides, which I have to start working on one of these days). But I have to say I'm getting really tired of having to walk sideways around my bed, remembering to duck so that I don't hit my head on the TV shelf, and only having 2/3 of the bed to sleep in, because the other third is serving as part of my clothes storage.

Anyway, since I always say, "Dream big," and since it doesn't hurt to ask, I'm going to the bank on Monday or Tuesday, to talk to "my" banker. I met him the other day, a really nice guy, who made me feel as though I was a valuable customer. I came in because a transfer I'd made in my accounts hadn't shown up as quickly as I thought it should. Turned out I was just impatient--it would show up in a day or so--so I said, "Well, I guess I didn't really need to come in," and he said, "Oh, but you did--so that we could meet." Well, that was enough for me: he is now "my" banker, in the way that Alice Jones was "my" banker when I lived back in Pittsburg. I felt I could go in there, put my problem or my plan to her, and she'd work with me to solve it or implement it. That was nice--but I haven't felt that very often. When I bought the motor home last May, the woman I worked with at the branch in Austin became a friend, a sort of "my" banker kind of person, but she got transfered, so that sort of fizzled.

Anyway, I'm going to go in and ask Dan Clark what he sees (now that I've got a big healthy bank account and a nice income) as the possibilities for upgrading. Charlie says I should fly up there and see the motor home--I'll be sold right away, he says: he's seen it. And AirTran, a new airline, I believe, flies right into Newburgh, which is 1/2 an hour from his house. So I'm thinking about it--very seriously. Of course, Charlie would drive it down here and get me set up again.

What do y'all think of that? I know there'll be a variety of opinions on this, and I want to hear them all--and then I'll do what I want, so be prepared for that!

Enough for today. For my next posting, I've decided to put up my 2006 Christmas letter. I only mailed out about 5 of them, and I wanted to mail all of them, but it's getting ridiculously late, so I think I'll just post it and y'all can read it or not, as you choose. And it has pictures! Later, guys. . . .