May camping

I have somewhere around five sewing or house projects right now that are almost done, so watch out for a torrent of upcoming blogging.  You've been warned! In the meantime my family and I took a quick getaway in Little Red this weekend. We drove out to Blue Licks Battlefield State Park, which is between Lexington and Cincinnati. We drove through some gorgeous horse farm country and charming Paris, Kentucky. (Says Dorothy, "Do they have an Eiffel Tower?"  Excellent question, but seems not.)

The campsite was damp but pretty. This campground had two features we really liked. First, the playground is centrally located and visible from almost every campsite, so frisky five-year-olds can run and play without waiting for the slow-poke grown-ups to catch up. Second, the heads to several trails are located right by or in the campground so families like ours don't have to schlep children by car or long and winding road just to start a family hike through the woods.

We realized just a bit too late that the park had a Pioneer Museum, which would have been so fun to visit since we only last week finished reading the Little House on the Prairie series. We did get to check out a trail, the battlefield and monument, and we'd just driven down to the boat dock to explore the creek when we ran into a handful of half-naked teenagers covered from head to toe in mud and decided maybe we should go back to the campsite instead. At first I thought they were actually completely naked teenagers covered in mud and memories of our adventures in Mercer County ran through my head, but at second glance there did seem to be bikinis and trunks somewhere under all the muck. I have no idea what they were up to, but Dorothy only commented that they sure could use a shower (yup!) and rear-facing Worth didn't see them at all. I heard the girls in the campground shower later talking about fall classes (anatomy! advanced chemistry!) and I'm sure they were actually, ahem, very nice girls. There may or may not have ever been muddy bikini-wearing in my past.  I'm not saying. I definitely didn't take advanced chemistry.

Back at camp we had dinner and a campfire. It was damp but not raining and Rob had a rough time getting the fire started. We'd almost given up on the campfire cooking to use our little red camper microwave instead (we're talking about warming pre-cooked chicken sausages and foil packets of potatoes I'd pre-roasted here, not putting a whole pig on a spit or anything) when the fire finally took off quite zippily. We'd just begun to nosh on our smoky hot food when it did actually start raining hard and we fled for the comfort of our tiny camper. We've never been so glad to have graduated from tent-camping as this trip. It rained the rest of the time but we were cozy inside with our art supplies, Rob's newspaper, my camper journal (above), matching pirate pajamas for the small set (below) and the pleasant sound of rain on our roof.

We headed home first thing this morning since hiking in the rain with children isn't really our thing. The trip was short but sweet!

April camping

We made our first 2011 trip in the little camper! The trip was the perfect mix of length of travel (not long), length of stay (not long), and low-key activities.  We visited General Butler State Park, which is only about an hour from home. Last fall when we started camper camping I noticed that all the big outfits had family name signs they put out in front of their campsites, kind of like campground calling cards or announcements.  I liked the friendly idea but didn't think one of the large, imposing wooden signs would go very well with our streamlined setup so I designed and ordered this little lightweight yard sign. It says "It's all right to be little bitty."  Now we've really got it all!  (wink)

We toured the historic home on the premises, we hiked, played dominoes, and checked out no fewer than three playgrounds. We ate a dinner of pasta that I'd prepared at home.  Dorothy made friends with the girl at the camper next door and created beautiful art at our picnic table.

Worth developed what I'm afraid may be an abiding love of mud puddles.  If you think this brownie-streaked face and pea-smeared hair looks bad, well, you should see his mud-stained bottom. 

At home I've been working on setting up a square-foot garden in our new yard.  I recently used colored yarn to mark off the squares.  I brought the rest of the yarn I used for the squares (it's all acrylic) to our campsite and taught Dorothy how to make God's Eye weavings. I love that she's now old enough to do some projects that are fun for Mom too. We sat cozily in our camper before bed and wound our yarn around sticks we'd found at our site. The simple weavings looked pretty on our camper wall last night (photographed), and now they look great hanging on the trellis of our garden bed.

I think one-night camping excursions are just right for where our family is at right now.  We all had a good, relaxing time, got to spend quality time without the distractions of home, were able to fully take notice of the changes spring was bringing to the outdoors, but were able to tote home dirty dishes for our dishwasher and skip the icky camp showers.  Perfect!

Sorghum cookies

This picture is blurry, but it's hard to shoot a moving target.  Dorothy is displaying the apron I found at a thrift store recently.  Guess where it's destined?  This lovely turn in the weather has inspired me to make camping reservations for us at some state parks we want to check out this spring.  I'm so looking forward to our first 2011 trip!

Today in the kitchen I experimented with a local ingredient I'm not very familiar with.  I had picked up a recipe for sorghum cookies at the state fair last summer and had yet to try it.  I altered the recipe to suit our diets and our taste, and they were really quite tasty.  As Rob said, "I still don't really understand what sorghum is, but it makes very good cookies."  Exactly.

Here's the recipe in case you decide to Bake Kentucky Proud as well (or something):
1 cup plus 2 TB sugar
1/2 cup softened butter
1/4 cup canola oil
1 egg
1/3 cup sorghum
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup oats
1 1/2 cup chocolate chips
1 cup unsweetened flaked coconut

Preheat oven to 350 and line three cookie sheets with parchment.  Whisk together flours, soda, and salt in a bowl or large measuring cup, set aside.  Cream butter, oil and sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer, add egg, vanilla and sorghum.  Beat well.  Add flour mixture in two parts, beating well after each addition.  Stir in oats, chips and coconut.  Drop onto prepared cookie sheet and bake 10 to 12 minutes.  Cool three minutes on the sheet, then transfer to wire rack.

The caterpillar

A few weeks ago I was trying to figure out something nice to do with a particularly cute caterpillar drawing of Dorothy's and this is what I ended up with.  It's a custom t-shirt from Cafe Press that we will give to Dorothy's cousin for Christmas.  I hope it isn't too redundant with the joint venture Dorothy and I made for the same cousin last winter, but since that gift was appreciated, this gift in the same vein probably will be too.  Dorothy really enjoys feeling like she contributed to the making of any gift, and the benefit of a professionally done t-shirt is that it should wash nicely, unlike (unfortunately) the print-at-home transfers, which require fussy care to stay nice.  I removed the white space from the caterpillar image using Photoshop, then saved the file as a PNG with a transparent background to make the design.

I took advantage of the warm weather this morning and did some more camper painting.  I still have not had the chance to finish what I started with the handkerchief paisleys, but this morning I made solid progress on the opposite side.  I purchased new, good quality brushes and they make all the difference in the world.  Maybe I should have thought of that before, but the difference was really amazing.  It was like I was trying to chop vegetables with a kiddie knife before!  This time the paint went on much better and the lines look more smooth.  It was faster going, too, so if I get another golden moment while both children are asleep or occupied and the weather is right I will get back out there.  Otherwise, the camper may have to stay incompletely decorated until the spring.

As for our housing situation, who knows.  We're working on a response to a set of nit-picky repair requests from our buyer.  We made a fair offer on the Good Memories house, but have no particular confidence that the owner is ready for the kind of reality check that would mean taking our reasonable offer.  I'm sure something will work out (Renata clutches at optimism), but at this point we're certainly curious about just how that will look.

Carbs and a calendar

For various reasons that I cannot blog about yet, we have decided to take our house off the market next week. I don't mean to be secretive (can one be secretive and have a blog?), but there is a Major Life Change coming to my family that simply cannot yet be discussed in public, but it effects our plans to move.  (It is, for the record, absolutely NOT a new baby.  So please don't start rumors!)  After much pondering, heart-searching, bookkeeping, and discussion, we concluded that the house should either be sold or off the market by November 15, almost 11 months after the for-sale sign first went into our frozen yard last winter.  So I've been making plans for how to live in our current home better.  I've poured over the IKEA catalog, Craig's List, fabric swatches and organization web sites.  I've plotted out which furniture we will keep, which will go, what needs to be moved around in order to make this little house work more efficiently for our family.  We also agreed to have a last-ditch open house, so we at least felt like we fought the real estate fight to the bitter end.  And I'm afraid it was bitter--I had already buried the idea of moving, and I did not want to clean and vacate the house on Sunday.  I left our spotlessly clean house with a very grumpy attitude.  Then a very surprising thing happened.  Our Realtor called and said she expected an offer from someone who came to the open house.  What? 

We're trying not to get our hopes up, since the last time we thought an offer was pending things didn't work out so well.  Still, it's been three days and things seem to be progressing.  The potential buyer has been back, asked questions, reportedly gotten a mortgage pre-approval.  We'll see.  A written offer is still pending.  I'm trying very hard not to dissolve into an emotional mess, but it's tough.  Should I carry on with my plans to change our house?  Should I be scouring the real estate websites trying to find a house for us?  Should I quickly finish and wrap all my Christmas shopping in case a sudden move disrupts Santa's progress?  Eek!  So everything feels up in the air, my stomach is quavering, I jump when the phone rings, and I'm craving (and eating) carbs.  The picture above is the first of two "cream" sodas I drank yesterday (in a glass Dorothy decorated).  Fill a glass with ice, then 3/4 full of plain seltzer, then a dash of vanilla syrup (like the kind coffee shops sell), then top it off with whole milk or cream.  Yum.  Sugar.

 

And while the real estate mess has been stressful, this totally made my day!  Mama Shell, of Shell Shares Recipes, sent me an amazingly fabulous calendar.  It's twelve super-cool pages of illustrations of vintage campers and I love it!  My first thought was to put it in the camper, but then I wouldn't get to see it as often, so it's going in my own kitchen (wherever that may be?) so I can drool over how cute they all are every day.  Thank you Shell!

Crochet is perfect for fidgety, nervous fingers.  I've also found that I have three or four minutes each morning and afternoon to crochet while I'm waiting (parked) in the carpool line for Dorothy.  It doesn't seem like a lot of time, but it adds up.  I just keep a project ready to pick up in the passenger seat.  I'd purchased this fun shiny coat this fall but wasn't sure what kind of accessories to wear with something so...shiny.  I decided to go for contrast, so I ordered some really fuzzy alpaca blend yarn.  I like the fuzzy with the shiny, and the scarf and hat are warm and soft.  I didn't use a pattern, they are both just very simple.  I made the hat big enough that it will (hopefully) just sort of sit down on top of my hair without squashing my curls.  It's hard for curly girls to wear hats, but this really warm yet lightweight yarn should help.

Weekend pictures

Another fun, busy weekend!  I finished this hat before we left for an overnight camping trip, to take to a 5-year-old birthday party when we returned.  The new owner seems to like it.  Dorothy approved of the "gem" beads in the center of the flowers.

We took the camper to Lake Monroe in Bloomington.  I went to college at IU, so it was fun to be back in that area.  We drove to campus in the late afternoon just to see how things had changed and vowed to go back next summer to visit some of my favorite old haunts.  Our campsite was, once again, not very woodsy.  Next fall we will know that we have to make reservations early (or commit to 2-night stays) if we want to camp in a natural setting during October.  The place we went was more of an RV park for Indianapolis fishermen or weekenders who are interested in an RV intentional neighborhood scene, not so much a woodsy campground one.  We had no idea going in, but it was also the weekend of this site's annual Halloween festivities, including a campsite decorating contest and trick-or-treating.  We hadn't planned on this, so during our excursion to campus we stopped by a grocery store to purchase candy and a makeshift costume for Dorothy--a $2.99 tiara and wand set.  It ended up being a fun surprise.  The other families were very nice, and the whole evening ended up being very enjoyable even though it wasn't what we pictured.  Since groups were walking around from site to site, many people also made a point to go over and peek in our cute camper, which was once again very unique among much larger and newer (and neutral-colored) campers.  My favorite comment was from one person who asked if it was really retro, or had we purchased it new to look like that.  :)

Now for my pictures.  Above, Dorothy is broom-sweeping our camper as we get things set up.  She fancies she is like Laura Ingalls doing her chores.

Even though our site itself was not woodsy, the campground was right next to the woods surrounding Lake Monroe.  We took a gorgeous hike through the pretty foliage and down to the lake.  (Can you spot the baby?)

Dorothy pretended to be a lake mermaid.  I got this photo of her pretending to jump back to her watery home, but unfortunately did not capture the hysterically cute affected mermaidesque hair-tossing of a moment before.

We cooked chicken sausages on the fire, and enjoyed our favorite fall acorn squash soup, which I'd prepared at home and warmed in the camper microwave.

The almost-full moon was a perfect backdrop to the campsite trick-or-treating. 

Overconfidence

Some people are afflicted with a lack of self-confidence.  Others of us are afflicted with a little too much confidence.  Like people who say, "even though I have never been a 2-dimensional artist, was not chosen to help paint the school's windows in the third grade, and would never even consider painting anything on paper or a canvas to be displayed in public or private, I'll borrow my 4-year-old's paintbrushes and use oil-based permanent paint to decorate my camper with handkerchief paisleys."  And so I did.  One man almost ran his pickup into the fence while driving through the alley, and neighbors I have never met walked dogs (were they even their dogs?) over my way to see what the [heck] I was doing to the little red camper in my back driveway.  It looks...(long pause)...better from a distance than close up.  But no one, ever, nowhere, will have a camper that looks just like mine.  One side down, three to go!

We went camping!

After several weeks of work we finally took our 1978 Fleetwing on the road.  We didn't go far--just over 30 miles down the road to the closest state park we could get reservations at on a few days notice.  It turned out not to even be in the woods, but on a golf course behind a state attraction less than a mile from the little downtown area.  Not exactly the hiking venue we'd had in mind, but this was, after all, just meant as a trial for our camping set up.  We had a little trouble backing in to our spot, being towing neophytes, but our camp neighbors helped guide us in and we quickly set up. Dorothy "decorated" the hitch with acorns upon arrival.

Then she decorated our table bench with fall leaves.

I got things together in the little camper kitchen.

This picture shows scale.  Our camper was by far the smallest one there, no contest, and the only one that wasn't white or offwhite.  (If you click on the photo it will enlarge and you can see it better.)  It was a real conversation starter.  "Oh, you all are the ones in the little red camper!"  That's us, all right.

We walked around the campground in lieu of hiking.  Dorothy collected nature finds in the treasure box we brought along for that purpose.

There was an old school playground with a steep metal slide (wheee!) and these creepy clown swings.

Dorothy and I broke out the camper craft supplies and made some acorn people after our dinner.

Everyone got tucked in; Dorothy up, the rest of us down.  I was surprised that Dorothy actually slept the night through up there in the bunk.  We had a great time.  We've tent camped with Dorothy on several occasions, but she doesn't remember any of them.  She was curious about the fire ("how will we unlit it when we're done?"), was confused that all the wood had disappeared this morning ("did the fire melt it?"), roasted her own chicken sausage and marshmallow, and insisted that we take showers in the campground facilities this morning.  Traveling with a four-year-old is such a great reminder to savor every experience!  We had a great time.  We brought some things we didn't need, and failed to bring a few things that would have been nice to have.  Now that we're a little wiser we're excited to try it again soon.

I made a camper fridgie

More spookies in the house! A few years ago I got this brainstorm on how to display some of the crocheted doilies that have ended up in my linen collection from various dearly departed relatives. I dyed them black, starched them stiff, and hung them in my windows with suction cups and little plastic spiders. This way I get to enjoy the beauty of the fancywork done by the women who came before me, but I don't actually have to use white doilies on my dresser. Dorothy has enjoyed arranging (and rearranging) the spiders.

Think back twenty or thirty years and imagine your grandmother's refrigerator.  It has a little crocheted yarn shape of some sort attached to it with a magnet, doesn't it?  Fridgies are a bit of an art that time has forgotten (and maybe that's for the best), but I revived it for this little project as one of the details to finish of my camper's interior.  My camper doesn't have an actual fridge, but I've attached this one to the galvanized metal backsplash I glued up over the propane range.  Very appropriately campy, I think.

All four sides of the camper are now painted and it's mostly ready to go.  I hooked up the water as a test, and it works.  The propane range does not work but I'm hoping it's just because the tank is empty.  I've been stashing bedding and kitchen essentials in it (a camper quilt is forthcoming but not done), and today I completed the very important task of putting together a camper art bag, with supplies for sketching or painting scenes, rubbing bark, collecting leaves, and gluing googly eyes and fake hair to acorns.  I foresee many hours of mother/daughter fun at picnic tables, stringing nature finds on fishing wire and creating little woodland whimsies with the help of glitter pom-poms!  I also found an old notebook, filled it with lined paper, and tucked a pen inside.  I hope to keep a camper journal with as much or little as we care to log, as a record of our travels.

A before and after

photo courtesy of Fine Design Camper Sales

I'm making progress!  The weather is finally nice and I'm hoping to make big strides on the camper exterior today, but right now I'm killing time in the house waiting for the baby to wake up.  The fabric for the cushions arrived in the mail on Thursday, so yesterday I spent the day wrestling with those.  The polka-dotted fabric is a nice thick indoor/outdoor upholstry fabric that I hope will easily wipe clean, and I found it at a great price online.   We cut the table down to make more standing room in the camper, and to make nice places to sit without being crammed up against the table (for when you're say, nursing a baby and need a bit of room in front).  The piece we cut off I stashed up above, so we can still use it when the table comes down to form a big bed.  I haven't photographed the kitchenette yet, but finishing that up is also on my weekend to-do list, so stay tuned! 

We're desperate to actually get this thing on the road and go camping, but I'm afraid if I move it from its present spot in my back yard that I will not prioritize it, and then it might never get done.  It will certainly (barring unforseen circumstances) be completely done in time for next weekend, but Dorothy gets to bring the class guinea pig home next weekend, and I'm just not sure about a) camping with the class guinea pig, or b) dragging a screaming preschooler away from the class guinea pig to go camping.  I'm open to suggestions on how to handle that one.

And as an update to our costume dilemma, the problem solved itself!  Dorothy was just a tad jealous of her brother's cute rat costume and decided that she would also like to be a rat.  So one more eBay auction won (and for a good price--hooray!), and we're waiting on one more package in the mail.  I can't wait to get some pictures of my wee rat pack next month.

Trailer textiles

With the interior painting done and the weather too hot to paint the exterior, I've been spending some time working on linens.  I made these little camper potholders, and I'm a little embarrassed that they are way cuter than the store-bought ones in my real kitchen.  My real kitchen is red, too, so I might do a switch so I can use these more often!

Now curtains!  I don't know if the print shows up well in the photos, but the blue upper has illustrations of campy (pun intended) vintage travel sights, including enormous fake dinosaurs and, of course, campers.  I went to the trouble of lining these with an old white sheet for extra privacy, and so the sun won't bleach the fabric as quickly.

And a nice stack of cloth napkins, all set for the campfire marshmallow messes of the future. 

Progress pictures

We're now on Day 9 of camper ownership, and my crafty energy is all camper, all the time, until we get this thing in the woods for the first time. But we're having tons of fun already, right here at home! The photo above is to compare to my primer picture, below.

Here's me on the unpainted side of the camper, rocking the schlumpy paint clothes look and inspiring my 4-year-old to beg for a hair bandana. :)

And the painted side! It's red! Embellishment to follow...

And my sewing table, covered in camper-related prints, ready for me to come back inside and stitch curtains, potholders, napkins...maybe a camper apron even? I also found a gorgeous red 100% wool throw at a thrift store that will become part of the camper ensemble. It has a patch sewn on it right now from a company; I guess it was a corporate gift of some sort. I'm just going to unstitch the patch, and I might sew on little white wool felt flowers to cute it up (ala Soule Mama).

In a momentary pause from camper things, I'm having a little Halloween costume trouble. I found a very inexpensive and adorable used rat costume for Worth on eBay, and it's ridiculously cute on him. I love the costumes put out by Old Navy because they are comfy and washable and easy to put on and off, so I just searched for costumes made by them to get inspiration for his. When I found the rat costume I knew it was just right. Dorothy wants to be a cat, so she can chase (and eat--eek!) her brother. The problem is, all the cat costumes I can find to fit my 5T daughter look like skanky cat woman outfits, not the least bit like cats. I did find one, with the help of a friend, but it's selling for between $40 and $50, which is nuts. I paid less than $5 for the baby's, with minimal shipping. And this might seem contrary to my whole blog bit, but I really hate the idea of making one. She'll wear it once, probably, since she's not all that interested in dress-up recently, and furry fabric is really expensive--much more expensive than run-of-the-mill costumes from Target. Plus, and this is really rather annoying, my kid doesn't want me to make her one. At all. I make her things all the time; Halloween costumes should be special. (Where am I going wrong? Eek again!) She wants a store-bought costume. So the search continues...

More primer

We're still at work on this camper project. I haven't taken many pictures because I'm usually too dirty or painty to touch my camera, but I snapped this one today on my phone. I gave Dorothy a sanding block to use while I was using the electric wire sander thingy my brother loaned me. I got one side cleaned, sanded and primed today. The stripes are gone! (Insert evil laughter.) But I may not be able to move my arms or hands tomorrow, as they got the sort of workout they aren't used to. I just chopped vegetables for soup, and ouch. But it's so enjoyable to see this project take shape!

P.S. I feel like I just need to put this out there. Dorothy did not sand on the same side as me while I was using the electric sander, and I wore a mask! :)

Prime time for primer

I'd planned to paint the outside of the camper first, but after Dorothy and I cleaned out the inside yesterday inspiration struck there instead. I'm not sure if there is more primer on the camper walls or me, but I'm having fun. This is the table and bunk area. I removed the table board to paint. The table board can be placed either table-height for eating, or level with the benches to make a large bed. The cabinets overhead can be used for storage or can be folded down to make a bunk bed, which Dorothy has already claimed as her own.

I went back to the hardware store today for interior paint and selected these. I'm going to paint the walls the middle shade of blue, and the cabinets (there is a wee kitchenette, not pictured) bright red. I love vibrant, true red, as anyone who witnessed my wedding already knows. Especially my lovely bridesmaids, dear folks, who wore shiny scarlet dresses in good humor. No apple or cranberry sidestepping for me, thank you. I found red with white polka-dot upholstry fabric for the bench cushions, and am planning to order one of the vintage camper prints with a coordinating red bandana fabric for the curtains. I hope Dorothy and I have as much fun camping in this tiny room as we're having fixing it up!

A one-day adventure

So we loaded up the muffins and other picnic items and headed for Western Kentucky. We stopped along the way for a picnic in the park. That's my son munching his cracker in the photo above, not my husband, in case you were confused. (Genetics! Oh the mystery. That I can give birth to children who look just like my spouse. But in this case the outfit helps.)

And we saw the camper, but decided to think it over a possible purchase while we hit the touristy sites in Grand River. Patti's 1880s Settlement was totally charming, although we were a bit confused about where the 1880s bit came in. It was a delightful hodgepodge of home decor stores, feminine boutiques, sweet shops and touristy amusements.

Dorothy loved the playground, but loved the pink tractor outside its namesake boutique even more.

Then we took a deep breath and...went back and bought the little camper! This is the only "before" picture I'm going to share until I have some progress for comparison. It's a project! But I think it will be a fun one.

And finally we tucked our little explorers in for the road trip back home. They both slept, with visions of future adventures dancing in their heads, I hope.

What this woman wants

Ok, so I know some women are really into jewelry. Me, I like jewelry, it's fine, especially if I beaded it myself or if it was a gift. But if someone is going to spend money on me, jewelry is probably not where it's at. This is currently a big joke in my house, as my tiny-little-camper lust intensifies. My husband and I laugh about how horrified I'd be if he, say, bought me a diamond bracelet instead of a vintage trailer. It would catch on my crocheting yarn, get mucked in my bread dough, scratch my baby's head, and look terrible with my Old Navy t-shirts and Keen sandals. (Cue laughter.) But if he were going to get me a bracelet (and it were something I wanted), I'd probably go and get my nails done right before. But instead, I really want a little camper so my little troop of adventurers and I can go mobile. And this weekend we're going to go look at one in Western Kentucky! And prior to the (possible) purchase, instead of a manicure, I went and had a hitch installed on my little SUV. Ta-dah! It looks solid, and it's kind of exciting to think that we're now tow-ready, if we decide to buy. If we don't buy, at least we'll have the hitch already, and we'll surely have a fun excursion, hopefully not resembling our last mini-roadtrip adventure.

In further preparation, I've been investigating paint and fabric options for our wee, wheeled fixer-upper. I definitely think the exterior should be painted red, possibly with white polka-dots. And check out this terrific fabric for the inside, or this one. Who knew? Keen-wearing, bracelet-eschewing, cute-fabric-loving, adventure-seeking mamas who sew must be in such abundance that someone brilliantly created vintage camper fabric prints just for us. I feel so unoriginal, yet at the same time entirely pleased, because now I can buy one of these and stitch up some camper curtains!

In other news, Dorothy loves preschool. Her class goes Monday through Thursday only, and this morning at breakfast she asked me how many more days before she gets to go again. And we've shown our house twice this week, which means I've not had time to do much other than shuttle kids and plot my little camper kill. Still no buyer, but handful of recent showings is heartening.