poured the remword Mom used.
Today, I was rushing to get the laundry put away before I left to run an errand, and I remembered why, shortly after we got the RV and had taken a few trips, I started to put Kip’s washed and folded laundry on top of the stand with the drawers he uses. It was because every time I shut the bottom drawer, I broke it. The first few times, after fixing it, he said, “Since you don’t seem to be able to open and shut this drawer without breaking it, why don’t you just let me put away the things I keep in there?”
So, that is what I did…unless I was preoccupied and forgot, which is what happened today. As I sit here writing this, I know Kip has yet to discover the broken drawer. I can almost feel some of you out there cringing at the thought of having a rackier like me around. Rackiness is something you’re born with and it cannot be easily corrected. It’s part of the afflicted’s DNA.
Mom used to say, “Mary, why do you have to rackey all of your things? Everything you own…your shoes, clothes, toys, books, even the curls I put in your hair, all get rackied right a way. Other kids keep their things nice for at least a little while.”
I’m allergic to rackey… Achoo!!
Mom was right. I undid all of my doll’s perfectly coiffed hair and either cut it or braided it. I altered their clothes and poked a hole in the baby doll’s mouth so I could stick the tip of the doll bottle into it’s mouth so it looked more realistic. I tore apart and changed, everything. I don’t mean maliciously or in a sinister way, I just didn’t take care of things like I should have. Like I said, it was in my DNA. Mom had some rackey DNA, too. I believe she was the only offspring in her family who had a different perspective on “things.” Things were not her thing. In all of her childhood pictures she is wearing coveralls and a hat pulled down over her eyes. In her adult years, she always dressed and looked nice, but she really didn’t care about having anything expensive. She was a one of a kind grown-up, just as she was a one of a kind kid. Her three sisters and her mother, were all ladies. They barely spoke above a whisper. Mom could be loud…but in a good way.
A rare photo of Mom without her tennis shoes on. She bought the cheap ones and colored in the Nike logo, Sisters Ella and Helen are to her left,
Mom let me wear whatever I wanted to. My play clothes and Sunday best were one and the same. I sometimes wore a beautiful taffeta dress to play with my cousins under Grandpa’s trees. I’ve seen the pictures. My cousins all had on their play clothes. My dress soon became rackey red, but I loved it!

Mom would run around the house all day cleaning, and at the end of the day, the house looked exactly the same as it did when she started. She said she wasn’t made to work hard. I think I’ve made the comment before that she hardly ever told me to dust or vacuum… except for the motel rooms I cleaned. I did a pretty good job on those, but you should have seen the cleaning basket I used. What a mess. All the other girls had their cleaning solutions and rags all neatly organized in their baskets. Their dirty rags were always deposited into Mom’s car trunk as soon as they finished cleaning. I, on the other hand, fished mine out the next morning. It was easier to tell which ones were dirty and which were still clean. The dirty rags smelled bad.
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Mom opened up the trunk of her car first thing in the morning and the plastic laundry baskets would be waiting inside for us to fill with all the dirty towels from all the dirty rooms. Mom would haul everything uptown to the laundromat and spend the morning washing and drying all the towels. During the wait time, she had coffee with whomever was at Mack’s Cafe. Mom didn’t fold the towels. That made her crazy. She brought them back for us to neatly fold. Mom, herself, was a bit of a rackier, but she didn’t tolerate rackiness in others.

I like being clean and neat, and sometimes I can go for long periods of time being neat and clean. It’s when I get too many things going on at once or have too many distractions that I lose all control of anything resembling orderly and organized.

I saw a quote at the end of my friend, Judy’s blog that read, “Organized people are just lazy. They don’t like to take the time to look for anything.” I get it!

The subject of tonight’s blog is the tiny home.

Writing about it is probably going to take the spring out of my step, the joy out of my heart, and wipe the smile off of my face. When I have finished outlining, as promised, the good, the bad, and the ugly, I will surely eat several of the chocolate, chocolate chip, muffins I made today so I could practice using the convection oven before making the move to the tiny home. The TH has a stove top range, and a microwave/convection oven, but no regular oven. Wouldn’t you know it? My practice yielded eighteen beautiful and delectably moist, muffins. I haven’t eaten all eighteen yet, but that is how I test the success of my practices.

I made these fake desserts the other day.

Here is a list of things that have to be completed before we move from the RV to the TH.

1. The pier and beam foundation has to be corrected. The concrete bars were poured for an eighteen foot wide TH. Ours is seventeen feet wide. The construction manager came to the site last Friday and explained to Kip and me how it will be corrected. He said this as we waded through deep puddles of water from the downpour the night before. Anyway, they have to replace the rebar that go down into the ground below the bars, so they will be in the correct position. When that is all corrected, they will anchor the house. If you want to understand what I’m saying, but you don’t…call Kip.
2. Next, FHA will send out an inspector to approve the correction. Who knows how long that will take?
3. When the contractor gets the written approval from FHA, we can get the electricity and the water and sewer hooked-up. Again…we will depend on the kindness of others as far as the timeline is concerned. We are supposedly on the work schedule for the electric company and the water/sewer company. Let’s hope that doesn’t have to be re-set.
4. When the first three items are completed, we can move in.
5. In the meantime, the RV port/garage, metal building, will be built on the slab that has been poured and is ready and waiting. The concrete driveway can be poured after the electricity is routed underground where the driveway will be.
6. I do believe, the last thing that will be completed will be the skirting around the bottom of the house. We don’t have to wait for that to be completed to move in. The tires will be removed when they anchor the house. The hitch was removed today.

So that is it in a nutshell. The BIG variable is the weather. We can’t move through the list if we’re getting significant amounts of rain, which is in the forecast for the next several days. I’m trying not to get depressed about the weather, but I need to be realistic. Ninety-percent chance of precipitation is a pretty strong indicator.

We are entirely comfortable in the RV and the pets don’t know there is anything better waiting for them out there. They, however, are used to traveling in this thing. They can’t figure out why they’re waking up and looking out at the same rather boring scenery day after cotton picking day. I mean the poor things need a break, right? Sorry…that could be some of my own feelings bleeding through.

If I had to be honest, we’ve been far too busy to move. Our days seem to fill up. Why is that I wonder? Why do our days fill up to the brim even when we don’t have to go to work every day?

1. We go to the doctor more.
2. We have more time to participate in time-consuming things, like belonging to things that consume time.

This was either the Star Wars production or our Christmas Play

1. We go to the doctor more. Oh, I already listed that.
2. When we talk, we have to say everything twice. We either forget we already said it, or the other person can’t hear us. Either way, it’s time-consuming.
3. Never mind…it’s dark now. I can go to bed. I have to get up really early tomorrow to watch it rain.

I have a part-time job. I might have a full-time one, too. Sorry…I can’t hear me.

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One more thing………………

Happy Birthday to my dear friend, Pat Davis. You are amazing and I love you bunches.