There's no place like home....

 

Home sweet home?  (Love's, Hampshire, IL) 

We've been driving around in our dorm room on wheels for 3 months now. We've been to 26 states (we added Kansas yesterday), we've gradually added some Petro and Pilot truck stops to our list of hangouts, and we now consider finding an RV dump that is on our route as a total coup! 

Yesterday was the first time either of the dogs got hurt while we were out walking. We were wandering the sandy scrub around the truck stop in El Paso, when Gem slowed up and started limping. We went back to the curb (I wasn't sitting in the dirt with the bugs, snakes and scorpions!) and I checked the paw she was favoring, and found a huge grass burr and it was HARD. It poked my fingers a few times while I was getting it out! So I apologized profusely, and we limited our potty walks to the rocky verge after that. 

We learn a little bit more with every load we take. Sometimes we learn basic stuff, like when you have a heavy load and it's centered over the wheels, the truck rides really smooth. Sometimes we learn that we really like an area or maybe not so much. Sometimes it's just a realization that we've been in an area enough that we are actually familiar with it. We are figuring out the lifestyle, but trying to figure out the processes that create our paycheck is seriously complicated New Math! (My math skills are strictly basic math, and Nick did ok with geometry on the x and y axes.)

So we are settling back into truck life. Nick over-packed on t-shirts. I grabbed brand new bags of the dogs' hip & joint meds, and lost them in a space that has only 7 cabinet doors. After years of complaining that he never talks to me in the car, Nick made multiple conscious attempts to start conversations. We haven't changed a lot, still making the same type of mistakes, but he's willing to try to fix something that I have told him bothers me.

He loves me! He REALLY loves me!