Everything but the kitchen sink

This is a kitchen sink post and a long one at that. I'm throwing everything in this one, none of it connected and none of it relevant to the news of the day.  Thank God for that; nobody wants to further discuss the news of the day because wow, what a shitshow.  

So school's back in session. My kids are older and wiser, their fresh little smiley faces heading out the door for a great new school year.  A friend on Facebook circulated the following article to help us "prepare healthy lunches!" for the new school year.  Brimming with back-to-school energy and enthusiasm, I clicked on the link.  I found the article immensely helpful.  (It's hard to tell in writing but that last sentence was sarcasm at its most exaggerated.)

http://goop.com/kids-lunch-recipes-from-chef-moms

As I stand late at night in the kitchen packing the following day's lunches, I conjure the following phrases: "Hudson has always loved Asian flavors" and "Maca is a Peruvian superfood; look for it in powdered form at health food stores" and my personal favorite, "The slightly sweet addition of mirin, a small amount of sugar, and (optional) dashi broth, transforms eggs in the most comforting of ways."

I then send a couple quick faux apologies up to my kids asleep in their beds and toss a couple stale bagels, devoid of cream cheese because we're out again, into their lunchboxes.

Maybe I should try packing lunches like Goop suggests just one time. It wouldn't be for health reasons; it would be more for entertainment. I like to picture Lucien's face should he crack open his lunch to find a Japanese sweet omelet and some lemon tamari dipping sauce for his pickled vegetables.  I can hear the incredulous "WHAT THE HELL, MOM......what is this pretentious crap......well, at least the eggs are comforting with that sweet addition of mirin."

I'm not entirely immune. I will admit to getting sucked into a tiny bit of parental overkill.  Coco recently had a birthday and requested a circus party.  I booked a party at SANCA, our local School of Acrobatics and New Circus Arts (we got it all in Seattle, trust it) and vowed to "keep it simple."  I was not going to bake anything, cook anything.  I was going to buy a tray of cupcakes, a few bags of pretzels, maybe some juice boxes if I was feeling generous.  Have some fun, throw a few bags of popcorn at them, get it done, that was the plan.

Then Coco said quietly, "Oh. I was hoping for a real birthday cake" and something immediately switched inside me.  Of course she needed a real birthday cake!  Yes!  Baking and lots of it!  Now!

I'm weird like that, can be very all-or-nothing.  I'm either in front leading the parade or I'm hiding in the corner hissing at people.  Hanging out in the middle doesn't last long for me so I went from "I'm not baking a damn thing and they can deal with it" to "I'm gonna bake the best birthday cake that girl has ever seen, it's gonna blow her dang mind" in a matter of seconds.

The next events were as follows, in chronological order --

*Log on to Pinterest*
*Search for a circus cake*
*Regret logging on to Pinterest*
*Feel bad about myself*

Well way to go, Lucas, lucky you.

PS. The number on top tells me Lucas is turning 1.
He is never going to remember this cake
which tells me you are not baking this cake for Lucas at all.

What is a Hezry?
Do you think they just mis-spelled Henry, accidentally flipped the "N" on its side?

 I like to think they did -- less perfect.
(Hez(n)ry, by the way, is also turning 1, though this cake seems more reasonable)

what fresh hell is this.

Pinterest is full of overachievers. I quickly abandoned Pinterest and instead Googled "easy birthday cake recipes" where I stumbled across the rainbow cake idea.  Perfect.  I threw myself into its creation.  A rainbow cake is a six layer cake, each layer a different color of the rainbow.  It took a long time. There was fondant and sprinkles involved. I was sweating profusely by the end.

It ended up being the tallest cake in existence because I didn't shave down my layers sufficiently.  It tipped over halfway through the cutting and serving, no longer able to stand on its own.  It was a top heavy rainbow sonofabitch.

But Coco was happy.  And I do love to see my Coco girl happy.

Speaking of Coco, we're a little concerned.  Alex took Coco to a video arcade recently that had one of those claw machines -- the machines that are rigged to rarely, if ever, let you win anything.  Still, she tried.  And tried.

Coco had been given a set amount of money to use at the arcade and it was dwindling quickly.  Alex tried to reason with her, explained the claws are intentionally weak-springed so they don't hold onto toys very well and suggested maybe it was time to try another game. She stopped speaking to Alex after that, stopped making eye contact, just kept pumping quarters into the claw game.  I soon thereafter received a text that said, "Help. Coco is like a degenerate gambler."

She came home with a stuffed animal she won from the claw game and a smug smile on her face. Coco has an iron will -- which should bode well for her, except that sometimes she can also be unreasonable.    

Speaking of gambling, Alex and I went to Snoqualmie Casino awhile ago with a couple friends.  We are not casino people but thought it would be fun to try something different. Even better, we decided to take the casino bus from Seattle instead of driving.  We pictured the casino bus as being a fun time -- champagne flowing and upbeat music playing for festive bus riders and whatnot. The casino bus was a total party in our minds.

The casino bus is not a total party.  It is the opposite.  The casino bus is a silent, kind of depressing thing full of mostly elderly people, half of whom are asleep.

The casino itself was also not fun.  After our initial shocked gasps at all the smoking happening inside the casino (it's on a Native American reservation so they make their own smoking rules) we promptly bought a pack of cigarettes, giggling like teenagers giddy with rule breaking.  None of us have smoked a cigarette in years so we all immediately coughed up a lung and took turns saying, "Oh my god, this is so gross."  We tossed the pack but still -- rebels!

Alex very quickly lost a lot of money at the blackjack table so he retreated to the corner with us where we played nickle slots and drank alcohol until it was time to grab the bus back to Seattle.  If you think the casino bus is depressing on the way to the casino, just wait until the trip back home. That is one silent bummer of a loser bus.

Here are more happenings in the past few months I never wrote about.  It's a lengthy list, forgive me, but I feel compelled to document these things, even if just in a crappy iPhone photo way.

The kids and I met this guy walking his pet lizard on a leash in South Lake Union --

it was not a fast walk for man and lizard, more an aimless mosey

We went on our annual camping trip with our friends, no wind storm this time --

Then we went camping with our friends again --

North Cascades National Park, by the way, is stunning

We played euchre at night by a lantern covered in a beanie hat --

One evening, Bobo fell asleep like this as I was putting Lucien to bed. We laughed at him pretty hard; he was barely hanging onto that log, just look at his little legs --

By morning, he had fallen off but was still asleep.

Bearded dragons are the chillest of animals

I learned how to play mahjong with the ladies--

and now I am hooked

We still have a sweet and funny though frustrating dog --

Natani the Navajo dog is not allowed on the couch

but she likes being on the couch very much

and sneaks up onto it at every opportunity.

We had a back-to-school party at our house involving a ukulele band --

We ate tacos, sang along, later had a water balloon fight in the yard  

We called it the back to school taco-lele party

and it was glorious.

Our friend Seattle Dad wore this amazing hat that one time --

Yep, I'm still going.  I still have more.

I went up to the top of Smith Tower for the third time, for the last Tower Sessions concert. The Tower Sessions are private concerts, held once a month in the apartment at the top of historical Smith Tower --

I will miss this concert series.  

I will miss the music but will miss most of all climbing all those ladders
and spiral staircases and catwalks 

to get to the very top.  

Below is a picture of the gorgeous Smith Tower, completed in 1914.  It was the tallest building west of the Mississippi River until the 1930's when something taller was built in Kansas, I think  --

The stunning private "lighthouse"apartment at Smith Tower is the pyramid shape at the top.  It's owned by a tiny dynamo of a woman named Petra and her children, and is where the concert series was held.  The glowing glass ball at the very very tippy top is where we were for these next couple pictures. It's a long way to climb and a small hole to squeeze through to get up into the glass globe but if you can make it, it's worth the effort --

My inlaws were recently here for a visit.  My mother-in-law had a birthday during their stay and we celebrated by inviting some friends for dinner, including a messy though delicious guest named Dungeness Crab, which we ripped apart like the disgusting animals we are.  I love the taste of crab but the process of eating it can be unsettling.

Alex and I took off for a few days while my in-laws took care of the kid wrangling.  We took the RV over to Port Townsend, a picturesque Victorian town on the Olympic Peninsula.

We stayed in a mini castle at nearby Fort Worden.  The "castle" was an odd place.  It was once a single family home with a single bedroom so we were the only ones in it for the night.  As soon as we entered, I said, "This place feels weird." Later, as we walked around the grounds outside the castle, I said, "It feels like someone's watching us, do you see anybody?"  Alex concurred, said he felt a little twitchy and tense himself.

On a whim, I looked up the castle on my phone --

You betcha it's haunted!  

Or so say some people. 

It was not a great night of sleep.

We spent one night in the castle then switched to the nearby Fort Worden campground on the beach where we promptly locked our keys inside the RV.  The tow truck driver our insurance company sent as part of our roadside assistance package couldn't jimmy the window enough to get the wedge thing and the metal thing in to pop the lock.

The tow truck driver scratched his head and mentioned he knew a guy who was "good with locks" in town.  It's not as shady as it sounded at first -- the lock guy is a retired police detective who now works part time as a locksmith.  He was also one of the most cheerful guys I've ever had the pleasure of coming across; he looked a bit like John Denver with that round shiny face and big smile.

Smiley John Denver Lock Guy got into our RV in less than ten seconds using a pair of tweezers and a tiny pick.  We did not give him our home address.  He seemed very nice but still, not taking any chances there.

Fort Worden as a whole is kind of an eerie place.  It's an old fort abandoned after WWII and turned into a state park, and is mostly empty now that we're headed into the off season. Although eerie, it's a cool place. You can stay in the old barracks and officers' homes at Fort Worden, and have a nice meal and a drink in the old jail.

If it looks vaguely familiar, Fort Worden is also where An Officer and a Gentleman was filmed -- and now we're all thinking about a beautiful shirtless young Richard Gere.  At least I know I am.

OK, I think I'm done now.  That was a lot of catching up.  As for our Mexico City news, it's more complicated than not complicated.  As of right now, there are no openings in the international schools but there "may" be openings in the near future.  This makes it very difficult to plan.

Applications are filed with a handful of schools and now we wait.  If the schools come through, we're gone in the new year, perhaps with very little advance notice.  If they don't come through, sorry, Seattle suckers, you're stuck with us.  Or at least you're stuck with me and the kids and you'll see Alex every other weekend.  Ouch.


All righty, off to tackle those homemade sushi roll lunches,
HA HA HA HA HA
MJ

Guessing Game

I'm back at the Paris book.  I have a developmental editor working with me now and she's been huge. We're dismantling all my ideas from back in November and developing new ideas.  Who knew there were so many ideas?  It's exciting but my head's swimming.  

While my head is in the bookwriting clouds, here's a fun game.  Guess which of these French quotes hanging on our kitchen wall Natani can reach?

yep....that one

That was too easy.  How about this:  Guess what terrifying object Natani is growling at and fiercely protecting us from?

That's right!  It's her own toy!  She forgot it on the back porch and it then blew into a strange, unrecognizable and frightening shape.  I like to believe she felt foolish when I let her outside and she circled growling at it until she worked up the courage to approach and sniff, but I'm not sure dogs are that self aware.

Here's another fun guessing question:  What's wrong with the schnauzer?  Did the schnauzer die?

Nope, no worries, he's alive.  We just took him on a hike. He was happy for half of it and then he was most decidedly not happy at all.  He just kind of flopped on the ground and said, "no."  So we carried him back.

I'm too old for this sh*t

Seattle is a boomtown. Our population is exploding, our home prices increasing to ludicrous new highs. It will soon become common to hear "I bought this ramshackle 1957 bungalow for 7.5 kajillion dollars."

Our neighborhood is changing rapidly; old homes are being torn down on every block and clusters of skinny townhomes soon built in their places.  I hate these new ugly buildings and my kids know it. When we drive past yet another old home being tickled to death by a bulldozer, Lucien or Coco will mutter,"Dammit.  There goes another Victorian with turn-of-the-century charm -- the architectural details along the roofline were to die for -- being torn down to make room for an ugly modern box lacking in character and quality."

Hearing your words coming out of someone else's tiny little mouth is both eerie and heart-swelling.

Thanks to all this urban progress, streets are regularly closed in our neighborhood for big construction machines and utility crews.  Driving the kids to school has become a frustrating task because there are always new and unexpected "ROAD CLOSED" signs popping up in front of the car.  I then must improvise, zig zag around, find a new unimpeded path.  Then the next week there are more signs -- the new route's closed now, too.

I'm convinced someday there will be no possible route to school so we'll go back home and watch movies and eat Nacho Cheese Doritos.  The excuse I will call into the school will be "there are no more streets left."  I guarantee the office staff will understand.  They will probably be taking the call from their own living rooms, having found no viable route to school themselves.

oh god.  no.  just stop it.

Alex and I attended the elementary school fundraising auction over the weekend.  Alex bid on a restaurant gift certificate because he's been wanting to treat his hardworking team at work to a nice dinner.  He missed a few crucial details before he bid and won, though -- namely that the certificate was for $200 worth of bagels. That's going to be one weird team dinner.

I took Coco and Lucien to the Seattle Bouldering Project while Alex was in Mexico for work last week.  I love bouldering, especially at this point in time.  When I'm hanging high on a wall by only my fingernails, all I can think about is how to keep hanging on.  I can't think about the words I'm using for the Paris book, and how most of the words I'm using are stupid words and I need to find good words. Bouldering is a reprieve from crippling self-doubt.

I may love the singular focus that comes with bouldering but my kids were less enthused. Within an hour they could not feel their arms nor legs so laid in whimpering little kid puddles on the mats and begged to go home.  Seattle climbers are a very supportive lot; they high-fived me and said, "Nicely done, Mom, you got 'em!"

We're going back whenever the kids get uppity.  You giving me lip?  GET ON THE WALL.

We took another trip in the RV before Al left for Mexico.  Taking off in an RV is more work than it sounds because you have to empty the RV when you're not using it and refill it when you're ready to take off again. You can't leave food in there to rot, can't leave linens in there to get damp in our wet Seattle winter weather.  It's like packing a tiny home each and every time so something is always inevitably forgotten. Last time it was ketchup and eggs.  This time it was butter and a pillow.

We also forgot to buy firewood.  Other campers' fires dotted the campground as we attempted to make our fire with a roll of toilet paper, small sticks and some damp leaves.  It was brief, brilliant, and smoky.

There are three types of RVers we've encountered so far.  The most common type is the retired couple.  Then there are young families like ours.  The third is more difficult to categorize in a definitive way -- they're the kind that shuffle around the campsite in dirty bathrobes and slippers and don't make eye contact. I'm not sure of their age or family situation.  It's anyone's guess what they're all about yet they are definitely my favorite.

and old man schnauzer went on a hike

Lucien recently told me about a girl he has a crush on at school.  He was invited to go to a movie with her family and while we waited for her dad to come pick him up, Lucien said, "I really hope I impress her."  I worried about what "impressing her" might entail (probably farting on cue) so I asked cautiously, "Hey Loosh....how do you think you should communicate with a girl in order to "impress" her?"  He thought a minute, pointed at me, winked and said, "I'm gonna speak to her in German."

It's worth a shot, I guess.  Better than farting.  If it doesn't impress her it will at least befuddle her and that's worth some laughs.  So go on, baby, sprechen sie deutsch.  And good luck.

Coco just ran into the kitchen and announced, "Donald Trump just bit me."  Frankly, I wouldn't put it past him.

Anyone want a bagel?
MJ

a lemon or merely lemon scented?

Lucien loves Star Wars.  He recently began coloring a picture of R2D2 but left the room briefly to discuss important matters with his mother. He returned to find his sister had turned R2D2 into a pretty princess at a tea party thanks to her pink marker and bottomless princess sticker collection.

There was a bit of yelling but then, thank God, my son realized the exquisite humor in the situation and laughed until he cried.  As did I.

R2D2 has never been so fancy.
The tiara. It kills me.

In other news, we briefly regretted our Winnebago purchase over the long weekend when a panel blew off the side while flying down the highway.  Sometimes one experiences buyer's remorse when one's vehicle starts blowing to bits at 70 mph.

It's possible this is going to become an RV blog.  Or an RV blog with a touch of  "our desert dog, seven months later, continues to destroy all of our stuff" blog.*  When we first moved into Banister Abbey, I thought this would be a home renovation blog.  And it was, briefly, but I have since gotten away from posting pictures of our home improvement.  My point is, I'm no longer sure what my point is.

(*Speaking of Natani, she knocked Coco's favorite game off the counter this week and started chewing it up.  I hate this game.  Alex hates this game.  My mother hates this game and my mother hates nothing in this world except stupid, stupid Mermaid Island.

I debated whether or not to let Mermaid Island die "a natural death" at the jaws of our destroyer, Natani the Navajo dog.  But in the end, I couldn't do it and rescued the ridiculous thing.  My mother can't forgive me.)

nom nom nom i love you nom nom

So the directionless blog wanderings continue this week with more tales of skiing (could be a skiing blog now) and RVs and bestiality.

I might as well take care of that last item now since it's all anyone will think about until I address it. We went out for Seattle Mom's birthday Saturday night and her husband, Seattle Dad, told us the story of the infamous "Enumclaw horse sex case" which happened in 2005 outside Seattle.  Some guy died from internal injuries (perforated colon, I believe) after being on the receiving end of sex with a stallion.  By "stallion" I mean a real stallion, not a euphemism for a virile male.  Truly, a horse.

Our beautiful friends out with us in Ballard.

Right after he told us the terrible horse story.
Why did he do that to me.

I haven't been able to shake that horse story since I heard it.  In addition to being repulsed by some sections of humanity, I just have so many questions about how it happened.  I mean what......how....

anyway, the takeaway from that is the human race is doomed.

We may all be headed for hot livin' in hell but in the meantime, the family and I continue to enjoy the Winnie B and more time on the slopes during mid-winter school break.

I look happy. The Loosh does not look happy.  

HE IS HAPPY

(Nope, he really wasn't, so mad at me right here)

The family headed for Hoodoo, a ski resort in Central Oregon, over the long Presidents Day weekend.  Hoodoo allows RV camping in the parking lot, provides an electrical hookup but nothing else.  It was our first attempt at rationing water, which we did incorrectly so ran out of fresh water from our tank on the second day.  We're learning, we're learning.

I remain the sole driver of the RV.  Alex prefers to put his feet up and avoid driving something big and scary and I have fairly debilitating control issues, particularly when it comes to my family's locomotion.  In that sense, Alex and I are perfectly paired.

I cannot overstate how excited Alex and I were at the prospect of camping at the base of a chairlift. We were near giddy on the drive to Hoodoo, imagining the extreme convenience of being able to wake up, eat a bowl of cereal, throw on our gear and walk twenty feet to the lift.  We were like kids being told they were camping at the base of a candy mountain, and when they awoke in the morning they could shovel mouthfuls of the sweet stuff into their gaping jaws immediately.

Excitement aside, the challenges began immediately upon arriving at Hoodoo and pulling into our reserved space in the resort parking lot.  An RV has to be level in order to avoid damage to both the refrigeration and slide-out wall mechanisms.  If you're parked in a non-level spot, you must put levelers under the lower wheels to even things out.  We've leveled Winnie before with our cheery bright yellow plastic levelers with zero trouble.  But that was then.

When you place RV levelers on top of wet pavement, slush, and a thin layer of ice at a ski resort, then try to drive your RV on top of them, those goddamn cheery yellow levelers shoot away from your vehicle with impressive agility.  You're not getting on top of those things; they're spooked gazelles sprinting into the forest.

When something isn't working, Alex pulls inward, goes silent with a steely and impressive determination.  When he goes quiet like that, I back off, disappear, don't bother him.  Trust it, he wants to be alone with his thoughts.  I instead watched and prayed silently from the inside as he tried shovels, ice scrapers, portable heaters, even put the levelers on top of our anti-slip table placemats.  The placemats were quickly shredded by the tires.  Now I need new placemats but that's neither here nor there.

It took Alex so long to get the RV up on those levelers, I had begun making dinner in the back by the time it happened.  The kids and I grew accustomed to grabbing onto whatever piece of furniture was nearby when Alex revved the engine and lurched Winnie forward to give it another go.  When he finally succeeded, our RV neighbors next door pounded on their windows and cheered.

Alex had been so immersed in getting the deed done, he hadn't realized he'd drawn an audience of fellow RVers and people waiting in nearby passenger cars.  He was like, "People were watching me?  Should I be embarrassed?" but I said, "Nah, hold your head high, man, you are the new face of determination in Central Oregon."

Alex has got serious grit.

We're barely on 'em, but we're on 'em.

we love skiing blah blah blah

Hoodoo is closed Tuesdays.  We camped Monday night and awoke Tuesday morning to find we were absolutely alone in this world --

Winnebago feels lonely and insignificant

I loved the solitude, loved having the entire place to ourselves like a giant snowy playground.  But me being me, I looked over my shoulder every five minutes and thought, "Gosh, we're really alone up here, a murderer could drive into this parking lot and kill us at any time and no one would ever know."  My thoughts are pretty dark but I take comfort in the fact Enumclaw guy's "I should have sex with that horse" is still way way worse.  

Coco and I climbed the beginner slope and went sledding.  While up there, a truck pulled into the parking lot and several men jumped out.  My heart stopped.  It was my nightmare coming true, I was sure of it.  I knew what I had to do;  I had to rush them, confront them, let them know I wasn't going to go quietly.  I was in such a hurry to confront those men about their murderous intent, Coco fell out of the sled in my hustle down the embankment back to the parking lot.

Sorry, baby

but Mama's protecting you

It became apparent, after I ran at their faces, the men in the truck were a father and his three teenage sons who didn't realize Hoodoo was closed Tuesdays.  They were dejected to say the least; the dad had taken off work for the day and the three sons had taken a day off from school.  They only had one snowboard and one pair of boots between them; the rest had planned to rent from the very closed rental shop.

Super nice non-murderous guys. We watched them and yelled our enthusiastic support as father and sons climbed the steepest runs.  They took turns using the one pair of boots and one snowboard.  They cheered for whomever's turn it was then yelled encouragement at the poor sucker as he climbed the equipment back up to them.  They made the best of a disappointing situation.

Sorry I thought you were criminals, guys.  You're inspiring in your can-do attitudes and it was a pleasure to make your acquaintance.

and it was fun to camp in a parking lot

Now back to beginning -- the Winnie B shedding her parts on the drive home to Seattle.  I looked in the sideview mirror after we'd cleared Portland to see what appeared to be a large piece of metal flying alongside our vehicle.  I yelled back to Alex, who was locked in the bathroom at the time with his computer in an attempt to combat motion sickness while answering emails (that was a mouthful and a confusing one at that, long story) I yelled something along the lines of, "WE GOT A PROBLEM, MAN."

Alex came rushing back to the cockpit and confirmed something had gone awry with his panicked, "Pull over!  Now!  The side of the car's about to blow off!" but I was surrounded by people on a major freeway with a shoulder not wide enough to accommodate the Winnie B.

I slowed down, put on my emergency flasher lights, prayed for an exit ramp, told Alex he was going to have to run into the highway to grab the piece if we lost it before I could stop.  (Alex has grit, remember.  I don't.  He was the obvious best candidate for the job.)

It was then I realized what people had been trying to tell me.  Not two minutes earlier, a couple had pulled up alongside me and honked their horn.  Then the man made some emphatic gestures.  He pointed at his own eyeballs with two fingers then pointed at the Winnie B.  It was the ole "I'm lookin' at you" gesture and it struck me as very rude.  I wasn't doing anything wrong, wasn't speeding, was well between the lines, hadn't cut anyone off.  How dare he.

I began making the same gesture back at him.  Two fingers pointed at my eyeballs then pointed at his eyeballs. "Oh yeah?  You're lookin' at me, buddy?  Well I'M LOOKIN' AT YOU, TOO.  I can look at things, too, and I'm lookin' at YOU.  What you gonna say about it?"  He eventually floored it and took off in front of me with a shake of his head.  What a jerk.

Except as I pulled off to the side of the road with part of my RV detached, of course, it became evident he wasn't a jerk at all and was instead trying to give me an important message, that it was time to take a good hard look at my vehicle.

I should perhaps evaluate my suspicions regarding the motives of strangers.  I am an island!

I finally eased to the side of the road on a desolate off-ramp.  Alex jumped out the side door -- straight into a pile of dog poop.  What are the chances?  What are the chances of pulling onto a rural exit ramp and jumping into a pile of dog poop?  That's just how life happens for us.  We embrace the unpredictability but not the mess.

Alex hopped around a bit, some expletives, decided he never wanted to see that pair of shoes again and took them off  right there on the side of the road.  He wrapped them in a plastic bag for later disposal and asked the children to retrieve his slippers.

It didn't take much effort to pull the panel off; it had been dangling by a mere thread.

there used to be a piece there...

...but it is now in here

Al hopped back in and we pulled back onto the highway, slightly rattled but relieved.  Not five seconds later, the battery warning light illuminated before me, a glaring red light that seemed sent from the devil himself.  I hesitated before delivering the bad news to Alex, who was happily wearing his slippers and chatting about our near disaster on the highway.  "Err...Al....?"

One exit later, we were back on a rural off-ramp reading our owners manual.  The manual said if the battery warning light came on, we needed to stop the RV immediately, pop the hood, and inspect the somethin'-somethin' belt for a tear.  Okee dokee.

We didn't know what a somethin' somethin' belt was.  A few Google searches later, we popped the hood and stuck our heads way down inside the bowels of the mechanics of the Winnie B.  The somethin' somethin' belt looked awesome, in fact looked brand new, because it is.

When we took off again from our second emergency stop of the hour, the battery warning light turned off and stayed off.  But still, we were jittery and spent the rest of the uneventful ride home Googling things such as "Is my new RV a lemon or merely lemon-scented?"

We've since learned it's fairly common for everything to go wrong in the first six-ish months of RV ownership.  The thing's never been used before and there are a zillion things that can go wrong with such a complex piece of machinery -- so a lot of them do, brace yourself.  So far, in our four initial trips, we've had a broken slideout wall (now fixed) a dead house battery (fixed) a dead GFCI outlet (fixed --user error, oops), a panel blown off the side (not fixed) and a battery warning light (what the hell was that about).

Yep, this could turn into an RV blog. Or skiing. Our dog is still crazy, too.
MJ