Gone Mobile, as it were

We've made it out of the house.  It was both a long and short two weeks.  

It's amazing what "stuff" you decide is important when you have a short amount of time to chose and only limited space.  I had imagined that we would sort, trash, donate and save items, leaving the house like we had just sold it, instead having it foreclosed upon, but nope, no time or mental energy to do that.  We left ALOT.  I learned that very little is irreplaceable.  And there is much I owned, had carefully saved for decades, that in the end, I just didn't really care that much about.  

I've worked in museums for over 20 years, and I couldn't help but think about the archaeology of our house.  What someone would learn by "digging" through what we left.  I know that the reality is that some company will come through and toss virtually everything into a dumpster.  It was quite surreal, walking through the house as we locked it up to leave.  I thought that this must be what it feels like to live somewhere as a fire approached - told you have 12 -24 hours to evacuate, so choose what you want to save and go.  Our only difference is that we had a moving van.  

Speaking of moving vans, my middle niece helped us out for 4 days.  Without her, we never would have made it with half of what we wanted to take.  (She also rescued items for herself.)  She's got a natural talent for packing a truck!  She's helped us with a couple of small exhibit projects before, but this isn't something she learned - though she does credit years of playing Tetris.

We've been in the RV for 3 days now and we have yet to level it, so no fridge, but otherwise, we have power, water and a functioning toilet.  The shower stall needs to be caulked still, so we shower at the office area.  When we arrived Wednesday night, we had about 30 minutes before a heck of a thunderstorm rolled through.  It poured, hailed, flashed and booms all night.  In the morning, a tub I had outside with some plants in it had about 3" of water in it.  The ground was marshy, but our lovely RV (named Beans, so when she and our Terlingua trailer are together they will be Frank and Beans) was nice a dry.  Yippee!

Yesterday I got us some internet.  The campground has free wifi, but it's unsecured and I'm not very comfortable with that.  So I got Virgin Mobiles mifi, which allows 5 devices to be connected to a modem that is the size of a thick credit card.  It's amazing, and while I have not tried to watch a video on it, it seems to be pretty good.

Hopefully I will catch up on the past few days in the next few days.  Things have been a bit overwhelming and busy, but I've begun to sleep again, so that's a good sign.