A doctor visit for Mom. She is doing so good that the visit lasted fifteen minutes. We were in and out in an hour, too. Her blood pressure is good, her other vitals were good, and she made sure the doctor knew that she was in charge of her health care. Sometimes the doctor will ask me a question when he should be asking Mom. Makes her feel small. We both hate that sitting in the doctor's office for two hours or more, so to get out in an hour was like having the boss come out and tell us all to go home early with pay. We left quickly before they changed their minds.
Mom has a good appetite, is strong enough now to get in and out of the bathtub and bed on her own. I am there though, just in case. She is 93 years old and a bit wobbly.
We are both looking forward to the tiny camper I'm building this spring. Going to have electric lights (12 volt and 110 volt), a generator, comfy twin bed for her, a dinette that makes into a small bed for me, sink, stove, a flush toilet, food, water, storage, and a small wood burning heater because to burn propane all night would get really expensive very fast.
The camper can be classified in the unique category of post-modern, vintage, shabby chic rustic, fully self-contained, and WiFi capable , i.e., pecan-tinted varnish over unpainted sanded smooth pallet wood cabinets and bench seats (pallet wood is light, strong, sands well, and is FREE). Will use burlap curtains (not feed sack burlap, but hunter's burlap with a tighter weave and a nice, woodland print) to keep the weight off the axle. Clear coats of polyurethane on the 5/8" plywood floors or battleship gray porch floor paint (whichever is cheapest). The exterior walls will be of tough but flexible 1/4" plywood. Is going to be insulated with 1/2" thick 4'x8' Styrofoam panels and then covered with a tough cloth fabric (hitting Craig's list or local thrift stores for fabric I can cut and paint) glued to the back of the shiny insulation board. Trim work will be pallet wood cut, sanded, trimmed then varnished to hide the seams and such. Using the old laptop with WiFi because the desktop I had originally built for the camper is staying in the house (too heavy, too big). You can sometimes get free WiFi in parking lots of big box stores. Most of the fast food joints around here have free WiFi, too.
The exterior seams will be fiber glassed and epoxied for strength and to seal gaps before primer coating. The outer walls will be primer coated well with several coats of a new kind of water-proof primer I've never heard of before (has nano technology like the Terminator). Hmm, I wouldn't mind travelling back in time in the tiny camper.
Ought to call the camper The Nano Camper. "Nah. You can't borrow it. No. It's not for sale."
After sealing and primer painting, the hull will be painted over with a good quality house paint. Can't decide on the color scheme. Two tones of leaf green with dark gray pin stripping? Maybe a cheerful two-tone blue with brilliant white pin stripping? Or white over sea blue with silver pin stripping? How about dark primer gray splotches with light primer gray splotches with stencils of oak leaves taped to it. Flat black paint sprayed over the stencils for that "I'm a survivalist" look after the stencils are pulled off. Nah. Gun thieves would get the wrong idea if it had the survivalist look (not to mention the local law enforcement guys because it might look like a meth wagon). I'm going to stay cheerful and neutral in the final color selection.
Will be looking for affordable aluminum skin as the budget fattens back up a bit. The paint should last a few years before the temperature extremes cause the plywood to start loosening the adhesive binding the wood sections together.
All of this priming, painted, cutting, designing, and such packed under a tin roof (hail-stone resistant and scavenged off the old farm house I'm going to have to tear down before it falls in) with lots of overhead storage in the kitchenette, dinette, and bed area. Still trying to figure out how to put in a skylight of sorts that I can open to let out the excess heat from the wood stove and yet won't leak in a blowing rain storm. Those crank out plastic kind of roof vents wear out too fast and a low-lying tree branch will crack it. Hurricane Katrina's 110 MPH winds through the backyard literally ripped the roof vents off my old camper trailer. Metal roof vents rust out after a few years because of condensation or the crank mechanism seizes up or falls apart in your hand.
I'll post pictures. It won't be as ugly as it sounds, but it will be very functional. Not typical (you should see the latest design I've drawn out today in my notebook on the desk). And warm. It has to be warm. Old Mom can't take the cold at all. And Zeb, the spoiled rotten cause he's a beautiful nearly 20 pound cat. He hates cold, too.
I forgot...a cat door, too. Pilgrim's habit of waking me at 2:30 AM so she could go outside got old quick last week. I can't let Zeb go outside though at night. He picks fights with dogs. A neighbor's pit bull was on his radar last week. Oh, man. Zeb just about gave me a heart attack stalking that large dangerous confirmed cat killing dog. That dog killed Zeb's brother Abby last December. That got that dog's owner into a lot of expensive trouble, too. Now that pit bull runs around the neighborhood with all of it's back, rear end, and back legs covered in mange.
Anyhow...
We're going to practice camping out in the back yard in it a few times to see what else it needs before we go spending the night on my farm in it. Her comfort and safety is the #1 priority. Might put a tiny AC in there, too. My generator can handle a small AC.
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