Gotcha

It is morning as I start to write this.  The birds are singing. Trees are dripping with leftover rain drops. Last night we had a terrific storm here that knocked out the power for over five hours.

Gotcha!
Finally caught a deer on camera
while patrolling the park at
Hartwell Lake

I no longer felt homesick for the Caribbean.

It reminded me of the near daily power outages we often suffered there. We had so many power failtures in the islands, that I had a tiny Kipor generator that kept my work and office purring.  It was portable, lightweight and super quiet.

Now I am in an RV with a built-in Onan gas generator.

I figured I could live off the house battery for awhile if the power didn't come back on anytime soon. Then  I discovered for the second time recently, that my house battery is discharging rapidly. I noticed when boondocking last month with no electricity, but I apparently forgot to write that down. It had completely slipped my mind until last night.

The battery rapidly drained even though I was using the bare minimum. The wheel estate was a bit steamy, inexplicably warmer indoors than the cooler outdoors, but the rains had forced me to close up all but one window.

It was very dark outside, the color of coal with a thick cloud cover that had obliterated all the star shine. I busied myself with water things, like washing the dishes, washing me, cleaning here and there. The sultry temperature just kept climbing despite my now open windows. The rain had stopped finally.  I plugged in my 12 volt fan to discover the house battery was dead. Dang.  Not supposed to die that quickly when I was only using two LED lights.  Definately something wrong with it.

I tried to lay down with my cranky arm which is slowly gaining use but still horribly painful. Not a breeze anywhere.  I have been seriously doing alternatives to make this arm heal. It's slowly improving. YAY!

Wait, why am I suffering further?  My wheel estate has a generator. Duh!

Only a slight problem. My electric cord, electric panel  and generator system rely on me physically plugging the RV's umbilical cord into the built-in generator. That meant I had to go outside in that thick pitch black darkness where the wild things are roaming and hunting at night.

I said my prayers, then ran outside, unplugged the cord from the utility post, opened up the RV compartment outside, plugged into the generator, then ran back for the safety of the wheel estate before the new rains could soak me to the bone.

Varoom!

I felt like the Queen celebrating her Diamond Jubilee.  The generator roarred to life, then settled on a nice hum. I felt spoiled rotten as I turned on the AC to bring things back to a normal temperature.

Gotcha again!
Deer  at Hartwell Lake

I tried my luck at doing some housework, I cooled off the RV. I guess the puppy dog and I had really steamed it up during the storming.

Eventually the street lights in the park came on, but dimly. We now had a brown out. I was so glad I had nothing plugged into the utility post, as brown outs can do extensive damage to equipment.

I waited another half hour, until the street lights were brightly glowing. I turned off the generator, then ran outside to plug into the utility post.

Nothing ate me and Big Foot didn't scare me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Before I could post this, I noticed someone had dug up my flower bed. I planted several flower beds for good luck when I arrived here to workamp. Two flowerbeds are around the camp, two are in rectangular pots. The seeds cost a whole dollar and promised 100 square feet of wild flower blooms throughout the summer. So far, I've managed to raise one-inch  green things, that I hope are growing taller to be flowers one day.

A while back a deer or some beast trampled one of my flower beds. It wasn't my dog, because he couldn't reach it on his tether.  It happened at night while we were indoors sleeping. I had built a fence around the flower bed out of some recycled wooden shish-kebab skewers. The cute little fence is taller than the dog!  The skewers would also help me line up the rock wall, when I got around to it.

But today, when I saw another flowerbed dug up, I was heart broken. I had put some flower seeds in two small rectangular planters.  I decided to right the little plants, salvaging what I could. That is when I found the dog treat buried.

*SIGH*

In my flower planter.

Now I have to teach the dog that the planters are MINE.  I did laugh when I found the dog treat. But I said "UT OH!" over and over which made little Harley give me that very guilty sheepish monkey look.