Nothing is ever easy.

My friend Martha says I've used up all my sympathy points, but -- because I brag about the fun parts -- I ought to be honest about the difficulties of this trip, too. Don't you think so?

No one should be surprised that getting ready to leave was exhausting. I have no one to blame but myself for that. I've been collecting things (books, wine and other fun stuff) forever. And I put off the inevitable for too long. Packing (and tossing out and giving away) took waaaaaaay too long.

As mentioned before, we had our RV fixed up. You kind of hope after all that time and money everything would be perfect.

Yesterday, we were ready to go at 10 a.m. That's only an hour late, which is pretty good for us. (Don't remind me. I know we had an extra 24 hours.) When Ross tried to start the engine, it wouldn't go. Dead battery. I guess neither of us heard we were supposed to turn off the inverter when not plugged into "shore power." (D'oh!) We had to call AAA, so we didn't leave until noon.

Lesson learned.

Last night, we pulled into our RV park, unhitched Jane (Jane Honda. Get it?), and settled in. After a couple of hours of sitting around, playing on the computer, watching TV . . . the lights started to fade and the heat went off. The outlets weren't affected, though. Weird, huh?

So, today, Ross had to call a guy to come out and see if he could see what was wrong. That meant Ross didn't come with the rest of us this morning and left after lunch to come back to meet the guy. So, he missed out on some of the fun. Plus, the guy was just as confused as we were. So it's still not fixed.

It's not huge -- since, we still have computer access and we have lanterns. But it's another awkward thing to deal with.

We're figuring it out as we go along. Sometimes stuff catches us by surprise.

Still here.

Just couldn't get it all done in order to leave this morning. In fact, we're still not completely there -- but we will be by about 9:00 a.m. tomorrow. So . . . a day late and a peso short, I guess.

We picked up Destiny on Monday, with all her new equipment and facelift and everything and parked her in a storage lot. On Tuesday, Ross braved driving her through the narrow streets of Wallingford and parked in front of our neighbor's house where there's a Y in the road and it's a bit wider. (Lola graciously moved her car around the corner for a couple of days.) So now we have our next home parked by our current home. That makes moving stuff a little bit easier.

We also have a storage pod parked in back. If you're not familiar with them, it's a pretty cool idea. It's a big box they bring to your door. You can put anything you want in it -- furniture, boxes, whatever. Keep it as long as you want. Call them when you want them to pick it up and they'll bring it to their warehouse and store it until you call and say, "Bring it back."

We've had it for months, it seems. They're coming to get it on Saturday. They say you don't even have to be careful about balancing the load. They pick it up from the top or something. Which is great. Because we loaded all the books first. Piled to the ceiling.

These last few days, we've had all of these omigosh! moments. Omigosh, I have to cancel Comcast! Will we still have the same email address? Omigosh, I need to transfer our phone number to Vonage. Will they let us keep it? Omigosh, I have to change our address with everyone. How does that work?

I think we've remembered most of the important stuff. If not, they'll have to forgive us.

Mail.

Mail has been my life and my livelihood since . . . who can count that high. Today I scared myself by turning in the wackiest change-of-address ever.

Last year, when we started this Mexico experiment, I had a heck of a time adding our names to the "Do Not Mail" list. I don't know if I've publicly confessed this before. It felt really disloyal and wrong.

The next step was to go to a Web site called "Catalog Choice." Every catalog I got, I went online and said, "Don't mail this to me anymore." It was strange.

But the weirdest was signing up for Earth Class Mail. I am forwarding all our mail to a new address: 93 S. Jackson St., #13711, Seattle, WA 98104.

It's a real address, but not really. I don't live there, but it's now my mailing address. They'll get my mail, scan it and email me the scan. If I don't care about it, I'll tell them to recycle it. If I want to know what's in the envelope, I'll tell them to open and scan it. If I want it sent to me, I'll have to figure out where they can send it.

Instead of sorting your mail over the recycle bin, you do it online.

This whole process started a while ago. Hardly anybody mails me anything really interesting anymore. My Mom is online. So is the rest of my family. I've already asked every biller with the technology to send my bills straight to my bank, where I handle them online.

I feel like I owe a lot to the US Postal Service and now I'm pulling the last rug out from under them.

Things change.

Getting ready to get ready.

Since you last heard from me, we've been (1) enjoying Seattle's most spectacular summer ever and (2) fixing up the house to sell it.

That's really about it.

Summer was so wonderful that we really didn't get to the whole house thing until far too late. But we finally did get the place pretty enough to list it a week and a half ago. There have already been three open houses and another one is coming up in an hour. There's nothing really to do but wait for that one hour to pass . . . so I thought it was the right time to relaunch this wacky blog.

Destiny, our RV and home for the month of October, has been in the shop for weeks and weeks. She needed some extensive body work. The other stuff required ordering parts. And since we weren't going to go on the road until October 1, the deadline for getting her back slipped out to tomorrow.

That means we haven't had her available for loading yet. We'll be doing that Tuesday and Wednesday.

Yeah. That's pretty insane. We (and by "we," I mean Ross) are going to be tired before we start. But we have a lovely itinerary planned across these United States. We'll be visiting family and friends along the way. We'll be taking our time. And that will be a little different, too, from many of our past trips.

We'll be hauling the Honda behind us. They say that doesn't make an enormous difference in how you drive -- except you can never, ever back up without unhitching the car first.

And, of course, the dogs will be riding with us -- soaking up the scenery, napping in the sunshine, chatting up the people at the rest stops.

I sure hope the house sells quickly!

Hot and sunny. Must be Mexico!

We got in, courtesy of Continental Airlines, quite late last night. The airport was pretty empty and the people who were there were wearing surgical masks. They call them tapabocas (mouth-covers). Learned that in the New York Times.

We always have a little guessing game about what won't be working when we get here. It takes a couple days to work all the kinks out. This time, Anna (the cleaning woman who hides from me) had forgotten (?) to clean the main bathroom and Ross's study. Dust and cucarachas everywhere. Yuk. But the rest of the house looks pretty good. Kind of a strange choice she made.

Also, no hot water this morning. We'd run out of LPG. That's easily solved, except that it's impossible to relight the pilot on the water heater. I hope Ross figures it out by tomorrow. I don't want another chilly shower.

Since we had no food in the house, we walked up to Casa de Waffle this morning for breakfast. No, I don't eat the waffles. Then we took the long way home, walking up to the town square before coming back. I got a blister, but it could have been worse if Ross hadn't thought to lend me his socks!

Getting used to being 5000 feet above sea level is tougher than it sounds, so I needed an after-breakfast nap after all that walking.

After lunch, we went grocery shopping. We had a few things on our list that we couldn't find at our usual grocery store, so we went to Walmart. (Don't judge me!) And, as we were wandering the aisles, Ross noticed a kid with a Wallingford Wurst Festival T-shirt. That's our Seattle neighborhood annual sausage festival. The whole family was with him -- and they live within a mile of us in Seattle. Crazy, huh?

I imagine they're happy to be soaking up some sunshine, too.

Home.

In case you wondered, all four of us made it home safe and sound.

I still haven't uploaded pics, but that's the next thing to do.

We got to visit with Karin, Mike and Corey in Eugene on Saturday. We pulled into Seattle on a sunny, warm Sunday. (Wait . . . Seattle? Warm in April??)

Then it was all filing taxes and back to work and two-walks-per-day normality today.

But still sunny!

Hiking.

We took da boyz on a two-hour walk today in Patrick's Point State Park. They weren't allowed on the trails or on the beach . . . so we stuck to the roads. (Discrimination against fuzzy people with tails!)

I hope to have photos to share soon.

The walk seemed to wear them out completely. We haven't seen them since we got back nearly five hours ago.

Ross is about to start cooking dinner, so that might rouse them.

Speaking of cooking. I've shared the cooking duties a bit more than usual. My first dinner was black bean burritos and, if I do say so, they were maaahvelous. Last night, I made "tuna hot dish" from the same RV cookbook and it was, if not a complete disaster, generously you could give it a 4 out of 10.

Why an RV cookbook? I'm not sure. Maybe these recipes use fewer ingredients. They give you shopping lists for three day of meals. I didn't quite realize that you can be a little trapped in a big vehicle like this. You pull into the RV campground and get all attached, then realize you don't have ketchup. Now what?

That's why our next purchase is going to be a car we can tow.

Yes, we're going to sell the Prius. >sniff!<

Reason one is that it can't be towed unless all four wheels are off the ground. Reason two is that they don't sell them in Mexico, so we're pretty certain they don't know how to service them.

We're thinking about a Honda Fit or a Smartcar. Does anyone know anything about either of these?