Since moving here, John and I have been striving to find ways to make this community really feel like home. Browsing Facebook, I found that the valley residents are very giving and compassionate. We've had the pleasure of experiencing this generosity first hand.
First, there was Chad, who brought us a pigtail to use with our generator so we could get power. Steve came over to help us put the snowplow on the Goblin, and then there was Kevin, who, with a friend, hand shoveled our driveway because he'd promised to plow it and his plow wasn't available. To top that off, he fixed the shift cable on the Goblin so we could plow ourselves.
In search of a way to spread the news of these wonderful men, and to allow others to do the same, on October 17th, I created a group called Good Deeds in the Mat-Su Valley. The group currently has 886 members and is still growing!
As Christmas approached, we began to see parents asking for help for food, clothing, and gifts for their children. The response was astronomical. I know that I co-ordinated the gathering of donations for one family. From the back of Trooper, I unloaded 4 large bags of presents, 1 large bag and 4 big boxes of food. That was just one of the many families helped at Christmas.
The Good Deeds Elfs helped so many people this year. I challenge anyone to find a more generous group of people anywhere.
Then on December 20, a member of our group noticed a homeless man digging through the trash.
Tis the season! While out finishing up our christmas shopping I happen to notice an elderly man walking across the parking lot carrying a small clear trash bag. As I get closer to him, and watch as he walks from lot to lot, i realize that the contents of the bag are items that people are throwing out. I continue to watch i notice that others are being very rude and disrespectful to him. I walk over and ask if he needs help with anything. He tells me that he is homeless and has 2 children that he is trying to find needed items for he and them for christmas... With a VERY heavy Heart i ask him to Stay and wait for me to return... Instead of buying myself ANYTHING i return to him w one toy a piece, 3 beanies, a large warm blanket and a hot meal. With tears running down his face he thanks me and then asks my name so that he may one day return the kindness.... I hug him and say, There is no thanks needed and just call me a blessing. Later on i see this same Man sharing his ONLY meal with a homeless teen.... THIS IS WHAT ITS ABOUT FOLKS . The members of our group got all fired up about this post, and voila, the Wasilla Homeless-Committee was born. We currently have 47 members in the group and are trying to set up a meeting for the second Saturday of January. Christmas Eve finds us busy at the Menard Center peeling potatoes for the Friendship Dinner to be held on Christmas Day. 6 hours of peeling, rolling eating utensils in napkins, pouring salad dressing, and making butterballs. What a rewarding time!
Christmas Day, started off with worship services before the guests started arriving. Boy, did they arrive! 4,000 people fed turkey, ham, yams, mashed potatoes/gravy, veggies, salad & desserts galore!
Entertainment was provided throughout the day, including a Celtic band, tuba band, and an acoustic group, just to mention a few.
Santa and Mrs. Claus made an appearance with gift bags for all the children. The bags were generously filled with books, gloves, games, and of course, candy.
The guests just kept coming. It was estimated we served over 4,000 from 11:00 until 3:00.
Best of all, about 10:30, it started snowing big fluffy flakes.
On the funny side, we'd purchased the pups snow booties to keep their feet warm. Sassy had a very interesting reaction to them. She absolutely hated them, sat down and refused to walk. The look on her face was priceless.
Only one fail since my last post. On the day after Christmas, we decided we needed to plow all the snow that had accumulated. One drive done, one pass made on the second drive and BANG, the winch rope breaks and the plow slams into the road.
I call John who comes down with a chain which we hook onto the plow. As he lifts, I bring the chain around the Goblin and hook it to the hitch. We were able to get him back into the garage, but in looking at the cable, we can see that the rope is wrapped back onto itself and we don't have enough length to grab onto to pull it loose.
We ordered a new one from Amazon, then yesterday John got a brilliant idea. He had a good length of paracord, which we doubled and tied to the 6 inches of wench cable available. He wrapped the other end of the paracord around a long screwdriver to serve as a handle and with just a couple of tugs, it broke free. We removed the rope from the plow side and cut the frayed end off the wench side, We then wrapped the rope back around the thimble, secured it with heavy duty zip ties, then wrapped with duct tape. Voila, it worked and I was able to finish the plowing.
We look fondly back on 2014 and expectantly forward to 2015. Hope all of you have a wonderful, prosperous, and safe 2015.
PROPANE:
We are going through propane as if all the jets were wide open and we are just venting it out into space. On Thursday, November 20, I called our dealer and let them know we would need a refill. We were down to 30% in the tank. We were instructed to call them when we hit 20 - 25%, but John worries about freezing to death, so I called early. No problem, right? Wrong!!!
Monday, I was on my way back from my orthopedic appointment (all is well with the hip by the way), when John calls me. "Please call Crowley & see when they will deliver. We are down to ZERO. Yikes. Make the call, and find we aren't scheduled until the next day (when our area gets filled). What do we do?
OK, don't panic. We need to run the furnace to keep the pipes from freezing, but if we keep the thermostat set at 68* like normal, we will definitely empty the tank. We still have a 30 pound tank and a 5 pound tank full and available. No sweat, right? Wrong!!!
When Brandon hooked up our big 'pickle' tank, he completely disconnected any access we might have had from the smaller tanks. I can't for the life of me figure out how to reconnect it. I am pretty capable of plumbing type chores, but this one has me beat.
Our solution was to set the thermostat at 60* so the furnace would kick on to keep the basement heated. As a fail-safe, we also put a good sized space heater under the RV. Indoors, we turned on both electric fireplaces and put on an extra layer of clothing, and kept the pups in their sweaters. Fingers (and toes) crossed, we settle in for the night. I think each of us got up several times that night to check that we had water.
Tuesday at 4:00 pm, propane still had not arrived. We know we will not make it another night. Just as I was dialing the phone to call Crowley, the truck arrived. Whew!!!
Not wanting this to ever happen again, I went ahead and spoke with Hazel at Crowley. "This was a bit too close a call", I say.
"Yes", responds Hazel, "you should call us when you are at 25%. It is a $100.00 service call if you run out." I let her know that I'd called at 30% and could we please set up routine deliveries, like around the 1st and 15th of each month? Nope, we have to call.
My solution? I set my calendar to alert me to call on every other Thursday so we can get every other Tuesday delivery. (John is still worried)
WATER:
We entered the Thanksgiving holiday with cold temps, but no snow. That's probably just as well because:
Thanksgiving morning, I arose early to get the turkey ready for the roaster. No water! What the heck? We have a heated hose that is rated to -42* F. We should have water. It only got down to 12* last night. We should have water, right? Wrong!!!
Since it was still dark outdoors (the sun doesn't rise until 9:30 or so, I decided to let John sleep in. (Losing the water is one of his biggest worries after freezing to death.) He awoke as I was in the dining room talking to our oldest son and heard me mention "no water". He comes out of the bedroom, very upset. "I just knew this would happen."
I strive to calm him a bit until it gets a little lighter outside, instead, he dresses and goes out to the RV hook-ups to discover water has flowed filling the area under the RV, down the western driveway, partway down the eastern driveway, under the cargo trailer, and into the little hut we put up for a doggy outhouse when snow does arrive. We still can't do anything about it until it is lighter outside, but luckily, we have water in the fresh holding tank, so all is not lost.
I decided to wait a bit to fix the turkey, since we aren't having guests, it doesn't matter what time we eat. Coffee, coffee, coffee.
When the sun finally comes up we head out. The water lines that are not protected under the RV have had heat tapes applied, and wrapped in 5 layers of insulation. Where or where could the water be coming from. Did you know that it takes longer to remove 5 layers of insulation than it did to apply it?
When I'd gotten to the last layer of pipe wrap on the hose we use for the Sani-flush system, I was greeted by a 4 inch length-wise split in the hose. (The cheap kind you get from a certain discount store that everyone calls Wally World). The expensive cold weather rated hose is still supple, and when disconnected from the RV, still runs. Good thing too, or I'd have a few words to say to the Pirit company.
We figured out that sometime during the night the flush hose had split so widely allowing water to drain so rapidly from the well that all water pressure was lost. Easy fix, just don't hook up the flush hose until needed, then use the shorter Pirit hose we have. Water at last.
POWER:
Approximately 30 minutes after we get the water problem solved, I'm starting to work on the turkey. John comes in. "We have no power outside, nor in the arctic entry. WHAT NEXT????
Placing the turkey aside (again) I go out to help with the power issue. The 20 amp breaker on the main box has tripped. Reset, fixed, right? Wrong!!!
We discover that when we turn on the light in the cargo trailer, it trips the breaker. Our youngest son has called by this time and I'm trying to talk to him and to John. "We lost our...no power honey...our water last...still no power babe...last night...no honey, it's not working. "Steve, let me call you back, this is too confusing."
We reroute our power supply so we have heat to the car engines, power to the freezer, and heat into the arctic room. "Take a break sweetheart, please?"
I call Steve back to explain what was going on and he suggests that the new light we put into the cargo trailer just yesterday, may not be grounded correctly. We solve the problem by just unplugging it.
It is now 11:55 am and I'm finally able to get the turkey into the roaster. I can also start on the rest of our Thanksgiving meal, which turned out just fine (if I do say so myself)
The following day it is time to start putting up my Christmas decorations. John gets all the boxes (I'm down from 20 boxes when we had the house to 3). It's not the arduous workout for him it used to be.
As I'm emptying ornaments and garland from one of the totes I a nice surprise. His mother's crystal pitcher, my hand thrown pottery bowl, and all my candy dishes I thought had been sold at our estate sale miraculously reappear. It's like getting Christmas early!
I'm plugging right along, minding my own business when John calls out, "We don't have any water!!" Not again! This is really getting old. He goes outside to check and comes back in. "My fault", he admits, "I forgot and left the basement door open when I flushed the tanks." The water lines we've strived so hard to protect are now frozen.
I have him open the panel wall in front of the water lines and turn on one of the smaller space heaters we have. We crank the thermostat up to 72*, open the desk drawers that back to the water system, turn on the faucet in the kitchen, and wait. I reassure my darling dingbat hubby that all is not lost, as long as the lines haven't burst. I really don't think we'll need to worry about that as it has only been about an hour since he was outside flushing the tanks. Within 30 minutes, we have water again, and no burst lines. He's learned a lesson though, NEVER LEAVE THE BASEMENT DOOR OPEN IN THE WINTER.
Back to my decorating (indoors at least). I'm finding as I age that it takes me ever so much longer to do what I used to do in 3 hours or less even 20 years ago. I'm very glad I was able to save my favorite ornaments, including the 3-D ones we picked up at gift shops everywhere we vacationed.
This was a gift from one of my former supervisors.
The stockings are hung by the chimney with care...
This RV had so many easy ways to decorate
Some of my favorite ornaments
These are the gold toned 3-D ornaments we've collected
There was no place to set this other than the top of the printer
My 'Charming Tails" nativity scene
Snowmen
Across the dining room slide.
And finally...the tree
SNOW:
After much anticipation, on December 2, 3, and 4, we got SNOW!!! 8 inches fell over these 3 days, and although it is beautiful, I still can't build a snowman as the snow is too dry to pack.
ATV:
On the second day of snow, we decided it was time now to fire up the Green Goblin. I mean, he's had the plow on for 2 months now and we've been unable to use it. Out in the garage, we get him started and pull him out to warm up. 15 minutes later, while John is doing something, (I can't recall what) I tell him I'll start plowing. This isn't my first rodeo, but...the Goblin goes 3 feet on the first pass, and then won't go into reverse. He won't go into neutral. He will only go forward. This is of no help at all. DANG!!!
We toss a tarp over him since we can't push him back into the garage and call Steve. He reminded me that sometimes the engine cowling will slip and not let the shifting lever drop into the proper gear. It is now dark, so we'll look at it tomorrow.
The next morning, we pull the tarp off and try again. No dice. John throws in the towel. "We'll just sell the damned thing and hire someone to plow" I've learned over the years just to let him rant when he's like this. He goes in and calls Kevin to come out and plow the drive.
Kevin arrives about 2 hours later, sans plow, and spends an hour trying to adjust the shift cable (I'd found out on the Prowler forum this was probably the problem). He is able to get it into reverse and neutral so we can back the Goblin back into the garage until we have time to get the linkage fully adjusted. He refuses any payment for his time and promises to come back the next day with the plow.
We spent the rest of the afternoon getting the rest of the outdoor decorations placed. (Yes, it is dark here by 4:30 now)
Kevin came back the next afternoon and shoveled our 100 ft driveway by hand. His boss left with the keys to the plow so he was shoveling by hand because he'd promised us he would clear our driveway! What an amazing young man. He also spent another 90 minutes working on the Goblin. We can now use it to plow, we just won't have low range. Kevin is our hero.
FINALLY FUN:
We think all the fun was had by the furbabies playing in the snow with and without their snow boots.
Finally to all my readers MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR.
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