December 2023/February 2024
You are the Master of Your Noodle
Winter in Alabama — we’ll tell you all about it.
Well hello to you all. It has been quite awhile since we’ve been in touch, all the way back in November, but that mostly tells you that the drama has been at a minimum, and that we’re enjoying settling ourselves in southern Alabama, which we are beginning to think of as “home.”
First off, Kathy wanted to thank you all for the wonderful, huge response to Rick’s request for y’all to send birthday greetings to her in December as she came up against her 80th birthday. So many of you wrote! She was amazed! Can you believe it, we counted over 85 different messages, coming from a total of 17 different countries! It was overwhelming. If there’s anyone who got missed in being responded to, she's really sorry. The email box was really, really full for awhile there!
It’s mostly been a quiet time down here in the south: a fair amount of rain, which was badly needed after what we were told was a very dry summer, too many cloudy days, plenty of wind, too much freezing weather but no horrific storms, the tornados left us alone, and no trees keeled over. Pretty normal, we’ve been told and it doesn’t last all that long, about three months altogether. As we write this it has been much warmer the past few days and today we even put away the electric blanket; officially declaring an end to winter.
A quiet time for us, but with plenty to do. A couple of months back Kathy decided she needed a bird feeder, and that’s been lots of fun. It became increasingly active as it was discovered by the various critters in the neighborhood and is now a regular stop over for ‘the gang’. We’ve toyed with the idea of putting up a neon sign saying, “Eat at Kathy’s”, but have not done so as yet. The varieties of birds are mostly pretty boring, but we do have two pair of red Cardinals, an occasional Robin, some Chickadees and Finches and several Eastern Jays mixed in with the browns and blacks and dull grays. No complaining from us.
Oh! And we’re starting to see rabbits! They’ve always been in the park — half-wild wanderers, we think, but fed by many and enjoyed by all. But now we’ve seen a couple here in our yard munching on the fallen seed. We hope there will be even more soon. The grass is getting greener and that should help. There are also squirrels around, but they tend to hang out in the wooded areas, and haven’t been interested in us so far.
The various critters enjoying our little oasis seem to be mostly Kathy’s responsibility, while Rick has been involved in getting our new shed ( Shed? see below) settled down, as well as doing some home decorating.
As you may remember, our “new” home is a 1998 Fleetwood Discovery 36’ Class A motorhome. Middle-aged at best and in need of much attention, so when we arrived in October Rick had a long list of projects to be undertaken over the winter: redecorating some areas, re-building certain bits, washing, waxing, organizing, repairing, you know the drill. Sadly, he also arrived with a very bad back. Just in the last week of driving before arrival it had gotten really out of whack so the first month we were here was pretty much lost to chiropractic visits, icing the sore areas and lots of rest. It was nearly the first of the year before he was back in anything close to normal condition.
In those early days we had the local RV repair guy we like to use come in to sort out some of the more urgent items on the list, but the others have had to wait until more recently.
The new shed was a real surprise. We knew we could get one, but hadn’t planned on doing so this winter. Then a departing neighbor had one they were happy to give away and asked us if we wanted it. The thing is, when someone leaves one of these lots they have to return the lot to its original condition so they couldn’t leave the shed. So we took a quick look, saw that it was a very nice shed and had it moved over on to our lot. Presto! We sold our little cargo trailer after moving everything into the shed and, as they say in British movies, “Bob’s your uncle”, which somehow translates to ‘everything’s good’. Having the shed is great, we feel really lucky to have been gifted with it, and it is a nicer one than we would have bought for ourselves.
As to the motorhome, a ton of things on the to-do list will have to remain there for another year, but a fair number of them are being taken care of, principal among them being the re-decorating of the front cab area with the use of some fabrics we ordered from a place we had visited in Zambia back in 2019; Tribaltextiles.co.zm is a fantastic place where they create beautiful hand painted decorative fabrics. We’re very pleased with the progress we’ve been able to make and can definitely say that our house is becoming more and more like Home.
These activities are, of course, mixed in with our Adventures in Trying to Stay Healthy. Mainly, a few months ago we joined the local YMCA and are taking exercise classes — mostly water aerobics and yoga. We’re really enjoying all this, and are over there at least 3-4 times weekly. No surprise — we’re feeling better, more active, and looking a tad less round. Since we do plan on being away from here for the summer (seeking cooler climes as we get in some wandering) we’re checking out home exercise videos and stuff, and seeking other YMCA’s that might be available in other locations — apparently many Ys will honor our local membership. We’ll let you know.
This is a quiet park, in a quiet part of the countryside. However, just as with much of the southern coast of the US, the area celebrates Mardi Gras up to the hilt. Parties, special foods, crazy costumes, and lots of splendid parades. Several of the local towns have major parades but we hear tales of traffic and parking woes, so have not been tempted to attend. The parade here in the park was lots of fun, full of golf carts decorated to the max, and and Kathy managed to get a couple of fun photos for you to enjoy. Golf carts, by the way, are quite standard transport among the leisurely middle-aged and older. Mardi Gras is a much bigger deal here in the south than in other parts of the country; schools and businesses close and everything.
It’s now the end of February, and we’re talking about Spring a lot. The camellias are in bloom, along with tulip trees and daffodils; we are expecting the magnolias to start in before too long. One reason why we like this park so much is the variety and sheer numbers of trees, bushes, and flowering plants. Between all this color, and the wide open grassy areas here, it’s much like a country botanical garden, including a walk in the woods. All of these photos were taken in our park.
This is a very good thing, because we have good friends coming over from Germany soon. They’ll be arriving mid-April, to stay for about 3 weeks. They’re renting a van and the four of us are taking our rigs and spending the time exploring Springtime in the South as we wander in Georgia and Alabama, plus perhaps a bit of Tennessee. We’re really looking forward to seeing them; we had planned this trip for spring of 2020; they had purchased their tickets and everything. Then Covid hit, the world shut its doors, and only now, in 2024, are we getting the opportunity to resurrect the plan. We can hardly wait for their arrival, which they’ve tried to time so they can really enjoy the south at its prettiest. It’s going to be a great visit.
After we drop our friends off in Atlanta to start back toward Europe, we’re going to make a bit of a stop back down in Alabama, grab a change of clothes, so to speak, and begin our travels for the summer. This mostly will be a trip to the West Coast, with stops and extensions along the way; leaving here mid-May and returning by early October. We hope to see as many of you as possible, but we extend an invitation to all to be in touch about meeting up somewhere along the way to help us enjoy a different part of the country. We think that would be terrific.
That’s about it for the moment, safe travels and best wishes to all,
Kathy & Rick
P.S. In reference to the title of our message: We have picked up a couple of fun phrases from our exercise classes. The first, from the pool, is “You are master of your noodle”, easily recognized by anyone who is familiar with water aerobics; the other “Your gaze goes to your armpit” is a bit more esoteric, but nonetheless quite familiar to any yoga student struggling to achieve various difficult poses. Enjoy.
