I keep losing stuff. I spend days, it seems like, looking for something and when I find it at last, something else goes missing. It’s driving me crazy.
When I complained about this at Quartzsite, the universal response was laughter. It seems I’m not the only one.
“When you move into a van,” one oldtimer observed sagely, “it becomes a black hole. You will not find what you seek, Grasshopper, until you don’t need it any more.”
Well, that’s not entirely true. I finally found my glasses and one pair, but not the other, of my reading glasses yesterday, long before I will stop needing them.
Now I can’t find my USB charger, the doohickey I plug into the cigarette lighter to charge up my old cell phone and iPod. (OMG, I just had a horrible thought: What if I lose my iPod? I depend on it like most people depend on their smart phones. Must. Not. Let. That. Happen.)
You would think that in such a small space, and having gotten rid of most of my stuff, that locating what I want would be a breeze. Not so. Things get flung on top of other things, other things fall down into crevices, and sometimes, everything just tumbles all over the place in a tight left turn.
The latter, I hope, has been solved with strict adherence to the Bungee Rule:
Thou shalt bungee everything down before starting the ignition.
Then there is the Walk Around the Van Rule, which I am still struggling to remember:
Thou shalt walk completely around the vehicle, checking EVERYTHING, before getting in the driver’s seat.
I lost a brand new solar light by not observing that one. I had placed it on the roof to charge up in the sun and drove off, leaving it in the dust for some lucky desert rat.
But the #1 rule of vandwelling comes courtesy of my Gramma, who would be horrified by my new domicile:
A place for everything and everything in its place.
The problem is with reorganizing. Every time I find a better place for something, I forget where I put it. Now I am going back to basics. Who cares if the new place is ‘better’ if I can’t remember where it is? So, when I do find that damn charger, it’s going back to its original home, the glove compartment where I shove pretty much everything I might need from the driver’s seat.
Now, where the f*&%k did I put it?!
