A Day in the Vandwelling Life

I’m trying to establish a routine of sorts while living in the van. It’s surprisingly difficult. Each day seems to present new challenges to routine. Or maybe it’s just my scattered brain. Here is as close as I can get to describing a typical day of vandwelling in the city (boondocks are a slightly different story):

• Wake up around 4 or 5am.
• Bathroom break.
• Rebundle and wait for the sun to come up and hit the van with warming rays.
• Drift off to sleep sitting up.
• Around 7, wake up again with a stiff neck. Sun is shining, yay! I’m nice and warm in my sleeping bag but my feet never get warm no matter what I do.
• Snack on some peanuts and drink some water.
• Surf Facebook.
• Van slowly warms up. 8:30 or so, it’s getting too warm. Unzip sleeping bag and remove a layer of sweater. Wish the sun could reach the floor of the van — toes are still freezing in spite of ultra warm socks and sleeping bag.
• Try to decide what to have for breakfast: scrambled eggs at the apartment? Quinoa at the park? Or Jack in the Box tacos? Tacos win.
• Drive to Jack in the Box, charging up gadgets at the same time.
• Pull into a parking spot and eat.
• Now what? I’m running out of clean clothes, so I head to the apartment to do laundry and charge the laptop, and dump the pee bucket. Might as well take a shower while I’m there.
• Park and pack up: dirty laundry, clean clothes to change into after shower, gadgets, laptop, charging cords, laundry soap.
• Forget: toothbrush & toothpaste (something always gets forgotten, might as well plan for it.)
• At the apartment, Robby and Emily, my son and his wife, are night owls: up all night and sleeping until late afternoon.
• Plug in various gadgets to recharge (always my first priority).
• Load washer with dirty laundry, realize that I need to take a shower before I can start the laundry so I can wash the clothes I’m wearing too. They smell pretty bad, so there’s no putting them off until next time.
• Sigh.
• Take long, hot shower.
• Decide that I love showers.
• Dry off and dress, then start laundry load.
• Eat yogurt while checking email and FB.
• Get sucked into Internet Black Hole.
• Drift off to sleep sitting up on the couch.
• Wake up after 20 minutes, hang laundry on rack on balcony.
• Dump and rinse pee bucket, pack up gadgets and head back out to LaVanne.
• Low Fuel light is on. Sigh. Put another $20 into the tank.
• Drive to nearby Lake Murray and pick a sunny spot for the solar panel I bought in Quartzsite.
• Get frustrated because the cable on it is so short that the panel must be rigged up on the passenger seat with the door open in order to get enough sun.
• Finally realize that the panel is not sending any juice to the house battery on the floor for some reason and give up.
• Brush teeth with bottled water.
• Call cousin Patti in Texas for our daily chat. Spend an hour on the phone.
• Snack on nuts and think about cooking some eggs at one of the picnic tables available. Seems like more effort than it’s worth.
• Eat more nuts to satisfy hunger while surfing Facebook and reading blogs.
• Chat on Skype with mastermind friends.
• Procrastinate about replying to blog comments and writing another blog post.
• Adjust solar panel and try again.
• The van is getting too warm, so give up on solar panel and drive to a shady, cooler parking spot.
• Watch the birds on the lake and the people around it. Try to spot other vandwellers in the parking lot — turns out they’re very easy to identify.
• Think about saying hello and feel suddenly shy.
• Get hungry again and spend ten minutes trying to decide between the usual alternatives: healthy (cook something) or lazy (fast food). Fast food wins again. I may be regaining all the weight I lost in Quartzsite, but I’ll think about that later.
• Drive to Burger King or Jack in the Box for the cheapest possible meal, then to the Ralphs supermarket parking spot where I will spend the night. I like this spot because it’s right under a light, LaVanne faces a half-wall with a church day care (empty at night) on the other side so I have a view but privacy at the same time, the lot is busy with people coming and going so it feels safe, and nobody bothers me here. Plus Robby works in the store in the evenings. Last night, he even stopped by after work to visit with me. I really enjoyed that.
• When the sun goes down (around 5:30pm), hunker down for the night: pin blankets up around tiny ‘living room’ for insulation, wrap up in comforter, put on warm socks and extra sweater, and get on Facebook again. Or watch a movie.
• As it gets colder, add layers of sweaters or jackets, put on gloves and wimple.
• Try to stay up later tonight but droopy eyelids win before 8 o’clock.
• Lean over and sleep on the couch (gave up on hammock, at least for the winter — it’s too much hassle to set up for warmth.)
• Wake up once or twice during the night to use the COLD pee bucket, then rebundle and surf the web until sleepy again.

Okay, this clearly is not how I want to be spending my time. I might as well still be living in the apartment: constantly seeking entertainment online instead of actually DOING something. At least when I was camping outside Quartzsite, I was learning how to camp, socializing with other vandwellers, cooking my meals, and going for a long walk every day.

Now that I’m back in the city, I have defaulted to my old habits — which, to be honest, I knew I would do. Changing habits ain’t easy, especially all at once. I’ve changed all the externals about my life. Now it’s time to work on the internals, i.e., my addiction to the Internet.

But, but, but — I don’t WANT to! wails my Inner Toddler.

Don’t worry, little one, we’re not going cold turkey, just looking for some balance. Instead of cutting back, we will add other activities like hiking, exploring nature — yes, there is nature in the city — and going on some of those adventures we planned last summer (remember?) to replace some (not all!) of that Facebook time.

Also, we need to work on fixing up the van for cold weather so we can be ready to head back to Quartzsite for the RTR next month. Not to mention reprioritizing our time so that writing is the first thing we do every day — starting right NOW.

Okay?

OKAY!