Why I Spent the Day at the Laundromat – OR – Shit Happens

Our Ehrenberg camp

My friend and travel buddy, Linda May and I arrived a few days ago at our winter camp in the desert outside Ehrenberg, Arizona. It was so nice to finally settle down to one place for awhile, and a familiar one at that. Both of us had been in the city for months, helping out friends and family.

Now, our near future sounded like heaven: an entire season in the desert with nothing to do but please ourselves. I’d been looking forward to finally getting some writing done. Ha.

Every day, it seemed like something else would disrupt my plans to get some quality time in at the keyboard. There were supplies to buy, camp to be set up, a mailbox to get, laundry to be done, showers to take.

But the work was never finished

There was always something I’d forgotten and would have to do the next day. Another trip into town, another writing day gone. Because everything takes twice as long when you’re vandwelling, and because I fizzle out by dark.

Out here, when the sun goes down, we all hunker down in our respective rigs and get ready for bed. Some read, others watch TV, but the time of being productive is over until the sun comes up again.

I can write at night, but I always find myself nodding off around 7:30. I wake up a few times and try to get back to it but it never works. If I do manage to peck out a few sentences, they don’t even make sense. By nine, I give up and crawl under the covers while Scout curls up in her bed on the floor.

So, mornings are my best time for writing

But once again, there are things to do: walk the dog, feed the dog, feed me, visit with Linda, go to town for whatever I forgot to get yesterday—yadda yadda. (Excuses, I know, but I haven’t yet managed to make writing come first. Working on that.)

So, Sunday was another afternoon of rushing around trying to get everything set for the night so I could focus on writing in the morning.

Darkness descended. Now I couldn’t find my purse, a regular and very frustrating occurrence.

Oldtimers laugh ruefully about this phenomenon they call Vandweller’s Black Hole

It happens to everyone, they say, which doesn’t make me feel any better. Since starting this life, I have repeatedly lost my glasses, my phone, and my little wallet/purse. Sometimes, they turn up. Sometimes, they don’t. I have a little basket where I try to always put them, and other small things that I use a lot, but sometimes I forget.

So I wracked my brain and worked myself into a tizzy. I looked everywhere in the van that I had ever found anything before. Nothing.  Had I left it somewhere in town? I couldn’t remember.

Now I was getting upset. Everything of importance was in that purse: cash, credit cards, driver’s license. Would I have to replace them? What would I do for money in the meantime?

Why did I keep forgetting things?

I didn’t want to think about it but that old fear loomed. You know the one.

A full-blown anxiety attack blossomed. I texted Linda and asked if I could come over. She always has a calming effect on me.

Sure! Linda chirped. Want me to come over there? I could bring you some chocolate.

No, thanks, I texted back, not wanting to put her to any trouble. I’m coming.

I grabbed a blanket and wrapped it around my shoulders to ward off the chill, put on my shoes and lurched down the tall step from the van.

“Stay,” I said to Scout, who had a betrayed look on her face.

You’re leaving me? Again? she seemed to say.

“I’ll be back soon,” I reassured her.

I thought for a moment about leaving the van’s side door open just an inch, but Scout had long ago figured out how to slide it open with her nose unless I slammed it shut. So I slammed the door and shivered for thirty feet to Linda’s tiny yellow trailer. It was going to be a cold night.

“Knock-knock!” I called.

“Come in!” Linda replied cheerily from her cozy, quilt-covered bed, an open book and her small dog, Coco, beside her. “Have a seat!”

I stumbled through the tiny kitchen, stooping a bit to avoid hitting my head on the ceiling, maneuvered around Linda’s small heater on the floor, and sat on the side of the bed. The mini trailer was toasty warm.

“Here,” said my friend, opening a small box. “Have some chocolate.”

I love Linda. She is the friend I’ve wished for my whole life — no judgment, no agenda, just pure friendship, love, and support. Plus, she feeds me.

I savored the candy and told her my woes.

Then, right in the middle of a sentence, I stopped, flashing on a memory of sliding the van door shut. And another memory: locking all the doors. And another one: the broken handle on the sliding door that I had never bothered to fix.

It was the only door that wasn’t locked, and it was broken. And the key was in the ignition.

A feeling of doom enveloped me

“Oh, no,” I said.

“What’s wrong?” asked Linda.

“I’m locked out again.”

It had happened before, in Big Bear. And again, just a week ago, in Lake Elsinore.

The first time, I got lucky — the passenger window was cracked just enough for me to reach in with a long soup ladle and pull up the lock.

The second time, I had put an extra key in a secret spot outside the van. But after unlocking the van with it, I’d procrastinated about putting the key back.

This time, the windows were closed tight and the extra key was still in the driver’s seat cup-holder.

Linda tried everything she could think of to break into the van while I followed her from door to door, uselessly whining about all my regrets and failures. Scout watched from inside, curious.

I wanted to hit myself on the head, over and over

Why did this keep happening? If only I had thought to bring the keys with me. If only I had said yes to Linda’s offer to come to my van instead of insisting on going to her trailer. I didn’t want to put her to any trouble but look at the trouble she was going to now!

“Woulda, coulda, shoulda,” Linda retorted, always the practical one. “It is what it is. Let’s figure this out.”

She was right. I needed to stop feeling sorry for myself and get my shit together. But it was soon clear that we were not going to break into the van by ourselves.

We got into Linda’s Jeep and drove a few hundred yards to the camp of our Fearless Leader, Bob Wells, but he didn’t have the magic solution we hoped for.

“They’re built to not be broken into,” he reminded us, helpfully.

I would have to call AAA and hope they would send a locksmith out into the desert, at night, far from any paved road.

Of course, I didn’t have my Triple A card. It was in the purse I couldn’t find, either somewhere in the van or somewhere back in town where I couldn’t remember leaving it.

“Don’t worry,” said Linda. “They’ll ask you some questions and find you in their database.”

We googled and found a number to call. The customer service rep was not encouraging. The road we were on would have to be county-maintained (it wasn’t) and I would have to give her the name of the road plus a cross street (no such things). I told her I’d call her back.

It was getting late. Even if we could convince AAA to send a locksmith, even if we could give him good directions, he wouldn’t be able to find us in the dark. We had no street lights, only faint moonlight.

We decided to wait until morning and call again

Scout would be all right. She had water and food. I figured we had until 8 or 9am before her need to relieve herself would become critical.

So, we settled back into the trailer and crowded under the covers into Linda’s small single bed, feet to head. Coco found an empty corner of the quilt.

It was a long, cold night now that Linda had turned the heater off. It gets too hot in such a small space if you leave it on while you sleep.

I had warned Linda that I snored, so she thoughtfully recorded me at one point and let me listen when I woke up. She said it sounded like purring. She lost the recording, sadly, but here is the sound of purring so you can imagine my snore. (And take THAT, former hotel roommate who kept complaining years ago that I was keeping you awake!)

The worst part was going outside in the cold to pee into a 5-gallon bucket with no toilet seat. Three times, because that’s the way I roll in my old age.

After my third and final pee of the night, I came back in and sat on the bed while Linda and Coco slept, pondering all my sins.

Suddenly, I realized my mistake

Every time I’d been locked out, it was the same scenario: I would lock all the doors for the night, then think of something I needed to go outside for, manually unlock the side door and slam it shut behind me to prevent Scout from getting out.

The side door with the broken handle.

Why hadn’t I replaced that handle? More regrets and self-recrimination. I vowed to fix it and finally went back to sleep.

At last, the sun came up. We awoke and waited to call Triple A until 8am, when we thought the locksmith would be open.

Turns out when you have a dog or a child locked in the car, your call becomes top priority. We needn’t have waited all night after all. The rep called the fire department and within half an hour, the door was open.

Scout jumped out joyfully, peeing and pooping all over the desert

What a relief!

Then I discovered, after the wonderful young firemen left, poop all over the van too — the rug, her dog bed, my yoga mat — shit everywhere. The poor girl had been trying to hold back a mudslide but in the excitement of all these people trying to free her, her bowels had spontaneously let go.

So that’s what I did Monday: laundry. Lots and lots of laundry.

p.s. And I found my purse. No shit.