Well, no, not exactly in so many words. We’ve never had a conversation about the times travel trailer life would be irritating.
There are a lot of things different about living in a travel trailer that I’m fine with.
I’m OK with a toilet that doesn’t really flush, and I’m OK with having to empty a septic tank periodically.
I’m fine with the fact that a watering can props up the water hose at just the right angle to provide decent water flow to the sink and shower and that when it gets knocked down I have to take a shower in bursts-of-water-shifts.
I don’t mind pitching a tent for my overnight guests, and I’m alright with sleeping on a top bunk where my face is 18 inches away from the ceiling.
I’ve made peace with the fridge that one day wants to freeze all our fresh vegetables and the next day struggles to keep things cool if the outside temperature climaxes at 100.
But there are moments when I’m irritated.
Like when I reach for my jewelry box and a cockroach comes scurrying out from behind it. Or basically anytime there’s a cockroach, which in a travel trailer isn’t that unusual. But it’s still disconcerting when you reach for the cutting board and one comes out from nowhere, lands on the floor and you grab a tennis shoe and slam it down onto the big-ass bug with such verocity that all sleeping dogs in the house wake, and your dinner guest is wide-eyed: what just happened?
Or like the time my friend texts me, “Guess what I just saw at your house. A HUGE mouse. But it’s not a rat. Rats don’t exist.” And then a couple days later when my boyfriend is visiting, it’s a Sunday morning, we’re drinking coffee or something and he says, “Babe, look. There’s a rat,” and we stand together and gaze at this huge mouse (rats don’t exist) meandering on the patio.
There are the times spiders crawl around in the shower with me. Before bed, I fluff the pillows and blankets to scare away any visitor- bugs that might have taken residence there.
A turtle visited the other night. Outside. And the rabbits are so prolific that sometimes I feel it might be dangerous. There are a couple lizards who live in the tree outside, a frog who frequents the patio, and a myriad of birds.
Don’t get me wrong. I am a lover of nature.
But sometimes I fantasize about the days when I won’t watch HUGE mice on the patio with my boyfriend on a Sunday morning, and when the presence of cockroaches are the exception, not the rule.
In the meantime, we carry on with tennis-shoe slamming and rat-trap setting. Because, by golly, even if Momma didn’t tell me there’d be days like these, there are.
And we deal.
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