2 years later

I can't believe it's been nearly two years since last posting. We sold the Sprinter and don't plan to do any traveling but you never know what may come along. The topic most on my mind in this new year is loss of motor function and I don't mean in the car. Balance, grasp and other taken-for-granted things have deteriorated badly. When I was making eyeglasses twenty years ago, I could drop a nosepad screw into its mount and screw it down in one smooth motion. Now my hands shake, my body twitches and my feet stumble. Medication plays its role in this but the illnesses themselves are the primary culprit. I think I'll be using an electric wheelchair before I'm 50, if I make it that long. My recovery time from colds and viruses is poor. No health insurance has prevented me from getting treatment I really need. It's hard to stay positive these days but I try, hoping for things to get better. I know the bleakness of Winter never helps my mood but I also know Winter ends and the warm sunshine returns.

Back From Florida

Dad and I got back from Florida on Saturday. We spent nearly three weeks there cleaning and prepping the house for sale and getting rid of stuff we had in storage - taking it to the Melbourne flea market and Goodwill. Gera was with us the first two weeks but flew back to start her new job. The weather was good and we accomplished a lot in the time we had. I started in remission less than a week before we left Jersey so I knew it was the right time to make the trip. I had that out of place feeling the first few days we were in Florida, but that passed and it just felt like home again - although far too "sleepy" compared to Vegas! We need to spend this time in Jersey near the family but we're hoping to keep the RV for occasional journeys. We'll see how long I can stave off wanderlust.

Whirlwind Mid-West Tour

We left Vegas on Halloween and it's been a fast trip to the East. We're in Springfield, Missouri tonight at a hotel. We've been alternating between hotels and RV parks. The RV is tight for sleeping with all our stuff packed in it. We did a great job selling off most things but there is still a bunch on-board. At the RV parks, we have to offload ten boxes to the car to make enough room for sleeping. It's been a quick trip, moving along about 250 to 300 miles a day. Our only real touristy adventure was the Grand Canyon but that was a beautiful trip. The pace is just too tiring to spend much time enjoying the sights but we are trying to schedule rests along the way.

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1990 Mallard Sprinter Class C RV

 

Yes, we'll be on the road again!

We put down a deposit on a 1990 Mallard Sprinter Class C mini-motorhome. It's 22 1/2 feet long, so it's smaller than our last one. But that will make it easier to park and Gera might actually drive this one! It seems big enough to haul all the stuff we'll want to take back East with us since we're not carrying any furniture. Whether we head to Florida or New Jersey first will depend on how full the coach is once it's loaded up. If it's too full, we'll go to Jersey to put that stuff in storage before we try to deal with the Florida storage unit. We're busy selling off stuff on craigslist and eBay. The trip will be much shorter than our last one. Mostly our goal is just to get there but we are going to try to see a few things we missed last time like The Grand Canyon. Money is tight so we can't stay anywhere for more than a night or so. Departure is scheduled for the end of October.

On the road AGAIN?!?

Well, it's hard to believe but, less than a year after settling into the rental condo and selling our RV, I'm actually considering doing it all over again! I guess I'm a glutton for punishment. Actually, it's that whole lemons into lemonade thing again. Gera had nothing but trouble with the two jobs she's had here this past year. Both companies are big corporations and they both treated her like crap! She's on unemployment now and interviewing for a new job but she's being very cautious. Nevada employment law is not on the side of the employee, so businesses get away with murder. Anyway, we're considering our options, including bugging out of Nevada in an RV.

eBay is still occupying my time for now. eBay Live! is here in Vegas this week so we're going to see if we can come up with a way to really make a living on eBay. But, we’re still leaning toward heading back East sooner rather than later. I’m looking for a cheap RV that will be big enough to haul our stuff in and give us a place to live for awhile back in Jersey; at least until we can find an affordable place. I’m going to look into buying a multi-plex or two that would give us some income and a free place to live. We might try to find a storefront for an eBay consignment business also. I have some other ideas but we’ll see what we learn at eBay Live!

Do I really want to travel the country in an old RV that’ll be sure to keep breaking down - AGAIN? I guess if the alternative is being homeless on the streets of Vegas, the answer is a resounding “Yes!”

The end in sight

Our RV adventure is near its end. We've moved into a rental condo in Henderson and are preparing the RV for sale. Unfortunately, I can't say that any place we visited on our journey offered me much of a health improvement. But, we had a good time and saw things we'd never expected. We're also happy that we've ended up here in the hills south of Las Vegas. It is definitely an interesting new environment for us to spend a year or two enjoying. After that, we'll probably head back East to be near our families. Maybe we'll RV again when we're old and gray. Only if the money allows though. My one recommendation to anyone wanting to travel like this is - be rich! If you can't be that, be prepared for a challenge to your wits. It's also helpful to study RV repair manuals before you go or you'll read them frequently on the journey.

Understanding

A letter and a story. The story of the spoons was written by a woman suffering from Lupus but the concept translates very well for people with FMS/CFS.

Living with FMS

The Spoon Theory

Lemonade

It’s been a weird New Year. We’ve decided to stay in Vegas because Gera got a great job, ironically with Bank of America. After living in the miserable job market of Brevard County, it’s a welcome change. Unfortunately, my hopes of relocation equaling rehabilitation have been dashed. I feel as bad as ever, with only the occasional respite. I had an unusually long remission prior to our trip back East but several things contributed to a return of my full-on symptoms. I reacquired a parasite from tainted New Jersey water and I had a bad case of food poisoning from a Delaware restaurant. A healthy person would recover from food poisoning in a couple days and the giardia or cryptosporidium infection in a couple weeks. I’m still feeling the effects two and a half months later. When I first acquired the water-borne parasite in New Jersey in December 2002, it took me until August 2004 to get rid of it. When the symptoms started again during our holiday visit, I realized the connection. My immune system is so overtaxed trying to fight off this undefeatable condition I’ve been living with for seven years - it can’t handle the simple stuff when it comes along. I’ll probably end up dying of something mundane like the common cold. So, I’ll live it up in the meantime as best my functionality allows.

Speaking of living it up, my sister was saying how much more of an adventure my life is than hers. I’ve heard some things from other people lately that suggest a mild envy of the way we live our life. I think that’s funny because everything I do comes from necessity, limitations and setbacks. People who think they know me would be shocked to hear me say this out loud, but it’s the absolute truth. Here’s a recent example – Gera had training in San Diego last week. Since the bank was paying the tab for her room, Ed and I drove out to stay and see the area. He and I had never been to California before so we wanted to visit but my real motivation was a day-trip to Tijuana for prescription meds. My broke ass can’t afford the $212 a month it takes to buy my medication without health insurance. So, I hopped the border and bought 2.5 month’s worth for $122. Seems like an exotic adventure but it was all about necessity. I roll wonderful things into “setback solutions” to keep myself sane. After we were forced out of business by the sunglass manufacturers and the State of New Jersey, I gave Jersey the finger and moved to Florida to start fresh. Jersey still holds a grudge for that (hence the parasite in the water). When it turned out I had an incurable disorder that was made worse by humidity (while living in the most humid state in the U.S.) and there wasn’t a decent paying job to be found anywhere in that freaking humid state, I sold my house and traveled the country looking for a healthier place to live. When God squeezes my lemons, I grin with my gritted teeth and say, “Well, now it’s time to sell some fucking lemonade!”

My latest setback has been with eBay. I’ve been selling stuff on eBay (on and off) since just before we closed our optical business in 1998. At first I just sold leftover sunglass inventory and then things I could pick up cheap at yard sales or auctions but, in 2001, I discovered how to make pretty consistent income using rebates. Six or eight times a year, CompUSA, OfficeMax, Staples and a couple other companies would run sales offering many items free after rebate. They did this because statistics showed less than 40% of the people who bought these items would send in or otherwise qualify for the rebates so they made great money. I would drop $1,000 to $2,000 or so each sale weekend then fill out the forms and wait for the rebate money to come in. It always did, even if I had to follow up with a phone call or another letter. In the meantime, I’d either stockpile the freebies or list them on eBay. I’d usually make 90% of my outlay back on eBay and since the rebates would refund all but postage and tax, it was all profit! I kept this little goldmine a secret but it wasn’t long before many people were doing the same thing. Starting in 2002, each rebate sale would start on Sunday (the only day you could hope to actually get any of that merchandise) and on Monday, dozens of those items would be up on eBay. This glut of auctions for the same stuff resulted in less sales and lower prices for everybody. With the decline in sales and the decline in my health, I started stockpiling. I could manage to go out and buy the merchandise but the selling for so little money wasn’t worth the exhaustion it caused since Gera was making decent money at her job. I also knew that holding the items until after everyone else’s supplies had long since sold would mean more money for me. Supply and demand drive prices. This tactic really paid off because even though our garage and spare bedroom were full of “junk”, it was selling all that stuff that carried us for a year after Gera got laid off and couldn’t get a job. So, here we are in 2005 and several things have transpired. Since people bought all that free after rebate stuff specifically to sell on eBay, they were much more diligent about sending in those rebate forms than people were in the “old days” of 2001. I’m sure the stores were seeing more like 80% qualifying rebates and therefore no profit. So, those days are gone and it is now a rare exception for a store to run a free-after-rebate sale. The deals have dried up and so has the little extra-income business that kept me feeling like a productive, worthwhile citizen instead of the useless pile of shit this goddamn disease is determined to make me feel like. But, always the one to smile at the lemon squeezing, I will do something else. I met a guy on the bus back from Mexico who has some expensive paintings he wants to sell and since he doesn’t know how to eBay, he might have me do it for him (for a small fee of course). I met another guy who travels around selling less expensive paintings that people hang on their middle-America walls as decoration. He also knows nothing about eBay and, you guessed it, wants me to help. So, necessity once again moves me to something different. I guess people will think I live the glamorous life of an art dealer after this one. Like always though, I’m just selling the fucking lemonade.