Chapter Five — Sleeping on a Sidewalk

The first few days in the camper were spent organizing things and trying to decide what will fit where. Despite the large amount of storage, we filled it up pretty quickly.

In the bedroom, we took off the decorative bedspread and pillows, and replaced them with our own. Since we were going to be sleeping in a queen size bed instead of our king, I brought sheets and the summer blanket from our guest room.

I got a heads-up from my girlfriend Debbie, about how her son had a new RV and how extremely hard the mattress was in his new RV. So before we moved in, I ordered a mattress topper. However, it didn’t arrive before our first night.

You don’t see the thickness of the mattress when you’re buying an RV. It’s covered up by a pretty bedspread, and has decorative pillows to distract your eye. We found out later, the mattress was about 4” thick. Not much padding between your body and the base.

Night one was a nightmare. The mattress sat on a wood base, which at the foot, flipped up for storage.

We picked up the “trap door” (so to speak), to put the bedspread and pillows under there, and couldn’t get it closed!! It had two hydraulic pistons to hold the door open so it didn’t slam shut on your head or hands, but we were afraid to push on it too hard so we didn’t break anything. After all, we have to sell this eventually.

“How are we going to go to bed?!!” There’s no way we could sleep on the table! So in a panic, we called Ty, even though it was almost 11pm. Thank God he gave Sweetie his personal cell phone number!!

He reassured us that we could push on it hard to get it to close, and while he was still on the phone, we were able to close it. Whew! We thanked him and apologized profusely for calling him so late. We were also very grateful that he answered his cell phone!!

So, relieved, we go to bed. During the night, it got really cold…in the 50’s, and all we had was the summer blanket! I guess I didn’t think about those cooler spring nights. I was FREEZING. And we hadn’t yet turned on the propane to turn on the furnace. And we didn’t have time to read the instructions to use the electric fireplace. (We found out months later, that Ty delivered the trailer with the propane turned on!! Argh!)

Sweetie was fine, cause he’s always warm, but my personal thermostat runs cold. I tried snuggling closer, covering my head with the blanket, but I could not fall asleep. I was cold. I even put on some lounging pants and a long-sleeve t-shirt on top of my nightgown, and a pair of socks, and while that helped a little, I was still freezing. We finally got up about 2am, and opened the trap door and pulled out the bedspread and put that on top of our blanket. And I was finally able to fall asleep.

The next day, Sweetie turned on the propane. And we read the fireplace manual. We’re not going through that again!!