Struggle bus morning

Elisabeth Boonin

• 4 min read

Once I’ve had my coffee, I’m great in the morning. Before that, it’s pretty dodgy. By building a careful routine, I’ve learned to muddle my way through the first minutes of the day… shuffle to the bathroom, then straight to the kitchen— switch on the kettle, etc. But living in our home on wheels makes it all a new and exciting challenge. Today I wet the floor and for a brief instant, I thought I may have literally shit the bed!

But I'm jumping ahead– last night we found another roadside rest area, near Mitchellville Iowa. We got there and enjoyed the last sunny hour of a beautiful day, busting out our lawn chairs and another can of gin-selzer-cucumber-lemon insta cocktail.

We resisted the temptation to stop in Booneville and held out for somewhere that we could let the toilet tree get out and play. Our hotel room had another lovely view of the sunset.

More hilarity ensued in the evening. We got inadvertently mooned by a guy trying to change clothes in the back of his pickup truck, terrible puns were told (Roberta turns out to be more Boonin than the Boonins!) and I once again admired Sara's forethought in packing screwtop bottles of wine. My friend Ling Ling is a phenomenal baker and had been tormenting me with pictures of her home made Oreos... sadly we didn't have any cookies. But we did have something yummy– Roberta had made us "Sephardic haroset truffles" for Passover (dates and apricots and pistachios mashed into balls, rolled in sugar) and we'd loved them, so she made a new batch for the road trip. Tipsy and stuffed I conked out, lulled to sleep by the drone of truck generators parked across from us.

I dreamt about Ling Ling's cookies

This all led to a rather groggy morning. In my own bit of clever planning, I've brought along my Aeropress coffee setup. It's perfect for an RV– just boil the water, put the press over your cup with a scoop of coffee. I gallantly made coffee for Roberta first, then popped in a new filter & boiled a bit more water.  We don't have a kettle, just a somewhat unwieldy cookpot.  So, it's a little tricky to pour the boiling water out of it into the Aeropress... I was focusing very hard on not burning myself or splashing the burning water and only when I started to feel hot water splashing on my feet did I realize I hadn't put the aeropress on a mug nor had I put any coffee in it.

Now I understand why they tell you to put on your own oxygen mask first before making coffee for Roberta.

I managed to get it right on the second try.

Eager to get back on the road, I decided to forego my usual second cup of coffee and we set about the process of "battening down the hatches".  If you've ever travelled in a motor home, you'll know the drill... if you don't check and recheck everything, you find out soon enough as things start to drop on the floor and cabinets flap, etc. I've been sleeping in the cabover bed, above the drivers seats, and I pushed the bedding back a bit, checking to make sure I hadn't left my phone or water bottle there. Then I discovered something clinging to my sheets that made me first gasp in horror as I ran through an unlikely list of possibilities.

Poor Willie! He's 2,000 miles away and I thought he shit in my bed

It took about 2.3 seconds to produce the following thoughts

  1. Oh my god, I pooped in my bed. Don't be ridiculous, that couldn't happen (and that poop is way too small to be mine)
  2. I hope it wasn't MY dog who pooped in the bed. No, she never does that.
  3. Damn it Willie, we keep showing you where the dog door is. Oh wait, you're not on this trip with us.
  4. Oh that's not poop, it's a Sephardic haroset ball! HAHAHAHAHAHA
  5. Ooh, I wonder if I should eat it

I hope that's the end of the AM struggle. Lessons were learned.