Working while hanging out at the resort

We've talked about the fun activities at the resort, and some of the places and events where we have gone during our month-long stay in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. But we also got some work done and projects completed. One of our annual projects is cleaning the outside of the motor home. We start first with the fiberglass roof. It gets a good scrubbing, then is waxed with two coats of mop and glow wax. That project leaves streaks of white down the sides, so very soon after that we have to plan a day to wash the entire motor home. Our motor home is 35 feet long and 8.5 feet wide and 12 feet tall. If you do the math, you can figure that when you do all four sides that is equal to 1,000 square feet of surface. So we rinsed the dirt off 1,000 square feet, we scrubbed 1,000 square feet with soap, we rinsed the soap off 1,000 square feet, and then towel-dried 1,000 square feet. Whew! That's a lot of trips up and down that ladder to get the top points, and a lot of bending over to get the bottom edge! We were tired after that work!

If you remember from an earlier blog, on the drive south we discovered that our muffler tail pipe had rusted in two. Mark removed the old part and started shopping for parts to repair it. After seven years with a motor home warranty, we are now on our own to make repairs like this.

Denisa loves being married to a guy that is good at fixing things. It was a major project to remove the old tail pipe. Then he went shopping for a replacement, only to find it would cost $500 and was on a six-week back order.

So he bought parts and pieces and made his own replacement for a lot less money. Some of the pieces were bought at a local parts place where only Spanish was spoken, so it was a multi-cultural experience. Mark installed it and everything looks great!

Mark had a long list of things to repair while we were sitting still. He bought and installed new drawer slide rails to fix our saggy hamper drawer. We had some new photographs printed for the frames that we display in the motor home. Mark did our income taxes, and got them submitted. He checked the oil in the wheel hubs and cleaned the air conditioner filters. He fixed the heavy duty air compressor that we use to air up the motor home tires. He fixed the sliding door that separates the bedroom from the rest of the motor home. He fixed a seal and re-glued a piece of carpet on the bedroom slide. He cleaned the overhead shower cover and the two fans. He bought and installed a new water heater annode rod and flushed out the hot water heater. You can see that the old one was badly corroded.

Whew! That was a lot of handyman projects that needed done on the motor home! If you think that he is only good at projects that include screwdrivers and hammers, he is also great in the kitchen. For Valentine's Day he surprised Denisa with a pink chocolate chip cookie dough cheesecake, baked to perfection.

This in one of Denisa's favorite desserts, so she would have loved it. But then he did a cut and paste project that turned that plain round cheesecake into a heart-shaped work of art. Happy Valentine's Day! Denisa is one lucky woman to have a Valentine that is so talented!

Even though we don't have any yard work at our camping site, Denisa's Mother does. We spent most of a day raking leaves and trimming plants and trees at her house. We had over ten of the large plastic yard bags full of leaves and trimmings. Another job that needed to be done is picking all the citrus fruit off her trees. Mexican fruit flies have crossed the border, and everyone is asked to get ripe citrus off the trees so that these pests don't have a place to lay their eggs and raise larva that will harm next year's crop.

The citrus trees in the park were severely damaged two years ago by a freeze. Many of the trees are no longer producing, and many died. This was the first year that we had to buy oranges while we were visiting the Rio Grande Valley. But Denisa's Mother has an old tangerine tree that made it through the freeze, and we needed to get those hard-to-reach tangerines off the top of the tree. Mark was standing on the top of our ladder, picking all the tangerines.

After he clips the stems, he tosses them down to Denisa, who has to use her best hand-eye coordination to catch them before they hit the ground. Mark took a picture of his view of the situation. He drops the fruit from the top of the tree . . .

and watches until Denisa makes the catch and bags the fruit. Then we start again.

Any damaged fruit needs to be juiced right away, so we had another job to finish up. We squeezed and then froze enough tangerine juice to get us a few miles down the road this year.

So even though it might seem like we are playing a lot during our resort month, at least one of us is getting lots of work done too!