Better Juice Maybe?

When APL was a very little boy, he once asked his mom for juice by saying “better juice maybe?” Sometimes APL and I use that phrase to joke about things (i.e. to help deal with things) that could/should be a bit better than they currently are. Considering our camper comes from a company called “Jucy,” it seems particularly applicable here. While I still think the camper is a major upgrade from hauling a heavy pack between public transportation and hostels, we’ve had a few problems with living in the camper since my last post.

Yesterday, I spent four hours in class learning about international trade law. APL spent all afternoon taking a surfing lesson. (Obviously APL got the better deal!!) By the time we got out of our classes, we were both so exhausted that we didn’t want to do anything at all. So we decided to pick up a pizza and just relax in Matilda. However, we made the mistake of driving away from the coast and back to our campsite to relax. At dusk. It was a very bad plan.

Though APL rigged up a brilliant mosquito net inside our camper (so we can keep the windows open and not roast to death in there) there must have been a gap or hole somewhere, because while we were trying to relax we had a mild mosquito apocalypse. We found ourselves sitting inside our mosquito nets but getting our palms covered with bug guts and our net polka-dotted with blood as we killed dozens of mosquitoes. Needless to say it wasn’t at all relaxing. It was frustrating. And exhausting. And itchy.

Also, though I have been sleeping pretty well on the bed in the camper, living in the camper seems to be contributing to me not sleeping enough. The campsite is pretty crowded and noisy until around 10pm, so we’ve been getting to sleep sometime after that, which is not actually too late. But we also end up getting up pretty early – around 8am for the past couple of days. This is partly because we have all the windows open in Matilda to stay cool, so it gets really bright in there really early. But, even if we could ignore the light, it starts getting too warm at the campsite, and certainly in Matilda, around 9am. Though 10 hours may seem like enough hours of sleep, with jet lag, traveling, hours of class every day, fatigue, and dealing with swollen joints from the heat I think I simply need more. I can feel my body getting more exhausted each day. I need major catch up sleep before I get past my breaking point.

This afternoon we also saw an error light blinking on our battery-powered cooler. Considering how I’ve been feeling more exhausted each day, potential failure of our cooler pretty much gave me a panic attack because I know that I need to be able to keep up with my ENBREL injections to get through this class and enjoy this trip. We called Jucy right away and told them the problem. To which they replied: “oh, you can’t run the cooler all the time.” They insisted that they told us this when we picked up the camper. They 100% never said anything of the sort. I know, because I was paranoid about keeping the ENBREL cold so I paid close attention to the part about the cooler. They said we needed to keep it on low – not that we needed to turn it on and off. Grrr…In any event, it looks like we will have to run the cooler on intervals from now on to save the battery. Hopefully it will be insulated enough to keep my ENBREL cold. Everything should be fine, but it is enough to make me a little bit nervous. Which makes me a little more grumpy. Which makes me a little more tired.

For Christmas this year I think I’d like a shady parking spot and a cool breeze so I can take a very long nap.