![\"Bag](\"http:\/\/perrellas.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Bag-Worms.jpg\" "\\"Bag")
<\/a><\/p>\nOur arrival at Buffumville Dam was uneventful. The gate open, one of the couples already planted in the far site, we pulled into the middle and began to settle LilyPad.\u00a0 Barely half an hour later the last couple pulled into the site closest to the street.\u00a0 I was later to learn that our middle site was the prime of all three.\u00a0 Street side was noisy and had no dish reception, end site had power surges and no WiFi.<\/p>\n
We greeted the other two Contract Worker teams, dogs KatieBug Pug and Casey Corgi sniffed each other and stretched out on the grass while us humans chatted. We are mid-range in age between the other two couples and, after several days together relaxing, it does appear we will all get along splendidly.\u00a0 A required training day on Friday will start us\u00a0 off and then we are on our own.\u00a0 One of the couples worked here three years ago and agreed to be our go-to source should we not be able to reach a Ranger.<\/p>\n Our Fearless Leader, Ranger Jamie, is as we Texans would say, a tall drink of water. Longtime employee, she has had a varied background and is direct, fare and relaxed in her requirements of our duties. Show up for work and do the job to the best of your ability. Our 12 straight hours, two consecutive days a week is our first \u201cpaying\u201d job. Our perks include a full hook-up site with all utilities paid, a beautiful park to enjoy on our days off, being close to our New England family and friends, two friendly neighbor couples with which to work and within a half days drive of reaching any New England state we wish to visit.\u00a0 That and the $5.00 per hour pay, all things considered, this worked out nicely.<\/p>\n Buffumville Lake Park has two pavilions,<\/p>\n picnic tables with grills,<\/p>\n Volley ball and horseshoe pits,<\/p>\n a beach, swimming area and a pirate ship,<\/p>\n flush toilets,<\/p>\n and seven miles of trails around the lake with a 300 car parking lot.<\/p>\n The toll booth where I work is a cramped dusty cube with two screened plastic sheeting windows, two doors, a small heater and a small musty a\/c. There is no way to keep the outside from continuously seeping inside.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t look this \u201cvintage\u201d in the pictures Ranger Jamie had sent.\u00a0 John will be cleaning the two stall bathroom facility by the beach and one vault on the dock side of the park and pick up trash. When cabin fever sets in, I will trade my cube for the golf cart, John will take my place and I\u2019ll do trash pick-up, check\/restock bathrooms and be the set of watchful eyes around the park.<\/p>\n This park is a \u201ccarry in\/carry out\u201d so whatever you bring in must be taken with you when you leave. No trash cans are available anywhere in the park, not even for our use. We must haul our trash over to the main facility several blocks away. Strange, but it seems to work with the exception of cigarette butts, dog poop and baby diapers left in the bathroom on the changing table. A tad gross but not nearly the worst we have had to clean up in the past so it\u2019s nothing either of us can\u2019t handle.<\/p>\n It is non-stop busy when the weather is pleasant.\u00a0 Cars line up to get in so sitting down for a rest is near impossible. Standing on cement for hours does unpleasant things to your back and your ankles tend to swell but our park guests are friendly so the time passes quickly when we are busy.<\/p>\n Our first day of work and we were slammed! Attendance right up there with the busy part of the season. I drove down to the beach to give the \u201cone hour closing\u201d warning after cleaning the bathrooms. A large family was enjoying the beautiful day, sitting on the beach with their whole family, having a Bar-B-Q and continuing their relaxation at our park from the previous days visit.\u00a0 We struck up a conversation and the husband said he wanted to do what we were doing when he retired. Strange how people see what we are doing and want to do the same. There sits a man in total relaxation, looking at my sweaty windblown self, watching me clean bathrooms and pick up trash, then trot off to stand in a tiny confined cubicle taking money for 12 straight hours, two days in a row with pay being a fraction of minimum wage. Odd that he sees this side of the fence as greener. Five years ago I had a completely different scenario playing inside my head when full-timing was my retirement dream.\u00a0 If you are thinking this isn\u2019t exactly what I had planned, you would be correct.<\/p>\n For reasons known only to them, the Retirement Spirits chose today to send us a warning, as they have done in the past, that we should be more accepting of our reduced space lifestyle in our rolling box. These \u201cSpirits\u201d intermittently send plagues ranging from slide floors buckling to tanks overflowing and pipes under the sink separating and flooding the floors. Each incident requires us to remove the entire contents of alternating areas of our motorhome, squishing us into an even smaller living space.<\/p>\n At the end of two busy long hot dusty 12 hour days, lungs struggling, back pinching, feet swollen, in a \u201chow the heck is this retirement?!\u201d state of mind, John picked me up in the golf cart and began his \u201cegg shell\u201d walk by hesitating before answering when I requested to go immediately back to LilyPad to ice myself from head to foot.\u00a0 He smiled as the dreaded words, \u201cGive me a hug\u201d escaped from his lips.\u00a0 Naturally my reaction was \u201cOh crap\u2026here we go again\u201d.<\/b>\u00a0\u00a0 Arriving at LilyPad, from outside our front door I could see the water still dripping from the bottom corner of our front slide.\u00a0 Apparently our sink drain had loosened and all the water from the dishwasher had run out onto the floor under the sink and flowed behind the cabinets to the front of the motorhome.\u00a0\u00a0 An \u201cit\u2019s always something\u201d of major proportion.\u00a0 It took five days to clean it up, dry it out and put everything back.<\/p>\n Our first attempt at a relaxing day off was a drive through town and was interrupted by the local police pulling us over, neither of us immediately understanding the reason. The stolen \u201cRibbit\u201d license plate we reported last August from a Portland, Oregon La Quinta Inn had come back to bite us in the hind end.\u00a0 For some peculiar reason, South Dakota DMV decided to ship us another plate with the exact same name. They didn\u2019t tell us that we would probably be stopped if any police happen to run our plates. We drove from Oregon to Texas without any plate at all, no police stopped us. We drove from Texas to Massachusetts with our re-ordered \u201cRibbit\u201d plates, no police stopped us. In the tiny town of Charlton, Massachusetts, a policeman pulls us over to ask us if we knew our plate was reported stolen. We were told by Oregon and Massachusetts that we were lucky several squad cars didn\u2019t pull us over with guns drawn and hauled us off to jail on a stolen car charge. Yep, just another typical day in our rolling-down-the-road lifestyle. Many discussions were had with Oregon to remove the report. Lengthier conversations were had with South Dakota police to remove the theft from the books, all for naught. Our new \u201cRibitts\u201d plates, a slight variation of \u201cRibbit\u201d, has arrived and another \u201cit\u2019s always something\u201d is behind us.<\/p>\n The pollen counts in New England, due to the late bombardment of snow, have gone on beyond Zebra with the highest counts in history. Already arriving with breathing problems, my lungs \u201cjust said no\u201d after two long work days and the stress of major water leakage clean up. We had to quickly find a doctor. Massachusetts has premier doctors and we found our doctor extraordinaire at an Urgent Care facility within a reasonable distance of our Park. Dr. Connors was willing to work with me and discuss my concerns instead of demanding I take what he ordered and not have a say in my treatment. Given strongly worded counsel to \u201cstay indoors\u201d, prescribed two medications to use in nebulizer breathing treatments four times a day, two oral medications and advised to wear a mask if I go outside\u2026UGH, no fun in my future for the next few weeks! My current mantra is, \u201cthis too shall pass\u201d. Our next work days will be totally rain soaked, giving me additional time indoors and the continuance of recovery.\u00a0 John and I will work something out that keeps me indoors more than outdoors for the upcoming weeks.<\/p>\n Another one of our responsibilities is to protect wild life. This morning I drove John to the Park bridge so he could chase off a turtle crossing the road. I am doubtful Mr. Turtle was grateful for us going out of our way, in the rain, to do him this good deed.<\/p>\n The local wild life, beyond turtles, is scarce with the exception of one lone turkey who strolls across our front lawn each morning.\u00a0 Must not be a social guy as he wanders into the forest when he sees us open the front gate.<\/p>\n The rain encouraged purple Lady Slippers to push themselves up from the thick pine needle covered forest floor and spread out behind our host sites. Hundreds of them have begun to emerge and cover the area. Makes for a pretty back yard of bright spring colors behind our graveled sites.<\/p>\n Our drive to Massachusetts was primarily freeway, relaxing and easy breezy. As we passed clusters of trees lining the freeway, the web worms were immediately noticeable and had already begun their damage to the local trees. So sad, a giant … Continue reading <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>\u00a0 <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>\u00a0 <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/h4>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"