Hello to anyone reading, and I hope that you’re having a decent day. Now that it’s been a few days since we got that RV, I feel like I can go into a bit more detail about what it’s like spending time and sleeping in it. The long and short of it is that, as I’ve probably already mentioned in the last post or two, it’s not terrible. It also isn’t the best setup in the world or anything like that.
The RV is not a type of vehicle that I have any previous experience with, and I was pretty delighted to find that it is just like a very tiny apartment in there. Parking on the side of certain roads leaves it in a tilted position, which can make it kind of disorienting to move around inside; my girlfriend purchased some leveling ramps for it. The tilt isn’t completely gone, but it’s much more level than it was before, so this particular problem is mostly solved. I hung up my wolf calendar–it’s really nice that I’m finally able to utilize this gift from my mom–and funny enough, it also serves as a pretty nice indicator of how level the RV is sitting. It was really lopsided before we moved spots yesterday, but now it’s hanging almost straight.
I’m still getting used to sleeping in there, but the amount of space makes it a huge improvement from the van. It’s made a huge difference not having to sleep in the same space that my stuff, and that of my roommates, is stored in. I can stretch my legs now!
Yesterday we got the propane tank filled up and I now know that it has a capacity of 11 gallons. The experience wasn’t great, though; the guy working at the U-Haul we went to repeatedly misgendered my girlfriend, who, I might add, is feminine as hell (not that misgendering a masc woman would be any better, but there wasn’t any room for confusion here). We got what we needed but it was awkward and uncomfortable, and when I tersely corrected the man he made no acknowledgement that he’d heard me. I’m not at all good at direct confrontation but I was furious at what seemed to me like intentional, repeated microaggressions rather than innocent confusion, so I left a poor review and name-dropped him. I’m not one who enjoys getting workers in trouble, but he had to have known he was crossing a line. I mean, she had a flower in her hair. Hopefully there is another place in town to get propane in the future.
Anyway, now that we have propane, shitty tank-filling experience aside, we are now able to run the refrigerator and use the stovetop. That is a pretty important milestone because it means that we can now get fresh food and cook our own meals again, reducing our dependence on fast food. I love a good burger, but there’s no doubt that the amount of them we’ve been eating lately is presently or will soon start to negatively impact our health.
What remains, and what will be tricky, is obtaining hookups to power and water, as well as finding a place to pump out the sewage. We’ve been careful about using the on-board toilet mostly just for urinating, but there have been a couple of times when it was used for an emergency #2. It’s really nice to have more reliable access to a bathroom because I have a weak bladder and enjoy caffeine daily, plus the heat wave we’re in necessitates drinking more water! I’ve built up a pretty bad habit of not drinking, and becoming dehydrated, because I don’t want to feel the unpleasantness of needing to pee and having nowhere to go. This probably represents an actual danger to my health; I’m on a couple of medications that increase my susceptibility to heat and have been sweating gallons every day for at least the past couple of weeks.
Overall I’ve been feeling pretty low lately. The RV, as said, is an improvement, but it is not stable housing and gets dangerously hot during the day. The other day I actually went into heat exhaustion and my vanmate had to rush me to the local maker space to cool me down. I’m really glad she was there for me, but it was a scary and unpleasant experience. I hate to think that if my condition had progressed much further she might have been rushing me to the nearest hospital instead.
It’s gotten me thinking a lot about climate change and the way it effects different parts of the population depending on social inequalities. I have always heard that the climate crisis would, and is, effecting first and foremost the poorest and most vulnerable people. It’s easy to hold this fact in your head because it makes logical sense. What’s a little harder is processing the fact that I am part of that demographic and being affected profoundly by the warming climate. People richer than I can imagine are making profit by burning fossil fuels, adding tons and tons and tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide to Earth’s atmosphere, and people who are also quite rich are making their profit by hoarding housing and making it unattainable to those who can’t fork over hard-earned income for it. Both types of rich people, of which I’m sure there’s a good bit of overlap, are responsible for the suffering of those who get third-degree burns from sitting on scorching sidewalk, renters who aren’t allowed AC units, folks baking in the car they sleep in because there’s nowhere else to go. No one is pressing a knife to my throat, or aiming a gun to my head, but I am being treated violently, and so is every other poor person.
Anyway, the next goal for my roomies and I is to find a stable, long-term spot to park the RV and work on it while also having access to running water and electricity. Thank you for reading!
Fern is Homeless 