Haboob? Or Just Sympathy Pains?

(Due to our internet being down all day Sunday this blog was posted a day late).

It arrived very suddenly with shrieking blasts around 10 p.m. last night and after it had blown through, we thought that the hurricane hitting New York had somehow gotten misdirected. I’m talking about a ferocious wind/thunderstorm which pounded our neighborhood for about an hour’s worth of destruction. A quick check with our neighborhood this morning and all suffered some type of damage.

Here’s what’s left of the tarp covering Marc’s work area on our lot. Looking around at many downed trees on others’ lots, I can’t believe ours didn’t suffer any damage.







Lots of gates blew down or out.







And the flapping blue tarp crowd is “a really flapping” now!






Odd spots of upheaval like this porch in disarray and an upended large BBQ and some poor guy’s very expensive gazebo ruined. (By the way, despite the lead in picture of ours dancing like a banshee, it survived, thanks to Marc’s good anchoring system.)







There are a lot of roofs damaged, metal torn off, even heavy tile lifted and scattered broken about all over yards. Many of these owners are absentee of course, so they perhaps won’t know of the damage until they return this winter. This was about the worst wind storm we have been in here in Yuma and followed the haboob (dust storm) they experienced in Phoenix yesterday early evening. Even this morning our Gila Mountain range disappeared to our vision there was so much dust stirred up.

Continued Sacrifices

Following along the lines of Marc’s sacrifices lately in giving up his toys I am making one of my own. Please be advised that sometime in September, our main website itchyhitch.com will cease to exist.

The primary way this impacts current readers is that if you are accessing this “What’s New” blog from itchyhitch.com you will need to bookmark this new direct address: http://itchyhitchwhatsnew.blogspot.com/
Please make note of it.

In actuality, we haven’t done much with our main website since we stopped traveling. The format is cumbersome for Marc to work with since it requires Front Page & HTML formatting. However, it does have advantages that I haven’t mastered in Google’s free BlogSpot; for instance, the posting of all the photo story videos. So this is fair warning that if there are pages on our main website you may enjoy and want to refer to in the future please copy them while you have the chance.

We have retained the domain “itchyhitch.com” since my primary email address is linked to that and the cost is very slight. And who knows? Eventually we may travel again and find need for an extensive website like itchyhitch used to be before falling on hard times, like us.

Kitchen Redo

We’re finally in the middle of our kitchen redo and things are a mess. I’ve got the RV kitchen to use of course, and save for the fact of running back and forth between the two places in 110 degree heat, I am thankful for it! Marc is working this in between some other jobs so when it will actually be done is anyone’s guess. We hope the countertop tile can be laid as of today but the more-intricate and difficult backsplash tile will be awhile yet.


After building the new enclosure for the dishwasher Marc did get the harlequin-pattered end cap tile finished on Friday and it came out very unique and different. My counter tile will be a combination of the two colors as well but with six inch tile. The predominant color will be the palomino with the buff color dropped in randomly and occasionally. Unfortunately the first dishwasher we purchased, a GE, ended up not working properly so we had to make a trip to Home Depot for a replacement on Friday which won’t arrive until Tuesday. I opted for a Maytag this time around; more money of course.




Our temperatures this past week actually moderated a tad; at least some of the early mornings were bearable although the week started with very high humidity at 70%. Looking ahead to this week though, we will be fairly consistent at about 109 most of the time. High electricity bills due to air conditioning are just a given this time of year so it sure hurts to pay the bill. Our a/c units haven’t shut down in weeks and months, running continuously, even in the RV.

The only other news of note is that our next-door neighbors had the fire department out upon discovery of a four foot rattlesnake which crawled beneath their manufactured home. Fire department personnel refused to crawl in after it—no surprise, so we now watch a little more carefully where we step as we traverse our lot with its myriad places for a snake to hide. It was surprising to us a snake would come onto that lot since they have a small dog but they also leave dog food out which probably attracts rodents. I know it attracts grackles every morning who hop around with chunks in their beaks. Of course, if it happens to show up on our lot there will be no calling the fire department on this end; we’ll serve up western justice of our own ilk at the end of a double barrel.

Just one more thing to put up with in a desert summer.

Over the Top

Marc now spends much of his free time cooking and baking and despite the small size of our kitchen there is always room for something like this—a new, original Boos Butcher Block made to order! Boos has been making professional level butcher blocks out of hard rock Maple in Illinois since the 1800's. There's one in the White House.

When the large truck arrived and I told Marc that I bought him a new toy as a surprise for his anniversary gift and told him it weighed around 270 pounds he was not only flabbergasted but stymied. That soon passed once he peeked inside the box although I’m not sure he realized it was going to be a stand-alone block and not just a cutting board.

After dinner, he soon set about putting it together since the legs and casters needed attaching. It took both of us to tip it upright, where Marc finished the process by attaching the knife holder to the side.






Mere words fail to describe the singular sensation of cutting on something like this. There is a denseness and solidness that is beyond belief—it truly gives the art of cutting or chopping a new glory. Every time we look at it we smile and run our hands over the smooth top as though it’s a thoroughbred born to race. What a beautiful piece of functional art that can be handed down through generations to use and cherish.

Changing Things Up

Living where nights remain relatively balmy during fall and winter we find we entertain a lot once our entire neighborhood is back in residence during “the season”. One thing I have really grown to miss since selling our home in Bend and living in the RV and the park model is not having a dishwasher. I don’t view washing dishes several times daily as an evil household chore, but I do particularly miss having one after having dinner companions or throwing a party which means a pile of dishes, pots, and pans which take me hours to clean up, wash and dry. I’ve wistfully told Marc that I wished I had a dishwasher enough times now that he finally got the message and is determined to figure a way I can.

For those not in the know, everything done in RVs and park models is done in miniature scale as compared to normal household fixtures. Appliances are narrower, furniture is small scale, cupboards lack adequate household depth; even water heaters are normally only five gallons! We were smart enough to upgrade ours however, so this park model sports a 20 gallon model so we eliminated one immediate concern. However, there just is nothing to be done about a cabinet whose depth is only 20.5 inches when a normal dishwasher needs at least 25.5 inches.

Looking at our quasi-bar configuration, that cabinet sits in the only and rightful area for placement of a dishwasher so Marc is determined that he can probably unbolt it and take it apart and take it into a cabinet shop where they can carefully cut it to expand it. This is a little too convoluted to explain in these pages but the gist of the thing is that it will then require a new countertop in the entire kitchen. Currently there is wood-wrapped Formica in the kitchen and on the separate built-in buffet. Our thinking is that we will put in new tops done in tile which can then also be run up as backsplash, which I have also desperately needed behind the stove. It will also be necessary to run tile down the end piece which currently houses our heater (and an open hole which we’ve never been able to fix) which has to be removed due to the dishwasher! We’ve not gotten far enough long to figure out where the heater can be reinstalled. It could be near to impossible to try and match the factory wood and stain so tile seems like a better option for this end cap. The look should be a great improvement and I will get my dishwasher!



Unfortunately, gaining a dishwasher forces me to lose my only large cabinet for pots, pans and bake ware so it has been a mad scramble of rearranging and eliminating in order to find room (mainly in the buffet) for these items.

The changes haven’t only been about me and my wants—I agonized for several months over something a little over the top to get for Marc’s present for our upcoming anniversary. We normally don’t exchange gifts at any point during the year and haven’t done anything in years to celebrate our day. Marc hasn’t had it easy giving up his toys this year and since he has developed a passion for baking bread, smoking meats, and just cooking in general I thought about what I might be able to contribute to the kitchen to make it more workable for him—OK, us.

Is this over the top enough? Ah-ha—it hasn’t arrived as yet, so stay tuned next week to find out his surprise!

Derby Settles In

Marc made it home with our new family addition late Monday evening. To ease her into things, he spent the night with her in the RV so she wouldn’t be exposed to our cat Tucker right after her traumatic week of travel and staying in various strange houses along the way. After that, we traded off and I took Derby and he took Tucker until we decided to introduce them later in the week. Meanwhile, Derby had a chance to look around after she would come out from hiding under or on top of the bed.

She made quick progress and soon grew to love early mornings out on the screened in front porch where she discovered the asparagus fern much to her liking. Since she was eating it and using it for her bed I finally needed to move it before she destroyed the entire thing. She also got much better with me, almost ceasing entirely her aggressive lashing out and now shadows me throughout the house as I go about my tasks. She hasn’t warmed up to Marc quite as much but I really do think she tends to be a one-person cat and must have transferred her attachment to Rachael over to me.









The jury is still out on the two cats together. They haven’t come to outright cat fighting yet but she often hisses at Tucker as he goes about trying his best to ignore her presence. She remains curious about him though and won’t let him far from sight despite feigning indifference.





This morning we moved the large cat condo from the RV into the park model and although it takes up a lot of space we can ill afford, it has already become Derby’s haven as she sits atop it and gazes out the window and tries to squeeze her ample rear end through the almost-too-small holes. Every cat we’ve owned has loved this thing and now it looks to be making Derby feel right at home.