I don’t mean to be a screw up. I really don’t. But as I’ve mentioned before, I have no aptitude whatsoever to be doing what I’m doing, traveling in and caring for a tiny trailer. It seems like any mistake that can be made, I make it. The good news is, as a friend of mine always says, anything can be fixed. However, one needs to stay alive in order to fix stuff. My latest foible could have turned out poorly in that respect.
It all revolved around The Tiny’s outside light, also known as a porch light. It’s very bright. And where I’m set up now, near a street in a residential cowboy neighborhood, I didn’t want the light illuminating the hippie panels that surround my awning all night long. It just didn’t seem safe to let my freak flag be flying at 2 a.m. when the bars close and the pickup trucks are heading home. But I do want a soft glow out there. If I look out the window, I want to see if someone has breached my veil of hippie panels and come inside my awning area at night, rather than me looking out at pure darkness.
So I so very cleverly attached some 3M Command hooks to the outside of the trailer, used some cafe curtain clips, and hung a cloth placemat over the light to provide a nice ambiance. (Some of you are seeing red flags; I saw none.)
Unbeknownst to me, the little 12V lightbulb in that lamp burns really, really hot. So hot, in fact, that with the placemat blocking the air flow, the heat from the bulb melted the plastic light cover. I actually enjoyed my soft glowing set up for several nights before I decided to try out another fabric and when I removed the placement, I saw the melted cover. That could have easily lit the fabric on fire. And as that’s right next to the door, and just below the nylon awing, a fire could have happened that would trap me inside. I thank my lucky stars that did not happen.
I wasn’t sure if I needed to replace the whole porch light. The frame is slightly wonky. And I didn’t even know if the covers are sold separately. So I went to the local camper supply store, and handily forgot to bring along the melted cover. I walked in, stammered something about a porch light and held my fingers in an oval, and the savvy clerk walked to a shelf and immediately handed me a new cover with a $3.95 price tag. That was easy!
The melted cover had popped out without much force, testifying to it’s compromised state. The new one popped in only with quite a bit of force, as it should to ensure a tight fit so it doesn’t fly off on the freeway.
I don’t know how to stop doing stupid stuff. Hopefully these dumb-dumb instances will ease up with time and experience. Hopefully red flags fly at the appropriate times.
I did have a few vital realizations, though. First and foremost, I need to replace my ancient smoke alarm pronto. I kept telling myself that because I don’t use propane in my trailer, I can’t have a fire. Wrong!
Plus, I have made a mental note to never, ever place the back of the trailer so close to a tree that I can’t fully open the swing-out window opposite the door. That is the egress, the escape route for me and the dog if there is a fire on the door side.
So another stupid thing happened. Chock it up. But the realizations I had as a result could well be lifesaving.
This experience falls into one of my favorite categories: “Non-fatal Wakeup Calls.” May they continue to occur.