Isa's Story

On this, the occasion of my 18-month trailerversary! (Perhaps the less said on the subject, the better.)

Some of you saw my big beautiful house plans this summer. Turns out I didn’t have enough money to build that house, short by $100,000 give or take. So new plan, smaller, less beautiful but maintaining some cool features. Don’t recall now how much over budget that one was. Then total revamp, small and very not fancy. What do you know, the money exists for that version! Barely. If I borrow money from my family. And only if absolutely nothing goes wrong, no surprises, no rock encountered by any of the zillion digging activities required (and the property is all rock).

On line mortgage calculator showed the monthly payment for that version would take 49.85% of my monthly take home pay. Which would mean a vastly reduced life style: lesser quality food for everyone: dogs, cats and humans. No vacations ever, ever again. (Sally, are you listening?) No playtime for Teri of any kind, ever again. And never, ever being able to retire. Not a sustainable scenario and I cannot, will not, do that to myself. I have had many, many panic attacks thinking I “should” try to come up with the money.

So I have officially pulled the plug on building the house. I’ve started looking for an actual house but there’s not much currently available for sale, particularly given that certain parties require a certain amount of distance from neighbors. It’s the wrong time of year and, I’m told, real estate inventory hereabouts is very low right now. So I’ll hole up in the trailer for the winter and believe/picture/manifest that the perfect (affordable) house (with walls and everything!) will turn up when the time is right.

I have been edging towards this decision for a while now. The above appears straightforward but it has not been. Everything that could go wrong, pretty much has. and if it didn’t go wrong, per se, it was prohibitively expensive. I won’t bore you with the details but some highlights include:

• Not only is the well water harder than anything (four-plus times standard), there is uranium present. All can be remedied – for a price.
• Needing either a bigger well pump ($$) or a large holding tank inside the house somewhere/how ($$) for the fire sprinklers required by the fire department.
• A turnaround carved out of thin air large enough for a fire truck to turn around (meant bringing in large quantities of dirt to flatten out enough space – $$$$)
• Even more money to get electricity to the property because my “good” neighbor, who had previously been willing to grant me an easement for an overhead powerline, changed his mind because he decided I should use a different pathway for access – one that the electric company views as unusable.[1]  (WTH?)

Aside from the financial aspects of house building, my neighbors are … interesting.

One set of neighbors called animal control three days in a row because Roxy was allegedly barking nonstop. In the middle of the day. In the boondocks. A couple of weeks later (one?), these same neighbors insisted Roxy was barking for two hours nonstop every morning between 6:00 am and 8:00 am. Except Roxy is in the trailer with me during that period, we don’t get up until 6:30 and I certainly would never put up with her barking for two hours nonstop, much less in the trailer. I would be (more) batshit crazy than I already am. They told me I was full of *something* because I continued to insist she was asleep during that period of time. Clearly I was lying about that because they “know Roxy’s voice and know it was her barking.” Huh? At some point they must have figured out it was not Roxy barking because I’ve not heard from them in some time. They did thank me in the most patronizing way possible for the work I’d been doing with her.

The neighbors on the other side also called animal control (the week following the multiple visits from animal control due to the other neighbors) because Roxy had them trapped inside their house. In Roxy’s defense, they had spent the previous week tormenting her by using the (shared) driveway next to her enclosure. Repeatedly, noisily and in spite of the fact that they could have used the drive on the other side of their property. Not the most aware human beings I’ve ever met, nor did I have any idea humans could be that despicable (about other things). Overall, I couldn’t fault them calling animal control; Roxy is damn scary when she gets going. And they opted not to press charges – just $50 worth of tickets. All’s well that ends well? To be clear, Roxy was not running loose due to any choice of mine. I’d just moved her enclosure (the previous day – well away from the shared drive) and it was not 100% Roxy-proof. It is now, believe me.

In related news, I found a great trainer for Roxy and she’s doing so much better even if we do still have stuff to work on. We’re still at the point that no one can come to the house but she can almost be trusted in public. Took her to a hot tourist spot on Labor Day weekend (with the trainer) and her tail never stopped wagging, people were petting her and telling her how pretty she is. I, personally, nearly imploded – way more people than this introvert can cope with. I’ve fallen off the training wagon of late (pre-winter/trailer freak-out) but plan to start working her again – as soon as I manage to get out of bed in a timely manner.

I also got the catio built this summer. Not a thing of beauty by any means but Wallee is yelling at me less. Or was until it got cold. Can’t win them all.

And a couple of pictures of the goofy dog because that’s always a good thing.

That’s the latest here. Everyone think good happy thoughts for our perfect new house to appear (soon!)

Hugs to all!

Love Teri, the Roxinator and Angel Isa

[1] Yes, the original plan was off-grid solar. Until I got the estimate for that – and the information that I’d have to spend another ridiculous amount in seven years for new batteries.