Just 4 days and counting! Yeah, we not only found a “suitable” rental, but we also found one that’s darn near perfect!!!!!!!!!! Yes, we got that trailer in Auburn! Its only negative is that it’s small, old and dumpy, but not quite as bad as I thought it’d be. The lot it’s on far exceeds my expectations! As I told Jessie, Mary and my folks, as soon as we buy a camera since I can’t seem to win one, I’ll take pictures, but I don’t see how pictures could do the area justice! Talk about postcard material! It’s so secluded and country-like! It’s no doubt to be the best place I’ve ever lived in before or after meeting Tom. I don’t know that I’ll ever want to leave there. If anything, I may want to see if we can buy out that portion of the land and haul in something newer and bigger. If not, we still do want to own something and wouldn’t want to live crammed and jammed into such a tiny place forever, so we agreed that we’ll buy a place elsewhere when he’s 55 or the horses start raking in serious dinero, whichever comes first. So 4 years maximum if we can’t buy him out at some point. Land out there is very, very expensive. This is California. Nothing’s cheap here.

From left to right it goes, bedroom, bathroom, living room, kitchen. We wish we had one more bedroom and another bathroom! The office could be in the other bedroom, and I hate having to pee when he’s in the shower. I think maybe the Klam dump was 625 square feet rather than 400. It seems one bedroom shy of it, and that’d be about 100 square feet less. It’s going to be totally worth being cramped in there, however, and the very few negatives we can see with it like the fact that it’s got a shared well cuz there are one or two other houses on the property that are on 8 acres.

It’s beyond secluded!!! I fell in love with it before the back wheels of the car were even on the land!!! It doesn’t have a washer and dryer hook-up, but it’s total heaven!!! No AC, either, just an evaporative cooler. I love those swamp coolers, though, and have missed them. As dry as the summers are around here, we shouldn’t need an AC, though we do have a window one. Swamp coolers are much cheaper to use than ACs, and it’s going to be so nice to be able to crack a window and not worry about losing any privacy. The only other negative, though it’s not that big a deal, is the brown paneling in the living room. At least it’s not too dark. The trailer’s got to be 30-40 years old, so that was the thing back then. It also has coffee-colored carpet. That is coffee with cream, of course. Again, if I had to have those earth tones I don’t prefer, at least it’s a lighter shade. I don’t like dark colors as much as neons and pastels.

Wooooo-hooooooo! We’re outa here! No more motels! It’s truly over! If someone had told me between June of ’04 and now, “Don’t worry. You will escape the city before getting into a retirement community, and you will live in a rural setting again like you love, just 4 years after leaving Arizona,” I never would’ve believed it in a million years!

Tom loves it too, of course, and agrees it’s totally gorgeous and peaceful. It shouldn’t snow, but just get a few flurries once every few years that won’t stick cuz it’s below 2000’. It’s just over 1000’ actually. You can barely see the other houses that are hundreds of feet away and way up higher peeking through the trees, and it’s set so far back from the road. Technically, the Oregon land was even more remote cuz you couldn’t see any houses at all through the giant aspens, pines and junipers, but the climate was horrible, and the commute very long, so we’re glad that didn’t work out. It sure is secluded compared to Maricopa! When we left there we could see 8 houses from ours, and of course people driving by could see all around the place easily. There was no privacy with it being so open and flat.

The peaks and valleys of the rolling mountains and farmlands are breathtakingly beautiful. Some hills are so steep that they put canvas tarps along them to prevent landslides. No biking around there, cuz it’d be too scary! It’s hillier than Klamath. The roads are a bit narrow too, right in that area. Tom says it’ll be scary the first time he drives at night. We can’t figure out how in the world they hauled the trailer in, even if it is just a single-wide.

Oh, I’m just so happy I’m practically crying tears of joy and relief!!! Wooooooo-hooooooo! I’m so thrilled it’s hard to do anything but mutter Omigod! We’re outa here! Yippeeeeeee! I’m glad I’m in shape so I can move, set up and help build whatever. Fat-n-fit, that’s me! Not for long, though. I’m gonna love jogging on the land. The clearing isn’t overly huge, though, maybe 300’ by 100’, but that should be plenty of space. I was worried we’d never get a place more than a driveway’s width away from the neighbor, let alone 20-50 feet. I think the neighbors are about 400’ away. I love the breathing space around us!

The property is managed by a 55-year-old woman named Maryann but owned by her brother Jesse. We’re going to meet them both on Saturday, our last day here. It’s $825 a month and includes everything but the internet. They only wanted a $175 deposit, no lease. We were a bit nervous when she brought up that dreaded issue of credit, but we simply told her the truth. We told her how we lost our Arizona home/land, even though we did make a little money off it, and later found stuff on his credit that wasn’t his. The Oregon land was never an issue cuz the guy who sold it to us simply bought it back.

It was a bit strange that Maryann expressed concerns over us being able to make the payments when Tom later talked to her by phone, but then why did she accept us? Her words were that she decided to “give us a chance.” Tom reminded her that we managed to survive this place and that he still hopes for a better job, and I do win my share of money, too. We sure hope there won’t be any problems! Wasn’t it I who always said the good places were hard to stay in while the bad was hard to escape? Well, we’ll be smart about it, not get carried away on non-necessities, and save as much as we can whenever we can.

Where I was about 60-something percent sure prayers helped, I’m in the 90s now! We’ve certainly come a long way from that fateful October night. We nearly lost our stuff twice, our lives once and our sanity a million times, but in the end, we survived the storm! Yippeeee! We’re going home, we really are!!!!!!! I not only can’t believe we got the perfect car and house but on the very first try! I also never thought you could live in a secluded area where car stereos won’t be an issue, yet still have the convenience of the city just minutes away. And Auburn and its surrounding towns like Ophir and Newcastle, aren’t cities in the way the bigger and dumpier cities around here are like Sacramento, Citrus Heights, Carmichael, Rio Linda, Marysville, etc. Words can’t express just how lovely it is out there! Tom’s job is even closer too, though he still intends to get a better job till the horses can if not get us rich, at least make us enough so he can work at home. Then we can have the wonderful problem of figuring out how to insure us. His job is 35 miles from here, but 25 from Auburn.

It’s so awesome and I’ll make that old dump gorgeous! You pull in off the main road and go up a narrow winding drive. Then you get to a fork. The road to the right leads to the neighbors, the other to our place. Outside you don’t hear a thing, nor do you see a thing other than vivid green trees, underbrush and lush hills. You can’t see as far as in Arizona cuz it’s not flat, but still quite a way in some directions. It’s way more private cuz of the vegetation and hills. The lot is a bit narrow because it’s the only clearing on that lower level of the land. You couldn’t walk to the neighbors if you wanted to. Most of the land has dense vegetation and super steep hills. You can’t walk behind the trailer either. That’s cuz it’s set close to a huge drop-off down to where the irrigation ditch is. There is a narrow wooden plank Maryann says you can walk on, but I wouldn’t trust it. If you fell off it you wouldn’t be killed or even break any bones, but you may get scraped up bad enough. It’s a steep valley that rises up to where the neighbors are a couple of hundred feet above towards the end where the kitchen is. You literally have to go outside to see them, and outside you’d still need binoculars to see much! A near-sighted person would never know they were there. It’s hard to describe and I don’t know if you get what I’m saying, but anyway, you can faintly make out the property with the horses and goats grazing one of the steep hillsides up on Duncan Hill. The front of the place is such a steep hill it’s like a wall! The land has been left in its natural state so we don’t have to mow, but I may plant a flower, fruit and veggie garden someday. Palms and Prickly Pear cacti can live there, but there aren’t as many in this area.

I am so not going to miss this city or motel!

Auburn is so much better than Maricopa was. It was certainly better than Phoenix, but such a trashy town nonetheless. Loose dogs running rampant, garbage blowing everywhere, boom stereos that could be heard 5 miles away cuz of the openness. Here, even though it’s not fenced, we don’t have to worry about stuff like that. Like I said, it’d be very hard for people and animals to possibly scale those hills and wade through all that brush.

I guess they either evicted or were unhappy with the last people that lived there. They stole the neighbor’s motorcycle. At least they think they did. It was later recovered down the road. They left a nice grill there on the front deck, too.

We may still never have the luxury of a dishwasher, but we’re gonna get a small washer that you hook up to the sink and do big stuff like the comforter at Laundromats. We have dressers, and the surprisingly large walk-in closet has built-in dressers on either end of it, too. We have a self-defrosting freezer, and they’re getting us a new oven. The bedroom and kitchen have dual-paned windows, but no ceiling fans. A person Tom’s height would get their head chopped off with those low ceilings! I like them cuz it’d make killing spiders easier as short as I am.

We’re gonna get a small computer desk and a little two-seater dinette at Goodwill or Big Lots. Probably a canvas garage too, and a storage shed of some kind will be good enough for stuff we don’t use much.

They said pets are ok. New ratdoggies soon, woooooooo-hooooooooo!

A part of me wishes I’d never become a doll collector. I do intend to downsize my collection a bit. I can’t wait to not only see my fiberglass friends but my vinyl and porcelain ones too, my stereo, and all our other stuff. It’ll be like going on one big shopping spree!

We haven’t had a landline since Arizona. We may have that again but aren’t yet sure just what the phone and internet setups are going to be. Also, we’re going to get a new UPS box a mile away cuz it’s just not easy to make deliveries there. This way we also won’t have to worry about being around to sign for packages that need a signature when we’re both out.

According to my online research, there’s been just one murder there since ’99, and the owners are clean, too. We checked them out. Maryann has a profile at classmates.com, and Jesse’s a year older than Tom. He was worried at first that since Maryann said we couldn’t live there if we were felons this was because Jesse was a felon, and they’re not supposed to associate with each other. In the end, we’re pretty sure she said that because they just didn’t want to rent to felons. I made the comment to Tom about not many people wanting the place, but he said, no, people would want it. Just the wrong kinds of people like druggies wanting seclusion. Yeah, no one would see much of you at this place, that’s for sure, so I can understand their concern. You can’t tell how steep the hills are by satellite. You’d think it was perfectly flat if you didn’t know better.

Jessie, who’s so fed up with her evil coworkers and seeking a new job, is happy for us but says she’d be scared to live that secluded. Maryann said it was “scary quiet” when she was there cleaning.