When I got up this morning I was 95% sure, for a variety of reasons, we’d never own a house again. But today’s online research dropped those percentages big time. Still not sure that’s really what we’ll want in the end, but clearly it’s not as impossible as I thought it would be.

When most people think of trailers they think of little tin shitboxes like what we’re living in right now. But as the 90s rolled around they started building these things like real houses. I assure you that our 42K-pound 1999 Palm Harbor back in Maricopa was all house and nothing but. They’re real houses just like any other house, only they weren’t built on-site.

We were looking at various rentals online and as I may’ve mentioned before there’s this totally ideal retirement community in the middle of nowhere that’s super cheap. But it’s out of the question right now because it’d be too long of a drive for Tom to and from work. But you can rent a 3-bed, 2-bath for just $700, plus they have so many amenities – pools, craft rooms, walking trails, tennis courts and more. If we decide to stay in the area when he retires it would be definitely worth considering.

For now, we looked at various rentals in different 55+ areas. Every now and then trailers for sale would pop up. I was stunned when this utterly gorgeous, modern 2-bed, 2-bath, 1500-square-foot trailer popped up that only required 7K for a down payment. We could have that by the end of the year! Using a mortgage calculator, Tom factored in what our payments would be with a 10-year mortgage. Well, including the cost of insurance and property tax, it’d be comparable to this place or less! Still don’t like the idea of the time and expense of fixing things being on us, but the thought of being our own boss again and being payment-free in a decade other than the few hundred the lot it’s on would cost really appeals to me. But not without testing the waters first. First I want us to get a taste of adult community living and test-drive the car before we buy it. I will be so, so disappointed if they leave their dogs outside to bark when they’re not at home! They may not be allowed to let them live out there round the clock, but if they leave them out even just a few hours during the daytime, that alone could get old pretty fast.

I like to have a Plan B in mind in case Plan A fails. Well, we may have a few Plan Bs depending on what happens. This is the most unlikely case but if for some reason we can’t get into an adult community, though we are of age and I don’t think our credit is that bad, Plan B would then be to stay out in the country but look for a bigger, newer place that’s not on a shared lot. Under no circumstances whatsoever do I want to live with our landlord again, even though I’ll be the first to admit Jesse’s not as big of a pest as he could be and some other landlords might be. We looked at a place on a 5-acre parcel for $1200 a month, which is the upper end of our range.

So, if we either can’t get into an adult community for some reason, or we do and don’t like it, back to the country we’ll go.

But if we do get in and we do like it, then Plan B just may be staying there for a year or two and then possibly buying our own place.

“We could buy a regular house,” Tom pointed out, letting me know it wasn’t as impossible as I thought. But I don’t want to live in the mainstream (even though the houses are usually more affordable there) and where everything goes – dogs, kids, car stereos, etc. The regular on-site houses in adult communities tend to be more expensive than mainstream houses, though they’re cheaper to rent.

The only thing I might not like is that these trailers are facing long side to long side, which would bring us even closer to our neighbors. Well, we’re gonna be close enough to them in places that aren’t trailer parks, and I don’t know if I’d want to go any closer to the point that I may feel claustrophobic and like we have no privacy at all. I don’t think they even have yards. I definitely wouldn’t like any visiting kids running alongside the place just outside our windows screaming their asses off either with the way parents don’t discipline their kids these days. In a place that has on-site houses, you should at least have a few more feet and some kind of privacy wall. Although… there’d be no place to leave your dogs in a trailer park for hours and hours, so we’ll just have to see. First things first and that’s getting into a rental in one of these places and seeing what their dogs and company are like.

Anyway, we’re packing up more stuff. It’s not always so easy when you have no space to work in. I’m going to love having so many little luxuries back in my life that I had to do without for so long! Just having adequate space around the bed and not having to move a zillion things to get to one thing is going to be heaven. I miss the days of not having to move my heavy desk chair just to get in the fucking closet.

While it’s been wonderful being so happy and having so much to be excited about and to look forward to, I will never ever forgive or forget God above for allowing us to suffer in so many ways for so damn long. I will never forget the years we were crammed in this old dive struggling as if we were a pair of lazy bums who didn’t give a shit or drunks or druggies. The fear, the stress, the sense of hopelessness… I will never forget a single moment of it. It’s hard to believe that the same people who had one foot in the grave now have a great job, a big savings, and medical insurance, and soon they’ll get to live in a place where they don’t practically have to climb over each other! I owe all the credit to us being too stubborn to place that other foot in the grave, and oh, how easy it would’ve been to do! The will to fight to live was fast draining from me. But as I’ve learned, more often than not the only ones that can save our asses are us and us alone.

Tom spent most of the day working in the shed. I can already see the back wall of the thing. That $600 7x7 shed we got with the 9K we won is really nice and it’s a little unfortunate we’ll be leaving it behind, but there simply won’t be any place or any need for it where we’re going since we’re almost certainly going to have a garage. It served its purpose for the last 4 years, though. I’m sure whoever’s in here next will appreciate the extra storage space while they sit and listen to the dogs and loud vehicles unless the Jes pest decides to haul it up the hill for his own use.

Tom’s been shredding all kinds of documents and other papers we no longer need and destroying old floppies. After 32 years of computing, he sure has tons of them! I used to use some too, for backing up journals. Soon he’ll be making a dump run for these things and more.

We’re also going to take pictures of old photos so we don’t have to lug these big bulky photo albums with us. Our camera should do a better job than our old scanner. It was kinda neat looking at various pictures and remembering many things I’d forgotten about. Little things like the tacky way I used to decorate and stuff like that. I have several pictures of Andy. I’m in one of the pics, and I have several others of myself that I’ll share online once they’re on the computer.

It’ll be warmer where we’re going, averaging about 5° warmer than whatever it is up here since the area we’re looking at is right at sea level while this place is 1000’ in elevation.

We have another cool spell coming in on Monday that’ll drop the temp about 20°. I’ll definitely need to run the portable in the bedroom at night. It may even rain a bit, too.

Eileen is saddened over the loss of her SIL from cancer and so I helped cheer her up in the emails we exchanged. She laughed when I told her she was a nice break from some of the assholes I deal with online that make me want to misbehave a lot worse than I did at age 11 when I last saw her. Only problem is that it’s harder to get away with things now, LOL. At 11 I could wait for the teacher to turn her head, bonk my fellow classmate upside the head and cry, “I didn’t do it!” But even though the teacher knew I was full of shit, she couldn’t literally prove it. These days, however, all our online activities are traceable. In other words, I’m forced to behave:( Anyway, Miss Behaved (misbehaved) is excited about moving this summer!