While it continues to have a way of making me feel insulted to keep getting an endless supply of attention from the fat, ugly and crazies of the world, I can’t deny that Aira really is a sweet person. No doubt about it. She doesn’t just tell me about herself, she asks about me.

That feeling of being so sure we were on the road to owning the place of our dreams has left me. Why? Not because I suddenly think it’s impossible, but because I don’t think it will happen anytime soon the more I think about it. If we had 26K in our hands right now that would buy us a nice house outright where we wanted to be with no credit checks or questions asked. The problem is we don’t have that kind of money right now. We’ve got around 5K and that won’t get you very far these days unless you’re willing to settle for an older, undersized trailer in a 55+ park that’s not as nice. It’s either that or stay here another 3-4 years till we have more money saved. The only problem is that by then that 26K house may be 46K.

Another thing is that once you factor in the fact that we’d have to pay utilities, we’d only save an extra $200 a month if we bought a cheaper trailer to stay in till we could buy what we really wanted. Better than nothing, and better to own it outright than to rent and deal with pesky landlords, but I’m really worried I may not get any sleep there. I intend to take Nane’s advice and just stay put if I have any doubts after going and seeing the place in person. The problem is that there are things we couldn’t know without actually living there, and once we do live there, it’s not like we could turn around and leave that easily like checking out of a hotel. Once we’re in, we’re in.

In just 4 months the NHA projects in CT landed me in the hospital after the animals that lived there continually deprived me of my sleep and ultimately my sanity. And I was still young! I did smoke, though, and my asthma was pretty out of hand at the time, but nonetheless, I ended up so sick that I was hospitalized for two weeks. It was then that my dad, who came up from Florida to help out, arranged for me to go from my sister’s house where I spent a few days following my discharge, to Andy’s place in Arizona.

So would I be able to sleep in one of these 3K trailers so long as the sound machine was blaring? sighs I don’t know. I just don’t know. Unfortunately, it’s not like buying a car so there’s no way to test the waters for a week or two before actually buying it.

There are other things to consider besides people slamming car doors all day that may jolt me awake when on nights, and that’s landscaping projects. Most of this could probably be drowned out, but if they’re mowing, blowing and trimming regularly it could get old pretty fast. There doesn’t look like there’s nearly as much to do as opposed to the apartment complexes I once lived in, but it’s another one of those things to consider.

Another thing I wonder is how often people may come to our door. They may not be landlords and we don’t have to let them in, but how often might the park people come to tell us there’ll be a party that night in the clubhouse? How often might the people that live there come to offer to sell us cookies for some fundraiser they may be having?

Aside from these unanswered questions that might or might not get me sicker than a dog in no time at all (today it’s the other way around; I don’t smoke, my asthma has gone dormant, but I’m not young) there are things I know I would definitely like. Mail doesn’t get delivered straight to the trailers but to the clubhouse. That way if we’re expecting a package while I’m on nights, we don’t have to worry about not being around to get it. They may leave it by our door, though, and that’d be fine too in a covered area. I’m sure the porch roof doesn’t leak like it does here as they’re not going to allow for slop jobs there.

I would love to be able to go swimming whenever the weather permitted, relax in the Jacuzzi, and walk to the clubhouse to mail outgoing mail, not that we have much these days with the way everything’s done online, and I think they might have fitness and arts and crafts centers, too. I have a treadmill, but I’ve always wanted to try an elliptical machine, too. I don’t like to walk. I like to run. That’s what my body’s trained to do. An elliptical machine would cancel out the joint impact.

Sometimes I still think we’ll never live where we really want to live. Would we have been in tiny old dumps all these years if that weren’t where we were meant to be? The slightest doubt and I’m not moving. Not after making too many dumb moves in the past. Even Tom said we’re done being stupid. I certainly don’t want to stay here much longer, but at least the annoyances here are familiar and confined to just two sources – dogs and loud motors. Jesse’s never going to slam car doors regularly a few feet from our place. He’s never going to have dogs just a few feet away. He’s never going to have anyone with little kids visiting just a few feet away. He’s never going to mow, blow and trim trees and bushes on a regular basis. There’s never going to be regular turnovers a few feet away where I have to hold my breath and hope to not get noisy neighbors yet again, although people usually own the places in the 55+ parks and so there wouldn’t be the kind of turnovers you can expect with rentals. The house next to us in Phoenix (we were on the corner and had only one immediate neighbor) went from an owned home to a city-owned rental. A family with a couple of kids and dogs moved out shortly after I joined Tom there a few months after he got the house from his brother who moved into his new wife’s house. Next came the Mormons and their 5 kids and dog. Then came the black, bass-thumping welfare bums followed by the Mexican welfare bums that virtually lived outdoors round the clock and made the Mormon family seem tiny. We all have our different likes, habits and traditions and that’s fine… until it affects and puts others out.

There was this trailer going for a little over 4K that wasn’t quite as nice inside but was actually the most appealing so far for several reasons. It has an extra room that was added on, a stackable washer/dryer, and a dishwasher. Also, it’s sort of on an “island.” The lot sort of juts out and prevents any trailers from sandwiching it in. We could run out and buy it this weekend, but like I said, I’m not sure this would be a wise thing to do. sighs I don’t want to take any chances I may regret and end up thinking this place wasn’t so bad after all like when things got so bad in Sacramento that I realized the Caribbean cruise we went on wasn’t so hectic after all. But I also don’t want to stay here. It’s either move and take a chance or stay here and dream.

The dreams I’ve had are not at all hopeful as far as signs of anything better to come on the horizon. There were two dreams that I recall. In one we were back in the Phoenix house. I noticed the back door was cracked. I pulled it open and gazed out at the pool. Part of the surface was covered with grass. I shut the door and turned to a desk that Tom had been using and sat to the right of the kitchen doorway. Soft music was playing from a portable radio. I reached to turn it off, but the buttons and knobs kept multiplying the more I tried to figure out which one turned it off, so I gave up. I walked through the kitchen and into the living room where Tom sat dozing on and off in a plush chair. “Don’t forget to shut the back door,” I told him, then I asked if we could afford to get the pool in shape for the hottest part of the summer, and he said yes.

In the second dream, Tom and I were sitting in a parking lot looking at 3 scummy buildings that were part of an apartment complex which not even Tom liked the looks of. “God would just love us if we lowered ourselves to this shit and put up with the untold amount of noise that’s got to reside within these walls,” I said as I studied the buildings that actually looked more like giant old houses. I knew one housed rooms while another housed studios with kitchens and baths and another housed 1-bedroom apartments. It then hit me that Andy had once lived there for a few months and described it more like a rooming house than anything else. “This is the Montana,” I said next. Weird name for it, but that’s what it was.

A split second later I was on the upper floor in what appeared to be a single room while Tom waited in the car. A small suitcase and my handbag sat on the foot of the bed, which was topped with a thin, worn white bedspread. Some of my things were scattered about including my little puppy figurine, which may not actually be called a figurine since it’s not that small and is covered with real goat fur.

I then peered out of the room and into a somewhat small hallway. There were maybe 4 other rooms, plus the community bathroom and the stairs leading downward. A few young women were milling about the hall, all appearing to be in their late teens to early 20s. A snobby-looking chick wordlessly passed by me and somehow I knew she was in charge of the renters. She went into the room across the hall, came back out, and then motioned me back into my room. She wanted to fill out the paperwork for the room, but still seemed very unhappy about me living there, which I assumed was because I was older.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “My husband and I would want a 1-bedroom if we’re going to stay here. He’s 55 and makes good money. What do those rent for, between $400 and $600?”

“At least,” said the woman, who began to talk to this ghost that Andy had told me they talked to when he lived there.

I gathered my stuff, worried someone had stolen the puppy while I wasn’t looking.

In other words, I guess this dream translates to… We shouldn’t have left Phoenix but gotten rid of the problem next door and remodeled the place instead. However, we’d never have escaped the music anyway. But we did leave and now all that’s available to us are old dumps with crazy snobs and potential thieves unless we go to some shit state that’s a virtual icebox practically year-round like Montana.