Happy 1-year anniversary on the other side, Dad! Well, maybe not “happy” unless the afterlife is a lot more fun than this one. Is there even an afterlife in the first place? Well, if there is, please, please, please take a bat to your wife’s head for me. You wouldn’t do it here, so… if you two are together in the afterlife and she’s not frying in hell, then it’s never too late to do what you, God and the law failed to do here and that’s to finally give her what she deserves!

So Nancy’s birthday would turn out to be D-Day for Dad. She hasn’t appeared to be on Facebook yet either, but I’m sure she’ll be in soon to suck up whatever attention her birthday will bring her. She’s got hundreds of friends but only ONE birthday wish so far, LOL. Good going, Nance!

Let’s see… what else? My ear has been annoying me on and off and we’ll be leaving for the IHOP and to check out parks in an hour or so.

Later…

We left just before 6am, jumped on the freeway, then realized we had forgotten Tammy’s IHOP gift card. Too lazy to turn back and loaded with oodles of money, we ate at Denny’s instead. I’m sure Tammy’s gonna get a kick out of us forgetting to take her card, but the card doesn’t expire and the IHOP isn’t going anywhere, so it’ll wait.

Denny’s was just so-so. I got the T-bone and eggs. The steak was tough, but the eggs, biscuit and red potatoes were pretty good. Tom got an omelet, which he enjoyed very much.

Since the gates weren’t yet open at the “Beverly Hills” park, we headed for Sacramento. The idea was to see the kind of neighborhood the park where you own a percentage of it was located, but thanks to Google who gave us the wrong directions, we simply wasted gas and time. The wetlands looked kind of cool as we passed by the Sacramento River delta.

We passed by the Northgate area too, where the extended-stay hotel was that we were stuck in for 8 months before coming here. I asked Tom if he thought Michelle was still there. Michelle, who worked the front desk, was one of those who was attractive and ugly at the same time. She had a great personality and would often do what she could to accommodate us. At extended-stay hotels, the housekeeper usually only cleans once a week. So depending on my schedule she’d either have the housekeeper come early or at the end of the day.

I joked with him about stopping by the office and, if she were still there, asking to hold off on the housekeeping. Then she’d be like, “Wow, when did you guys come back?!” Then we could really fuck with her head and insist we never left, hahaha.

We hadn’t gotten very far into the park Tom was excited to show me before I readily agreed it is indeed the Rolls Royce of parks! It was utterly gorgeous. Even nicer than the Diamond K Estates all had nice new homes with garages. It looks like a regular neighborhood with regular houses. Most of the houses are really nice and out of our league at the moment, but they do have some that are easily affordable. We could take out a 10-year loan for a nicer place, but we don’t want that kind of debt. Space rent is one thing, but we like to own things outright – cars, houses, everything. Also, we should be able to get something plenty nice enough for much less. Who needs wet bars anyway? Tom never drinks and I almost never do.

The homes range from 10K to over 100K and the park itself is just beautiful. It’s no wonder the homes and space rent are a bit pricey. You can breathe a little easier at this park cuz it’s not so damn cramped and the houses aren’t right on the street either. The roads aren’t so narrow and everything around you is so well maintained. This is the nicest park.

It was so cool when we turned onto one of the streets and saw the fountain shooting up from the center of the large manmade lake in the center of the park. The lakeside houses are obviously more expensive, but it would still be nice to be on one of the streets where you could at least see the lake at the end of it. It’s not a must, but it would still be nice. Especially the fountains. I wonder if the people closest to it feel a mist on windy days.

There were 5 or 6 wild turkeys slowly meandering around which was kind of cool. They seem so brave, though I’m sure they’d run if someone approached them. They’re sure are huge, too! They had to be around 50 pounds.

I didn’t like all the cars. Several houses had 2, even 3 cars parked by it. That could get pretty damn door-slammy with the way people are in and out so often, but I’d rather 2-3 cars parking on me there than 1 parking on me at the “sardine” park which was the worst one we’ve seen so far. That one was unbelievably cramped and mostly consisted of dumpy old single-wides.

I would still prefer not to have anyone’s driveway running alongside our place, or for people to make a habit of hanging outdoors gabbing and whatnot outside our place, but again, I’d take that there over other places as I don’t think it’d be nearly as annoying there given the layout, spacing and the way the houses are set up. I’m sure anyone I shared pics of the place with would be impressed. It’s that nice. Totally worth the space rent which ranges between $600 - $750. A little high, but still easily affordable. We pay $825 here.

The problem is that there’s a nasty catch to every single goddamn thing we want in life. Our credit is no longer shitty, but doesn’t meet their requirements yet. We know without a doubt we could eventually get in there and we know we could find something affordable there in an acceptable location within the park. There were only a few shaky locations, but again, I’d rather those than most other parks. We even saw the two places we had our eye on but didn’t get, and yes, they’re in ideal locations. But we didn’t have 10K last summer, and we don’t want a place that was set up poorly and therefore not structurally sound. They already started ripping out the old carpet, so we saw. It looked like brand-new sculpted carpet online, but Tom said it was just horrible.

It’s not the impossible dream. That’s the good news. The bad is that although it probably won’t, it could take another year before we can get in. It’s going to depend on how strict the park is about their precious magic numbers when it comes to credit scores. While we’re both quick to say we’d rather wait for first best than take second best right away, we also don’t want to remain in the shadow of the Jes pest another year. Just the thought of another year of this dial-up slow Internet connection for another year makes me want to scream. The only thing that’s gotten better here is the barking. I rarely hear them anymore. Makes me think someone’s been staying with him, cuz as soon as he’d take off, especially at this time of year, they’d go batshit crazy for hours. But neither of us wants to live like bums is his microscopic dump while we listen to his fleet of vehicles coming and going, deal with his never-ending slew of projects, and fight to stay online.

So, while we definitely want to aim for this park, we also want to keep all our options open while we’re at it. That means that we’re still going to check out that 1999 Skyline on Wednesday, along with another older, bigger place here in town.

Still… I can’t help but think of the few clues my dreams have yielded thus far – tons of citrus trees, 12K, blue and or tan, right-side parking. I don’t know about the colors as they’re kind of common, and most of the places have right-side parking, but there are some 12K houses in the super nice park (Lakeview) which happens to be in Citrus Heights. I’m hoping the closer we get, the more dream clues I’ll get. Unfortunately, I still don’t think we’re close yet which would explain why I haven’t had many dreams at this point. The “April change” dream could’ve simply meant we’d get my inheritance then, but the dream where I said we’d be over in Lincoln couldn’t have meant anything. Not after learning that the park there is for all ages.

We estimate being able to save another 20K if we are here another year, and that’s without putting much effort into it. If we actually put some serious effort and skimped on things, we could save closer to 30K. For now, it’s back to waiting… listening to Jesse… waiting… listening to Jesse… and dreading the number of plumbing issues we’d be looking at in the interim until we one day take back what God took from us…twice.