Lifes a Great Adventure

Half an Hour late for work. I hate that. No makeup. Hair Wet. I do not love starting my day this way. At some time during the night my alarm got changed from 5:30AM to 5:30PM. I think it was that black man shaped fog that was chasing me in my dreams last night. I screamed so hard in my sleep that my daughter 2 floors up heard it and came running downstairs. I would have sworn that He was hovering over my bed. I simply have to unload the Stress Plate.


My house is for sale. AGAIN. For $50,000.00 less than last year’s listing and $100,000.00 less than the year before. I’m singin’ to deaf ears. The entire neighborhood has their houses for sale. Again.

My single neighbor to the left of me is losing hers in 30-90 days. She plans on being gone before the Green Eviction is taped on the door. That way she’ll feel like it was her choice to leave and not that she was being Removed from her Home. She is going to take her two daughters and what will fit in the back of a Moving Van and drive towards a new job. Leave the rest for the bank that refused to adjust her keep working with her.

I considered that for a brief moment. Very Brief. Besides the fact that I have an amazing wonderful loving boyfriend… I wouldn’t make it to the edge of town and my DumbAss ex would have me arrested for kidnapping. Again.

I keep telling myself that at least I have some equity left in MY house. Unlike everyone else of course… haha.

Last night as I was riding around the yard on my antique lawn mower, those words popped into my head and I laughed. Not so much a laugh really… more a hysterical cackle as I’m thinking, ‘What in the hell does that mean anyway’. And how can I actually say it out loud without howling like a crazy deranged person afterwards.

In this economy how do you know if you have equity until it actually sells. I mean we are just picking numbers out of our butt at this point. Especially given the fact that down the street a once Million Dollar home just went on the auction block for $275,000.00. I’m no Real Estate Expert but I’m assuming that F’s with my Property Value. The words Property and Value in the same sentence being an oxymoron at this point.

And if by some miraculous event my house does sell before the bank decides it no longer wants to let me live here for Free (bastards) I have a slight concern about where or how I will be able to rent a place off the tips I’m making at the coffee shop.

These are silly concerns really, because mind you, I am in the stream. So who needs a house while floating down the river. All I need is an inner tube and a cooler of beer.

Something always happens. You wait and something will change and you‘ll look back and go… AWWWWW OK.

I do have a plan C. In case Plan A & B do not work. I call it the ‘Homeless Van Plan’. I think its quite ingenious really. I buy a Van (off my tips from the Coffee Shop remember), I get a one year membership to the local gym so I can work out and shower every morning for $45.00 a month. I get a Costco Membership and eat samples twice a day for $45.00 a year. I park for 14 days at a time in each campground in the valley. I’m thin and clean. My friend Chloe thinks the ‘Homeless Van Plan’ may be a Keeper. However, You can imagine that my children think this plan sucks the big one.

It won’t be the first of my ‘Life Plans’ that they hate. I once had this great plan of all plans to live in a 10x50 mobile home, that I incidentally found in the paper under the ‘FREE to a GOOD HOME’ section, while we ‘saved money’ to build our dream home.

After remarkably little reluctance on the part of the Alaska Bound Husband and amidst loud protests from our 4 children, we turned the 14x60 Manufactured Home into a ‘Rental Property’ where I proceeded to inadvertently rent to just about every Meth addict who lived in the area and we moved into our FREE 1950ish 10x50 Mobile Home on wheels, surrounded by hay bales to insulate the bottom. I am sure that you can almost picture the look on my kids faces when they saw there new home. “it’s an adventure” I said. With the greatest of smiles.

The Green Bean Casserole lovin’ part of me thought this was a great plan. I could see my savings account getting bigger and bigger.

I did not foresee how difficult it would be to collect rent from a drug addict.

Nor did I know that we would have record cold temperatures that winter. I also did not take into consideration that the 50 year old 2” walls just may not have any insulation left if they ever had any to begin with nor that our Giant Rooster Earl would freeze to death swimming in the dogs heated water dish. And as entertaining as it was to watch my children blow frost puffs while mouthing the word “Adventure”, as they were sitting on the couch watching tv, I did recognize that it may not have been one of my better plans. It was a long tough winter. These things are so much worse when self inflicted.

I was also not prepared for the 50 years of Nasty Gunky Grease that had built up in the pipes. For future reference there is a reason one should call a plumber First not Last for such a job. The gallons of Draino merely unsettled the black blurpy thick oily septic mess leaving it to broil and burp and fart out of the kitchen sink for the better part of a week, it was enough to make your eyes water and your throat burn. The cure of which became the shower curtain cut into squares and duct taped over the sink until the plumber came to our rescue. $250.00 later we could breath… and use the kitchen sink again. Best $250.00 I ever spent. I was so happy I asked the plumber to marry me. He did Not even crack a smile as he ran to his work truck.

That is the season that my children call “Mom’s Great Adventure” and certainly one we would all like to avoid in the near future.

I’m sure there is more than one lesson I could derive from that entire experience. Besides the obvious, that being do not rent to Meth addicts, I think I learned that Nothing in this life is FREE! Everything comes with a Price. That one cost me a Rooster. :0)