Part 9: The land lord pilgrimage, and 30 second showers.
Welcome back, and big sigh of relief, we made it through fire season! Well most of us did, a lot of people lost their homes this year, especially over there in Spokane. The worst part was that one of those fires was started by an arsonist.
As promised, here it is more of my story.
To catch up, here's Part 8: To homeless or not to homeless...
And if you need more than that, here is the start of all this, Part 1: "How I wound up on this mountain..."
If you are current, below is Part 9, it gets weirder, not as weird as "American flag Speedo man", but still pretty damn weird.
After the pilgrimage to Clarkston, and the handing over of $3500.00 to someone who had way more money than us, we were given the keys and the lease agreement, which was month to month (kind of unheard of, and very nice in this day and age where subscriptions and fiscal chains are all we know), we were set to move in. We closed around 3 days later on the corner house. I wept, and bought new pants.
I had never been so stressed out about lodgings. I knew it was going to be bad, but how bad, that's a different story. Since then, things have gotten so much worse in the states, but we'll get to that down the road.
We had most of our things packed already and the rest of our belongings were in storage, which was another unwanted bill of $90.00 a month. Then, we packed up that tiny little U-Haul and moved across town to our temporary lodgings. That little place was only going to be for a year or two while we built our house up in the woods, on the mountain, away from people. That "only a year" turned into three years, and a number of grey hairs making home in my beard.
I can still remember the sigh of relief as we moved the last box into the rental and returned the truck to the U-Haul rental place. I was thankful for that little place. A steady place where me and the wife could plan the next part of our life and the construction of our 2400 sq foot one level home. -cough- I am upstairs as I write this. So what happened? Lots happened. But it all started with a 30 second shower.
I say started, because the first thing I did when we moved into the rental was discover that the hot water only lasted about 30 seconds before dropping to sub zero temperatures. So cold that my manhood found a home in my abdomen. Sometimes we could make it two minutes, but rarely.
We were told to just turn up the heat on the heater. We did not, we noticed the safety measures were disabled on the heater and instead dealt with our short showers for three years. The land lord was far away, and rather than attracting attention, we decided it would be best to keep him far away. I don't think he would have liked our dogs, or our political views. I got the feeling he hated big dogs and that his other hat was red and had a bold MAGA printed on it.
Just as the water was getting cold, I had a horrible, crushing feeling that something was wrong and our rental wasn't as secure as I thought. Or worse, the plans we had made for our house build wasn't going to be approved, wasn't possible, or was too expensive.
From that point on, those thirty second showers seemed to be a reminder- that something wasn't right. As it turned out, our road to the woods was going to be a lot more difficult than we thought. Especially in our county. It wasn't the building that was difficult, although it was, it was the codes, the permits, and the idiocy of bureaucracy. Those showers we a constant reminder to stay grounded and prepare for the cold blast of reality that was coming.
There was so much we didn't know. So, so much.
Up next, Part 10: Angry declarations and plan changes.
cheers!
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