Update: 11/15/2022. Fourteen years later. I found this old article in my drafts. Wow, how many things have changed. John is gone (divorced) the boys are grown and living on their own in the next county over, Chico (defender of the yard) lived another 10 years and died in his sleep in front of the wood stove. In the house. We stayed in that trailer for 2 years until the house was built. I ran my eBay business from my Windows XP desktop in a corner of the trailer. I now have an actual office in the home. Yes I’m still in the home we built so many years ago. I had to buy John out of it when we split, but it was worth every penny. I still love it here and I still see the spot where The Trailer once stood. Overgrown with buffalo grass now, but the space still belongs to those memories.
This is what I wrote in 2008:
We’ve moved out of the (money sucking) rental and are finally located on our OWN property! Despite the minor inconvenience of the small living quarters, this location feels so much better. For one thing, it is warmer! The mornings are lovely and breezy and it warms up nicely in the afternoon.
Here is a picture of our humble abode:
It’s pretty crowded with John and I and the 2 boys but we’re learning to organize our movements so we aren’t always running into each other. The cats are in and out, they do what they want. The chihuahua is in charge of everything, and John has fenced off a yard area for the BBQ and the laundry and all – so Chico is able to go in and out without taking off into the woods.
Two months later…
We are surviving in the trailer without any major difficulties (save a few leaky window corners). On the ‘glass half full’ side – it’s very easy to keep tidy. As long as I keep up with it, it’s not a big hassle. No storage of course, but we keep bulk items in the shed on the other side of the driveway and can restock easily. On the flip (glass half empty) side, it is pretty much impossible to cook a decent meal since there is no counter space to speak of. So one-dish casseroles have become my friend. We have an outdoor BBQ too, but used it sparingly during fire season.
What? You say – This is the 21st-century girl – what about a microwave?
Well, I fried the microwave. We borrowed another one. I fried that one too.
So now we are using a toaster oven for small stuff. Of course, we still have the trailer oven and stove top, but am trying to keep the clean-up at a minimum so I don’t use the oven much. This may change. We’ll see.
The cats are adapting, as cats do. This is Dave – occasionally he gets his own meals.
(Jake took a video of this as well, but it’s too gross, what with the bone-crunching and gut-slurping sounds. So I’ll just post the still and you can imagine you’re own sound effects.)
