Okay, my computer is still missing in inaction, but we did manage to find the keyboard for my iPad. So I guess I can type my saga with thisā¦.at least itās easier than trying to do it on a touch screen! This is going to be LONG!!
Iāll start with the move, although it kinda combines the kidney sage and the house saga a bit. Back in very early spring, my numbers tanked. A GFR of 15 is usually when they start talking dialysis (which as most of you know I refuse to even consider), and my number had crept down to 19. I sank into a bit of a depression - it seemed that no matter how hard I tried, I couldnāt keep those numbers up. Iād have a pretty good series, in the mid to upper twenties, then start to drop again. One day I looked around at the old trailer and I burst into tears. I told Ken that I didnāt want to die in that old place. I know, melodramatic, but thatās exactly how I felt. So we started looking at modular homes. He let me do the choosing. I chose the Mt. Hesperus, by Champion.
At first, from the moment I chose the house and the dealer, a wonderful young local woman named Hannah, things went fast. She and I spent hours choosing options, designing my dream kitchen, redesigning, adding windows in the bedrooms, choosing cabinets and flooring, and I could feel my spirits lift with every phone call, text message, and email. Funny, Iād never stepped foot in this house until it was delivered to Cowley, and even then I could only get into one half at a time. Hannah doesnāt have a show lot, and thatās why she can sell the same homes for thousands of dollars less than dealerships in Billings. Instead her clients become her friends, and they are thrilled to let her bring potential buyers for tours of their homes, just as we will be. The models arenāt the same, but the quality, some of the options, the color schemes and so on gave me a real good idea of what I liked and what I didnāt. I found our home online, I studied reviews online to find the best dealer I could, I contacted her online, we met at her house/office a few times finalizing pricing and options, she helped us find the best financing - online though a local bank - and finally on April 30 we closed on our construction loan. Then fast slowed downā¦.way down. By then there was a 300% increase in demand as people were flooding out of Covid and violence-ridden cities and coming out west to buy up any postage stamp piece of land they could and putting up modulars. So we were delayed. And delayed. And delayed even more as building supplies were all but dried up. But we hung in there. Hannah is a night owl like I amā¦she has 7 boys so nighttime is when she gets most of her work done. It wasnāt unusual to suddenly get a text message from her at 11:30 pm saying, āHey, Di - what color did you want your soap dishes in the master bath?ā or the trim on the outside, mosaic kitchen tiles as shown, or something else? I was enjoying myself tremendouosly. And my numbers started going back up. I think in 2 months I went from that scary 19 to 29!
One of the people whose home we toured lives close by, 6 miles away in Byron. We were there when it was still a foundation with 2 halves on the lot, then we watched the process of her house being set on the foundation. The company that does the setting is from Sheridan, Opieās Mobile Home transport. So I told him our biggest concern was our giant treesā¦could he even set one on our lot? (we had already had āThe Giantā removed at a cost of $5000, and sure couldnāt afford to take down anymore) He came over and took a look, and assured us that he could. (He wasnāt just bragging - he could back a 64 foot modular section through a keyhole and line it up perfectly with the foundation on one try - we watched him do it with ours!). Anyway, he asked us what we were going to with our old 1972 trailer and we told him we had no clue. He went inside, looked around, and said, āIāll take it.ā Now bear in mind that to move that house off our lot, a house that had been sitting in the same spot since 1972, would have cost us about $8000. Instead Opie gave me a dollar for the house, I wrote a bill of sale to please the port of entry authorities, then I gave him the dollar back for prepping the house and moving it off. He hauled it to Sheridan, where he donated it to a young lady with two teenaged daughters. Sheād lost her home in a fire, no insurance, and had been living out of 2 storage units for 3 years. She works part-time for his wife in a thrift store in Sheridan, which was how sheād been accumulating household goods. She was thrilled.
Okay, so the house was ordered, arrangements were made for removal of the old trailer, financing was approved and the money already in our construction accountā¦..piece of cake, right? If you think that, you donāt know Blooie. We got word that construction of our house would start at the factory on September 13th. We had set up the timing so that Opie would move the old place off the lot on October 2. Ken and I had Motel 5 1/2 set up and we moved into it on September 28th, since by then all of our household stuff was already out of the old place. We figured it would just be for a few weeks, and the weather was still nice. We had no running water, and had to rent an outhouse, but it was just for a few weeks. Yeah, right.
Our contractor started the foundation on October 5th. We were supposed to be moved into the new one before Halloween. The new house was actually not delivered until October 21. So much for Halloween. We had one section across the street to the north and the other across the street to the east, and an empty foundation. Finally the house was set on the foundation on November 8th, so we figured weād be in before Thanksgiving. Nope. It was getting colder and colder, with snow, and that outhouse wasnāt fun at 2 am. The issue was the finishing work, some of which is still not finished. But on December 4th, after two days of temps in the single digits, Ken said, āThatās itā¦.come hell or high water Iām sleeping in the house tonight. Weād had power, water, and sewer already going. What we didnāt have was gas. No gas, no heat. Gas wasnāt hooked up until December 3, and by then the house was so cold that it was taking forever for it to get warm in here. He and Kenny went to the storage unit and brought over our bed. We set it up, and began a bare bones existence among the ladders, the bits of trim and wallboard and people popping up out of the crawl space, but by golly we were IN!
Itās a beautiful home, with three bedrooms, two baths, and a totally custom kitchen totally designed by yours truly. Itās 1856 sq feet, a palace compared to where weāve spent the last 25 years. We have a long way to go to be totally settled yet, the front porch isnāt finished, and all we have surrounding is dirt - no more lush green yard with flowers everywhere, but that will come! In a separate post Iāll put up some picturesā¦this one has already gotten too long!
. Went to see a nephrologist this morning. Long story short, looks like my kidneys are good, and I , don't, have an adrenal problem! Mammogram yesterday looked good, they just can't figure out my woozy head. I don't think that will ever be resolved now. Bummer.
. Oh well, no one ever said getting older is a fun trip.
I'm truly not much of a drinker.
