Loans

Shortly after, the anger kicked in. I was furious. The loan payment and rent would be less than we had paid in rent: what kind of stupid arbitrary decision was being made here? I called up a mobile home manufacturer to see what they could do, and of course they were interested (who wouldn't be interested in selling a new home to a person) ... that saleswoman hounded me for months after, as it turned out, but it was a start. I was, all of a sudden, in bloody-minded mode. The realtor rang through to say sorry and maybe we could get in touch in about a year, but I certainly wasn't going to wait another year :: laugh :: nor give up on the first attempt.

There was a site online that didn't offer loans to owners in parks, but only to owners on private land; they did however put me in touch with Forward Financial, who in turn put me in touch with their eclectic but knowledgeable agent, Elmer Nelson. That is one seriously down to earth man, brusque but competent; one of the first things he said when I was asking him about the company was that the problem didn't seem to be with his company, but with us ;-) and that he would see what he could do. And he did.

The Loan

Don and I wracked our brains about this one - we were going to make an offer, met with Terri, but decided we should not, because there was no way we could guarantee having that money by the time escrow closed. We made a decision to get the money together before we made the offer. It wasn't much in terms of the amount, but it was a lot for us. We went into savings turbo mode.

During February, there were more and more hassles. Elmer wouldn't do things the way Terri and her company needed them done, so there was some um, discussion about contracts and the like. We were a bit freaked out by the park rules, one of the most disconcerting of which was that on resale, all homes over a certain age had to be removed from the park! Lot of hard thinking over that one, something the heartache of which it's hard to convey here, but to cut a long story short, we drafted an alternative set of rules or exceptions, had the down to earth landlady sign them off, and during the second set of full moons both in March, made the final decision to go for it. As it turned out, we would save so much on the monthly payment that even if we had nothing left at the end, we would still have been in the black - and, we figured, much happier. (Turns out we were right on that one, writing here from the lofty heights of October.)

The offer

I started to pack ;-)

Escrow was set to end in late April, moving day was May 2nd. We went to the escrow place and were treated with some sense of the occasion it was, which I liked. We finally got to meet Elmer, an older man with whom Don immediately got on well, as they were both interested in aeroplanes. We had to wait for the seller to do paperwork and I sent Don on his way, collecting the paperwork with a handshake. What we didn't realise until a few days later was that we had already closed escrow, and were homeowners! As I recall we got out the bubbly - Terri brought us a bottle with balloon attached, a really nice touch - and sat on the boxes giggling over that one.

Moving Day

Not too long after, Deann and Sheri with the boys showed up to help. Garret, the baby, stayed in the car while Kyle, the three-year-old decided to help - and turned out to be incredibly strong, carrying all sorts of stuff and proving to be an asset! We set up a chain gang, with Deann stacking the van, Sheri hauling the stuff from the house to the van, and me making sure that the stuff was in the doorway to be hauled. It worked out well, because Don took charge of Kyle, handing him things that were about the right size to be carried by small but strong hands!

Not too long after, my long-time Net pal Sheri (another one!) from Alameda came on over, with her big teenage son, Josh - the more muscles the merrier! Things really speeded up then, but as always, it was a chore - you always have much more stuff than you imagine, and the others absolutely goggled at the number of (dead) monitors Don had managed to squirrel away... It was fun, though, as I'd never met Sheri before, and yet there was no awkwardness, just a hug and then let's get on with business.

Because Sheri and Deann had to leave around two or so, we decided to just take what we had already stacked to the house, and show off the new place. Meanwhile we grabbed a pile of tacos and stuff from Taco Bell to feed the workers. We got to the house, Sheri-Alameda fell in love with the roses, and everyone really liked the interior :-)

Sheri took us through a house-cleansing ritual, protecting it from what she causes cooties, as we had noticed a sad vibe there before from the way it was left empty for a while. By the time we were done it felt much better, a bit like a house blessing. I will probably write this up as a separate article, as I think it deserves more detail than I should fit in here.

Then we hauled in some of the heavier stuff, and our helpers had to go around three or so, and thus we were on our own.

We split the duties; we spent a few hours bringing stuff in, then Don went back to the old place to load more stuff while I brought the stuff from the carport into the house, meeting quite a few of our neighbours in the process! It was of course exhausting, but finally most of it was in. Don brought home the cats, looking confused, and let them settle into the bathroom. I still get a laugh out of how they came out of the cage, took one look, and slunk right back in again!

The last hour, at the old house, was pretty grim - it just seemed to drag on and on and on... Don refused to listen to the idea that we might just want to hire the van for another day and so we had to do it that day instead. But we did get to have a cup of beer with our soon to be ex neighbours, which numbed the pain in my feet and muscles a bit! We finally left after dark, unloaded what was left into the carport, dropped off the U-Haul and went to bed. There was not a spare inch of ground anywhere, except for the mattress - and boy was that welcome!

So there you have it - the tale of Little Blue Moon. It feels like home, and I am NOT moving for another five years!!!