outer-jessie's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Woodland critters If there's one thing I know, it's that I don't know anything. Nah, just saying that. I know a lot of shit. However, none of it is really all that in demand at the mo', so I'm still floating around joblessly in the general direction of July 1st, when we're supposed to be all set up at the next place we're going. It's causing us both a fair amount of anxiety to have all this up-in-the-airedness around our living and money-procuring arrangements, but in the midst of that, we have a bit of a decision to make. Or to be made for us, if we take too long to make it for ourselves. We're in a bit of a pickle, as I think I mentioned, given that we are flat-out all the fuck out of money after this most recent move. We sucked out all our savings to make it work here, and we've never made a cent of it back. We have very little wiggle room: we have to make a go of cutting way, way back on our expenses when we move to Oregon. We need a place that costs us...let me check my budget spreadsheet...Oh, ha. Oh, this is (the opposite of) rich. After all our other bills are paid out of our projected Oregon income, we can afford not quite a hundred dollars of additional expenses, including housing, food and gas. That's assuming we pay not even the entire minimum payment on our credit cards. It's not good, you guys. It's not good. Now, chances are, after a little while, we'll be making enough money to survive and then some. I'll be doing some kind of paid something, even if it's just flipping burgers or stuffing envelopes (do people still do that? what a waste of time), the Nebraska house will eventually sell, maybe the consolidation/refinance of my student loans will go through. But you can't walk into a new town with nothing. We aren't traveling minstrels; a girl needs a place to sleep and a place to put the litter box. You need first month's rent, and most likely some kind of deposit. We're going to need a storage space and a post office box. (I can hear you now: "No, you don't! You don't need such luxuries as a forwarding mailing address!" Yes, we goddamn do.) When we go up next weekend to, fingers crossed, find a place to live, we're going to need money in our bank account so that we can put down that deposit and have the check actually clear. We can't drive up there with the cats and all our crap and not know that we have someplace to go. I mean we can, but we'll die of the stress. So, a conundrum. What do we do? Rentals that will take cats are few in the new place, and expensive relative to our new income. We can find one, if we have to. We can keep our heads above water for a little while - a month, maybe two - before we drown. It would require waiting until the last day of my current job and taking my final paycheck straight to the landlords, hoping that they've reserved the promise space for us instead of screwing us over. It could be done; we'll be saving a good chunk of money by not having to pay the rent here. That amount might be just enough to do a first and last months' rent and deposit. But we've been shorting our credit cards for months, so basically we'd just be prolonging our suffering regarding our debt, and probably shorting ourselves regarding our ability to pay for groceries. If we're not careful, if we make a miscalculation, we could ruin our credit for the foreseeable future. We're walking the line right now, and it is narrow indeed. This could be the end of it. Or: We don't do any of that. We have an opportunity at this moment to do something a little different. This is our opportunity to make a choice about renting a too-expensive place and throwing our money away every month, buying a too-expensive place and throwing our money away in the future if it makes like the Nebraska house and refuses to sell, or taking another path. We've talked about tiny houses, but the regulations around them are too unclear, the up-front costs too steep, the obstacles too numerous. We've talked about buying a trailer home, a viable option perhaps, but it would require living in a trailer park unless we bought a piece of land and plumbed and wired it. We have neither the time nor money for that. (And the good trailer parks, if there is such a thing, are all old-folks communities. They're strict on the age policy; I asked.) We'd have to make sure it was resalable or portable, because eventually G's funding will dry up and we'll be rolling stones again. We could do an RV; nothing says "no moss" like an RV. Of course they require living in a community of nomads too, which I'm not opposed to per se, but I'm not too keen. Living in a too-small space in close quarters with other people in their too-small spaces just seems unhealthy to me, mentally and physically. I don't know. But RVs are also pricey; we'd have to finance an old one from the 80s if we're going to afford the rental on the space. You don't pay separately for utilities, sure, but with the cost of the space, it's more of a bundled price than a discount. This is really boring. I'm sorry. I'm getting to my point finally, I think. I'm starting to convince myself that we're young enough, we're resourceful enough, we're adventurous enough, to take it even one step further. We can take that financed RV and park it in the woods. Specifically, hooked up to facilities in the woods. It might not work out, but let me paint you a picture: I take a job as a host for a park, which doesn't pay in money but instead in a free place to hook up your RV. G drives off to her normal job everyday, and I work part-time cleaning toilets, chasing off animals, selling park visitors ice and band-aids, and communing/fighting with nature. The rest of the time, I freelance writing grants or working on research projects, or just finishing and promoting my own novel. Or novels. I probably won't get weekends off, but after the work is done, G and I drive off to the beach or the mountains or to Portland or to our friends' house. Then, after the money dries up for G's position, we drive our RV into the sunset (or sunrise; there's no further west to go) and on to the next place. Or we sell the RV and start over again. Eh? Think we could pull it off? Now, have I been offered such a position? No. Do I own an RV that we could live in if I were offered such a position? Well, no. Would we qualify for the financing of such an RV, with our student loans and credit card debt and lingering other house? Unlikely. If we were somehow able to overcome those obstacles, would I be able to manage a park's worth of random occupants, both human and non? Maybe. Might my jeebs heeb at night, to be in the darkness of the forest, all on our own, maybe surrounded by masked murderers and certainly surrounded by spiders? Probably. But...I think...it might be amazing. And there's no better time than now. Meaning, there's no worse time to be starting over and no worse way to do so than with no money to your name, so why not go whole hog? I applied for the job. I'll keep you posted on what happens. 12:49 a.m. - 2015-06-05 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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