First, some news. The preparations on the home site are done till the delivery date of July 8. The septic field is usable, and has been approved. The well has to have regulatory approvals finished, including water testing. It will be completed after the power is connected…………….whenever that happens, hopefully on the 9th. The drillers went down to 270 feet depth, and we have 2.5 gallons per minute flow. Not huge, but adequate. Permits and NB Power bureaucracy on top of Health bureaucracy and and and…..
Then, I called to confirm if the truck was really going to be ready on Friday. In a word, Non! Rappelez (call back) Lundi ou Mardi . The body shop guy also wants to be sure he gets paid for his work. Understandable. This whole process has been somewhat of an adventure in and of itself. ICBC in Surrey, BC contracted a company in Quebec city to deal with the French-speaking body shop. Quebec City contracted an insurance adjuster in Grand Falls, New Brunswick to go there because he is closer to the site. Nice guy on the phone, Nelson Paradis, aka Butch. I keep having to ride herd on everybody because they are all busy and now and then one person doesn’t sent stuff on the the next one, and then the last one in the chain went on holidays. Fun and games. Better that though than being confined to a hospital or having not survived the accident and leaving Marie with all the hassles to deal with on her own.
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Confined Spaces
This is not about entering underground chambers or manholes filled with toxic or noxious gases. This is about living in a trailer for two and a half months and still staying sane and getting along with your partner.
Before we left on our adventure, I wondered how this would work out. We had been camping for a night or two in the trailer. We had been camping in tents in the past. We slept in the back of my 3/4 ton stetch Ford van years ago. We even spent a night together in the back of our little Ford Escort Station Wagon, bcause we could. Now THAT was cozy.
Sure, I have read about other couples who have lived and travelled in much smaller trailers than ours. We always had somewhere to go back to. Early on in the What IF phases of speculation, Marie had suggested selling the house and going Gypsy for a year or two or…. I emphatically said NO because I was concerned about this concept. I now know I was right.
While we were travelling across Canada, it wasn’t too bad, because we had somewhere to go, a goal to distract us from the size of the space. Even when we were stopped in Merritt for the week after the truck broke down, it wasn’t too bad yet. I was in a bad state of mind in Saskatoon, after the tire blowout, I was nearly ready to turn back, more due to the mechanical problems, than the space issue. Mostly the trip was smooth sailing after that, every day was another goal to reach, then to rest up for the next leg of the trip.
Once we got here, we thought we would be moving on to a property fairly quickly. Days turned into weeks, as we dealt with the banker, realtors, careful lawyers. We had the grand kids over one at a time for their traditional “Overnight” with us. As I said, we were parked on a quiet, dark coountry road between fairly tall trees.
We had had others stay in the trailer with us last summer…. but during one stuffy, VERY dark night on Jessica’s Overnight, with our bedroom exit door blocked with luggage and laundry baskets, and the pass-through doors to the bathroom closed, found me waking up,. unable to breathe in the pitch dark. I felt trapped, like I was drowning in the humidity and non-moving air. I had to calm myself and carefully make my way through to the front door of the trailer and go outside to catch fresh air. Not good. Made me think of prisoners locked in small cells, even solitary confinement. I couldn’t imagine being locked up like that. I had toget outside several times that night. I have since put a solar light on the back bumper outside our bedroom window as a “night light” to orient myself in the dark. We have other small lights here and there in the trailer as well.
I know, I know, City Kid out in the country, used to a street light every 100 feet, freaked out about the dark….here the street lights are about 1 or 2 km apart. The NB Power guy, who came out to check our place for installation of an electric hookup, asked if we wanted a “Dusk-to-Dawn” light in our yard. In spite of all that, we turned him down on the suggestion. I guess they give this option to customers, at their expense, since it is before the meter.
After the Overnight with the third kid, Joe, the oldest, the grandkids actually suggested that we postpone the Overnights till we were in our house because they didn’t like the small space and the tension they felt from us. At first, we thought we would be heroic, but on reflection we decided that this would be the best option.
Marie also has had a couple of tense nights, not so much about space, but about the “no-see-ems” that get through the bug screens, and mosquitoes that sneak in when we go in and out of the trailer.
We certainly have the dodging to get by each other down pat now. Moving three things to get at the one thing we need, well, that’s getting old..Stepping over Bella and having her react nervously like we were going to step on her, that can be irritating. Our cats, Pi and Snoopy bounding over everything, including us, like it’s their personal jungle gym, that is really unnerving and at times painful when they are moving at top speed. I think even they are feeling the strain though and do try to be accommodating. We will all be very happy when we are in our new home, small as it may seem, it’s still nearly three times the size of this trailer! AND Brand New! We are living in about 240 crowded square feet. Apparently the rule of thumb for minimum space for a couple is 540 square feet. No wonder.
It’s not quite the same as building our own home, having this one delivered.. but we do understand that living in this trailer is sort of tolerable in the summer, but being confined to quarters in this space as a construction shack, through the winter, could get to be quite intolerable. Not to mention cold and expensive, since the insulation in the trailer is not up to temperatures close to minus 20 C. That would be a serious challenge!
