Moving house…

The Sunday prior to let’s-move-the-house Monday was seriously intense. In keeping with our way, my dad and I left it till the very last minute to tighten the lag screws on the bottom of the trailer and get the house off its leveling blocks, then built a pretty questionable set of stairs in the dying light amid dazed rushing to get my shit together.

Somehow I guess I did get my shit together, and Monday morning rolled in before I was with it enough to make note of the ‘lasts’ of my life in Little Yellow’s at my parent’s. Last night with the kittens trying to eat my necklace as I tried to sleep, last waking to the view from my windows, and last time I could walk out my door and into my mother’s.

Jill arrived at 8:00 am. A close second to knowing folks that can build things is knowing folks with big ass trucks who are awesome enough to help you move, and Jill is just such a wonderful person. She drove all the way from Colorodo, then back again the next day, to move little Yellow and deserves a serious stack of gold medals for putting up with the sniffling, babbling, half panicked pile of nervous energy that was me for the entire move. Jill, you rock.

My house took the trip very well. She bounced and bumbled right down the 5, 166, and 101 behind Jill’s truck and didn’t give us a hint of trouble. Nothing broke. House and trailer stayed gratefully connected. I decided to leave my clothes on the pink room shelves and they pretty much chilled out there the whole time. One rouge sweater took a nosedive on the road to Santa Cruz, but that was it.

In fact, my house took it so well that I, in comparison, took it all very badly. I was a total wreck. I went through so many involuntary emotional changes in the days prior that I almost had to consider the subject of my sanity. I cried A LOT. I also got super jittery, ridiculously excited, and had more fear surrounding this move than anything I can ever remember being afraid of.

There were a few moments in which I seriously wondered what the hell I was doing. My beautiful house that had been so comfortable and stable was suddenly empty and totally imbalanced. It was far from level without the piles of cinder blocks that had held it up all year, and got jacked up to an extremely disconcerting angle to be high enough for the hitch ball. Walking inside for a last minute check felt awkwardly off, because nothing was as it should be.

And then the whole house moved. It was quite possibly the most bizarre feeling I’ve ever had or sight I’ve ever seen. I obviously knew I was building a mobile space, but all the thought and anticipation couldn’t quite prepare me for the reality of it. In the space of a few seconds, my house went from a (seemingly) permanent driveway fixture to a trailer hitched up and ready to roll. Just like that.

The open houses helped keep things grounded. Most everyone was super nice, and I love sharing something I’m so proud of. People drove real distances too, presumably on purpose, just to see Little Yellow :D.  We were a little late for the Frazier Park start time (actually we were late for everything except Santa Cruz; made it 2 minutes early. Way cool) and there were already 4 cars waiting for us, just amazing.

A few folks didn’t quite get it, but those ones are going to happen. Now that I have and live in my house I really don’t give a damn anymore 😀 One woman wanted to know how I did it. Not how I built it or how I got the resources, but how I could live in ‘that thing’. She brushed it off at my being young because I’d never be able to do that if I were her age, what with all of the furniture one accumulates. I respectfully (probably not, actually) told her that perhaps depends on what kind of choices a person makes. She didn’t see the logic.

My mom (who drove my car up behind whilst taking about 5000 pictures) cheerily convinced the man at the San Luis Obispo Travel Lodge to let us park Little Yellow in the lot so we stayed there for the night, half in a room half in the tiny house. ‘We’ meant me, Mum, Jill, her grandson Joseph (who made the trip with us, great sport) and my curtain-sewing sister. She had to work Monday and my mom had to work Tuesday preventing either from going the whole way, so they quick changed Monday night at our suave Travel Lodge rendezvous. It was kind of like a circus.

A homeless man on a bicycle came by Tuesday morning while I was eating breakfast on my porch in the parking lot. He stopped dead in his tracks when he caught sight of Little Yellow and stared for a few seconds with his mouth open.

‘Woah, what…who made that?

‘I did’

(blank look)

‘Naw…you’re not man enough to build that thing’

‘Oh I’m more than man enough to build this thing, buddy’

(silence)

‘What do you call a deer with no eyes? No eyed-deer’

(rides off)

We stopped for gas twice, and weighed the trailer at the truck stop near my house. I’d been quietly freaking out the whole build that it’d be over the 7000lb Gross Vehicle Weight Rating but we came in just fine at 6020lbs and I was so happy I thought I might pass out.

Reaching our final destination and getting the house set up and unhitched was a massive relief. Or at least a relief from the fear I had of moving it…Once Jill drove away I was back to the fear of being somewhere new and therefore terrifying. That said, I’m extremely grateful to live close family again (mom and stepdad live down south, dad and stepmom live up here) so I haven’t felt alone.

My landlords are lovely, my spot is absolutely beautiful and a month later, I’m settled and completely in love with my life. I go to the ocean every day, work as a hostess in a restaurant in town and have met so many great people since I’ve been here. I’m so busy and happy that I hardly feel like I’m in my own reality. Like maybe I’ve just wandered into someone else’s perfect life.

A full post on living in Little Yellow is far overdue, but must continue to be so a little while longer. My handicapped camera (his name is Harold) has finally given up the fight as I found the other day. The zoom stopped functioning last year after I dropped him in some sand and he’d been acting a mite shitfy since a melted chocolate fiasco mucked up the viewfinder and most of the mechanisms, but he’d worked pretty diligently even so. Until the beautiful sunny day I decide to take pictures of my house…Go figure. Thanks a lot, Harold.

And here, as promised, are tons of pictures 😀