{"id":17,"date":"2016-10-20T19:55:14","date_gmt":"2016-10-20T23:55:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rebeccaleone.com\/blog\/?p=17"},"modified":"2016-10-22T22:39:07","modified_gmt":"2016-10-23T02:39:07","slug":"i-knew-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rebeccaleone.com\/blog\/2016\/10\/20\/i-knew-it\/","title":{"rendered":"I Knew It"},"content":{"rendered":"

My trailer floor is collapsing.<\/p>\n

I bought my precious vintage single wide\u00a0trailer just over 2 years ago, and it wasn’t long after I moved in that\u00a0I realized the real estate ad should<\/em> have said:<\/p>\n

\n

All maintenance has been 100% deferred!<\/p>\n

Absolutely everything is wrong with it!<\/p>\n

Spend the foreseeable future fixing expensive and sometimes life threatening problems!”<\/p>\n

\n

Life threatening? \u00a0I must be exaggerating, right?<\/p>\n

I’m not.<\/p>\n

As soon as I had the electricity turned on, the fuse box blew up, caught fire and burned along the raceway through 8 feet of wall. \u00a0After the electricians “fixed it” and turned the power back on, thankfully the fuse box didn’t blow up again; this time the bus bar melted which eventually blew all the fuses including the main. \u00a0Through all my many electrical problems that have put me in the dark, the longest I’ve been without electricity is\u00a09 days. \u00a0In a row.<\/p>\n

So there’s that.<\/p>\n

Then there’s this.<\/p>\n

Soon after the fire, and by “soon” I mean the next week,\u00a0the ceiling in the living room, kitchen and dining room collapsed. \u00a0The 1″ x 2″ chopsticks<\/del> beams that provide the structure between the roof and the finished interior ceiling came crashing down, taking with them the finished interior ceiling, and it all fell together, in one enormous whump.<\/em>\u00a0 The place was full of workers and I’m pretty sure one of them caused the collapse but, regardless, it’s God’s grace that nobody was underneath it at the time.<\/p>\n

Once the dust settled, the metal roof was exposed, and it had bowed inward forming a huge hollow, like a single-wide sized metal soup bowl. \u00a0The roof\u00a0was collapsing under its own weight.<\/p>\n

I sprung into action and\u00a0called roofers, construction companies, handy men, and anybody else I could think of.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The lightning capital of the world is Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela<\/a>, but the part of\u00a0Florida that I live in\u00a0is nipping at its heels<\/a>. \u00a0Because our weather is so severe, there are a bunch of apps that construction workers use to help them plan their work around the weather.<\/p>\n

After I described my\u00a0situation to one very kind\u00a0roofer, he told me\u00a0that thunder storms were predicted to begin around 3:15 that afternoon and I might well be killed<\/em>\u00a0if I\u00a0didn’t leave the trailer before the rain started.<\/p>\n

\"Whaaat?\"<\/p>\n

I was so stressed I doubt I would have figured that out\u00a0but, of course<\/em>, rain would accumulate in the soup-bowl roof, and, of course<\/em>, the weight of the accumulating rainwater would cause the walls to collapse, and, of course<\/em>, when the walls came down there’d be nothing holding the roof\u00a0up and then, of course<\/em>, the roof\u00a0would come down.<\/p>\n

Of course.
\nFlorida is full of trailer parks and I had called a bunch of them asking for contact information for the park handy men, and the handy man from the park right next door to mine\u00a0actually called me back.<\/p>\n

Michael Fernatt, who became my personal hero, took a break from his\u00a0scheduled job for the day and came over just as the rain began to fall, and he stayed just long enough to\u00a0hang some cross beams and screw into them toothpick type props that forced the metal roof\u00a0out of its perfect bowl shape.<\/p>\n

That held me over until Mike\u00a0worked me into his schedule to properly rebuild my ceilings including\u00a0reinforcing the living room ceiling so it would be strong enough to hold my fabulous Schonbek chandelier<\/a>\u00a0which hangs in the center of a gold veined ceiling mirror.<\/p>\n

\"_mg_6092\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Schonbek
Schonbek Halo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Mike said to me, “you\u00a0do\u00a0<\/em>know you live in a trailer, right?”<\/p>\n

I do, Mike, I do.<\/p>\n

Then he died of pancreatitis. \u00a0RIP Mike, you were awesome.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

You’re probably wondering why I bought such a dump. \u00a0Well, the real estate agent that sold it to me was dishonest, and she was in cahoots with a “contractor” who made almost everything worse, and every bit of work he did for me had to be redone. \u00a0And there was a trend; she’s been accused of embezzlement at the firm she worked at at the time of my transaction. \u00a0If I were to pursue action against her, it would implicate the sellers who are an adorable, ancient couple who I’ve fallen completely in love with. \u00a0They were clueless about the condition of their trailer, they never lived in it, it had been empty for years, and they never claimed to know its condition. The agent was the dishonest party, not the sellers. \u00a0You’ll hear more about “my old people” later.<\/p>\n

I totally get the problem with\u00a0“good money after bad” but I also think it’s possible\u00a0that, at some point, enough good money will\u00a0eventually modify the bad to the point that the bad money isn’t bad anymore.<\/p>\n

Instead of worrying about what might go wrong\u00a0next, and instead of focusing backward and seeking restitution, I decided to go another way. \u00a0I named my vintage single wide my Junkyard Jewelbox and I set my mind to saving it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

About a year-and-a-half ago, Jamey was under my trailer pulling wire between my modem and some of my computers.\u00a0 Since it\u2019s a single wide, while he was in the “crawl under” he could take in the entirety of my trailer’s\u00a0underbelly landscape, if you will.<\/p>\n

As fate would have it, he spotted a plumbing leak.<\/p>\n

In the outflow <\/em>pipe under the double kitchen sinks, Jamey saw a slow drip, drip, drip. \u00a0<\/em>He crawled over to it and found that it had been going on long enough that a significant\u00a0wetland had\u00a0formed beneath it.<\/p>\n

He also noticed the reason my sink drain occasionally ran slow; as the outflow pipe ran under my dressing room which shares a common wall with my kitchen, it angled in the exact wrong<\/em> direction an outflow pipe should angle; it angled up<\/em> instead of gently down<\/em> toward the oblivion that is its connection to the greater sewer pipe system that serves the entire trailer park, and beyond.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Jamey,
Jamey, beautiful Jamey.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Jamey is a genius, and it\u2019s important that I get that right out there, unequivocally\u00a0and right up front. \u00a0There really isn\u2019t anything he can\u2019t do, and do well.<\/p>\n

His mind is lightning fast, absolutely nothing gets by him, his construction and carpentry skills are excellent, he\u2019s an artist in the truest and fullest sense, and his work and life experience is intensely significant.\u00a0 Plus, he\u2019s an ex-porn star, and they simply don\u2019t put unattractive men with small penises in porn.\u00a0 Well, they do, but it\u2019s a sub-genre, and Jamey\u2019s gorgeous in the main-stream porn kind of way.<\/p>\n

I digress.<\/p>\n

He reconfigured the elbow to create the necessary slope in the downhill direction and he replaced the pipe.\u00a0 And just like that, the leak was fixed.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Fast forward to about a month ago.<\/p>\n

As I storm<\/span> delicately float through my trailer, stomping<\/span> walking softly like the fierce<\/span> graceful, scary<\/span> feather float, freakishly strong<\/span> wispy ballerina-type, gender fluid dom<\/span> girly girl that I am, I\u2019ve noticed a softness under foot.\u00a0 As I stalk<\/span> pirouette about, I\u2019ve noticed that the floor seems to give, but just a tiny bit, underneath me.\u00a0 It\u2019s as if the floor is suddenly \u201csprung\u201d \u2013 like a proper dance studio floor.\u00a0 It gives, but just a tiny bit.\u00a0 It bounces, but just a tiny bit.\u00a0 It moves with me, but just a tiny bit.<\/p>\n

And somehow, in the teensiest partial wrinkle in the palest of shimmery grey grey matter in the deepest recesses of my brain, and\u00a0completely unconsciously, I began cross linking disparate data points until I was strong enough in my theory to know what was coming.<\/p>\n

And I actually called it.<\/p>\n

In late September, I was\u00a0visiting with my \u201cold people\u201d and something odd happened.<\/p>\n

Somehow, I spoke words that didn\u2019t really make any sense at the time . . .<\/p>\n

Somehow, completely, unexpectedly and without any logical context triggering them . . .<\/p>\n

Somehow, certain peculiar words, strung together in such a particularly strange way and then softly, almost at a whisper, these strange\u00a0words\u00a0tumbled haltingly from my wrinkled lips.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope my trailer floor doesn\u2019t collapse.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the thing about some old people, and my old people, particularly.<\/p>\n

Non sequitur is de riguer.<\/p>\n

My comment went completely unnoticed.<\/p>\n

Except for by a\u00a0microscopically microscopic portion of a wrinkle in the pearly palest recesses of my grey matter where 3 cells celebrated with a perverse sense of satisfaction, knowing that the thrill of accurately predicting the future would soon be overwhelmed by an enormous amount of work and expense that would, in the end, suck. \u00a0And suck large.<\/p>\n

But I’m getting ahead of myself.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Early this summer, while cleaning like the germaphobe<\/a> I am, I flooded my kitchen counters with a quarter inch of scalding hot bleach water and as I let it sit \u2013 you must let it sit for a while in order to kill bacteria, you know that, right? – I noticed my kitchen counter had separated from the wall.\u00a0 Where I used to enjoy scrubbing in the grouted \u201cu\u201d shape that joined the horizontal counter with the vertical wall, now, in that same place, there was a void.<\/p>\n

My counter was sagging, hanging, sloping away from the wall that it used to be connected to.<\/p>\n

\"Where
Where the horizontal meets the vertical<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Busy, as we all are, and as I tend to somehow always be, I simply added the recognition of the counter sag to the mental \u201cthings of mine that sag and\/or hang\u201d database I keep in the brightest shiny pearly\u00a0part of my grey matter.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

My morning ritual of exuberantly pounding empty the grounds basket in my 9 shot espresso maker often creates a Rorschach of droplets of espresso all over the chalk white faces of my kitchen cabinets. \u00a0Early in September, while I was wiping them down with scalding hot bleach water, I noticed a vertical gap where my corner cabinets meet.<\/p>\n

\"Where
Where the Cabinets meet in the Corner.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Do you know what happened next?\u00a0 Of course you do.<\/p>\n

I added the kitchen cabinets to my mental database of \u201cthings of mine that sag and\/or hang.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Then time, as time does, began to\u00a0warp.<\/p>\n

Five days in London, less than a week at home, then a grueling 6-day course in Paris where I didn\u2019t realize a housing host offer didn\u2019t<\/em> include anything to actually sleep on, so, like the tough girl\u00a0I am, I (gratefully, happily) slept on a Cadillac conversion for 6 nights.\u00a0 Without sheets. \u00a0Without a pillow. And for 2 of those nights, with a bath towel as a blanket.\u00a0 And \u2013 hello Europe! – even though it\u2019s in the low 40s at night, the heat wouldn’t\u00a0be\u00a0on until the day after I flew home.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019m durable and resilient and man, am I game, so, in spite of the difficult sleeping situation for most of my nights there, I crushed it in Paris and I flew home in high spirits, feeling invincible, unstoppable, and super charged by my own constantly-compounding ambition and overflowing with unmitigated joy derived\u00a0from simply being alive.<\/p>\n

But while I was gone, a\u00a0bazillion Jewelbox data points that had accumulated from 45-years-of-deferred-maintenance had cross linked and reached a critical mass of their own.<\/p>\n

While I was in Paris, my kitchen floor collapsed.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"The
The floor is separating from the wall.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

I’m the Momento<\/a> of story tellers; To go fully forward, we have to go a tiny bit backward.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Last February, the guys who mow the lawns here at the trailer park hit my trailer with their interstate-median-sized commercial lawn mower.\u00a0 The driver in question was a super nice man who just couldn\u2019t stop apologizing.\u00a0\u00a0 And that really matters.\u00a0 Especially when hardly anything else does.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what needs to happen for a super nice man to run an interstate-median-sized commercial mower into your trailer.<\/p>\n

He sneezed.<\/p>\n

And as you may know, sneezing requires – \u00a0without exception it includes, it most assuredly insists upon, it fucking demands – an eye blink.<\/p>\n

To review: he sneezed, and, simultaneous with the sneeze, he blinked.<\/p>\n

When he opened his eyes after the blink, he was headed straight for my neighbor\u2019s Frangipani and rather than commit an interstate-median-sized, landscape\u00a0edition, Director’s Cut\u00a0of Trailer Park Chainsaw Massacre, he swerved into my screened porch instead.<\/p>\n

When he hit me, I was inside my Jewelbox, in a state of blissful flow<\/a> working at my desk.\u00a0 The force of impact was strong enough to knock a small vial of my dead mother\u2019s hair off the stand of my Thunderbolt.<\/p>\n

Instantly, my mind, ever the problem solver, produced this list of possibilities:<\/p>\n