A Weekend of Moo

If you're familiar with Kate-Talk (aka Kate Language, Kate-Speak, or Kate-isms), raise your hand!  Ok, so those of you who are still sitting on your thumbs, I have a peculiar way of making up words or using existing words out of context to mean various things usually denoted by my tone and demeanor.  So, they're difficult to use in the written word.

Moo came about in 2009 on a trip with my partner, Lola.  It was originally versatile, meaning anything from excitement to disconsolation.  Nowadays, I use it almost exclusively to mean dissatisfaction about which I am grumbly.  (A condition I call Growly McSnart Face.)

Chris had a half day Friday, and earlier in the week, I'd seen some new land advertised in Jamul.  Of course, it didn't have an address associated with it, and Adam didn't hear from the realtor in time to get one to us, but as usual we took our chances that it would become apparent.

So, late Friday morning we each got together the various land-looking necessities.  For Chris: jeans, hat, coffee, his vaping device, sunglasses, phone, bag with wallet, etc. and mask.  For the dog: harness, leash, tweezers, baggies.  For me: facial sunblock, hat, sneakers, water, snacks (not just for me), an over shirt in case I get cold, phone/bag + wallet, mask, and -thanks to the pandemic and my habits therein- the only jeans that fit me right now which are the ones that have a hole in the butt.  Seriously, if ever you run into size 8 (or 6 cuz eventually...) Piama jeans, please get them for me!  They fit my body in ways jeans never have and I will give you my undying gratitude plus some reasonable item in trade including but not limited to: money, cake, massage, or my firstborn.

The property is listed on Wood Valley Trail.  In order to get to Wood Valley Trail, we had to traverse Lose-My-Lunch Lane.  I smartly offered to drive since that gives the driver +2HP against nausea.  Wood Valley Trail itself is a dirt road of no particular excellence.  The good news about it being washed out in places was that we can tell it does rain there, at least sometimes.

We followed the short street until it drifted off in several directions.  Luckily, there was a real estate sign at that point which signaled us that we'd arrived.

No land search is complete without trespassing

Which land parcel it was specifically was a bit confusing to discern but we had some clues.  The ad had said that there were multiple areas on which to build, a seasonal stream (!), and that there were mature trees.  We headed up the way that was clearly trespassing and found a pad on which to build... in the middle of the road.  The road literally lead right up to it, then continued past the pad.  It might have been one thing if the road went off a different direction, or the pad was significantly set apart somehow... or the road was wider, but it was enough for one vehicle only and went straight on through.

Pad facing the way our home would need to face

I realize this picture makes the pad look nice and large, however we need the pad to be long east/west, and this is north/south.  The space that is there would mean that we'd need to build a two story earthship in order to just have the amount of rooms we want (one multi-use kitchen/dining/living area, one art room/office space/meditation room, one bedroom, a storage room, a large garage for Chris to have space to work, and requisite bathrooms -one full, one half).

A two story earthship sounds great.  It really does.  I love the idea.  However, the complication in building it is enormous and not something we really ought to take on if we don't have to.  It costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to get the Earthship Academy to build you an earthship. Two stories adds hundreds of thousands more.  Because it's basically two earthships.  And it's not even cool like a loft or an extra high room in one area to a second floor because that would mess around with the concept of thermal mass.  So, it really is just two separate earthships connected by a dark stairway back through the earth up through the greenhouse of the upper one which is set back from the lower.  Good for wall sconces and your wildest dungeon fantasies, less excellent for an open, calm, light home.

We looked off the precipice of this pad and figured that the semi-cleared area below was both the seasonal stream and a potential second building site.

We weren't quite sure that was the intended other building area so we walked on down the road through what was indeed mature trees.

We did reach a slightly more open area where the road petered out.  It might not have been a super build-ready area but it was nice.  Surely we could hang some hammocks from the trees.

Phoenix is good at finding shade.  He also got another ant bite.

This area was just at the end of what we thought was the property and because it was ... something like 20 acres, we wanted to see where the rest of the acres were.  Seems that they stretch up the mountain opposite the pad.  We went to see if we could check it out.

Where the road had trifurcated, there was a drive down to the bottom of the valley.  We followed it along to the presumed other building area that hadn't been so much cleared as whacked into submission.

At that point the dog christened the land and Chris had to go back to the car and get a bag.  Phoenix and I walked along a path that wound up the hill a bit but then ended in a turn around a bush.  There were beautiful rocks on the hillside.  Not that we could get to them, but they were super pretty to look at.

All in all, there were a few issues with this land.  The main one is that the main pad really isn't wide enough for us to do what we would like.  We'd need to build two stories and we could only do that if we cleared the hill up from where the pad is now.  There's a rock where the pad connects to the mountain, so burying cisterns wouldn't work there.  And then... we're not really sure how we'd deal with vehicles.  Presumably we could just build a garage as the first thing off the driveway/road, but if we build all the way up to the road, it would be difficult to get building materials for later projects onto the land.  The land has no well, which would be nice to have, and while I never expected to have a view on the land we got, this land is stuck down in the valley enough to feel just a little constrictive to me.

On the plus side, it's got a seasonal stream we could tap for water and the capacity to build across the stream.  Most of the land up the mountain isn't traversable right now, but presumably over years we could make a few paths.

On the way back we got to comparing this land with the land on Beaver Hollow Road.  I was complaining about how bad the road was to get to this land, thinking that Beaver Hollow Road had been better.  Since we were heading that way anyway, we stopped off to look at Beaver Hollow again.  

Y'all, this road is so shitty.  It's like, the shittiest of shitty roads.  If The toilet from the movie Trainspotting was a road, it would be Beaver Hollow Road.  

The worst toilet in Scotland

I did manage to avoid the rock on which I had previously bottomed out the car.  There was a lot of swerving along the road avoiding rocks at 15mph (~24kmp).  So much so, that I nearly went head-on into an oncoming car which was doing the same thing.  

And it's a long road.  Ok, I looked it up and it's not that long.  It's about 4 miles (~6.5km).  But it takes over 15 minutes to do those 4 miles.  I did love the fact that you get on Lose-My-Lunch Lane for only a blip of time before turning off it to get to this property.  Really, you don't stay on it long enough to blow chunks.  And you don't so much want to vomit on Beaver Hollow Road.  But you must have the patience and dental insurance of the gods.  

It's difficult.  We do like the Beaver Hollow Road property.  It's huge and actually does have enough space where we could build pretty much what we want.  The house itself wouldn't have an amazing view, but we could clear some space at the top of the hill and have a great view from there.  But as we talked about it, Chris brought up the issue that he's quite unsure that a flatbed truck could traverse the shittiest road in the county.  And if a flatbed truck can't make it down the road (or back up it), we'd have to abandon our plan to build with tire bales.  And I, for one, really like the idea of tire bales.  They're not usually free like tires, but they're a lot less work and take up lots more trash from landfills.

A google search once we were home did not elucidate the kinds of conditions big trucks need in order to bring you really heavy building materials.  If we get serious about that property, a call to a trucking company is in order.

At this point a number of circumstances converged that resulted in me not eating dinner until past 8pm and gathering a ridiculous headache.  They may have been related.  So I asked Chris to do the realty search for the land we'd look at Saturday.

I normally just dismiss towns out of hand that are too far away, or if I'm lucky, the website has a filter where I can select the towns in which we're interested.  Chris didn't do this and he found a property that sounded a-MAZING.  It's offerings?  A gravel drive, two pads, off-grid neighbors, mature oak and mesquite trees, and A LAKE VIEW!!

**Side note** For those who don't know, a big part of us moving to CA had to do with Chris's need to be near water.  I could say it's because he's a Pisces, but then I'd have to admit to finding astrology fun and I wouldn't do that.  Chris's home was never more satisfying than when he lived next to Lake Champlain in Burlington.  And when I say 'next to,' I mean, he literally lived on the property right next to the lake.  He didn't have to cross the street, or go through the woods.  He literally walked out his front door and, lake.  Well, edge of cliff then lake at the bottom.  One of our first dates was getting pizza and sitting on the beach and eating it.  I think some seagulls got a little pushy at that time.  Chris lived there after I moved to NM and would have continued doing so except his landlord sold the house and called, on Chris's birthday, to let him know he had a month to find new housing.  Then he had to cancel his trip to visit me in NM and everyone was most unhappy.  Anyway, living near a lake is a big deal.  And there's not much water with which to do so here, folks.**

So, the catch is that this land is in Santa Ysabel.  That's over an hour drive from here.  It's beyond the town that's beyond the town we'd stated was the outskirts of where we'd look.  But... lake... 

So Saturday morning, I struggled awake with one of my horrible dreams where I wake up missing one of my senses (this morning it was sight) then realize I can't possibly be awake if I can't see and I'm still asleep and start the dream all over again.  I put on my ass-hole jeans, made some tea to-go, and off we went.

Chris was miffed that the GPS brought us up a back way through Ramona.  But we got to see the odd Barona Casino which looks like a cross between a retirement home and a castle.

I swear my Grandmother lived in a place just like this

And the paintball range that looks like a castle ghost town.

The dog was a bit whinier than usual on the drive up.  We didn't think anything of it -he does that sometimes especially when he's excited- until I looked around and saw him urinating on the backseat.  In case you're wondering, no, that is not normal.  We pulled over asap and got him out of there where he peed for possibly 3 whole minutes.  

We told the vet in October that his drinking habits had changed.  In the last two weeks, he's started waking me up after Chris leaves in the morning to go pee, but I sort of thought he was just stressed out.  But this prompted a call to the vet.

Parts of the drive reminded me of a very dry Vermont.  Later, Chris pointed out that it actually seemed like a cross between Vermont and New Mexico, which felt like a nice homage to our history.

It's interesting how certain areas seem to attract certain types of domesticated livestock.  In many areas we've looked at it's horses.  I do love the idea of having horses for neighbors.  In others we've seen goats.  The way to Santa Ysabel is very much about cows.  We moo'd appreciatively (as opposed to my disconsolate moo) at many cows on the drive.

And on into Santa Ysabel, a town I'd never been to before.  The turn off from the highway boasted a Saloon with this sign:

I feel offended by the "hot chicks" part of the sign, but I have to say, the place looked fun.  It had big windows, probably a wood floor, and really just had an old country feel about it.  Until we saw that a coterie of motorcycle and sportcar drivers were having a big gathering there, inside and out, and no one was wearing a mask.  *Sigh*

On up the hill we went.  A large tree on a particularly hellacious curve boasted a big **Trump 2020 No More Bullshit** sign.  The road curved precariously around the outside of the mountain with a sheer drop on one side and rock on the other.  And then... we were there... Or were we?

Unbeknownst to me, this property had also been advertised without an address so we were going on faith again.  Where Zillow had dropped a pin, was a property that... wasn't the right acreage according to the description.  And there really wasn't a pad at all.  There was a tiny shed-like structure but it was nested atop a spit of land that otherwise was a valley.  A beautiful valley, but not someplace you could build.

We kept driving and found a way that went off to an outcropping of land that housed a picnic table and was currently occupied by surly looking young people.  We kept driving and eventually saw a realty sign.  Except, it was missing something.

Well... it was the only sign we had.  When a gate barred the way, we got out and walked.  Two huge birds flew circles around each other in the super wide open sky.

We did find a pad!  And it was great!  Really great!  It was wide enough and then some and, while we'd have to build facing the mountain, the lake view to the west was unencumbered.  It was gorgeous.

Driveway

Mountain view

Lake View

Around this time we started hearing gun shots.  Plenty of them.  Apparently the young people at the picnic area were having target practice.  So much for peace and quiet!

But... the picture from the listing didn't show this unencumbered view of the lake.  And this made us think that maybe this wasn't the land in question.  Also, where was the second pad?  There was a pad down the east side of this hill, but it had two campers on it and a driveway between that land and this pad was clearly already built upon.  And the property lines indicated that this plot was not really the advertised size.  And while the mountain itself had mature trees, the pad didn't have any.  So... ?

We thought maybe it was too good to be true so we went hiking around looking for a different pad or pads.  

We hiked down this path a goodly ways.  Chris had out his property lines app and it seemed like maybe some parcels up the hill might amount the right amount of land, so we hiked back to the car, drove it around the mountain to find the road up.  We stopped at the gate with the no trespassing sign and I went to a nearby house to ask if they knew of land for sale.  The sign on this home was for Canid Education, which I took to mean dog training.  The woman I approached was wearing a Star Wars thermal and a mask that said Yes, it's me.  This all made me feel somewhat better about the "hot chicks, Trump sign, shooting" trio.

This woman was really kind but didn't know about the property.  We walked the many roads up there until we ran into properties that were clearly someone else's.  We found a trail at one point that circled the top of the hill, but it led back to the Canid Education center.  We asked the guy there if it would be ok to go on the property to get back to the road, but he pointed out that they had many wolves in cages there and it was probably not a great idea to bring our dog on the property.

And that's when I began to understand that Canid Education did not mean dog training.  It was super cool to see wolves.  Chris is especially fond of wolves, as is his sister.  It seems to run in the family (which is not at all related to the Brothers Grimm).  And it would be super cool to have wolves for neighbors so long as they don't eat your pets.  But I really hope that these wolves are caged because they lack some necessary ability that would allow them to remain wild.  Moral judgement: it's wrong to imprison wild animals unless the other choice is its unpleasant and untimely death.

We'd walked quite a lot at this point.  The dog had peed at least six more times -and not like marking pee; it was beautiful but we weren't seeing any other pads.  So we got in the car and wondered, as we peered eagle-eyed for realty signs, if we should ask Adam to look into this land.

"Well," I started; "if the land is the pad we saw and maybe some pad we didn't see, would you be interested?"

Chris: "Yes."

So we decided to ask Adam.

It took us about 20 minutes of driving home, at which point we'd barely reached Julian -the limiting town we'd decided would be the indicator of too far away- for us to change our minds.  It's not a bad drive, but it's long and Chris would have to do it twice a day.  And while maybe he could change his hours so that he mostly worked 12 hours 4 days a week, his job randomly needs him to come in for a few hours here and there on the weekends and have an early start this day, and a late stay that day.  It's just too far.

We trudged into our apartment a little over an hour later.  I'd developed a painful zit at the edge of my lip, for which I'm grateful I have to wear a mask that covers it.  I took a shower.  We had lunch.  Chris took off for work.  I ordered a new seat cover at an evil box store, then picked it up with some groceries.

I was talking with my heart-friend, Katie when Chris came home.  He went off to vape in the storage/guest room (it's where we store our guests) and came back a few moments later saying "I need your help."

Me: "Now?"

Chris: "Yes.  I have ticks."

He pulled up his shirt to reveal three ticks lodged in his torso, happily eating him.

I grew up in a place that has ticks.  However, I have never actually had the displeasure of seeing them on a human.  My cat once, yes.  But human?  We both knew that with ticks you have to be careful to remove them such that the body doesn't break off the head leaving it to burrow deeper into your flesh.  But how to do that?  The problem wasn't lack of information, it was that we'd both heard so many ways to do it, we weren't sure which was right and which was an old wives' tale.  Smother it in petroleum jelly until it backs out to get air?  Hold a match head to it? 

We had this tick removing key... 

...which I'd never seen before.  But if there's a tool made specifically for the job... 

Now, we don't actually know how to use the tick key.  And in all reality, a five minute google search to find out how, would have been just fine.  But when there are ticks buried in your hide (or your partner's hide) the only thing you can think is "Get it off!  Get it off!  GET IT OFF!"

via GIPHY 

I surmised that because you have to make sure the remove the head, it made sense that you'd have to push the key into the flesh to get down under the head.  Sort of like a pimple extractor tool.  So I pushed and scraped and pushed some more... but that first tick, the biggest, wasn't coming out.  And Chris got a really significant bruise.  So we decided to go with the tweezer & twist method.  I sure hope we were right.  Chris said he didn't feel anything left stuck in his skin, but it sure looked awful.

We put the ticks in a Tupperware in case they needed to get tested for Lyme's disease later.  Then we did a systematic search and destroy mission for ticks on the rest of Chris, then me, then we turned to the dog.

The bathroom has the best light but no space so we decided the kitchen would be the second best place to search the dog.  The problem?  The dog isn't allowed in the kitchen because it is too small.  So when I asked him to come in and lay down, he was like "Nope!"  We spent a few frustrating minutes trying to convince him that he could come in and lay down, but he would only lay part of the way down.  It was literally like downward facing dog.

So we went into the living room, got Chris's camping lantern, a flashlight, and the tweezers and doggedly searched the dog's... personal business.  

via GIPHY

In the end, we got seven ticks.  Three off Chris, four off the dog, and blessedly, zero off me.  *shudder* You know what I said before about wild animals needing to be wild as long as they have the ability?  Forget that!  These ticks are going to star in my new Tick Circus.  I'm making a toothpick trapeze as we speak.  And the finale is going to be a very tiny flaming ring that they don't quite make it all the way through!

It was a harrowing day.  I had a new burgeoning headache.  I suggested we go get food because we fracking deserved it.

Chris went down to put the new seat cover on the car seat where he discovered that the waterproof quality of our seat cover was grossly exaggerated.

You know, we're sort of down to our last options here.  It's not that new land won't become available.  But we've generally seen the stuff that we'd consider that's available right now.  Chris is worried that I'm going to make us wait until The Perfect land shows up.  I'm afraid he's too willing to compromise.  But Saturday made us both more willing to just look at whatever.  So, given a new and more illustrative map on Zillow, we decided to go look at the land on Summit Crest in Santee on Sunday.  This is land we tried to look at a week or two ago and didn't have enough information to find the right parcel.

As I was laying in bed past midnight, trying to fall asleep, something, a piece of hair? an eyebrow lash? a sleepy seed? fell onto my face.  I flipped out thinking it was a tick.

We decided to just get it over with come morning.  I got up at 10 and we just went.  We turned onto Summit Crest, which we hadn't known to do before (the road isn't so much marked and it looks like a driveway), went up one of the steepest hills I've seen, and stopped at the No Trespassing gate.

So, we practiced our limbo skills.  (Just kidding.  I'm hesitant to say we're too old for something like limbo, because it somehow sounds both elitist and attention seeking.  But literally I tried to throw a stick for the dog the other day and hurt my shoulder in mid-wind up.  So... no limbo without significant limbering up first and some NSAIDs after!)

The road... to say that it's steep really isn't doing it justice.  To say that you'd have to be a mountain goat to traverse it regularly, would be closer to the truth.  But I don't work out the way I'm supposed to and climbing stuff is good exercise, right?  So we headed up.

Trying to stand straight on the hill

Best Michael Jackson impression due to a massively tilted camera

When we got to a point where one hill ended and the next hill began, Chris found himself very confused with his property lines app because none of the properties looked like the random square of property advertised in the listing and none of them were the right size.  We could find matches to some land characteristics, like the shape of the road, but that didn't lead to any obvious property matches.

We looked up the hill.  We looked down the hill.

We decided that with no end in sight to the hill (we looked around that corner up there), it didn't make sense to continue without the hope of really finding the land.  We are not goats.  We will ask Adam to get us an appointment for someone to let us drive to the land.  And I'm glad we decided that.  My legs were shaking by the time we got back to the car!

We may not want to live in Santee, but much like the decision* not to move to New Zealand where we'd have a much better life with a government that leads much more to our style and benefit than here, we can't make a place better from far away.  As I sit down to write about our weekend, I'm reminded of our privilege to be looking to buy land in the first place.  The fact that I have some confidence that a financial institution might lend me money, if I ever find one that does land loans, is huge.  

I also feel something fall onto my neck.  It's a tick.  Welp, this one is going to be the cannonball for my amazing Tick Cannonball Feat.  Get ready sucker.  You're gonna' FLY!

* I say it's a decision but also, we don't currently have enough points via their system to make them want us either.