The last post was well-received on The Facebook, where many friends offered high praise, support, and comments like, “Wow — that’s so cool it makes me envy you.” Well — it seems likely that if they are the well adjusted, competent individuals I have credited them with being, they may not feel especially envious or terribly generous with praise after this update. . . *gulp*

In my last post, all was peachy keen, if a bit slow-going, and I was preparing to put the skylights in and finish the roof, all whilst listening to the dulcet tones of forest birds, embraced by nature, and charmed by the occasional owl while sitting in my loft at twilight. As my former acting teacher and colleague, Gary, would say, “What could be more fun or more wholesome?” 

That didn’t happen.

Instead, the weather forecast changed, and we were expecting cold temps and falling precipitation, which doesn’t make for a good roof-putting-on kind of weekend, really. (The owls agreed.)  Rather than being brought down by the change of plans and annoyance of yet further delays, however, I triumphantly decided to make another attempt at leveling and stabilizing the trailer. Up to this point, it’s been somewhat level, and somewhat stable. But not terribly. I had also noticed that it had shifted at some point (but clearly hadn’t taken the clue), and the jack that’s welded to the trailer was pushing up against the sheathing at the back, making it impossible to put siding there. It seemed that nothing could really be done “well” until it was fully stable and level, so I went out and bought jacks to stabilize and level the trailer, merrily took them home, and began the process.

I was so merry, in fact, that I thought it would be a great time to take a selfie:

In short, it failed.

In fact, it was almost a complete disaster.

Just as Dad and I were making a final few adjustments before considering the whole thing something of a success, there was this . . . sound . . . like a groan . . . after which, the trailer suddenly gave way and heaved about 8 inches to the South-East, knocking me out of its way as it headed in the direction of the valley below.

Fortunately, this ladder seems to have helped slow it down:

It was pretty horrifying.

Once Dad established that I was okay (it was really more of a push out of the way) and we were sure it wasn’t going to slip further toward the valley, we started walking around scratching our heads for a bit, trying to decide what to do.  Here’s what we were looking at while we scratched:

 

Here’s a longer-range view of the position of the trailer, which you can see is listing to the left (or South-East):

We considered many different options. Initially my dad was ready to get a winch to pull it back over to the right/South-West. I wasn’t too sure about it. I figured if he was serious, it would be wise to consult with my brother-in-law’s brother, Kevin. He owns big trucks, is a trained carpenter, has worked and/or lived on farms his entire life, and likely owns a winch. Turned out he was duck hunting that day, so we stacked blocks around the wheels, reassured ourselves that it was likely to stay put and be fine for a day or two, packed everything up, and went inside to warm up and settle our rattled nervous systems.

Although I was calm for the first few days afterward, the fact that I had nearly watched my house slide off the plateau and into the valley below eventually hit, and it made for a pretty tense week. No matter what your level of meditation practice or relative “Zen”, you’re still faced with the stark reality that the home you’ve spent the last 8 months of your life building was precariously close to being lost, and it’s really upsetting. As my father observed later on, “If that trailer had gotten any closer to the edge and had gone over into the valley, most of that work would probably have been lost, and I really don’t know how we’d go about getting it out of there.”

Here’s the thing: we didn’t have a way to engage the brakes (or ensure that the breaks are engaged) on the trailer, but it had been pretty reliably stable up to this point. There was no real reason to think it was in any danger where it was. When we initially got the dang thing up the hill in the first place (see my first blog post on the entire subject!), it was such a harrowing experience that by the end of it we felt lucky to have gotten it into a workable position at all. No amount of research, reading, consulting, planning, or ruminating will really adequately prepare you for the experience of doing something like this for the first time. We knew we would make plenty of mistakes, and we were prepared to do it anyway.

When I think of the imagery of “The Fool” (I love him) in the tarot, I see more and more often the ways I figuratively — and literally — resemble him:

The intention, of course, would be to embody the archetype this way:

Or even this way:

BUT — when all’s said and done, I think this is likely the most realistic depiction of what was going on:

All fools aside, though, after a solid 24 hours to think it through, dad had a new plan: call someone who moves and repositions mobile homes, and get them to come and move the tiny house. Seemed like a good plan, right?  Why not trust the experts? Probably much safer than winching the tiny house back up to a safer position, and far less likely to damage the axles in the process. After making several phone calls over a few days, we found someone willing to take it on: Jeffrey Day.

Jeffrey was unbelievably competent, and came armed with a piece of machinery that enabled him to reposition the tiny house as though it were a tinker toy. Check it out:

I videoed the entire move, which took 2 minutes and 56 seconds, including moving the crushed ladder out of the way. (I hope to get it uploaded to YouTube in the near future. . .) Once it was re-positioned, mostly what they had to do was rock it back and forth to get the tires off the ground and stabilized at the right level, and put the TransLift back in its “on the road” mode. Then it was putting blocks under the corners of the trailer to ensure its level-ness and overall stability, which has been greatly improved, not to mention how much safer it will be to work on the left side of the house. So, while I’m confident that there will be plenty more mistakes made before it’s finished and ready to move into, the good news is that I will also be all the more likely to live to tell about it!

To give you some idea of the difference in position, as you look to the left in the above picture, where you see the aluminum ladder and stack of blocks is right about where it was sitting after it slipped.

And that’s pretty much it for the moment.

. . .never a dull moment, though, is there?