aka: Two Old Gals Needing Do-overs
I feel like I got drunk in Vegas and accidentally woke up the next morning married to a total stranger.
Meet Petunia.
She’s a 1963 Kenskill, twenty feet long and sporting a fridge, stove, shower, toilet, sleeping accommodations for four (if two of them are very small) and–God help me — pink sinks and a pink toilet.
Restlessness, hubris, wanderlust, quarantine, sudden & unexpected unemployment at age 61–and a nice federal tax return–and bam! I bought a vintage trailer.
I’d been jonzing for a tiny house for several years, thinking to put an adorable cottage in the way back of my backyard. My imagination saw it as a guest house, an artist’s cottage, an Air BnB or a rental property.
I could–oh, I don’t know–hitch it to a truck and actually travel around in it.
I had also thought about flipping houses at one point in my life, because the TV shows make it look so fun. It’s the transformation that’s so compelling: The Cinderella Effect.
So that’s what made me go to CraigsList on a restless Sunday: the need to reinvent something. Thursday, Petunia was mine.
I over-reach a lot.
I originally thought Petunia would just need a little sprucing up and I could flip her for a nice little profit. I could even get myself into the trailer flippin’ business. How hard could it be, right?
But this old gal needs a complete overhaul, not just new curtains, fabric up-styling and a splashy coat of paint.
Speaking of old gals needing a do-over, I have some wear and tear of my own to root out, retool, and spruce up. As Robert Lewis Stevenson said, “The great affair is to move.”
Looking at the behemoth parked in front of my house, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. A ton of work stretches ahead of me, most of which I’ve never done before. (Anyone can pull up tiles, right? But what about that thing they call a “black water tank”? I think it has to do with poo. Oh boy.)
Well, the only way out is through. So off I go. One step at a time.
Stay tuned for the ongoing transformation, as this old gal and I get miraculous do-overs…
