Bio - 24 in My Bio

The fact that a guy named Steven sold our house for a surprising $83,500—just shy of our asking price of $85,000—only two weeks after it hit the market raised a red flag in my mind and sent my bad vibes crawling. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was about to go wrong, as if a higher power knew we’d need every penny we could get.

Steven was one of the biggest con artists we’d ever encountered, alongside Dan, the well driller, and Gravity, the general contractor. They were all part of an elaborate scam, with the well driller being the worst offender. He deliberately underestimated the necessary depth of our well to extract more money later, but we refused to pay beyond our initial agreement. Instead, we ended up spending three months in hotels while they botched multiple aspects of the project. To help stay on days, I took Melatonin, which I managed for an incredible six months.

The first month was spent at the Siesta Suites in Scottsdale. The place was typical of Arizona apartments—noisy, with thin walls and constant activity, whether it was landscaping, painting, or repairs.

Despite the chaos, we found some enjoyment along the way. We shopped for new items for the house, and even though it was hectic, I relished the process, even as I regained all the weight I had lost after quitting smoking and jumped back up to 125 pounds. With the circumstances being what they were, watching my weight wasn’t a priority.

Dennis, a coworker of Tom’s, seemed like a lifeline when he loaned us his thirty-year-old, twenty-seven-foot trailer on October 17th, 1999. While it was far from glamorous, it was better than a hotel room. Still, we had to visit hotels every other day for showers. Siphoning water into the tank was a hassle, and the near-pressureless showers were less than ideal. Keeping the propane tanks filled was a struggle, too; while the days were warm, nights were frigid. As a result, we became regulars at the Fairfield Inn, where I often chatted with Teresa at the front desk while grabbing coffee and snacks.

Tom and Dennis agreed on $400 a month for the trailer, but by the time we were finished with the trailer, we owed him $1,000. Dennis had initially seemed generous, so Tom didn’t anticipate he’d demand the full amount upon retrieval of the trailer to buy some sporting equipment he wanted. Instead of helping us, Dennis exploited our situation, seeing it as a way to make money.

After Tom switched from nights to days at the bank, we finally moved into our new home, which I proudly named Desert Winds Ranch, just a few days after New Year’s 2000. It was a welcome change from the noise of our previous life, with the nearest neighbor over 400 feet away. Occasionally, we’d hear distant music, but it was nothing compared to when we were in Phoenix. Plus there were some sonic booms and gunshots during hunting season, alongside the distant barking of dogs.

Our house featured a living room, a den, a dining area, and four bedrooms, including a small retreat off the master suite with a spacious bathroom and a garden tub separate from the shower stall. Though the model showcased two sinks, I opted for one sink and extra cabinets instead. The closet was large enough to fit two twin beds.

The kitchen had a skylight, a dishwasher, a garbage disposal, and an oven with a digital temperature display that beeped when preheated. It was self-cleaning too, something I’d never had before until then. However, the refrigerator’s ice maker remained unused, as our well water tasted surprisingly salty.

A few things were done poorly that bothered me, like the absence of an evaporative cooler. Installing one would have required additional money and awkward ductwork along the vaulted ceiling. The wallboards were also sloppily done, with noticeable seams that could have benefited from tape and texture, but that was more costly too.

The denim blue carpet turned out darker than I had expected, and the tulip design I chose for the kitchen and bathroom wallboards wasn’t as appealing as it seemed at first. Still, denim blue was better than brown, and the tulips weren’t ugly.

The best part was that the house was custom-made to our specifications, aside from the basic model. No one else had lived there before. While I didn’t have many options, I chose whitewash for the kitchen and bathroom cabinets and white linoleum for the kitchen floor. Unfortunately, there was an ugly red stain in the spot where they marked the vent. I opted for blue exterior paint with white trim, my first choice from the available options. The smooth countertops were a welcome change from the drab ceramic tiles we had in Phoenix.

For years, I had used my grandparents’ furniture and my parents’ silverware and plates, which was fine at first, but finally, we had our own items—things we had selected ourselves.

It was hard to believe that less than a decade ago, I worried about where my next meal would come from. Now, my biggest decisions revolved around color schemes and decor. For a while, it would be that way, anyway.

The view was breathtaking. Gone were the sounds of shouting, honking horns, and blaring sirens—now, the dominant soundtrack was nature itself. Mountains loomed in the distance in every direction, and in one direction, you could see at least forty or fifty miles away. At night, the distant lights of Casa Grande twinkled like stars on the horizon. It was hard to believe that barely a decade ago, my view consisted of run-down, graffiti-covered buildings. I had come a long way from that filth, poverty, and ugliness.

But the land wasn’t without its imperfections. At some point, someone had gutted a trailer on our property, leaving all kinds of junk behind. People also had the habit of tossing trash they didn’t burn, and the desert winds would blow old shopping bags and other garbage onto our land.

Dogs were another issue. With no leash laws and many in Arizona unwilling to keep their dogs indoors, our land became a free-for-all for the town’s roaming pets, even a few horses and a llama!

While the neighbors weren’t problematic, they could be nosy. I was surprised, considering this was a place people moved to for solitude. George, the elderly man who owned the ten acres behind us, made it a point to introduce himself. He informed us that he’d split his property into five two-acre lots and planned to build rentals on the two that remained empty—a plan we weren’t thrilled about. We suspected he hoped we’d offer to share our well, but we never did. Later, his workers brazenly ignored our “no trespassing” sign, strolling onto our property when they saw our well-being worked on, eager to know all about it and slow things down even more.

Our nearest neighbors were a Mexican family—consisting of a woman in her forties, her daughter, the daughter’s husband, and their five-year-old son. They came by to meet us and to ask if we owned the loose dogs that had killed their chickens.

Dan, who lived diagonally from us, could be obnoxious at times, revving engines for hours or blasting music. He moved a year later, but not before stopping by when he saw Gravity and his tractor—hoping to hire some tractor work for himself.

It seemed the more I tried to escape people, the more they intruded. They were on the phone, in the mail, at the door. I half-expected to open the fridge and find someone in there, too!

Maricopa, split by the Ak-Chin Indian reservation, was a farming community with privately owned lots with manufactured homes. Few houses were built on-site, and the range of residents was broad. It wasn’t unusual to see a well-kept home next to a dilapidated dump strewn with trash.

The only downside to the fresh country air was the occasional whiff of horse manure, though that depended on which way the wind blew. Maricopa had rules—one house per acre, one large animal per acre, and no home closer than twenty-five feet from the property line.

In spring, beekeepers often worked on the farms nearby, and swarms of bees would gather in the trees, including those on our land. The incessant buzzing was something straight out of a horror movie and rather unnerving.

It was convenient living just fifteen minutes from the reservation casinos, but financial problems soon resurfaced, limiting how often we could go.

Maricopa’s town center didn’t offer much back in 2000: a Circle K, a Dairy Queen, a feed and grain store, a junkyard, a manufactured home dealer, a church, a school, a funeral home, and police and fire substations. Even the small town I grew up in back East had more. Maricopa didn’t even have a bank, though it did have a small post office, where we rented a P.O. box after transferring our mail from Tempe, as there were no delivery services where we lived. Today, it’s quite a bustling town.

Being outside the Valley of the Sun, Maricopa had more extreme weather. Summers were hotter, and winters were colder, with highs and lows fluctuating greatly—a 70º day could plummet to 35º by morning.

Tom and I settled into our new home, and life was good. We set up our new furniture, and I had fun decorating. We talked about future plans—a pool, an Arizona room, porches, sheds, barns, horses, fences. I had achieved all my major goals and no longer craved the ones I hadn’t.

We bought a home gym, and I started to tone up and lose weight, getting back down to around 105 pounds.

The only sad event after moving in was losing Scuttles, my favorite rat at the time. The dark brown rat died suddenly, just five months after we brought him home. Vanilla Belly had passed while we were still living in the trailer, leaving us with Ratsy and Bear. I despised Bear; he was a mean, half-blind tan rat. He died around the time we got Houdini, a light brown rat named for his escape artist antics. He’d often hide behind boxes in the master closet. Houdini eventually nestled into my heart even more than Scuttles had.

Yes, life was good. We had a beautiful house, and it was finally quiet. But as predicted, things did break and leak more than they should have.

Little did we know that while we had left the noise behind, something else followed us. Something filled with a hatred far beyond our understanding, and one day, after finding myself bored with nothing left to do, there was a knock on the door.

Suddenly, I wasn’t the least bit bored.