Bio - 37 in My Bio

Written in 2007

Not long after we left the duplex, I entered my 40s and in late August, we found a small house to rent for just $450 a month on the edge of downtown. The neighborhood was older and a bit run-down, but it wasn’t unsafe. A coworker and friend of Tom’s, Eddy, helped us move, and someone he knew even towed our truck for free. While they were moving our stuff to the new place, I made sure to be as noisy as possible, just to get back at the rude, loony neighbor we had.

The reason the rent was so low was not just because the house was old—it was also tilted and easily the smallest house I’d ever seen, especially for a two-bedroom. It wasn’t even 1000 square feet. The house had a gas heater in the living room and we had to use portable heaters in the other rooms.

We weren’t entirely alone in this place. While we had the benefit of no shared walls, we did share the property with the best neighbor we ever had up until that time. Her name was Kim, a young woman who wasn’t working when we first moved in but later got a night job. She did have to park next to the house to reach her place in the back corner of the lot, and sometimes she and her company could get a bit noisy with car doors and stereos. But thankfully, her stereo wasn’t too loud and mostly blended in with the usual street noise. It was audible when we were awake, but it never woke me up.

We met the owner of the house only a few times, mostly when we had issues like freezing pipes or a broken refrigerator. For everything else, a handyman took care of the small repairs, like fixing some sewer issues.

We were glad we didn’t renew the truck’s license and registration since Tom’s job was just a six-minute walk away, and even the grocery store was closer.

The house had an old picket fence in the front and chain-link fences on one side and in the back. It was just a driveway’s width from a quiet elderly woman’s house, and about 60 feet away was another rental, a larger two-story house with three bedrooms. I was thrilled to learn that the property management company there forbade dogs. Their good-sized side yard ran right up to ours, but most of the renters didn’t get too obnoxious. Just a little music and some vehicle parking in the side yard, but it wasn’t too bad during the four turnovers of tenants.

Though it was quieter than the duplex, the most annoying sounds came from a dog in the back across the canal and the constant barrage of car stereos whizzing by.

After not hearing from Bob all summer, I sent him a letter, only to have it returned, labeled “deceased.” He had passed from the same thing Tom’s father died of—lung cancer caused by asbestos. It was sad, but I was relieved that Bob was no longer suffering.

A month or two before we left the duplex, we performed a spell Tom found online that was supposed to lift curses. I laughed at the idea but, with nothing to lose, gathered the household items required and gave it a try. Gradually, things improved, and I honestly believe it was due to that spell. There were just too many coincidences to ignore. Maybe the horseshoe outside the front door helped as well, along with the lucky bamboo plants we got, but either way, most of the two years spent in that house were fun.

In the fall of 2005, Tom was unexpectedly promoted and went from making $8 an hour to $13, though he eventually grew to hate his new role as QA manager.

With the extra money, I was finally able to see a doctor about the strange popping sensations and pressure in my bad ear. The doctor explained that the popping was due to a vacuum effect caused by congestion in the tube connecting the inner ear and throat, which was fairly common. Tom had experienced it too, but it wasn’t as annoying for him. We later suspected the pressure was linked to changes in elevation and the cold.

One of my fondest memories from living in that house was all the shopping I did—and Tinkerbell, the most incredible rat we ever had until then. Just when I thought there couldn’t be a more fun pet than Little Buddy or Blondie, Tinkerbell came along, and she was amazing. Friendly, smart, and full of energy. She’d chase me around the house, climb up my leg to sit with me and share treats. She was quite the terror as a baby, though, getting into all sorts of trouble—falling into the toilet, digging up plant soil, and getting stuck in spider traps.

In addition to expanding my doll collection, I had fun trying out new incense fragrances and buying a variety of other things with the extra money we had, though I later regretted not saving most of it.

Randy, our jolly mailman, was a delight. I looked forward to his visits when my schedule allowed me to catch him as he stopped by.

My moods influencing outcomes in more prominent ways than most is something Tom pointed out to me over the years. He said that while I might have premonitions and vibes, my real strength was influencing things based on my mood or attitude. At first, I laughed at the idea, but the more I thought about it, the more I began to see it. I even did some experimenting of my own.

I remembered how I used to take inhalers and nasal sprays that I was told I’d always need. But these days, I rarely use them. I was also told to avoid dairy because of my sensitive stomach, but one day, I got “determined” to enjoy it anyway, and now I do just that.

While it’s normal to feel good when things go well and lousy when they don’t, and for a positive attitude to attract positive outcomes, my experiences sometimes seemed to take this to an extreme.

Now that I understood my influencing abilities, I began to test it further. I started winning cash prizes more frequently, going from one or two small wins a month to wins every few days. One of my prizes was a Caribbean cruise, which we took in January 2007. But before the trip, I had a dream I knew meant something. In it, I was showering in a portable stall inside a warehouse with ceilings 15 to 20 feet high. When Tom came to help me down, we both fell, and I woke up before we hit the ground. I knew it was high enough that, had we landed, we would’ve been severely injured or worse. This dream made me feel uneasy, and sure enough, the trip was long and exhausting, and less fun than we’d hoped. When we got home, we had to deal with frozen pipes and a broken refrigerator.

Since K-Falls didn’t have a major airport, we took Amtrak to Portland and flew out from there. I loved flying, but the experience had turned into a chaotic circus of noisy kids.

The cruise was a blues festival on Holland-America’s Westerdam, featuring Delbert McClinton and other performers I’d never heard of. It lasted a week, sailing from Fort Lauderdale to the Bahamas, Puerto Rico, and the Grand Turks & Caicos, though we never made it to the last port due to stormy weather. While I loved Puerto Rico, Tom and I agreed we wouldn’t do it again, especially since only the stateroom was included in the package. We had to spend nearly $2,000 on airfare, hotel stays, ground transfers, taxes, and other costs. The stateroom, which was valued at $5,000, had a private veranda I enjoyed writing and reading on, but the room itself was small and cramped.

I sent a postcard from Puerto Rico to my parents, knowing it would surprise them. We laughed about it, imagining their reactions.

Not long after, I won another big prize: a travel certificate worth $7,000 for a trip to Italy. We thought it would be fun to surprise my parents again, but a looming disaster would spoil that idea—more on that later.

In late 2006, Tom found an article explaining my rolling sleep schedule, which was caused by abnormal melatonin levels making my circadian rhythm a little longer than the standard 24 hours. So I wasn’t going crazy after all, and I hadn’t just gotten myself into a hopelessly bad “habit” I couldn’t fix.

Around the same time, I tracked down my old friend Jessie’s address online and sent her a letter. Since she’d known me by a different last name when I lived in Arizona, I figured she might be confused getting a letter from a “Jodi S.” in Oregon. When months passed with no reply, I assumed she no longer lived at the address I had. But in the spring of 2007, she surprised me with an email explaining she had misplaced my letter, which is why it took her so long to respond. We’ve kept in touch ever since. At the time, she was separated from her husband, working as an accountant, and living in a duplex with her 4-year-old daughter. She moved back in with her husband a few months later, and her son had recently gone out on his own.

I still hear from Mary regularly, but not much from Paula—she’s never been much of a writer.

Like many kids growing up in New England, I fantasized about moving to California. As Tom and I grew more frustrated with Oregon—the high taxes, the cold, the snow, his job, our rundown house, the limited stores and restricted hours, the lack of opportunities—we began to talk seriously about moving.

By June of 2007, we were ready to leave Oregon behind. Tom tried to find a job online, but it didn’t pan out. We also couldn’t find an apartment in advance to avoid the cost of motels, especially in pricey California. With limited options, we decided to take the $2,500 I had won in another big sweepstake and hope for the best.

We started severing our ties to Oregon. Tom gave notice at work, and we let the property management company know we were leaving.

On the morning of July 25th, I woke up, looked at the packed boxes around me, and smiled. The little girl who had dreamed of moving to California over 30 years ago was about to make that dream a reality.

I got out of bed. It was time to make that dream a reality.