THE YUBA

The YUBA
Location: truly middle of nowhere.
Reason: Cuz that’s where Alvarez Farms is….

Just outside Yuba City, California is a town called Live Oak.
Felicia and Dominica grew up in Live Oak and have 2 houses on their ranch that needed to be emptied, cleaned and yardsaled! Since I could spare the time, I volunteered to help. Mostly though I volunteered because if it were me, I would want to be helped!

I wont bore you with the lame details of packing up 50 years and two generations of stuff, except to say…..since the houses have been empty for quite sometime the wildlife had taken over—inside. So in addition to extreme manual labor, heavy lifting, four 40-yard dumpsters and a three-day yard sale, we battled spiders, wasps, mice, rats’ and a snake. Yes, I typed SNAKE. In a proud moment of fierceness-I was collecting the “caught” mice from the crafty traps. My fierceness immediately turned “chicken” as I got “charged” by a really pissed snake that was stuck to a mousetrap! I SCREAMED dropped everything, continued to scream and ran outside into the driveway. Felicia (who had no idea what had even happened) ran out after me screaming too! Needless to say, my personal hero and new best friend Mike—drove from two towns over to come get the snake—by the time he arrived the snake had escaped. However, he was kind enough to clear out the closet and leave no room for the snake to hide. It still took me two more days to even set foot in that room.

The rest of the boring details can be summed up with the fact that I think we actually were actually delirious (very much like The Shining) from the heat, manual labor and total isolation. You can see this for yourself by the pictures —take a look…I think you get the basic idea of how smoothly this month long project went, right? But major thanks also go out to my dad, my brother, Eric and Jay for all the extra manpower!

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