In the last chapter, we covered the big move for MammaBear and PappaBear, January 15, 2020. That is when things were just beginning to develop on the national scene regarding an unknown ‘virus’ we now refer to as Covid.

The moment I saw that news, I held out hope that people would see through the ruse and reject fear-mongering outright. I held out hope the coming protocols would also be rejected as ridiculous at best and downright dangerous at worst.

History has shown that scared people do very unexpected things. Admittedly it got worse than I ever expected in America but that’s for another article.

For me and James,  we had the advantage of knowing — and have known for decades — there is no such thing as a virus that can make anyone sick — nor is virus contagious. To be more technically correct I’ll put it this way — virus is not what is being pushed out on the population today and never has been.

Virus are fragments of dead material being excreted through the cleaning channels of the body, including dead cells. This material is not alive and cannot replicate or cause harm. Dead things cannot do what living things do. Essentially virus is cell trash. Virus is not something to fear.

There are bacteria that can create difficulties for certain. That said — bacteria has to be particularly virulent, meaning potent and immediately present to do harm. An example might be cutting a raw chicken and using the same knife and cutting board to cut vegetables. That can definitely make a person sick.

Another necessity when it comes to bacteria, is the body has to be in a state of susceptibility with a weakened or low functioning immune system.

One or both of the above can create illness when it comes to bacteria.

Today, people are taught little to zero about the basics of how sickness happens. As a society we are no longer in touch with body wisdom or the passed-down knowledge cultures have shared down through the centuries.  It’s being lost in a cloud of white coats and experts.

One of the simplest realities about acute sickeness — commonly called “a cold” — is nearly unknown today and that is colds are “earned” not “caught”.  You do not “catch” a cold, you earn it.

Germs cannot make a person sick unless a person has the appropriate inner environment for bacteria to thrive.

We all come into contact with armies of germs on a daily basis and are left completely unaffected. Our bodies are beautifully built to protect us from all manner of bacterial invaders 24/7, 365 — not to mention our bodies themselves contain billions of bacteria, many of which can cause inflammation and disease if they multiply beyond the body’s capability to keep them in check.

Theres a lot more to this story than the over-simplified version we’re force-fed through 60 second commercials by big Pharma.

Especially, here in America we as a nation have become highly uneducated about our bodies and are easily manipulated by bad health information than ever before in our history.

If people knew just the bare bones basics of how the body works — no plandemic of any kind — could ever be perpetrated on the public ever again. There is no such thing as contagion.

Nevertheless, it is currently not the case that people have this basic knowledge and fear began to spread like wild fire from suggestion, starting early in 2020.

You may be saying but — people died. And they said it was a virus.

Yes. People die every year by the tens of thousands. It’s part of the cycle of life. You may not have noticed that by every metric, the needle on all-cause mortality barely moved world-wide. Yet that wasn’t what was on the news. The death toll was artificially inflated by the CDC and then later retracted in CDC papers that few people saw or will ever see.

Whether you believe emotional trauma can cause a person to get sick or die — or you don’t — it actually isn’t even a question mark that highly stressed and fearful people are far more susceptible to sickness, disease and even death.

So, were there excess deaths? Yes, less than 6% according to CDC corrected totals. Could fear account for that? I would say yes without hesitation.

Hospital protocols — mitigated by administrators both in hospital and government agencies  — played a larger role than anyone would like to admit.

I’m not saying doctors knowingly killed people. I’m saying doctors were intentionally misdirected, which killed people and it continues today.

Back to the beginning of 2020.

Shortly after MammaBear and PappaBear were moved into their new apartment, James and I continued our land search with more focus.

We hoped to find something close to the St Louis area… within 100 miles if possible.
After at least a dozen visits to raw properties, we found a 20 acre -parcel in Herman, Missouri, about 75 miles west of St Louis and 20 miles south of I-70. It was beautiful.

At the time of our first visit it had a herd of cattle on it which we had to be mindful of as we walked the property. When we arrived that day, the cows were of course curious and came to give us and the real estate agent a good once over. I didn’t realize cows were that big!
We loved the property, the location and the available services. It was less than a mile off a paved road, electricity was nearby, easy to get installed and there was fiber-optic available for internet.

So… we made an offer.

Excitedly, we told my parents about the offer and discussed our ideas about housing.

My Dad, being an aeronautical engineer and master carpenter, found it hard to believe we could get anything done with raw land quickly. Dad always had a little trouble with the alternative housing ideas I had been sharing with him for years. He was stuck in the old stick-house mentality — a concrete foundation, sheet rock, house wrap and more. As an excellent carpenter that is what he had worked on and with all of his life.

Strawbale home with a living roof. 
Here’s an article on why you’d want to live in a strawbale home!

Here I was always talking about cob, strawbale and living reciprocal roofs that could be built from resources on the property itself (aside from the strawbales of course). He always had a hard time picturing that but with an offer on a property he began asking more questions. It was great to be on that dream road together.

Interior of a cob cottage.

While waiting to hear about our offer on the 20 acres in Herman, James and I decided to head to Oklahoma for a couple of days to see about selling the 5 acres we still owned near Talequah. We had an offer on the property so it was worth going. That property was purchased while we were still with Conway Truckload and we had not visited in 7 years. Not since the last video I posted about it on YouTube, in 2016. Heres that video if you’d like to have a look:.

James and I booked a night at an AirBnB in Oklahoma. It turned out to be a little Amish farm with ducks and chickens and cows. The roosters were at our door in the morning making it difficult to get our bags back into the car! After being chased by a couple of amorous roosters we made our way to the property and sold it that day!

We checked in with the real estate agent on the Herman property and learned there was still no word. Since we were only a short distance from Hot Springs, Arkansas, we decided a hot bath was in order and pointed our van in that direction.

Having never been through much of Arkansas — largely because there are no major freeways in the state other than I-40 to the far south and I-49 to the far west — both of us found ourselves smitten with that beauty of the state.

We spent our first night in Hot Springs, in a tiny newly renovated motel that was adorable. It was that wonderful shade of green popular in the 1940’s and 50’s with little white glass tiles in the bathroom, a tiny fridge and fresh pillows on the bed.

After visiting one of the gorgeous, historical hot spring locations, swimming for a few hours in temperatures from 96 to 104 degrees and feeling rather pampered, the phone rang. It was our real estate agent. Our Herman offer wasn’t rejected exactly — it was ignored.

Apparently our offer was used by the owner as “inspiration” — to get a local party to finally pony up and make a move on the property that he had been procrastinating over for years.

That local party — we learned — had paid cash for the land outright. That left us with a useless piece of paper in our hands.

Contract or no contract — and an offer on paper is a contract — we were the outsiders and S.O.L. on this one.

We could have pressed the issue since we did have signed copies with the owner and a first-offer privilege — but — the people who would hear our complaint were (can you guess?) local. According to our real estate agent it wouldn’t be worth the time and effort. The deal was done.

We returned to St Louis more relaxed after visiting the Hot Springs — but definitely disappointed.

Our real-time education in purchasing property in small towns that adhere to very different rules than the big cities was growing. Hard-won!

Over the next few weeks we looked at a line-up of properties down both sides of the I-44 corridor between family dinners with Mom and Dad. We came out unimpressed with all but one.

Our list of requirements wasn’t making our land search any easier.

Our dream — for more than a decade now — is to build a cob, strawbale or hybrid home with a humanure compost system instead of septic, an arched barn and more. These alternative building methods are much healthier and more enjoyable to live in over the long run. They’re less costly — short of the sweat equity — and get better as they age, not worse. These parameters mean you have to find property that’s outside of county building codes and restrictions.

There are many states and counties across the US, that are waking up to these wonderful time-tested ways to build a home. But it has been a slow march. You can wait years to get approved for a cob or strawbale home by building departments that haven’t even heard this is possible.

It’s funny that the first strawbale homes were built in this county — in Nebraska — and it swept around the world. Many of those old homes are still standing in Nebraska today. The point is that you’re better off looking for land in non-regulated counties.
BUT — living outside of county restrictions can be a double-edged sword.

While you won’t have an HOA to answer to or restrictive building codes that will prevent you from building the home you want to build — or forced to pay for permits and wait — sometimes for years for those to go through — other things can come into the picture that aren’t so great.
No building codes can lend itself to bad behavior like junk yards, un-checked mechanic shops and unsightly or illegal dumping. Dumping is illegal everywhere but the farther out you go from county regulations the easier it happens… unfortunately.

The “people” in unregulated communities really matter. The people who live there are key. How people think and behave as a result of the freedom they have from regulation, is paramount.

When people have more freedom it takes more thought and care, not less. People who cannot regulate themselves without an outside force impinging on them don’t make the best neighbors.

We found several gorgeous properties located outside of county restrictions but there were literally junkyards just down the road. A definite no-go. You can’t make people love, want or enjoy freedom when they don’t.

By the end of March 2020 — a full six months had passed since returning to St. Louis and we were still staying at the Air BnB we found on our trip from Denver. We had a large bedroom, bath and a patio in the home and the owner offered a reasonable month-to-month rate that had worked for everyone — but six months had somehow become our unspoken limit. We were starting to feel a little pressure. Not from anything on the outside. It was rising up from not being closer to finding land and having no clear picture of what was next?

That’s when Dad — once again — asked for help from both of my brothers and me and James.

While we had successfully moved the Bears, into Assisted living, we learned Mom was going to the house on a regular basis since they had moved.

With her car was so handy, sitting in the parking lot of the Assisted Living Community, she was making trips to Illinois. Once or twice a week she was going to the house to swap out clothing or dishes or simply to spend the day there. The house had become a kind of giant storage unit that still felt accessible — and she enjoyed going there.

Dad was concerned. He was still convinced that she would move back immediately were he to pass away. Technically, if she chose to do that, no one could stop her. It wasn’t a safe environment for her but there would be no convincing her that was true.

Dad asked us to do an Estate Sale and put the house on the market. Russ and I agreed to get it done. Kelly, who lives in Chicago, would help where he could.

Dad was actually doing better. Once he and Mom were in Assisted Living, it took the pressure off both of them to have daily help with showering, dressing and daily meals. There was no longer a need to shop or cook and we could all visit them weekly.

Things were on an upswing.

My brother Russ and I split the request from Dad. Russ would concentrate on getting the house on the market and James and I would focus on the Estate Sale.

The week after Dad’s request, James and I got a call about a property to look at to the south, in Steelville, Missouri. It was 7 acres.

This property — wasn’t raw land. It had a small house with a work shop. The workshop was built out with several excellent wood working machines including a band saw, a beautiful table saw, drill presses, router table, all kinds of hand tools and more. It was set within a community of small to mid-sized parcels and off the beaten path.

PIC steeville property

The Steelville, Missouri property. The house is to the left in this photo and the shop is to the right… the larger brown building.

The owner was an elderly gentlemen in a similar situation to my parents but with less urgency. He thought it was time to move closer to his kids, into an Assisted Living Community — back in Oregon.

Mid-state Missouri wouldn’t be called “blue” by most. Missouri has been a red state politically for a long time — though there are pockets with a strong liberal bent in larger cities, the rural areas tend to be working people with more conservative values.

The gentlemen who owned this property — was the exception!

Once James and I realized there were strong political differences between us, we made a point to steer clear of those topics. Strangely, it was like walking in a mine field. The man wanted to talk politics and we didn’t. The more he pressed the more we just nodded and got back on track talking about the property.

We were definitely interested even though it didn’t exactly fit our plan. Thinking outside of our own box, it seemed like a way to get started, move forward and get our feet planted. It wasn’t “in the country” but it wasn’t in a big city either. AND — it was a way to test our ideas without living in a tent first. The whole back 5 acres would be our playground while we had a place to cook, eat, shower, sleep and rest.

We decided to try one more time and put in an offer. We settled in for the long-haul of negotiations since this gentleman made it clear he wasn’t in a hurry.

While the offer was going through its paces which would easily take several weeks, Dad and I agreed that moving out of the Air BnB and into the house made sense. It would be a hands on way to get the Estate Sale done and hopefully… faster.

James and I moved our things to the house. It felt like forward progress.

We tucked into a corner in the downstairs area of the house so our things wouldn’t mix with the house contents and slept in a couple of hammocks we brought from storage.

I started separating items, checking prices on unique things my parents had and arranging meetings with sale day crews; the people who come in to help with the sale, collect the money, provide the muscle to move items for folks and provide security.

Far from the easy, well organized Estate Sale that I had envisioned, it became a bizarre and unsettling situation.  Mom wasn’t happy with anything I did on the Estate Sale or anything Russ did regarding the sale and on top of knowing how she felt — lockdowns were starting in the eastern states.

Fear was palpably spreading across the country and it became clear that people weren’t going to Estate Sales or visiting homes for sale. Everything was radically thrown up in the air and everything we tried didn’t work, no matter how hard we pushed.

After a few weeks spent sleeping downstairs in two hammocks, I decided we needed to move upstairs to the bedroom. Mom and Dad’s old bedroom. It was the only large bed in the house since they had turned the other bedrooms into a craft room and a library.

I didn’t feel comfortable sleeping in their bedroom at first. I didn’t think we’d be there long enough to warrant doing so but lockdowns changed our plans.

On the second night of sleeping, in the bedroom, I woke up with enormous welts on my neck and shoulders, stomach and hips. James, had only a few of these same marks but much smaller. I was covered with welts and as uncomfortable in my skin as I could imagine.

I had no idea what the problem was or how to fix it. I had never seen or experienced anything like it. The only I thing I did know was that each morning the welts, redness and itching were getting worse.

I spent two days hunting online for information that would help me figure this out. That is when  I discovered — bed bugs.

I couldn’t believe that was possible. I know my parents. I grew up with these people. I know how their home is kept. I know my Mom and this couldn’t be the answer.

BUT — it was.

That’s when I learned that Illinois was in the midst of a bed bug epidemic.

What???

Such a thing was possible in 2020?

Yep!

The best that State Officials could offer as an answer to why bed bug infestations were spreading was — traveling nurses. The explosion of hospice and in-home care nurses moving from house to house to see patients helped these tiny bugs spread through the state — including into the nicest neighborhoods.

I thought bed bugs were only found in filthy places where people were themselves filthy — or — only in cheap, seedy motels. I was a little bit beside myself!

I had to buckle down and figure this out.

No matter how much I was grossed out by the very idea and had NO desire to look at enlarged photos of these almost telescopic creatures in their larvae state — I had to bite the bullet and do it.

I learned that bed bugs are a constant and chief concern in the finest hotels in the world. Infestation has less to do with filth and far more to do with convenience — the ease with which they can spread from place to place.

Bed bugs can easily hitch a ride to the nearest food source (which is blood and CO2 or breathing people). They fall or hop on a briefcase, a pant cuff, a jacket or hat, in clothing or simply on suitcases sitting in a closet or next to a curtain and in their early stages of growth are nearly invisible.

While clutter offers more places for bed bugs to hide once they’re in place — a fastidious environment doesn’t mean they aren’t present by any means.
There are entire swaths of the country currently engaged in a raging battle with bed bug infestations for the first time in 50 years. The pesticides used years ago are no longer allowed so new ways of fighting them have been developed recently.

At the top of the list of states fighting this battle — in the top 5 — is Illinois, where my parent’s home was located.

I learned that people on pharmaceuticals are less likely to react to the bite which means bed bugs can go unnoticed for quite awhile since there are no welts or itching from the bites.

Both my parents have been on heart medications for a long while, among other things. Neither of them knew they were being bitten because neither had physical signs on their bodies — but the signs were in the bedroom without question.

Someone like me, who takes no drugs of any kind, will more than likely wake up with welts that itch and get worse over time. Welts can be the size of a quarter or a half-dollar. That’s hard to miss when your skin reacts that way.

I learned there are many myths about bed bugs. I had to unlearn every one of those to overcome the tiny invaders because I was so freaked out at first that I could barely think of what to do much less sleep in the house at all!

James and I moved back downstairs. We tried every possible trick we could find online to keep from being chewed on during the night. Most of what I found online at first — like comet sprinkled around the bedpost — turned out to be old wives tales and useless for actually combating bed bugs — but I was desperate.

After three solid days of research and finally getting a good grasp on the problem — James and I located the telltale signs that revealed those little buggers had been ensconced there at least for weeks — possibly months — it was time to tell my parents. Neither Russ nor I could order a pest control service to come to the house. It had to come through Dad. He had all the local information and this couldn’t be kept from them.

When I explained the situation my parents were horrified. When I say horrified — I don’t mean a little — I mean right off the deep end. They believed that with the house going on the market, a bed bug problem could be the kiss of death — and I couldn’t disagree. It’s a problem very few people really understand in America today.

Just like me, most people are completely uneducated about bed bugs and think the absolute worst immediately. The ideas that come immediately to mind are things like — the house must be filthy — the people who live there must be horrible, poor people who never clean their home — and the list goes on and on.

My parents both had an immediate knee-jerk reaction that I thought I was prepared for — but soon discovered I wasn’t at all prepared for.

Mom immediately said that James and I had to have brought the bed bugs with us. We had been staying in an Air BnB, a concept they didn’t understand at all since it wasn’t a proper hotel — therefore that had to be the source.

I wasn’t surprised at their reaction but when I tried to explain — Mom was having none of it. As you might imagine, she wasn’t interested in learning about bed bugs. Her home couldn’t have bed bugs and that was that.
While Mom was having trouble talking to me throughout this process, Dad instructed that I should call the pest company he had used for years. At this point, he was seriously worried this could negatively impact the sale of the house. It was a very stressful moment for everyone.
We did call a pest control company and set up the appointment. Another lesson came with that call….
…for the service to come out for this purpose — you have to first prepare the house.

James and I donned white jumpsuits purchased from home depot, booties, gloves and masks to vacuum every possible surface, empty every drawer, pack every possible item that wasn’t nailed down into plastic bags and move it all out of the immediate bedroom area. Plus — check every other room for signs. It took several days to get this done.

Ouch! My welts & our make-shift Hazmat suits!

When the service came they would spray everything with a cryogenic substance that freezes the buggers, kills the ones alive and prevents reproduction if any manage to survive.

The items in plastic bags would be treated. Everything would need to sit undisturbed for at least a week after the treatment. The service guys would return in one week’s time to double-check, spray again if necessary and provide special cases for the mattress to prevent further issues.

James and I talked with the guys who came out to the house — who were amazing by the way — for quite awhile. I had to know for certain if it was at all possible that we brought bed bugs with us?

The answer was a flat NO.

It wasn’t possible for two primary reasons: (1) I had no welts prior to sleeping in the bedroom and (2) it takes longer than a few days for bed bugs to bite once they’ve been introduced into an environment. There is a particular stage in which they bite and it takes longer than a few days for them to mature into that stage and the telltale signs of bed bugs in the bedroom were at least a few months in the making.

At first, I was devastated by the whole affair. The idea my parents would think James and I had brought this into their home just slayed me. Once I was certain, beyond any shadow of doubt — and knew it was an impossibility — I let it go.

I couldn’t blame Mom. I can only imagine how disturbing it was for her to hear that news while feeling as displaced as she already did.

The worst part was the potential threat on the sale of the house. The situation was remedied and most likely never really was a threat to the sale of their home but it seemed possible at the time. The pest control company told us they had seen total home infestations that were beyond imagination and this wasn’t that even close to that even if it was an incredibly intense few weeks.

Throughout those months, I still wanted to start posting again. With the unsettled nature of living in an Air BnB without knowing where it was going, looking at land but not landing anything, making offers that fell through for the strangest reasons and finally… waking up with bed bug bites was just a ridiculous series of events I couldn’t imagine putting online at the time.

The fact I can talk about this now is due to retrospect and clarity that didn’t fully take shape until after-the-fact. At that time, there was so much up in the air that it was necessary to simply hold on and continue building powerful inner resources. I didn’t realize just how powerful these experiences would turn out to be until later. More on that in the chapters to come!

To end this chapter, I’ll close with the Steelville property.
When the offer was made we put up $1,000 to show our good faith. After all the inspections were done and several counter-offers were made, it looked like we were close to closing in on a deal.

As the final days on our offer were ticking down a termite problem — discovered during the inspectio — became the sticking point.

The gentleman chose not to end the negotiations even though we were less than $1,500 apart on a $140,000 sale. It was like something clicked or just turned off and there was no way to get past it. He just stopped. Ultimately, I realized he was offended over the termite discovery. Sound familiar to you?

In the end, instead of releasing our $1,000 of good faith money, he chose to close negotiations and leave our $1,000 in the hands of the real estate agents escrow. This meant we’d have to go through a clearing process to get our money back which could take months. It has been 3 years and we still haven’t recovered that $1,000 …yet.

In a final note from the owner, he sent a text saying he figured he couldn’t trust us because we were probably Republicans!
If you’re not laughing — please do. I did!

Someday, that $1,000 will come through the St. Louis Courthouse. The wheels of bureaucracy churn slowly in that town.

In the next chapter, we’ll get into the final steps… prepare yourself!
See you next week!
Andrea

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Recommend video for more information about ‘virus’. Viral Delusions Documentary.