Grrr! My mom is angry at me for wanting to move out-again!

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I've always had this trouble with my family, especially my mom. Every time I want to move away from her, she whines and complains. Although she says she doesn't remember, she did this when I moved out after finishing HS at 18, and again when I moved to San Francisco at 19. Well, now I'm 41 and have been living in a small cottage in her backyard for 10 years. (This is in a different location than my childhood home.) Most of my immediate family is gone, except for her. She is old. I have made plans to buy land in far northern California (I currently live in Sacramento) and build a cabin on it. Again, she has started in with all the reasons "you can't do that", and she tells me that after she's gone that some distant relatives-who aren't really close to me-will take me in. She doesn't seem to consider that they have lives and families of their own and will not take me in. I am going up to Yreka tomorrow to look at land, and she wants to tag along, presumably so she can tell me how foolish I am. I told her no, I'm going by myself, the end. She isn't giving up quietly, though. She is smothering, she is not a bad person but she simply likes to "mother me". I am really frustrated with her, and I think she is holding on to me so tightly because she has pretty much nobody else, her folks are gone, her husband (my dad) is gone, most of her cousins are gone.

Yes, I agree. Mothers sometimes do cling to their adult children, because of their own emotional neediness.

When you move to Yreka, she can do what millions of elderly people do. She can move into a low-rent senior community and make friends with people her own age. And that's not such a bad option, life is easier there, and she won't be emotionally vampirizing her own flesh and blood.

Sorry if I said this a little strongly. If my daughter ever moves far away, I will miss her terribly. But this thing with old moms and their adult sons is a real phenomenon, little talked about, but real. Actually I know of one old mom with an adult daughter who lives unfortunately nearby, the old mom treats her terribly but arranges things so the daughter can never get away.

So live your life, don't expect her to go down quietly, but you can tell her "we each need friends our own age."

So, I went up to Siskiyou County on Monday, the land is really nice and only about 12 miles from the tiny (200 people) town of Hornbrook where there's a post office and gas station, and about 30 miles north of Yreka (pop 7,000) which has a Wal Mart, a drugstore, and a full service supermarket.

Medford is 40 miles to the north of the land and has the usual roster of big box stores, but it's on the other side of Siskiyou Summit which is the highest point on Interstate 5 between Vancouver and Tijuana and there is a lot of snow there in the winter, and the downgrade from the summit to Ashland is very steep, so steep that big rigs are limited to 18 mph so they don't go out of control. You can look up Siskiyou Summit on wikipedia for the details. Medford also has a good hospital, in fact the hospital, the school district, and some wineries pretty much are the tax base.

My mom says, well what if you're snowed in in winter, you'll freeze, and what if you can't get your meds, and how will you get power and water (I will have solar panels and a small wind turbine, and a cistern for water, and in dry years I can get water delivered in bulk) and so on. The land I'm looking at doesn't get feet and feet of snow like some other places I looked at. I will have a small electric space heater. Medicare is pushing people towards mail order meds since it's cheaper for them. She even says that my plan to salt meat won't work, never mind that people have done it for thousands of years.

Actually, the remoteness of the place does concern me a little. I'm quite a bit older than you, and I have come to appreciate that it's really beneficial to have good services available, such as ambulance and first rate medical facilities. Since you are presumably going to be living alone there, I would worry a little about what you might do in an emergency.

But that's just the old mom in me talking.

Unfortunately, this is actually the best option of all that I looked at. Some places in southern Oregon that I looked at are around 50 miles from the nearest town, over two lane roads, and are snowed in for much of the year. And don't get me started on Idaho. And then there's Nevada, where you can drive for fifty miles and still be in the middle of nowhere.

Hornbrook is right next to Interstate 5, the main north-south freeway on the Pacific Coast. Hornbrook is 15 miles from Yreka and about 30 from Medford. Yreka has a small hospital. The main road east from Hornbrook, Copco Road, is lined with ranches and a trailer park or two. There is a fish hatchery and a lake that is popular with sportsmen. The branch road, Lakeview Road, has a popular jumping off point for lake excursions.

As for wildfires, a local ranching family holds rights to graze their cows on this land, if you move there you have to either accept the cows or build a big fence. Walking around the lot, I saw old cowpies and cow hoof prints. Since the wind blows from the south, and most of the cows graze on that land, they eat most of the grass that could catch fire.

Have you lived like this before?

Not exactly, I've lived in a travel trailer on my grandfather's property before the house was built, and I've been around chickens a lot as a kid since my grandpa raised them. Years ago before this area became a suburb it was very rural, and people relied on wells and septic systems. So I do have some familiarity with rural living.

Aren't you the one who said you wanted to live off of the grid? You say you have an electric heater, but what if the electricity goes out and you're snowed in? You could use some insulation blankets and they are rather cheap. There's some food you can get that are like bars and have a lot of nutrients in them (Amazon). I assume there's running water? Otherwise I ended up getting these wipes that are for bathing when you don't have water. And what about drinking water and toilet paper? I'm worried about the being snowed in part.

I will have solar and wind generated power, and if the battery gets too low I plan on having a small propane heater, but I will have to be careful and NOT get one of those "ventless" POS units from China that sound an alarm after you're already dead from the fumes. As for water, that will be from a rain cistern, and if there's no rain I'll simply pay a bulk water delivery service.

You must have misread my post, I said that some of the land elsewhere I was looking at had snow problems, but the area I picked really doesn't, except up on the I-5 passes. The most the area gets in a month is 4 inches. I plan to raise chickens and ducks and salt the meat. I have thought of protein bars too.

Oh yeah, about the toilet paper thing, I have a water sprayer called a "shattaf" that I got off Ebay from a guy in Egypt, Muslims use them to wash their feet before praying but they can also be used to wash one's rear. It wouldn't work with a pressurized American-style toilet valve, but it may work with normal water pressure (which will be provided by a pump).

Pezar, when you've moved out and gone back home again, what precipitated your returning? Will that happen again?

Basically, rent in my area inflated faster than my SSI check did. I originally moved to my grandparents' land because of a Y2K obsession (this was in 1998) and when I realized that the internet doompeddlers were wrong and civilization wasn't going to come crashing down, I found that rent had suddenly become unaffordable, and landlords were suddenly requiring 3x the rent as income. I simply couldn't match it. And then, a few years later, my parents decided to build their dream retirement home on some of my grandparents' land, and said they would build me a little cottage in back. I had no other options but to say yes.

Where are you coming up with the cash to buy this parcel up near Yreka? How much will you be left with after it's built? Have you been successfully managing your own money?

Savings. Srsly. My mom doesn't charge me rent, so I try to save around 1/3 to 1/2 of my SSDI check every month. I got into some really deep debt, mainly for a business I was trying to start and a crapload of dental work, and I owed my mom a lot of money. I finally paid it off in the fall of 2014. After that I basically taught myself how to save money. I pay for maintenance and repairs on my car, and food. My mom pays for electricity since both houses are mashed onto one bill by SMUD. She has a family plan for the cellphones, so I don't pay for that either. So, I save as much as I possibly can.

I think we're all just concerned about you living so remotely because none of us could probably do it! There's a lot of work, lots of and organization and planning involved, and points in time when things must be done right NOW not 2 days from now or else; not most people's fortes here.

I understand the mom situation. My mother is quite a bit similar, she means well though. I may be moving back to live with parents in the upcoming months more permanently.

It takes quite a bit of solar panels just to power one 1500watt space heater(average watt space heater), let alone lights, a fridge or a stove or any other electronics. Have you really thought that part through in detail? Have you really made an itemized list and calculated the costs fully? Wouldnt it simply be cheaper and safer to rent somewhere other than San Fransico and giving you enough buffer zone between you and your mom where you could live your own life still? If you were bankrupt just 2 years ago, even if you made like $15,000 a year, how much money could you possibly have amassed from SSI in such a short amount of time to afford this? Even if you have a tiny home, they typically cost like $200-$400 a sqft, plus the cost of the land.

I have seen space heaters that run on as little as 450 watts. Actually, I went bankrupt in 2010, from the failed business, but my mom had cosigned one of my credit lines, so I had to pay that back. The bids for the parcel of land that I'm looking at start at $1300, for land which the county appraises at $4500. I have a couple thousand in savings. As for the house, it will technically be a "shed", built by a small husband-wife business out of Salem, OR. The cost will be about $3500. Then I will wire it and plumb it myself. The cistern will be maybe $1300. Actually, I live in Sacramento, which is about 90 miles inland from SF. Still way too expensive. As for the solar system, what I will do is set it up so that the panels charge a battery, which is then hooked to an inverter. The cabin will actually run off the battery instead of directly off the panels.