Making progress

The carpet is almost in. The installers were here all day yesterday and will be back today to finish. Tomorrow, then, we will be heading back north to pick up the rest of our stuff. Jim borrowed two trailers, one sixteen foot and one twelve foot. We'll pull one and Jim and Kathy will pull the other with Jim's little red pickup truck. Hopefully we will be able to get everything in the two trailers and three vehicles (I still have to bring back the Hyundai Accent, so Ray and I will have a long, lonesome trip back this time).

We had frozen pipes twice. Lucky us, we came down here in the middle of an unusual cold streak. The first time we didn't have any damage to pipes but the second time the pipe to one of the outside faucets broke and a whole section fell to the ground. Ray just capped off the pipe, we won't need that any time soon and it got us our water back. We have borrow a propane torpedo heater from Jim that worked really fast in getting the pipes thawed.

My friend Maureen, daughter Shayna and the granddaughters came down for the weekend. It was nice seeing them, but I sure enjoyed the peace and quiet again after they left! Ray got a little depressed, though, he really missed the girls. He's all gung ho now for them to move down here. I'm mixed on that. They can if they need to, of course, but I think I'm getting too old to deal with the chaos of little kids.

Heading back

We have been back at Shayna's for the past few days. We came back up here because she needed to go to court yesterday to get a permanent order of protection against her ex boyfriend. It was granted. Mike blew a gasket afterward, yelling "fucking bullshit" and slammed the doors going out of the courtroom. What an idiot, he was in handcuffs and with 2 sheriff's deputies because he was brought over from the jail. I almost laughed when the little old gray haired court bailiff went toddling over in case the strapping young deputies needed help.

I can't wait to get back. The kitchen has a new floor but still plenty of work to be done. We have running hot and cold water and a toilet that works, but need to finish the little bathroom and get started on the master bath. Ray wants to get the pump hard wired. We need to get the new carpeting in so we can get our stuff moved down there.

We went and talked to my brother John today. He has several large car hauling trailers and has said we could borrow one. We just need to call him several days before we need it so he can get the stuff out of it. He uses to store at least one of his GTOs and other parts.

We took Ray's huge recliner to his brother Bob and picked out fabric to recover it. I could live without taking that thing with us but Ray likes it, so at least I got to have it recovered so it won't be quite so ugly.

We get started

So now we had a property that we own and no one can take away from us (well, except for non payment of the $2.31 property tax). We realized when we bought it that there would be work to be done, but it was so cheap it left us with money to be able to do the work. We both put our notices in to work. Ray's last day was set for January 4 and mine for New Year's Eve (I just wanted to finish out 2007 at the clinic). January 5 we headed south.

The man we bought it from told us that he had just put a "new" pump in. It might have been a DIFFERENT pump but it has been decades since it was NEW. We connected power to the pump and watched the smoke pour out. It was fried.

Off Ray and his brother Jim go to the nearest Menard's 25 miles away to buy a new pump and while they were at it, a new tank. After much discussion they had the new stuff installed. Connected the power, and it immediately powered up and started pumping water - right onto the ground under the trailer through broken pipes. Another day of work got the pipes connected, but not until after Ray had one of the waste pipes break open on top of him. Wouldn't have been a problem except it was from the toilet we had been using and flushing with water we hauled in from Jim's house. YUK.

Finally we have running water. It's still COLD running water, though. Time to get the water heater going. Turns out the circuit marked WATER HEATER doesn't go to the water heater. Ray had to tear down the inside walls surrounding the water heater to get to it. We though we were going to have to buy a new heater but figured out that there was an unmarked 220 circuit that actually went to the water heater. It's a small one, 30 gallons, but at least we now have HOT running water! We can shower!

New year, new beginnings

It's always best to start at the beginning, I guess. However, to start at the beginning of this story would go back more years than I care to think about, so I'll start at the beginning of the end of the last chapter.

In October 2005 my husband Ray was laid off. Ray is a union carpenter. We thought he would fairly quickly get another job. Carpenters always come and go from one company to another so it was no big deal. The housing market was already starting it's downturn, though, so after 6 months on unemployment he still hadn't found another job. Then in July 2006 he finally was hired again. We thought our luck was turning upward again. Two hours into his new job, his legs went numb. He came to the clinic where I work looking absolutely terrible. I took him to Walk In Care where they immediately sent him by ambulance to the nearest ER. He ended up in ICU for several days, he had 100% blockage of one femoral artery and 95% in the other. Employers take a dim view of new employees working for 2 hours and then being off for 2 weeks, so he was again unemployed. The only other job he was able to get was a low paying night shift at a distribution warehouse. Certainly not enough to keep up with our house payments. We were able to sell the house in July 2007, just ahead of foreclosure. Because of the housing market we had to sell for far less than we liked, but still came out with enough to be able to look for property that would be paid for. We moved in with our daughter Shayna temporarily and started looking.

Ray's brother Jim lives in Southern Illinois. Jim had been after Ray for years to move down by him. We had Jim contact a realtor and set up a Saturday to look at properties. We made the 6 hour trip down the weekend after Thanksgiving. Jim mentioned that an aquaintance had a property he was trying to sell. Less land than we wanted, under an acre, but it had a 3 bedroom 2 bath mobile home and he only wanted $10,000 for it. We said sure, we'll look at it. When we got there, Jim told us the owner dropped his asking price to $8500. There was no way we could turn that down so we bought it. Easiest closing I've ever been through, the title company faxed me the paperwork, we signed it, and mailed it back to them with a cashier's check. The woman at the title company very apologetically said that after we cleaned and fixed up the place the property taxed would probably go up. No sweat, the taxes for 2007 were $2.31. It could increase by 1000% and it wouldn't be a problem.

Now we are ready to make our new beginnings