Perpetual Ruminations

Half a Year Later

It's been 6 months since I wrote in here, way too long.

My last entry was under quarantine and just at the tail end of all hell breaking loose, or so we thought. As it turned out, even as one crisis calmed, another flared. With our credit in shambles, we found hours cut do to the pandemic and a big reduction in income. Civil unrest was growing around us, and our problem child was still creating a lot of headaches and problems for us, even though she was temporarily placed outside the home.

With our income lower, we couldn't maintain our lease for long, so it was time to find a new place to live. We had been wanting to relocate a bit further out of the city, but with the stay at home orders, it wasn't looking like things were going to work out. That and we were very short on funds and still locked into a lease until July. However, shortly after my last post, we found a nice little place out in the country, but much further than we had planned on moving.

We talked to the owners, they wanted us to come look at the place and meet us. It was about a three hour drive, but a nice day when we met them and looked the place over. Being down to one daughter still in the home, a two bedroom duplex was fine. It meant downsizing a lot, but the location was good. Our daughter fell in love with the place at first site, and within a few days we had a one year lease. It meant going a bit further in debt to make the new payment while finishing the old lease, but it gave us time to move, clean the apartment, and get organized a bit. Well, that was the plan.

Two weeks after we closed the lease deal, we had enough stuff moved to stay here between trips to move more, but kept enough at the old place to stay overnight there, as well, since it was almost three hours each way. About halfway through our carefully planned and organized move, some rioting broke out too close to our old apartment, right across the road from the complex. We decided it was time to get the hell out of Dodge once and for all.

Three days straight we spent running back and forth to haul items and clean. We had to rent another storage unit here to pack stuff into until we could sort it. Again, even more financial set back, but we talked to the credit union and explained the situation. Even with our dropped credit score, they approved us a personal line of credit and upped our credit card limit. Of course, this helped but at the same time, made things more difficult. But, with careful budgeting and planning, we managed to utilize the credit without letting it bleed us dry. Of course, it took time to find work in the new area to get some income flowing back in, but work was found and now things are holding pretty good.

Of course, skimping and holding off on so many things over the summer kind of hit us this fall, new tires for the pickup and the car was quite an expense. The plan was to get the truck tires first, they were the worst, but the car decided it wasn't going to go any more without new tires and left us stranded on the side of the road with two blown front tires. They still had a bit of tread, but the belts had let loose and we lost one tire, put on the spare, then lost the other about fifty miles from home; towing charges are crazy!

Anyway, both daughters are home and it's been quite a stressful reunion with the younger daughter, but so far things are going pretty good. We are cramped on room, and since the second daughter returned we had to split our big bedroom into two smaller rooms to accommodate her, but it's working. Crowded as it gets at times, we all love the area we live in; it's a rural area, but close enough to town for all our needs. In fact, even being crowded like we are, we are all wanting to renew the lease next spring.

That's enough catching up for now, I need to refrain from writing too much or I won't have anything to write about after the next six months passes!