I'm back. With the first chunk...

Holy cow, I can't believe my last post was almost a year and a half ago! I've kept meaning to catch my blog up, but the longer it went the more daunting the task seemed. But now I'm going to take a cue from Nike, and just do it. I think the best way to catch up on a year and a half is to do it in chunks. First of all, back to July, 2010.

In two of my last posts, I alluded to bad news that I should post about but didn't want to. I'll do that now. Bad things always seem less horrible when viewed from a distance. 

Since Martin had lost his job, we were barely getting by. Each month got a little tighter. We ended up having to apply for assistance to try to keep our townhouse. We were just trying to hold on until I could get a job that would pay the bills. We qualified for rental assistance, which helped fill the gap. In early July the payment from the county (which always went right to our property management company) was late. We had our part of the rent, but our landlord refused to accept a partial payment. Instead they chose to evict us. We asked that they return the county's payment since they weren't going to use it to allow us to stay in our home, so that we could use it to find a new place to live. Instead, they waited until the week after we vacated and then cashed the check. It was a horrible time.

Looking back I don't really know how we made it through. I think it was just that we had small goals and needed to meet each one in a short amount of time. We threw together a garage sale and made enough to rent a storage unit and pay for a motel for a week or so. From late July through mid-September we were homeless. Martin still had the paper routes, so we had about a $1000 coming in each month. He would get paid, we'd pay what few bills we had left (storage, insurance, cell phones, food, and gas), and use what was left to rent a motel room until money ran out. Then he (and Chevy) would live in the Focus while Kaleb and I went and stayed with my parents. Then he'd get paid again and we'd get to all be together once more. Again, it was a horrible time.

Since we were an intact family, we qualified for emergency assistance to help us pay for a hotel room. We still had to pay our part, but we got help, and it eliminated me having to take Kaleb and go to my parents' house. Shortly before we were evicted, I found out I was pregnant. It was a complete shock! And it only added to the stress. One of the requirements of receiving support from the county was that we had to have visits from a social worker. It was a pretty crappy feeling. But she said she had seen many families in our situation, and most of them ended up splitting up from the stress. She said it looked like Martin and I would escape that fate, and that we seemed to work really well as a team. I think he and I have always done better when we're working towards a common goal. 

I mentioned in one of my last posts that I had a job interview lined up. I ended up getting the job at a nursing home 65 miles from home. The job was a Godsend, but it was also one of the toughest job situations I've ever been in. Before I even got my first paycheck we were kicked off emergency assistance. Thankfully around that time we also found an apartment. It turned out to be a really crappy place to live, but it was a roof over our heads and we all got to be together (in more than a tiny hotel room). Martin starting referring to it as the "crappy new house," which is, of course, what Kaleb starting referring to it as, also. We moved in on Friday, September 13, 2010 (which should have been an omen). It was a tiny little two bedroom, so Anthony got one room, Kaleb got the other, and Martin and I bought a futon for the living room. If it wasn't for our horrible, horrible neighbors (short version: drug busts--seriously, SWAT with assault rifles drawn--more than once, fights on a weekly basis, abusive parents across the hall, and more screaming than I ever want to hear again), it would have been a cozy place for us to live and regroup. And regroup we did...