2012, new year and new place!
Well, not a completely new place, we've been here since June now. Anyways.... Our stay in Montana last January ended poorly. After roughly three weeks, the person that we were staying with got tired of me not kneeling to his power trips and sent us out.. about 2 days before I got my tax info and roughly two weeks before I got a few calls back from applications I had filled out up there. Instead of moving into a 500/month mobile home out there, we found ourselves on the road, back to Washington, with nowhere to go. Left Billings at 4 AM, got back in Vancouver at about 9 PM. Dropped on my aunt's porch and stayed there for that night.
Wound up spending the next two months watching our tax returns vaporize in motel rooms because we couldn't find anyone to rent to us, even with me offering 6 months rent up front! Economy has everyone scared shitless it seems. No job? Fuck you, get back to us when you have one. When that reserve was exhausted, my wife and kids wound up staying with her folks, and I was living with my dad. Fortunately, after only about two weeks into that mess, I got work at the local gummi factory.
That was enough to keep everyone's nerves not-on-edge for about a month while I put money away for us to move out on. Life wasn't done fucking with us just yet, though. Because of that no-notice moveout we were given the preceding December that kicked off this clusterfuck in the first place, I still couldn't find anyone that was willing to rent to us very easily. We eventually found a rent-a-room place for about $525/mo, and stayed there with another family of four. (mom, 3 kids.)
They were nice folks, and we all got along as well as could be expected with an apt that now had 3 adults, 5 kids under 11, and two bedrooms. My mom of all people though had some property open up, she just needed some time to get it ready. It's been worth the wait though, a good-sized 3-br double-wide for $600/mo. Soon we'll finally be getting a washer/dryer hooked up, along with a few other things that we're feeling the absence of.
So in short, we've survived a year of hell, we're all still together, and nobody has gone more insane than they were when we went into it! Our daughter is doing well in school, and our son will be starting this coming fall. Can't believe he's already that old. Oh, and the property managers that gave us that notice? They were eventually fired for doing that entirely too frequently. So there's still some karmatic justice to be had in the world at least.