No Words to Describe This So We'll Call It: We R Pwnt

Yeah. Our entire family is effing pwnt. In every way you can possibly conceive of. I haven't posted in a while because I simply have no idea where to begin. And we're all so, so tired.

...

Monday rolls around, and we're all excited about going out to the house and feeding the dog. Last time we were there was Saturday, see. So the goal is to get all the crap that we aren't using out of the house now, before the furniture and crap..while simultaneously checking on the dog.

We load up all of the old tax returns, heavy winter blankets, winter clothes...shoes...May's old report cards and shot record and...crap. And get in the truck!

....lalala driving down the road!

Some butthole pulls up next to me long about downtown Dallas and proceeds to point wildly at the truck, screaming out of his window at me.
jerk.
I looked at him like he was crazy which is when my peripheral saved our lives.
OMFGDANGERDANGERABORTABORT! THE BED OF THE TRUCK IS A BLAZING INFERNOOOO! AHHHHHHHHHHHH!

So I pulled over IMMEDIATELY on to the part of the road where there happened to be no shoulder, just a concrete wall and 6 inches between us and the cars. We were stopped in the fucking HIGHWAY during rush hour in Dallas. fuckingFUCK!

I grabbed my screaming baby girl, forced the door open and yanked her ass out up against the wall, to be faced with burning blankets and boxes blocking us, at which point I had to lift her up over the damn fire and tell her to RUN. Meanwhile, back at the ranch...my d00d had jumped INTO the bed of the truck. And by bed of the truck I mean, the blazing inferno that was burning paper and blankets and crap to try to put the shit out.

So a bunch of assholes watched as I held my screaming, crying baby on the side of the highway and did nothing. Until some Mexicans stopped, jumped out of their truck with 2 cases of bottled water and began opening them and dumping the contents all over the truck. God bless them. Seriously with all my heart I say that.

My d00d ended up with second degree burns all over his hands and legs..which sound not so bad. But, they're evil. Absolutely evil. All of our winter clothes and shoes and blankets and ...May's toys burned up. The truck is fine. Lord help us.

...

try try again.
Jump in the truck, make it without burning the truck to the ground...and are faced with a horrible stench as we pull up to our new home.
Amanda Jane. is dead. in the backyard. bloated , stinking and covered with flies.
w.....t........f.
Attempted to dig a hole into the hard, cracked 203823 degree earth that is our front yard in order to lay this poor dog to rest , and couldn't.
The Aryan Nation rides up out of the sunset on a four wheeler and explains that they 'didn't do anything wrong' as we stand in the yard reeling. And then some other neighbor pulls up next to them and gossipGOSSIPgossips and I'm bleeding from the crotch something fierce in front of these people and proceed to leak unbeknownst to me...

On the way home the brakes failed. Then the battery died in the truck. Ex-husband shows up to 'save the day!@!!' ::wtfevER.:: and slams the hood of my truck shut with a wrench sticking out of it, thus making the truck look even more retarded than it did pre-jackass.
Apt.=eviction notice as a result of new management who renigs on every promise old management made to include the one about us moving out and paying reletting fees and a bunch of other shit.

Because, decent, honest, kind, caring, fair business people r l0zers! fire the old, in with new assholes that give you the finger, evict you, refuse to fix your a/c which drives your electric bill up to 1000.00 +/- and leaves your apartment a welcoming 97 degrees after you come home from work after fighting to get your truck to stop because the brakes won't work and you can't afford to fix them until payday.

seriously. what in the living fucking shit is going on here.
I know, but I don't want to deal with it. We have to finish packing and move in still and I don't have time to think and neither do the rest of us. Just.get.through.it

Sad Times at the Ranch =/

So we went back this weekend to get started on painting. Forgot the spackle for the holes on the walls. Started painting anyway because we're moving in next weekend. Still no a/c. Spent most of our time running away from/battling mutant wasps from hell that attacked us and/or got stuck to the paint on the walls as a result of leaving the windows open to cool down the house. Windows have no screens. sad sad sad and I could go on forever.
But let's start from the beginning....

We pulled up and I immediately jumped out of the truck and ran to search for the dog. She was in the thing some assholes mistakenly treated as a dog house. We haven't been able to go out there until now because it costs $40.00 to get there a pop..and we had no money to go check on the dog sooner than that...moving on; my dude had to rip the roof off the shit hole dog house to get Amanda out and she was half dead. She'd had her puppies, who's death we could smell but couldn't locate the source of..so I sat in the yard and bathed her in the cold water we brought, held her and held her and cried. Just writing about is seriously bringing tears to my eyes. God bless that precious dog. She's starving to death, and just gave birth..and still had it in her to wag her tail when she saw us. Holy crap the sorrow. I'm waaay to emotional sometimes. =/ She's the kind of dog that my pappaw would take out to the woods and shoot. Eff you PETA/Animal Irrationalists btw. It's selfish to put a dog through thousands of dollars of care that may or may not work to make yourself feel better. And I'm not here to argue this point.

In any case, we had to take today off from working on the house today due to lack of funds and will be going back tomorrow once the bank releases our $ that was stupidly deposited last week. I'll be searching for Miss Amanda and feeding her baby rice and some other bland baby food to help get her back on her feet. I'm doing everything I can within my means to save this dog because it's what good people do. I would've brought her home with me but she'd wandered off by the time we got ready to go and we couldn't find her. But I did leave out food (which she probably can't eat at this point) and two HUGE bowls of water for her that will surely last until I get back tomorrow night. But man I'm anxious.

On Monday, we'll be finishing painting the walls and ripping out as much carpet as we can before sundown...no electricity yet so we gotta bust ass to get it done. But I have a serious tendency to digress, so let me lay some stuff out here.

I'm a single mother living on about 20k per year. I got a little brother that's my biggest fan, and a boyfriend that I love desperately that loves me and my daughter just as much that's working his ass off for us...and that's it. Basically, I have no support and am doing this on a very, very limited budget.

This is coupled with the fact that the house is seriously trashed. You can't tell from the pictures but it is. Holes in the walls, the wood strips (sorry don't know their names) on the corners of the walls are falling off, easy to nail back up I know.

The carpet needs to be ripped up. In the master bedroom there's a serious hole in the floor where the particle sub-flooring is all effed up and you can see outside. It's not a huge hole and we can cover it very easily.

The master bathtub leaks so bad we have to replace the flooring in the bathroom, which is understandable and normal but also means that we have to go under the house and find out what's leaking and why. Thank God the pipes are plastic and cheaply and easily replaced.

The house needs leveled. The skirt on the back half needs to be replaced, as there is none at the present time. We can't afford a lawnmower right now and there's chiggers.

By themselves, these tasks are easily fixable. But looking at the sum total ... it's pretty scary. We need a drill and a circular saw fer sure. We have to time our move because I don't get paid until the middle of the week and the electric and water needs to be turned on. And it's stifling in there with no A/C. If next winter is as bad as this past winter, we gotta get going on getting some heat as well. In order to fix the central air, this will require repair of the ducting underneath of the house.

I gotta get May enrolled in daycare and school.
This does not = easy by any means. We didn't expect it to either.
And honestly, I could have a brand new home hauled out there and trash this piece of crap like now if I wanted to. But there's a bigger point here.

This work will enable me and May and my dude to look back and say:
'We did it. This proves we're capable.'

It builds character for sure. It will teach us to value what we have as it's truly a gift from God that we've proven that we respect and are thankful for. In 2 1/2 years the land and home will be paid off, which means 6k per year extra that will be leverage for retirement, May's college education..and so much more.

But it's hard. I know people have done what we're doing in the past but I get so anxious knowing everything that needs to be done and I don't have the means to complete it but piece meal every pay day.

At this point, we're going to be buying plywood to patch the holes in the floor instead of replacing it all. It'll suck when we finally get the $400.00 it's gonna take to buy all the wood we need to replace all the flooring in the house because that'll mean tearing up the retardicon patches we're putting in which will mean more work.


siiiiiigh.
This is some rough ass bidness.

ur mom.

So THIS is what we're dealing with. Does this help you? do you feel better now? will it assist you with your attempts to copy us as we try to make a mansion out of a big crappy piece of trash?

yeah. that's what I thought, monkey.

Seriously.

So we got May all set up with entertainment and got ready to take inventory of everything we needed to do to the house to make it liveable. But I digress..
Our first job was to get the damn dog out from underneath the house. We just so happened to have a 230 lb. bag of dog food handy, and proceeded to attempt to coax Amanda Jane (named after my auntie's old german shepherd) out from the bowels of our new home. God was SO looking out for us. For as I sustained wasp attacks trying to bribe the dog out, a one legged, human emphsema and her special ed son came hobbling through the tall grass of the empty lot next to ours to introduce themselves. Sweet.

So these people whose names I forgot to remember sort of on purpose proceeded to give us the low down on all of our neighbors. Apparently the people living next to us were currently in prison for domestic terrorism for being members of the Aryan Nation. Good thing I'm totally cracker white and so is my entire family. And, the neighbors across from us 'do drugs.' Better steer clear of those Advil popping sons of bitches. We all know how those kind of people are. Additionally, the entire neighborhood has called Codes Enforcement on these geniuses about 900 times as a collective effort to get them to clean up their Coke can littered, mysterious steel parts decorated yard.

So not only are these the most informative people ever, they're also the most helpful. The son works in demolitions. And by demolitions, I mean he steals copper wiring off of other people's outside A/C units and turns in Coke cans for $$. And omg..he's also...



an animal expert!! yaaay!
Upon seeing me rolling around in the dirt acting all kinds of a fool trying to get the handicapped dog out, Bubba decided to intervene. He directs his mother to go get his 'bad' shirt as he doesn't want to ruin his 'good' shirt which has a huge Confederate flag on it with the words 'Hell Yeah I'm a Redneck!' smartly silkscreened across the front. makes sense.

So the mother hobbles off on her steel support and returns with a dirtier version of the same shirt and dude proceeds to haul Amanda out from under the house and bless her heart.... she's hugely pregnant and super duper sweet and we're so happy she decided to hang around to protect our home.



So the Hatfields continue to blah blah talk about blah blah whatever until Maria ran off to play with her new doggie friend and thank god finally, Lung Cancer McFakeleg and her genius son wobbled off into the sunset.

The Truth About the House

As much shit as I've talked about this place, it probably sounds like a horrendous place to live. But in all seriousness, it's beautiful. There are nice houses with character and huge open fields with wildflowers and deer and butterflies and the lake is two seconds from the porch. The town is a great place and the schools are excellent. Our family is very, very blessed to have found such an awesome place.

That said and moving right along,

this house needs serious help.

Our first job is to rip out the carpets and nail down 3'4" inch plywood through the entirety of the house. Nada big deal. Plywood is about $20.00 a sheet +/- . All mobile homes tend to have subflooring made out of cheap particle board that rots when exposed to moisture. This stated, if you're not familiar with how mobile homes work, it's probably horrifying to hear that I actually bought a house with big holes in the floor. But this is a problem typical to mobile homes.

*update

I've just been given enough flooring to do our entire house,

so..that's pretty excellent. I'll be posting the pictures of before and after
and during so you can see how EASY it is DIY your own effing floors. It should comfort you that I've never done anything remotely like this, have no idea how, and am getting it done via advice and instruction from others. So, if I can do it ...
ANYONE CAN!

Our very next problem is that the bedrooms are painted in varying shades of diarrhea. Habitat for Humanity to the Rescue!!!! If you've never heard of Habitat ReStore, it's a place where Habitat for Humanity sells all of their donated surplus home building stuffs. We bought three gallons of white paint for $8.00/can while we were there. So it's going to cost us about $30.00 to paint two bedrooms. If you haven't been there, this place is the shizz and seriously, it's time for you to make a lil trip over yonder next time you're on a serious budget like ours, (which is about umm, $200.00 or so) and you need to get some crap done around the house. It's definitely worth it.

Next weekend we'll have these two issues dealt with in order that we can move in as we kind of need to get settled ASAP.

The very next issue to tackle will be the wiring. Mobile home wiring should not be aluminum as it can arc, which will cause your house to burn up in about 34 seconds and your whole family to die. sad times. Before about 1980 or so, aluminum wiring was the standard until Romex came to town. Thankfully, our home was built in 1985 and does indeed, make use of Romex. The problem is that it still needs to be rewired and have all of the electrical outlets replaced.

If you're a fellow trash house fixer upper, you're probably wondering how to get this done. Simple! Do what I did and fall in love with an electrician! Because thankfully, my d00d's going to draw a circuit, put in new electrical outlets and wiring which is $200/1000 ft. and install separate circuits for my computer which I know nothing about nor do I care to. Electricity is boring. I have no need to care about it.

Seriously, this is one of the very few things about this kind of work that is
NOT DIY! I REPEAT, YOU CANNOT DIY!
You can try to, but your City Codes people will kick your ass and take your house away and fine you and destroy your life. And if that doesn't happen, the least of the problems you'll face as a result is that you won't be able to renew your home owner's insurance. This stated, make sure you have a licensed electrician come out and handle the bidness for you.

There's all kinds of other problems with this joint like the fact that highly economical individual that lived in it before us left 22 bottles (wtf?) of calamine in the bathroom cabinet. And the bitch ass wasps that look like something out of a Japanese horror movie. Overall I think, the work's going to kick our asses. Nevertheless, excitement abounds. yay!

And So We Endeavor...

One day two weeks ago, I was at work and received a call from my d00d regarding a notice on the front door of my apartment. It seemed that the management of our apartment complex had chosen us as one of the lucky winners of a free apartment inspection the very next morning. Additionally, at no extra charge, we'd also simultaneously be receiving a free bug spray of the entire apartment. Apparently roaches are breeding in my dishwasher. yummehz.

So I asked my boss if I could go home and commence to detox the hole that we call home in order for my place to be ready for inspection the following morning. He said 'sh0re!' and so I went home and scrubbed for 6 hours.

The next day, my boss came into my office with a printout of a Deliverance movie poster with photos of a single wide on a lil lot by the lake. Yesssssssssss! As a little girl, I fantasized about living in a 22 year old mobile home with half the back skirt ripped off, holes in the floor and a three legged dog living underneath of it. I was crazy excited.

The next day, I called the owner who just so happened to be the nicest truck driver ever. He apparently loved my voice and this, coupled with the fact that the house needed 2038423084 dollars worth of repairs prompted him to give me no down payment and the first month free if I decided to move in.

Dudes, I was so there. The next night, we drove through shit ass Dallas gridlock traffic in blinding rain with one windshield wiper working to a dirt road off of a dirt road on a dirt road to the place on the lake.

We all jumped out and Maria waited on the rickety, slippery, untreated porch, as I ran around the perimeter of the yard screaming that 'A THREEE LEGGED DOG IS CHAAAASING MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!' and that's when I knew..

We were home.