The ongoing and seeming never-ending mess with trying to avoid the foreclosure, trying to provide everything needed for a short sale, struggling with day to day expenses, closing the credit cards, trying to keep minimum payments current, taking care of the dogs, with continually failing health, by golly I was having just a wonderful time in Nashville!
The silver linings in all of this consist of the following:
My Tennessee girlfriend and I reconciled our friendship, and I was blessed to make friends with the two kindest and most thoughtful gentlemen I have ever known. In keeping with my practice of not naming names in this journal, I do hope that they will recognize themselves in this and know how very deeply I am grateful to them and value their friendships. Their support and hard work in helping me get ready to vacate my house will always be one of my heart's finest of treasures.
And so, as previously mentioned, the foreclosure department at the bank decided that the short sale department and their processing of the offer was simply holding them up and they over-rode all of that hard work
and went ahead and foreclosed.
Another thing I had been trying to do through all of this was to find suitable lodging at a price I could afford so that I could maintain my job in Nashville.
I found nothing, and I had no where to go. Nine dollars and thirty-six cents and hour gross does not take one very far anyway.
I got a POD and loaded it and a U-Haul truck and packed it to the gills with the help of my two friends. Actually they did the loading with help from me. I simply could not have done any of it without them. If it had not been for their consistent support, the sheriff would have tossed all of my stuff out on the curb.
And so, the actual physical eviction occurred the end of January. I parked the U-haul in the lot where my friends lived and took a quick trip to Missouri to visit my nephew, my sister and my dad, then drove back to Nashville, and met up with my friend who had agreed to drive the rented truck down to Florida for me.
Yes. That was my decision. I determined to return to Florida. I missed Florida, my friends, and above all, that tall good looking fellow referred to earlier, although having been out of touch for so long, I had no idea how that would go.
And where in Florida was I planning on living? Since I still had interest in the house we built in 1995, I moved back in against the advice of pretty much everyone I knew. You see, I and my two remaining dogs, moved in with my ex-husband and his wife and her two cats.
Now this has been an interesting development. Legally of course, I have every right to be here since the house was not put on the market and sold as the judge had ordered. There were a number of reasons why that did not happen that may be relevant, but I will not go into just now. Nevertheless, the house is once again my shelter. I am confined to the small guest room with my two dogs, and when I am at work, the critters are confined to the dining room downstairs.
There is one small section of the yard that I am able to keep mowed for them. The rest of the property, which is less than an acre, has not been mowed in over three years and has reverted to some form of jungle that is filled with stickers, weeds and thorns of all kinds, and so is unsuitable for my dogs to run in as they used to do. The shortest foliage is shoulder high and much of it rises high above my head and is snarled together with assorted vines. Once upon a time this was a beautiful spreading lawn dotted with pines and several lovely broadleaved trees and shrubs. Flowers surrounded the house; vinca, jasmine, hibiscus, plumbago, beauty berry, orchids and bougainvillea colored the landscape. The spreading banyan tree supported my swing and was the most relaxing cool spot on the property.
A portion of the land was separately fenced for wildlife and we called it the forbidden zone because we forbade the dogs access to it so that the birds and squirrels and other small wild creatures would have sanctuary. I was able to maintain it as well as the yard and kept it in a controlled state of wild for them, with water and feeding stations. The whole property was noted for its beauty. It is now, quite a disappointing malaise.
Job hunting here in Florida is quite the same sort of challenge as anywhere else in the country.
In desperation, for a short time I took a job with a telemarketer, cold calling assorted time zones, pushing magazine packages at those who answered their phones. It was a miserable thing to do and I gained a lot of compassion for those who do it. Few do it as a career choice. It is generally, as with me, a last ditch effort to make eight bucks an hour. To me it seemed unethical and truly conflicted with my personal sense of integrity. I prayed for no one to answer their phones. I prayed for them to simply hang-up quickly. I felt badly for those few who were taken in by the script. I was never sure they fully realized what they were getting into. Eight hundred and some dollars for five years of five assorted magazine titles seemed like not such a great deal to me. I read magazines from time to time, but I fully doubt that I have spent anywhere near eight hundred dollars on magazines in my entire lifetime. By the way, they paid without taking any deductions or reporting the payroll, so that those weeks do not go toward my social security nor count toward quarters for unemployment compensation purposes.
I continued of course, to search for something to do that was a legitimate job.
Fortunately, I was there less than two months when I received a call to interview for a position with a library in one of the universities.
I jumped at the chance and was eventually hired. Ever hear the saying: if something is too good to be true, it probably isn't?
The manager and his assistant were apparently in their thirties and forties. the rest of the staff was all in their early twenties.
Naively,I did not realize what a problem that could become...
No comments:
Post a Comment