Life has been a whirlwind lately. I guess I should update everyone as to what's going on in my little cosmos.
1) House situation resolved...not
We did manage to get the premises vacated in late November. Of course, that meant packing up and removing all belongings to a temporary storage unit that we paid for for 2.5 months. That has caused more headaches than it's been worth. Been constantly accused of stealing items from the home. Noone took anything from that house. If anything was missing it was missing before we set foot in it. Besides, the house had been left totally open for more than a week. Anybody could have walked in off the street to take whatever they wanted. The neighbors even tried to take the pots that were outside the front door and broke one of them in the process. Those pots had been there for nearly 8 years - unmolested in wind, rain, hail, snow, heat - and their dumbasses come along and ruin them.
We telecommuted for two months between December and February, but work took up so much of our time, and provided constant harrassment, that we were unable to get anything done on the house. We did manage to get a few things off the very looonnnggg list.
First thing, all the locks had to be changed. We had to replace all the mising light bulbs and the shower head that had been taken. All carpeting was ripped up due to damage and smell from the dog. We also started tearing out some sheetrock in the back bedroom in order to fix some serious wall issues. All the windows were also replaced.
We played at painting the kitchen & dining areas. Personally, I hate the color. It's too pale, flat, and looks a little dirty for those fubared walls. We also had a kitchen consultation with Home Depot. The cabinets and appliances that I would like have a price tag of about $8,000. They weren't even remotely top-of-the-line either. Oh well. Finding that out pretty much sucked.
The heating/air unit is also pretty much dead. It is stuck in "heat" mode, which was fine for the winter, but has now become a problem. The system is almost 20 years old. So replacing parts doesn't make as much sense as just redoing the whole system. Of course, that costs a pretty penny. And speaking of pretty pennies.....
2) Financially, we have just been fucked....
Oh yeah...totally and royally fucked. We put a large portion of our available cash assets into purchasing the house. We didn't have a whole lot of time nor choice in the matter. More than half of our cash went in, as did several loans from our home equity and a new loan on the car to pay the purchase price. That left about half of our cash.
We had our remaining funds invested with an economist in Charleston named Al Parish. He has involved with our business since the beginning. We have known him and been acquainted with others that have invested with him for the past 10 years. We decided two years ago to invest some cash with his investment pools. We put a big chunk of money in and also had $150 a week deducted from our paychecks as well over the course of the last two years.
Well, he has been arrested for fraud and it now looks like we are SOL on getting any of our cash back. That money was going to fund an adoption so that we could finally start our family. We have already had to put those plans on hold due to problems with our job and finances before. We were finally in a place to start the ball rolling. Now...we may never recover and we may never be able to have a family.
I am devastated. I am angry. This all makes me sick beyond belief. I have thought some really nasty evil thoughts lately. Because there just isn't any money there, it looks like we won't get anything back either. Five years of savings gone in an instant. To go from one day having a cushion so that if we did lose our jobs, we'd be okay to the next having nothing really is distressing. I don't know what we're going to do.
Read all about the case here: Al Parish News Archive
3) Job is still iffy
Although we have weathered the firing of the CEO, there were some personnel cuts. I cannot say that I didn't agree with most of them, however. Now, there are 6 total employees. I think we're more streamlined and more effective for the most part. The biggest issues is cash flow. We were linked to the Al Parish fiasco when a young inexperienced reporter took some half-assed information and drew some pretty damaging conclusions (ie. that we were out of business and that all employees were terminated as of March 31st!!!). As you can imagine, that has had a detrimental effect on our business.
Plus, the top brass of the company also were investors. So, they have been hit hard by having their money wisked away as well. Which means, we're on our own. They no longer have deep pockets in order to bail us out of any sticky financial situations. Things are very tenuous.
So, without money we're more of less stuck. We have a house that is not in saleable condition, and no money to get it to that point. We have jobs for now, but we're haivng to scramble to build some bank just in case things go south really soon.
Well...life certainly has been giving us lemons lately. Bushels and bushels of them. But we can't exaclty make lemonade because we can't afford the sugar. ;-)
So, for now - we've been forced to drink down this cold sour brew and pretend to enjoy it. Although, all I want to do is give the world (and all these damn "lemons") the big fat finger.
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