A Tough Week (Continued)

So I was getting ready to check in at the Indianapolis airport to fly back home on Tuesday when a tall, well-dressed man hurried up to the ticket counter. He told the lady at the counter that he needed to get to St. Louis as fast as possible. He was wearing a suit and tie, but there was a certain lackadaisical, somewhat goofy air about him. He then decided to disclose that he had had a very tough week. He was 22 years old, $70,000 in debt, and as of that day, unemployed. He had payed for his ticket to Indy for his job, unknowingly so that he could arrive to get fired in person by his superior. He had also totaled his car the Friday before. He seemed to be in a state of denial about the whole thing as he laughed it off and simply said, "bad luck always happens in threes". I sort of laughed to myself as he said it, thinking we had had out own string of bad luck lately.
Robbie has told you about the wreck, so let me continue the story as I tell you about our house-hunting horrors...

It seems like I went through this not too long ago when I was in college. Robbie had just graduated and was going to ASBC in Alabama. I had to stay behind in Indiana and finish my last semester at Purdue. We were staying in married student housing the semester before, but I could no longer stay there since Robbie was leaving. I had to find a place for just one semester that wouldn't break our bank account. And I had to do this all over Christmas break of 2006. I remember thinking then how horrible it was to feel like you had no place to call home. But, thankfully, God provided and I was able to move into an apartment with two other girls from our church up there. The rent was super cheap and everything eventually worked itself out. Well, here we are again 3 years later without a place to go, but this time we have a 5-month-old baby, a 50-lb. dog, and two full-grown cats. This presents a little more of a challenge.

Perhaps I need to back up and start at the beginning. Robbie left for survival training, as you know from previous posts, on January 3rd. This was the beginning of the move, in my mind, since I began packing the day after he left. We lost our cable service that next week and I spent the entire rest of the month packing boxes, working online, and preparing for the big moving day. Robbie got home on the 24th of January, and we loaded the moving van on the 31st. That was the last day we had a place to call home.

That night, we brought our caravan to a TLF on base at Columbus and from there went to a Holiday Inn Express the next night, to a TLF at Tinker AFB the next night. The TLF at Tinker, to our surprise, was a glorified hotel room. Peyton had no yard, and the 6 of us were stuck sharing a place the size of a standard hotel room with one small bedroom and a tiny kitchen. We had a reservation to stay there until February 15th. Originally, we thought that would be plenty of time to find a house (not to mention we would only be reimbursed by the Air Force for up to 10 days). Of course, the place was too small for all our belongings, so the majority of our stuff gets loaded into a storage unit outside of base.
We started house hunting two days after we arrived at Tinker, thinking we were getting a good head start. We found a house, but it sold before we could make an offer. We found our next house, and we wasted no time to make an offer. We were excited when the deal went through, and we thought we were set. We signed the preliminary contract on the 7th. And then the trouble began.

Our bank informs us that they can close no sooner than March 3rd! We fax them all our information ASAP, and still have trouble getting our processor to get to work. We talk to our realtor about the loan issues, he talks to the processor, and finally things start to happen. Meanwhile, our reservation at the TLF runs out and our animals have no place to go. We can move into another TLF, but this one does not allow pets. So we had no choice but to put Peyton and the kitties in a kennel. That was on February 16th.

We couldn't get the initial inspection done on our house until February 18th thanks to our slow processor (we nicknamed him "Dirty Sanchez"). We go through inspection and find approximately $980 worth of repairs that must be done on the house before closing, not counting the roof which would have to be replaced due to extensive hail damage.

So on the 19th, I'm ready to leave to visit family back in IN. That morning, we get a call from Paw Prints and Peyton had broken loose from his cage in the night and had done some damage. They told us we had to come and get him and find somewhere else for him to go. Robbie takes me to the airport and then picks up Peyton that afternoon and takes him to "Camp Bow Wow", a $30 a night "resort" of sorts for dogs. (Mind you we are already paying out the wazoo for hotel fees at this point). Peyton stays a night there while the kitties continue their stay at Paw Prints (a.k.a. kitty jail).

On the 20th, our reservation in the regular TLF runs out and Robbie moves all our stuff from there to a friend's house in South OKC. Kyle and Lena are an AF couple from Columbus who just moved here in December and graciously agreed to take us in for a few days. They have a beautiful 4-bedroom house with a fenced-in yard and a very nice chocolate Labrador named Jersey. Peyton was delighted to be reunited with Robbie and go to Kyle and Lena's to meet their dog. Unfortunately, the kitties had to stay in "kitty jail" because Kyle is allergic to cats.

On the 21st, Robbie had his big scary wreck while I was away visiting family.

The entire weekend I was gone, Robbie was driving to our house to see if any repairs were in progress. Every day proved more and more disappointing as the house continued to remain untouched.

I arrived at Kyle and Lena's last Tuesday, the 24th. Peyton seemed very happy, Robbie was okay despite being a little shaken from the wreck, our poor kitties were still caged, but our house closing was set for just a couple days later on the 26th.
Then we get a call yesterday. According to an additional inspection done by a structural engineer that morning (at the request of the bank handling our VA loan), our house is structurally unsound and will require an entirely new foundation. The process would take at least 2 weeks, and approximately $20,000 to complete. Not to mention it could open up an entirely new set of problems in and around the house after it was completed (which at that point would be our responsibility to deal with). Needless to say, we decided that it would be in our best interest to get out of the deal now, before it was too late.

So as of today, the day we were supposed to close and begin moving into our new house, we are back to square one. Only this time, our money is dwindling, our SUV is in the shop, our kitties are in jail, and have to find a place to live even faster than when we first arrived. May I also add that the place where our kitties are being held was robbed last night, so we narrowly avoided another disaster there.

Robbie and I are now searching for an apartment, which is a whole nother headache in and of itself. We have to find an apartment that will offer a short-term lease, will accept 1 large dog and two cats, is on the first floor, and has enough room for the 6 members of our family along with all the stuff that formerly fit snugly into a 4 bedroom house. Our hunt for a home has suddenly taken on an entirely new level of impossible. Welcome to our never-ending nightmare.

So the question I am asking now is, was that guy at the airport right? Does bad luck really happen in threes? We've lost our car, we've lost our house,... I'm wondering what comes next. Or maybe the bad luck started before that when Robbie was wisked away for training way back in December with only 2 days notice. We can only hope things will start looking up from here. As always, we will keep all of you posted!