State of the Troll address
Ok, the last thing I wrote was that we were getting kicked out of our place. Since then, here's what's happened. We were forced to move at the end of December, no appeal possible. We were caught without any money to move on, so we had to look for a place we could stay at. None of our friends or family locally were able to help us.
A friend of my wife offered to let us stay with him, and we wound up taking him up on it. the catch is that he lives in Ballantine, Montana. We lived about 925 miles away in Vancouver, Washington. Now try to imagine spending New Year's night on a 20-hour drive (not counting a 7 hour sleepover) in a 2-wd Toyota Corolla that's about 20 years old with questionable tires. Packed so full of crap that it looked like a blanket sea from the neck down. Not a typical fun road trip.
So we're about 1/3 of the way into January now, and I'm looking for work out here. Hoping that a lead turns up, because it's the 4 of us squeezed into a basement this month. A comfortable basement at least, but we don't have any level of husband/wife privacy. We get our tax money back towards the beginning of February, and when we do we have to make a choice. Find a cheap place to stay here and hope work sorts itself out, or go back to Vancouver and hope work sorts itself out there.
The cost of living is much less out here, but all of our friends and family are there. The hardest part about the choice though is our daughter. She's 10, in 4th grade, and just changed schools in the middle of the year. As much as we don't want to make her change schools *again*, we may not have a choice. It's a messed-up situation, but at least we have a warm roof over our heads. Some folks don't even have that much right now. We do have some money coming in at least, my unemployment and some other benefits.
A friend of my wife offered to let us stay with him, and we wound up taking him up on it. the catch is that he lives in Ballantine, Montana. We lived about 925 miles away in Vancouver, Washington. Now try to imagine spending New Year's night on a 20-hour drive (not counting a 7 hour sleepover) in a 2-wd Toyota Corolla that's about 20 years old with questionable tires. Packed so full of crap that it looked like a blanket sea from the neck down. Not a typical fun road trip.
So we're about 1/3 of the way into January now, and I'm looking for work out here. Hoping that a lead turns up, because it's the 4 of us squeezed into a basement this month. A comfortable basement at least, but we don't have any level of husband/wife privacy. We get our tax money back towards the beginning of February, and when we do we have to make a choice. Find a cheap place to stay here and hope work sorts itself out, or go back to Vancouver and hope work sorts itself out there.
The cost of living is much less out here, but all of our friends and family are there. The hardest part about the choice though is our daughter. She's 10, in 4th grade, and just changed schools in the middle of the year. As much as we don't want to make her change schools *again*, we may not have a choice. It's a messed-up situation, but at least we have a warm roof over our heads. Some folks don't even have that much right now. We do have some money coming in at least, my unemployment and some other benefits.