Victim of the Game

In March of 2005 we bought our first house! Mom’s ultimate dream was to own her own home, so we did what we could to make it a reality. Mom’s friend Nancy owned a house that she wanted to get rid of, so she gave us a great deal.

Neither Jill or I had really had credit before this so we were excited too. We had moved into the house the previous November after Mom’s diagnosis with cancer because the apartment we had been living it was terribly drafty, and really not a good place for a cancer patient to be living.

The sale went through just after Mom’s birthday, and she said she never had a better birthday gift.

This place was huge, at least for us. Basement, attic, and two floors of living space. Three bedrooms upstairs and a front and back porch. Mom’s legs didn’t work great so she made her bedroom out of the dining room. That worked fine since we hardly ever ate dinner at the table anyway.

I made an office out of one of the bedrooms upstairs, and we made a media room out of the other, with the third being our bedroom of course.

Throughout our time there we had a few roommates. Jacobb, his girlfriend, and their three kids moved in with us the May before Mom died so we had a house full again. Mom really liked this. She loved kids.

After Jacobb and Ashley moved out we moved Mom upstairs so she would be closer to us and closer to the bathroom. When she died things really started to change.

We lost her income which made things difficult but we were still able to make it. Then I fell down the stairs. I tell people the house kicked my ass. Since my injury was so severe Jill was forced to miss a lot of work to take care of me, and that made paying bills hard.

Bills started falling behind the November after my surgery, and we never caught up. Due to pure perseverance and God’s guiding hand we made it all the way to January of 2008 before everything came tumbling down.

Since we had to make some hard choices, house payment or heat, electricity, or food, the necessities were paid for first. In Illinois in January heat and food take priority. In February we were notified that foreclosure proceedings had begun by our mortgage company.

Since the housing market was so bad at that time we were told by a mortgage professional that we probably wouldn’t get evicted for a year. So we stayed for a while and took our time looking for a better apartment.

I had a client by that time who owned a bunch of apartments locally, and he had a place for us. So we packed up our things and moved on up to the east side, to a deluxe apartment, but not in the sky, on the ground level. We moved into our new place in September of 2008. Keep reading for this exciting tale. We moved in the middle of the night with a 10 foot trailer.

1. A Small History Lesson	2. Congratulations It’s A Freak
3. The First Five Years	4. It All Goes Up In Flames
5. School Daze	6. Say What?
7. A New Hope	8. Becoming A Sophisticated Redneck
9. A New Beginning – Literally	10. Back Into the Fray
11. They Like Me, They Really Like Me	12. 10011001
13. Let the Music Heal Your Soul	14. Taking My Sister to the Prom
15. My First Love, My First Broken Heart	16. From Zero to Hero
17. Livin’ On a Prayer	18. Moving On
19. Going Full Circle	20. The Rockford Files
21. Faith of the Heart	22. Partner, Friend, Lover, Wife
23. Turns Out She Was Right	24. A One-Legged Bear
25. Another Victim of the Game	26. Payin’ Bills with my Skills
27. A New Revell-ation	28. A New Page, A New Day
29. R We There Yet?