Okay, I promised an update regarding the move and here it is.

I’m still a bit ambivalent about this whole move. A large part of me will be intensely glad to be out of Alpine Meadows, but another part is still waiting for the next shoe to fall.

Parkwood Green accepted our application (they don’t do credit checks, in fact crime seems to be the only thing they’re concerned with) and the bank went through on financing.

The (new) trailer was moved into the park yesterday, though the crew almost got into an accident on the way over. We had a sudden snow squall go through, which reduced visibility to almost zero. Apparently some lady hit the breaks unexpectedly, a semi swerved to avoid her and almost hit our trailer. However nothing happened and they finally made it into the spot… only to discover our water line had broken during the night. ^^;

Mom visited this morning on the way home and saw that everything is hooked up now, which should mean we can begin moving our stuff in. I’m still not sure which room I’m taking, but we can hash that out when we can actually move in.

The only other ugly thing is that we’re going to have to rent a power-washer to clean the trailer once it gets warm and the shed is full of garbage from the previous owner. >_> But that’s not too bad, considering.

Trudy, the owner of Cedar Mobile Home Service, is a miracle-worker. I swear. She’s taken care of all the permits, phone calls, even managed to talk a building inspector to give us a permit on his day off. Right now it’s looking like we’ll be able to live in the new trailer Monday or Tuesday. Trudy is good, let me tell you.

Another bad thing is that we couldn’t stay with Comcast. They don’t offer service in Sparta, even though it looks like they’re only a mile away. *sighs* Bye-bye anime, Food Network, and Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Anyroad, we’re going to take a load of junk to the trailer today and then we’re going out with Jodi tomorrow to pick out new appliances. (Note to self, turn Amazon store to vacation and get financial aid papers filled out!)

In other news, my main blog can now be set to friends only! (Haha!) I knew there had to be a plug-in to do this. ^_^

Instead of trying to inform everyone who needed the password, I can just send them logon information and be able to set things just like I can do on LiveJournal.

I just know I have some pretty weird people checking out my blog and I wanted a better way to protect sensitive entries. This is still my online diary, afterall. Yes, I want to share with my friends and family, but I don’t necessarily want my classmates reading my health-related posts. (or rants full of obscenities.)

Don’t worry, this isn’t going 100% friends only. I was just looking for a better way to protect posts to varying degrees.

Nothing super-long like my previous entries. I’m just feeling suddenly worried that the bank will reverse their stance on our financing and that Parkwood Green won’t accept us. There’s just so much dramatic talk I can take before I start going nuts. And Patti has been doing that as hard as she can, telling us our credit is so bad we don’t stand a ghost of a chance.

I’ve just had so many bad experiences over the past year that I automatically begin feeling like something’s just going to go wrong. Things felt so bouyant earlier today and now I’m feeling cold, depressed, and worried. It just can’t go so right… can it?

Well, once again we blew Patti off.

Remember last entry when I mentioned numerous phonecalls? Well, one seems to have come through.

Today, we looked at a 1997 Dutch 16×80 trailer. For a repo, that thing was immaculate. It has no appliances, but we were told it was a 2000, so we’re hoping that the fact it was really a 1997 will sweeten the pot a little bit. But we loved it. It was clean, bright, and didn’t have a huge number of things wrong with it like the others we’d looked at. Aside from being told the wrong year, what we found were nitpicky things that could be fixed pretty quickly/easily.

We made an offer on it and put down our $200.

Then we took off and went to Parkwood Green, got an application, and checked out the lot that would be ours. Ed (aside from me misunderstanding that the park office was also his home) seemed to have no problem whatsoever with what was happening. The fact that the bank was willing to play ball with us tells me that our credit can’t be that horribly off. The only thing they said was that we’d be better off with just Mom on the mortgage, or else the student loans may mess us up. (No problem.)

So far, it looks like we’re going to be paying about $150 a month on it, on top of the $320 for base rent. Not counting any overages from the electric, that basically comes out to be just $5 more than what we’re paying at Alpine Meadows. However, we won’t be paying for water, sewer, or trash… nor will we have to pay for Luna or our cats.

When we got home, Patti was bent all out of shape because we didn’t drive back down to 54th street to place an offer on the tight thing she showed us.

I’m trying to be nice to her, but her pushiness knows no bounds. As far as we were concerned, there was no “thinking” — she basically told us we were coming in today at 4pm to place an offer. Not, “would [we]” or “if you would like to”… but told us we were coming in to place an offer. I told her we weren’t interested and why. (Too tight, master bathroom pretty much unusable to us, etc.)

She tells me, “We have other trailers, hun.” *growl*

“Yes, but our health is suffering… my grandpa suggested we should find an apartment and regroup once we’ve had a chance to rest.” Yeah, health as in Mom has almost had an accident every night this week since we’ve spent the better part of the day running from one end of the county to the other.

“With your credit, you won’t be able to get into anything.” Oh, really. How do you know? Have you checked our credit report without our consent?

I pitch my voice more aggressively, “Patti, we can not afford to keep driving to 54th street and beyond.”

At this point, she is not happy. Not happy at all. Oh well. I guess she’s starting to get it that we’re not going to be paying her an extra $2000 and she’s not getting whatever kickback she wanted to get by shoving us into Glenwood Estates.

Anyway, provided things go through okay we could be looking at only one or two days without a place to stay. We could move our things in (by next Wednesday possibly), but we can’t live there ourselves until all inspections are done.

Please keep your fingers crossed and prayers coming. There’s going to be a lot of prayers in this house until we figure out where things are headed. I’m so tired that I can’t even dredge up the hope. Patti’s deflating comments about our credit have gotten to me a bit. Everyone I’ve talked to has said to ignore her; she’s just getting a kickback from Glenwood… but I’m emotional enough that I am feeling discouraged.

Maybe this is a solution, but I’m just not sure. I’m discouraged/depresed enough that ambivalent really doesn’t describe me.

There’s something about talking to friends and family about problems that put them into a totally new light.

We’ve spent much of the past week searching for housing. Our realtor, Patti, isn’t feeling all that helpful. Don’t get me wrong, aside from not communicating as much as we’d prefer, she’s done a great job selling our trailer.

However, that doesn’t change the fact that we feel she’s pressuring us to make choices without allowing us to think them through.

For one thing, she’s basically declared that there is only one park in the area that will take us and that the current trailer she’s trying to show us is our only option. On top of that, she’s being awfully patronizing and is constantly calling us “hun.”

Okay, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Friday, we began looking for homes. I called Patti and requested to see a couple homes in the Woodland Estates trailer park located in Rockford, MI. She refused to show them to us, claiming they’d be too expensive and the park would never allow us in. BUT, she told us she had a double-wide we could see Monday if we were willing to wait.

So we spent the weekend packing and otherwise relaxing. We’re pretty well squared away, much of what we have out can easily go back into the same boxes we got them out of. Though we threw out all our book boxes back when we moved in, thinking we’d have a few years before we needed them again. ;_;

Monday comes around and Patti tells us that the double-wide trailer we wanted to see sold over the weekend. (Wha -??) BUT, she had one that would be perfect for us. But it’s clear over on 54th street, which is clear on the opposite end of the city from us. My mom blew her off, saying she only had a couple hours of sleep, and we went and looked at a few used trailers being sold by Cedar Hill Mobile Home Service.

Mom fell in love with the first trailer we looked at. It was 16×80 and was just really nice; only problem was that it already had a bid on it. The other was filled with trash and had the most revolting red carpeting through it. Thinking ahead, Trudy — the owner of the business — had us fill in an application for financing and promised to fax it in.

This morning, we received the good news and the bad news. Bad news was that bid on the trailer mom loved was accepted. Good news was that we qualified for financing.

Now… if our credit reports are so awful that no other trailer park would take us — why was the bank willing to finance us only asking for a W-2 and proof that our current trailer was paid off?

Second good news was that there’s another trailer we could look at which is newer and is already located in a park somewhere. Since mom was asleep, I asked for pictures and we’d see about going to it tomorrow.

Later on, we took off and checked out a few other trailers, but they needed ALOT of work, so they were a no. We then went to look at the trailer Patti was so fixated on.

Let me tell you, it was “cute” but we really didn’t like it that much — even for only $8,000. It was only a 2 bedroom and felt extremely tight. Maybe that was because the family had the windows completely sealed shut, but it felt almost clausterphobic. They’d built cubbies through the whole thing, which added to the “tight” feeling. For a shower they’d somehow rigged a shower head to spray inside a jacuzzi tub, which was situated inside it’s own little cubby.

The “computer room” as they billed it was another cubby-hole, which was smaller than some closets I’ve been in. It was little more than a broom-closet with a window.

Since we were trying to be polite to the owners, we said it was “cute.”

Patti was instantly after us to put in an offer, without letting us discuss it or think it over. We requested time to think it over and she tells us that we can’t take too long to think or else it would be gone. She then proceeds to tell us to stop by tomorrow at 4pm to fill in the bid.

Umm… no.

We got home and after supper, I made one last phonecall to a trailer that was a for-sale-by-owner in a park we already know we’d like. Angie said the minimum she’d be willing to take would be $15,000, since that’s what she has left on her mortgage. BUT — since we were able to get financing through one bank, maybe we can get financing through another.

Finally, tomorrow we’re expecting about 5 phonecalls from various calls we made earlier in the week. (And probably a dozen from Patti, wanting us to come down and make an offer on the tight thing we looked at.)

This evening, I talked it through with Theresa, Poppa, and Jodi.

Between the three of them, things have been put into a better perspective. Momma-elf discussed ideas for jobs and possibly relocating; Poppa suggested that we look into an apartment, and Jodi really put her thoughts into the trailer issue. “Don’t let [Patti] pressure you.” was the resounding message.

Anyway, I’m off for bed. Please keep your fingers crossed for us, everyone. The little glimmer we got from the bank might just turn out to be something. *HUGS!* Love you all.

To start this off, I have to stress that it’s not a case of us being completely innocent victims. I hate that idea of people passing themselves off as completely innocent of any wrongdoing; Alpine Meadows has been pulling that with us for the past few weeks. So I’m not going to try that myself. We were in the wrong. We didn’t pay our rent and didn’t have the courage to ask for help when it could have been easily given.

And we were evicted because of it.

That being said, I feel that our treatment at the hands of Alpine Meadows, the courts, and the realtors at First Choice Mobile Home Sales was completely deplorable. We’re not criminals, we’re not trash. We’re people who just happen to be poor.

This entry is kind of rambling and VERY long (9 pages, 3873 words). I broke it up into pages to keep it straight. (Lj cuts if you’re reading it there.) I’ll include dates and times so we can stay clear about the timeline, since I do tend to jump around a little bit.

Every time, every freaking time. Every time we put our house up for sale, we get idiots claiming the house stinks and therefore is worth less for some reason.

Do they pull this shit on other people? I don’t know a single house that doesn’t have it’s own smell. Just because we have pets, they seem to think that we need to drop our price down several thousand dollars. Oh, and lets not forget that we have a “crack” on the ceiling in the kitchen. It’s actually just some drywall tape that’s come loose. *sighs* So that’s $19,900 minus $2000 for the realtors minus $2000 they want us to take down, minus whatever the park is going to charge us to get out… that’s going to be under $16000 to find a new trailer, pay deposit, and first rent.

Lovely. And if I’d spent 15 minutes to spray some Oust, Febreeze, and some pet smell remover they would never have noticed. A few staples, drywall compound, or plaster and they wouldn’t have noticed the “crack” either.

Why does the world hate me so much!?