An Empty House But Not An Empty Schedule

An empty house can be kind of boring actually. Like really boring. Especially when you have three weeks to wait.

Maybe that’s why we have so much in the first place.

But I didn’t have to worry about boredom because boredom didn’t last long because I can never catch a break. A new problem had arisen which gave me a lot to do.

Twelve years earlier, yes, twelve years, my husband had lost his job and stopped paying on a credit card. Just stopped and didn’t tell me. The credit card company sued and since he wasn’t working, they garnished my wages.

Already down one income, I was one angry momma. Losing 25% of my income was a huge deal and the bill was almost $4,000 meaning this would go on for a long time.

We survived and the garnishment was paid in full. They even sent my company a letter stating that fact. However, they never sent a letter to our house.

The garnishment ended and eventually I stopped thinking about it.

Until now.

Since that letter was never received and taken to the courthouse, the mortgage company decided that they would need to keep an escrow for not only that amount, but 180% of that amount so over $7,000.

But I was so angry about it the first time that there was no way I was going to let this mess up the purchase of the new house.

I knew I had seen some sort of letter regarding it somewhere in the house and since most of the house was packed up in the storage unit, I would spend the next three weeks looking for it.

It was a record hot month of May with temps reaching into the 90’s (F) for a record number of days in a row. The humidity was unbelievable. Sitting in a chair was enough to make you sweat.

Over a hundred stacked up boxes to go through – one by one.

I was miserable.

By the end, I managed to find a whole bunch of different pieces of paper that proved the debt was paid in full but none of it was good enough for the mortgage company. All of my pay stubs, copies of the checks sent to them, and the court orders were there but it didn’t matter. I couldn’t find the one thing that I needed.

We even spent hours on the phone with them but they still refuse to send that letter.

It was such a waste of those three weeks and I swear that I will never, ever let this happen again.

One of the first things that I would get for the new house was a file cabinet and that’s where the important papers will go as I find them.

We’re still working on getting that letter to this day but, thankfully, the mortgage company let us close.

It was just so frustrating not being able to work on more important things then looking for these papers that should’ve been dealt with over 10 years ago. There’s so many other things that I could’ve been doing.

I don’t ever want to forget that terrible horrible no good feeling and let that happen again.