"...It's the Other"

You know the saying, "If it's not one thing, it's the other."  The Army has it's own version.  "Everything breaks when your spouse deploys."  Hmmm.  Let's see if that holds true.  Nathan deployed July 24th.

August:  The loan Nathan and I took out finally closes (started the process in June 7) but they are trying to charge us $1000 in points when we specifically took the higher interest rate with NO POINTS.

September:  New paperwork for our loan, but there are three different sets of settlement statements presented to me at the signing.  You saw that correctly.  THREE.  Loan closes with an entirely different amount than any of the three from the signing.  Discover that the title company charged $450 more on the "final" settlement amount than on the "correct" settlement amount (of the three possibles) presented at closing.

October: Plumbing backs up, plumbers decide it's a collapsed pipe, dig up the front yard and break the water main into my house.

November:  Still fighting with the title company over their fees.  For the first time in my life, I engage the services of a lawyer.  He writes them a letter.  Their response?  They have to retrieve my records from storage.  Huh!  Weather turns cold, but the furnace has a mind of it's own and decides if and when it wants to work.

December:  Still fighting with the title company.  They can't find my records.  Roofing layer on my rental house sheers off in a Christmas Eve windstorm.  The wood is still there, but the stuff protecting it (and everything inside my house) from rain, snow, and sleet is gone.  It's Colorado.  In December.

January:  Still fighting with the title company, they were going to look into in and get back to me by "the end of the day."  After a month of nothing but a blue tarp covering my house, the roofers finally arrive.  Their "fix" leaves a shower of debris over THE ENTIRE TOP FLOOR of my house.  It costs me $200 to get it cleaned up because my insurance doesn't cover it (no actual damage to my property...just covered with filth), my landlord's insurance doesn't cover it because there is no structural damage, and the roofing company doesn't cover it because they aren't responsible for the interior of the house and they told me to lay down a tarp.  Uh...no, they didn't tell me to tarp, and even if they did, how am I supposed to cover THE ENTIRE TOP FLOOR?

February:  Still fighting with the title company; they never got back to me, and so I'm now on to my second lawyer because the JAG officer can't actually go any further than write demand letters and follow up e-mails which, as you can see, have gotten us nowhere.  The plumbing backs up again.  This time the guy digging up the pipes running from the house to the street hits the gas main.  They also didn't turn my water back on so, tonight, while I'm supposed to be getting ready to leave on a big trip, I have no way to clean up the kitchen after days of trying to not do dishes until the plumbing cleared up, no way to do laundry, and no more sanity.

Do you think the Army would go for it if I requested my husband be allowed to come home early from his deployment because this house (and his wife) are not going to survive much longer?

Until next time,
Becca