Stuck!!!

There are now two days left in the No Regrets challenge and I have bared my soul and let the readers in on numerous cringe-worthy moments in my life. Another one just came to mind so here I am sharing yet again. This embarrassing situation came in 2011 after a faulty water heater began leaking. It took a while for us to figure out what was going on because there was thick carpet on most of the floors in the house. The water must have been leaking onto the floorboards without our knowledge and we assume that it shorted out the ground wire because one day out lights simply went out.

We were planning to move and began staying in a motel until we could find another home. We turned the water off when we figured out that it was leaking but the damage had already been done. The reason we did not simply purchase a new water heater and fix the electricity was because of the unique situation we were in. We had moved into the house with my grandma in 2003 after my mother died so she did not have to go to a nursing home.

The house we had lived in for 14 years had been built for someone else through Habitat for Humanity. The original owner moved out and my husband and I got this house for a really good deal. Our home was not big enough to move my grandmother in so we came up with a plan. We would sell our home, and pay off the 4 years that were left on my mother's house. We could then sell her house and the money would be split between myself, my brother and our dead brother's 3 children.

My mother had not left a will so her house was heir property. When we went to Habitat, we were told that my husband ad I had not signed a final deed paper so essentially we were renters. We were told that we would receive nothing if we left the home we had been in for 14 years. The only recourse we had was to walk away and move into the house with my grandma and this was a harsh blow.

Habitat did their own financing that time and did not have the same rules as a bank so we could do nothing to challenge them. After my grandmother died, my brother and one of my nieces began saying they wanted their share of the money from the house and were pressuring us to move. My aunt told me that if we fixed the water heater or any other issues in the house we would. not get our money back when the house was sold.

She said she had been in a similar situation with her parent's home and lost $5,000 she had put into it. She said a judge would see the 4 years of mortgage payments that my husband and I paid as no more than the rent we would have paid somewhere else. We had already lost 14 years of money to Habitat and did not desire to have it happen again so we did not replace the water heater.

One day, shortly before we moved out I was walking in the kitchen near the sink when suddenly I fell through the floor. My body, all the way up to my waist was underneath the house in the crawl space. No one else was home and I did not know whether to laugh or cry. This was something I expected to see on television shows like I Love Lucy and could not believe this really happened to me.

Although I was alone I felt humiliated and that insult had been added to my other injuries. Of all the crazy things to happen, here I am dangling with my feet just above the ground underneath. I had put out my hands and they were on top of the floor and somehow I applied enough pressure to pull myself up. Thankfully there was no lasting damage except to my bruised ego.

If only someone from Habitat had given us a heads up about signing that final paper. We would have received money from our home and all would be well. Instead, that one situaiton led us to my mother's house and problems with the heirs. My husband and I, between the two house, paid 20 years worth of mortgages and ended up with not a dime. Even after my mother's house was eventually sold the money was split 5 ways and first was used to pay off any outstanding court fees or doctor bills where there were judgments and I had plenty of the latter. I got not one dime and this was as embarrassing as falling through the floor.