There we were. A couple nearing an empty nest. For never having kids, I was looking forward to the Brother-in-Law moving out so we could have the house to ourselves.
That was June-ish.
July found us letting a young (19) woman move in to escape a bad home life. By the end of July her 15 year old sister had moved in after DCFS got involved and felt her mother needed to get her shit together.
So now we have the two of them for the indefinite future.
Bringing us to today. Or last night to be more specific.
It was a dark and stormy evening.
It was a dark and stormy night.
A night that saw an apartment lose its roof. The apartment where “my” girls’ best friends lived.
And who have no place to go but a shelter.
So, now my little home is up to eight. (The friends, their mother and brother)
Our 2 dogs and our 2 cats and in told their is a third cat, but I haven’t seen it.
Oh, it was scary, wasn’t it? Like the storm at the beginning of the book “A Wrinkle in Time”.
Youse are generous folks, an’ I commends ya!
Sugarplum came in and stayed on the back porch, which is scary because it’s just screened-in, but still cook, you know? But Bobby, the other stray who is afraid of hands which leads me to think he’s been abused, stayed somewhere else, hopefully in the cubby at the northwest corner of our garage.
Yeah, I had a momentary pause with Covid concerns, but i can’t very well send them to somewhere with even greater chance for their health.
I joked that I’ve done enough work from home, maybe I’ll do home from work for a while. I keep a sleeping bag in the truck and it’s not like I’ll have much less opportunity at a shower living under my desk.
i was just reading a buddhist lesson about the joy and good karma that is generated by the act of selfless giving, and then i read this. you are setting a wonderful example for other humans. : )
It is a wee bit cramped, especially as we went and got as much of their belongings as they wanted to salvage. I’m hoping to be able to clear out some space in the garage so we can store what they don’t need immediately there.
I look at the short-term impact mainly - now I have enough people I don’t have to rake the leave.
Just shy of two months and the house is back to four occupants.
I believe it can be best summed up as living through a story with an unreliable narrator.
Oh well, at the end of it I have a water bill that was double what it usually was for a couple months and I’d lost the use of my garage workshop as it was used for storage during that time.
You can only help people as much as they want to be helped.