Finally....

After 3 long years, selling out house and moving south, two additional moves (and still will have another in the future, but not yet), having our daughter go through Kindergarten, First Grade and now Second Grade, J is officially well enough to go back to work.  COVID nearly killed him.  It's taken a heart ablation, surgery to repair the phrenic nerve that controls his diaphragm and PT to get his pulmonary function test normal.  He had a PFT of 47 and now is perfectly normal which amazed the Mayo Clinic.  Another month, we'd be moving to another house and declaring bankruptcy.  I thank God every day for his life.  

Homeowner or just a renter...

Well something strange has happened in the last few days. J and I have gone through lots of financial hardship starting back in 2006.  By 2008 we had no choice but to file bankruptcy.  It was clear that we wouldn't be able to pay our credit cards no matter how hard we tried to come up with a way.  Thank you aviation and the wonderful starting pays.  We found a lawyer, got money from my parents and proceeded to file the necessary paperwork.  We signed re-affirmations for our car and the house mortgages. I'll admit that so much was going on that we couldn't keep track of everything.  I had hoped the lawyer would be on top of all that but I guess not.  We received the re-affirmation document for our car but we hadn't thought about the mortgages.  Apparently they got lost at the mortgage companies and were never returned to our lawyers office before our debt was dismissed.  We continued to pay but we had more problems and needed to do a loan modification to help us out for the 1st year.  We found out that since both mortgages were dismissed, which only means we get no credit on our credit history for having a mortgage, but doesn't change the fact that they still have a lien on the house.  We were successful in getting the 1st mortgage modified.  We stopped paying the second mortgage since they couldn't foreclose anyway and we were in the hole 100K anyway.  We figured we would pay our 1st mortgage till we were ready to move on and just give the keys back to the bank.  Well a few days ago we got a UPS package from our 2nd mortgage and the letter said they were releasing the lien on our house due to some state and federal government settlement.  They have been trying to reach us for a few months now and we just avoided the calls.  I kept thinking that J would call and say "early April Fools" or it was in the UPS package and he missed it.  But he didn't and it looks real.  Now I feel like this is our house again.  We haven't done much with it but this changes everything. We're not just renters were homeowners again.  At least that's how it feels.  It all seems so unreal right now.