So where to start...
My husband and I were both born and raised here in Utah. We have both come to the conclusion that we don't enjoy living here. So in January(2009) we started kicking around ideas of moving out of state using the money we got from income tax returns. We threw around ideas like Colorodo, Washington state(where I spent most of my childhood summers with my beloved Grandparents) and California. I hate the snow, anyone who knows me, knows that me and snow do not mix especially when it comes to driving in it. So we decided to find a place where it didn't snow. Then we were thinking how lonely it might be going off on our own, when we are so used to having our huge family all around us. So I ran by Matt(my husband) the idea of maybe moving to Northern California to be by my Dad.
The back story on my life with my Dad goes as follows. When I was 14 months old my Mom and Dad divorced. My Dad automatically remarried and moved to Ogden while we moved to Clearfield. My Dad got regular visits with me and took advantage of them. My Mom started to hate the situation and started giving him difficulty with the visitation, there was fighting and police involved. So when I was almost 4 my Dad moved to California, to which he fell off the radar to avoid paying child support. I didn't see my Dad again until I was 8. He went to spend Christmas up at my Grandparents at the same time, we have always had a connection and I thought that we might build a relationship again. Then he disappeared again until I was 18. When I was 18 and he knew that my mom could no longer get child support out of him, he started calling me. He came in and out of my life like the wind. He would say things he was going to do for me and my child and husband, to which none ever happened. In 2007, my Dad met a woman and fell in love. He started calling on a regular basis and he even came to visit twice a year or so. We finally were getting to know each other.
So when it came up that we might want to move to Northern California, my Dad was estatic. He offered me a job right away in his Marine Salvage business. He told me that we could stay at his new wife's house until we found a house, he didn't want us to even look into apartments, he said he was going to make sure we got into a house and that he would pay me between $5000-$3000 a month, depending on how much business we did that month. Matt went through all the procedures to get a California Barber and Hair Stylist license. We started packing and saving every penny that we could spare.
As time went on and the moving date of June 7th came closer and closer, the money started to dwindel. Matt's job which was strictly commission was slowly getting slower and slower. We sold Matt's car to try to make up for the difference, we weren't going to be able to take it to California anyway. We started to dip into our then $4000 savings to pay day to day bills. Things kept coming up and the money reached $2000, I called my Dad to tell him that we might not be able to come because of our money situation. He laughed and his exact words were, "you are freaking out about money? What are you worried about? We will take care of it." So my fears were oliviated for while. Then our cell phone stopped keeping a charge so we went and bought another brand new one for $200, we also made sure that they had coverage in California. When our money reached $1000, I called again and said other than the gas and food getting there we don't have enough so it looks like we are staying. My Dad said, "No, no, no, no I will take care of the Uhaul to get you out here and then we can get you working right away." Ok, again I was feeling ok about the situation.
The day came and we were able to get a Uhaul using my Dad's new wife's credit card. We loaded our small but crowded apartment into a 26 foot Uhaul, it took almost 3 days. Everything that didn't fit we had to sell at the swap meet or we were forced to give to neighbors. We gave away a couch, recliner, entertainment center, desk, bookshelves and a dresser.
We started the long drive to Pleasant Hill, California from Layton, Utah at 7pm on June the 11th. (738 miles) We were exhausted, only made it to Wendover before we decided to get a room and start fresh the next morning. We started out and drove right through, stopping in Winnemucca for lunch at the Jack in the Box and arriving at my step mother's house at 10:30pm that night. The house we nice and Matt and I stayed in the guest room, which was nice, Brittany(Matt's sister who went will us) stayed in my step sister's room(she is in the coast gaurd and was gone), the kids were promised a room, which hadn't been cleaned out so they were either on the floor in one of our rooms or they slept on a futon that was on the floor in the living room for the dogs.
The first day in California was exciting, but we discovered that our phone didn't work there like we had been told, so we had no way of communicating with our family here in Utah. we thought wow this is the first day of the rest of our lives and we will get a refund and get something else, we are going to be so happy here. We caught up on sleep and the kids played with the dogs. The second day, we went and unloaded our huge Uhaul into my dad's empty warehouse and my Dad asked me to join an auction site using my credit card, he claimed that the site doesn't like him, I found out later that he was banned from using it because of sneaky business dealing and none payment to clients. He get pissed when I told him that my credit card was maxed out and I couldn't use it. The third day was a good, day. My dad gave me the oppurtunity to sell one of the boats that he had in his lot, it was a small one and it needed work. The guy bought it for $300.00 and paid with a check, which wasn't what my dad would have accepted if he was there. After the check was cashed my father gave me $100, for selling it. I thought ok so I'm making money now. That night Matt, Brittany and I all went out to eat at this New York Pizza place there in town and we found an old beat up cell phone in a drawer that my step mom said we could have, we went and set it up with Metro PCS which is like Cricket here, $60 later, we at least had a phone, to call home.
Well time went on and Matt got a job right away at a salon in Baypoint, but the one bad things was it was brand new and wasn't set to open for a few more weeks, I thought well I'm working now and we are staying with my dad and his wife we should be fine. Brittany started searching for a job, which wasn't as easy as we thought.
Over the next week or so, my dad gave me little things to do like, going out and taking pictures of boats, emailing clients and posting ads. I wasn't paid anything for these duties. When all of our money was almost out our van started acting up. My dad said he would take care of it so we took it over to a very small town auto shop, they were all booked up for almost a week and couldn't fix it until then. So I brought it back to the house and we borrowed my dad's old beat up Mercedes that didn't have AC. During this time we were running out of the non parishable foods that we brought with us. My step mom was feeding us dinners, nice meals, but I guess for breakfast and lunch we were on our own, we were eating anything we could get our hands on, Roman noodles for lunch almost everyday for 18 days really sucked.
Brittany finally got a call back from a Hollywood Video about a job, she went in for an interview and we later found out that she did get the job. During the whole time we had been there I had been on Craigslist looking for rentals. We looked at a few and we put in two different applications. We were waiting to hear from the landlord.
On June 25th, my dad came into the kitchen and said to me, "lets take a ride," So we hoped into his new land rover and get down the road. The coversation went a little something like this:
My Dad- I need to know what's going on here?
Me- about what?
My Dad- about Matt and Brittany working and your money situation?
Me- um Matt will start his new job in about a week and Brittany will start in a few days.
My Dad- what about this house that you have put the application on?
Me- it's really nice 4 bedroom 3 bath and it's $1800 a month(which was really cheap for California)
My Dad- and you have the money for the deposit and first months rent?
Me- no
my Dad- so how did you think you were going to get into a house?
Me- I guess I'm going to have to ask my mom for it
(which was a lie, I couldn't never ask my mom for that kind of money)
My Dad- yeah because we don't have that kind of money.
Me- ok
My dad- so you guys have no money at all?
Me- no the only money we had left we that $100 you gave me
My Dad- well I know I wouldn't have spend a good portion of my last $100 on going out to eat.
(what I wanted to say then was, I didn't know it was going to be my last $100)
it was quiet for a while
then he started talking about our eating habits and that we aren't feeding our kids right with noodles and junk food.
Me- since we don't have any money that's what we had to feed them
my dad- you are welcome to anything to eat in the house
(what I wanted to say then was- well that would have been nice to know two weeks ago)
my dad- Karen and I are going to LA for the weekend, so we will go to the store and make sure that you have healthy food to eat.
My dad- I know that we don't really know each other, but hopefully us working together we can make a pretty good SIDE job for you, together we can make up to $2000 to split
(I started freaking out inside, side job, he told me that I would $5000-$3000 a month, not at the most $1000)
My Dad- I'm sorry that we can't help you with the deposits and get you into that house. But we don't have it right now, because my business has been slow, but I'm not sure we would borrow it to you if we did, we don't do that sort of thing.
(I wanted to die, I wanted to jump out of the car and kill myself at that moment, how was I going to tell Matt and Brittany, they thought everything other than my not getting paid was on schedule, we would get that house and I would start working more and start making a living.)
(he also talking about my weight and that it was a problem, he even offered to pay for a gym membership for me)
Later that night we went out to a discount grocery store and they bought us food for the next four days while they would be in LA.
That night I broke the news to Matt. That there wasn't any deposit money coming and that we wouldn't be able to get into that house. That the job that he had offered me was a lie and that we really wouldn't be able to survive living there with out it. It was just too expensive. We both freaked out(quietly, my dad and step mom right down the hall) we both cried for hours. Not knowing what to do, we were at the mercy of my deranged father and complacant step mother. Matt was afraid that he would start a fight and my dad would get one of his hundreds of guns and shot him.(really this was a true and honest thought in my head) We decided that once they left for LA the next afternoon that we would figure out what to do.
The next day while my dad and step mom were out for a while, we broke the news to Brittany, it really broke my heart seeing her so upset and knowing that it was my fault, I shouldn't have ever trusted him, he dooped me like he does people he does business with.
Finally after my dad and step mom had left for LA, I called my mom and told her everything. What else could we do but go back to Utah, where we have family that love us and would do anything for us and where it was much much cheaper to live and we could get on assistance if we still needed to. My mom said she would do anything we needed. I felt like total crap taking her money and loading all this on her. But other than going to a shelter whatelse could we do?
I wasn't going to stay in that house another minute, I didn't want to even see my dad ever again after the lies that he told and tricked us into coming out there.
So they left on Friday afternoon for LA and wouldn't be back until Monday sometime. Friday we scrambled around figuring out what to do. I made a Uhaul reservation for Saturday at noon. I took the Van over to a different shop to get it looked at and they messed around with it and it seemed to be electrical, they unplugged and plugged everything back in really tight and the sputtering had stopped, we felt so lucky that it wasn't something more serious. We started packing again, what we had brought into the house. Saturday we picked up the Uhaul, not without drama, they wouldn't take my mom's credit card over the phone so I have to get the cash after she deposited it into my bank account.
We went to the warehouse, where is was 108 degrees that day(Brentwood, CA) and started moving all of our stuff for the third time. We were more than half way done we decided to go and get something to eat. We drove about 3 miles down the road to Burger King. When we pulled into the parking lot we saw something wet running down from behind the van, I went to the from and saw tons and tons of fluid just exploding everywhere out of the engine. It was antifreeze, I knew that we had a blown head gasket, we had had one before. The whold world seemed to crash down around our feet at that moment. I called my mom, she was in shock, why was all of this happening to us? We decided that the only thing to do was to try to get back to the warehouse and leave the van there, there wasn't anything we could do for it, we couldn't afford to fix it and I certainly wasn't going to hook it onto the back of a 26 foot truck and try to drive that for 740 miles. So we unloaded the warehouse into the Uhaul and pulled the van into it. We drove the three seater truck with all 6 of us from Brentwood to Pleasant Hill, we made it thank God.
The next hurtle was how were we all going to get back to Utah. We thought we would rent a car. Well no luck there. We didn't have a credit card with any money on it and my mom couldn't pay for it because we were the ones driving it. So the last resort was to fly three of us home to Utah and have the other three and the dog ride in the Uhaul. That night before we left, all of us wrote letters to My dad and step mom, telling my dad what he was and thanking my step mom for letting us use her house and food(since we found out that all the money and everything was hers).
We had to drive from Pleasant Hill to Sacremento with all 6 of us in the truck, it was scary and I was so worried that we would get pulled over. So Brittany, Alex(my then 9 year old) and Ethan (my 6 year old) were flying home, while we were getting them checked in and I was getting money for them from the ATM, the Airport Security, which I told I was going to be right back told Matt(who never drove the truck) to move it and come back around to pick me up. When I saw the truck drive by the window I ran out I knew we were in trouble, I had become accustom to driving that big truck and I knew that Matt would have a terrible time with it. I chased after the truck but he didn't see me, as he turned this corner I saw him hit a barracade and I was screaming and crying.
I went over and yelled at the security guy for making him move, I told him that he couldn't drive it. He got on his walky talky and found where he was in the parking lot and just then Matt and Natalee came running down the sidewalk, Matt was pissed at me for taking so long inside and I heard about it for hours, there was luckily no damage to the truck, I was so worried that he would get onto the freeway and wouldn't be able to find his way back. We got in the truck and headed east.
My Mother and Father-in-law paid for us to have a room in Elko, NV. We get up to my mom's apartment in South Ogden about 3pm on Tuesday June 30th. For three days we stayed at my mom's house a 400 sq foot one bedroom apartment. Matt was lucky enough to get a friend to hire him at Carl's Jr. On July 2, my father-in-law talked to the management of his apartments and they had an opening and we get a wonderful apartment, that a man that day and decided that he wanted a two bedroom. We stared moving in on the 3rd of July. We unloaded our Uhaul and assested all of our damaged and broken furniture, but we were so happy to have a home and by safe and sound. Matt got a new job at a barber shop and I've still looking for a job.
I feel really guilty got putting my husband, kids and Brittany through all of this, I should have known better, I should have looked at all the thinks he has done in the past and know. I just thought maybe he wanted to make up for all the stuff that he missed. I am still working through my hundreds of emotions and I know that it will be a while until I feel normal again, until I feel like this wasn't all just a bad dream.
