This post is Part 6 of Our Long Way Home.
You can find the prologue, and Part 1 – 5, here: http://homesteademporium.wordpress.com/category/our-long-way-home/
Our Long Way Home – Part 6
Upon arrival to our new homestead, there was lots to be done! We all unloaded both trailers and tried to make up ‘beds’ on the floors as best we could with just four mattresses between seven people, then we had a nap! The girls were so excited though that they got to work cleaning!
Once Graydon and I woke from our nap, we all explored the property and decided where we should put up the first of the fences. They needed to be put in place before the horses were to arrive in a few days. We had finally heard from the horse mover who assured us she had found a nice place to take our horses to right in Saskatchewan, only a few hours away from our new homestead, and had also arranged the horses to be brought to us once our fences were up. Joshua and his friend Steven who was staying with us, had arrived two days before us and were ready to get working.
They picked up the post pounder, and got to work, along with Julia, putting posts in the very next morning.
Graydon, Elsa, Shaylah, and I, had to get the u-haul into the city the very next morning before noon. The movers were scheduled to arrive later that day, so we decided to make the trip worth while and make a trip to costco. We only had a fridge with a small freezer for now, but we knew our two large freezer would be arriving with the movers soon and we could stock up on the much needed groceries for our new home. We picked up enough frozen foods, meats, fruits, vegetables, to last us at least two weeks so we wouldn’t have to make another 2 hour trip into the city for a while.
As Graydon went to pay for our grocery purchase, his debit card was denied.
Strange…
He used his other account here in Saskatchewan instead, and all was well but we wondered what was up with our BC bank account. When we got out to the car and loaded up the groceries, I check my phone’s online banking, and saw, MUCH to our surprise, that our bank account had been debited over $22,000.00! Our account was now WAY in the red!
What.The.Heck!?!!
We could see by the bit of info online that it was the RBC bank, which my vehicle payments had been coming through, that had taken the funds out of our account. Meanwhile, to make a very long story short, this bank had JUST been paid out in FULL a week ago for my car payment. We had needed to rearrange our finances to afford the move, and in doing so, we had used a low interest line of credit to pay out our car debt. This bank had already been paid out it’s funds, yet here they were, taking the FULL amount out of our personal account, AGAIN! Oh we were frustrated!! We immediately called the number on our card, and we could barely understand the woman on the phone. Her accent was that strong! Frustrating again! Then after talking to her and trying to find out what on earth was going on with our account, we got hung up on. We’re not sure if it was a fluke and we simply lost connection, but if so, the timing sure was great, and they didn’t bother calling back to help us.
We ended up spending the next DAYS on the phone, for MANY hours, trying to get them to fix our account and get it out of the red. In the meantime, bills bounced, we had cheques written on that account, and the whole thing was just a financial disaster at a time when we had so much already going on!
We simply did NOT have time for all this!
Back at the new homestead later that day… the mover never showed up. We had all our meats and frozen foods crammed into the fridge, the very small freezer, and our camping cooler. We kept rotating ice packs from the freezer into the cooler in hopes of keeping the meats cool enough that they wouldn’t go bad. The movers couldn’t tell us when they would get there, and the man I had been dealing with all along tried to tell me that he already told me they couldn’t get there as fast as us. When I reminded him that we slept in a trailer for THREE days before we left, just to give them a head start to prevent this exact thing from happening, he shrugged me off.
Frustrating! Now we would continue to be without proper beds, or our other belongings, including our freezers, for who knew how long. He couldn’t tell me!!
In the meantime, back at the OLD homestead on the Island, the carpet still had not been put in, and the guy we paid to install the doors etc. after the carpet was put in, was no where to be found. Home Depot had not gotten the other carpet, and this carpet installer was no longer assigned to our job. When Graydon tried to call the number he had given us, that had worked previously, it wasn’t working any longer. Strange! Again! More funds lost, with no way to retrieve them.
Too much strangeness!
We were spending WAY too much time each and every day on the phone with various companies. RBC to try and get our bank account fixed, and trying to get them to admit their 22 thousand dollar mistake! Our personal bank to try and get them to fix the account so bills would stop bouncing, and cheques we had written would be allowed through, since we did in fact HAVE the funds in the account, and the mistake was NOT our mistake what so ever!
Then we were having to make phone calls to Home Depot about the carpet, the rental agency to plan times for the painter to get in, who couldn’t finish his work, because the carpet wasn’t done yet!
Then there were daily calls to the movers, who still had not arrived. Remember, they were to arrive Tuesday? By this time, it was the end of the week and STILL no movers in sight, and they still couldn’t tell me when they would be showing up!
This long way home just kept getting longer, and longer.
