A Little Trip to Texas

If it seems as though I've been absent from bloggyland it's because, well, I've been absent. :-) DH and I have been on a mission of repossession these past few weeks. I suppose a little background is in order...

Back in May of 2008--Mother's Day to be exact--DH's brother died of a massive heart attack. THE absolute worst Mother's Day of my life. Sigh.

His brother and family are pretty "rough" characters. Just stating the facts. We've done our best to help them over the years as they've came to us for a boost here and there. So when his sister-in-law wanted some help in financial administration DH was happy to oblige. Mainly she wanted him to take care of her finances--paying bills and whatnot. Her car kept breaking down and that was a real hassle since DH just doesn't have the time to work on vehicles at this point in our lives. He decided to try to help her and her credit out a little by co-buying a new car for her. A pretty sweet deal for her, I might add.

Then a couple of months later things went sour. Real sour. We had discovered that she had been lying to us about several important things and engaging in activities that she shouldn't have been involved in. We confronted her and she continued to lie until the proof was right in front of her face. There was also trouble with her teenage son as well. It was a mess. DH and our pastor/friend tried to counsel their family but they just weren't into any of that.

After a particularly nasty scene they ended up abruptly taking off with the car to Texas where she has family. Now we don't really care where they live but when her auto insurance expired and she never gave us any money for the car payment, well, we knew that we were going to end up having to do something unpleasant. So frustrating!!! Try to do something nice for someone...

It just wasn't feasible to do anything right away but in the first week of January DH made a preliminary trip just to hopefully visually locate it. Amazingly he found it and came home with the plans of us both heading off together to find it and repo it the next week.

Things went according to plan but we did not find it. Everything went against us and nothing worked out like we had hoped.

For those of you who don't know, my husband is bi-polar and has anxiety issues. We've tried several different medications but when he tried Lithium last winter it really messed him up and he was hesitant to try anything else. Most of the time during the warmer seasons he is ok but winter is really hard. Anyway, he had a severe anxiety attack during that second trip and it was awful. He was totally freaking out and we couldn't find the car. Our wonderful, wise Father allowed us to not find the car simply because of how things might have violently played out during my DH's anxiety attack.

After arriving home empty handed and traumatized I made my thoughts known of how I thought DH needed to go see the doctor again. Thankfully she had an opening the day he called and gave him a prescription for Lexapro for the bi-polar which has worked for him in the past and Xanax for his anxiety which has resulted in an amazing change. WooHoo!! I love having a calm, sane, rational husband!! He loves it too.

To make a long story short(er), we left again on the 20th--DH's 3rd trip--and the Lord showed his mercy to us by not only letting us find the car but we didn't get killed in the process--though it was indeed an ugly scene with threats of being shot, me being held hostage for a few minutes and neighbors chewing me out. DH was able to stay calm and cool during the whole thing which was amazing although I had to take more grief than I wanted. And once DH's nephew realized that his mom hadn't made any car or insurance payments for the past 6 months he was a little more understanding.

The police officials were well aware of our intentions and we notified them once we had the car. We also let them know about the nasty messages on DH's cell phone left by his nephew which we have saved in case we need to take legal actions against them--threats of murder of our family and so on.

We are now trying to figure out what we are going to do with this totally trashed out car. The exterior is still in great condition but the interior is a complete disaster. We had it appraised and it's worth about half of what we owe on it. Nice. At least the bank is working with us to get her name off of the title so that we can do whatever we want with it.

On our first trip down together DH and I visited some of our favorite places down around and in Galveston. Hurricane Ike really did some damage. The worst of the still visible damage was on the Bolivar Peninsula. It was sad to see. The state park and Sea Wolf Park were pretty messed up as well though it's hard to see from the pictures.



Galveston Island State Park






Sea Wolf Park