An update on my family's situation - Hurricane Harvey

Well as you know, Hurricane Harvey wiped me out.  It destroyed my home, my main transportation,most of my belongings and those of my kids, then a week after Hurricane Harvey my daughter was in an accident, rolling her Ford Escape and getting banged up pretty bad.

Well since then many people have donated to help us,and FEMA gave me some money.  Not enough to rebuild and replace everything, but enough to start.

One of the things we HAD to replace was my daughters car.and as of Saturday evening we did that.  Using some of the money donated by family/friends/readers we had enough for the down payment to get her a 2013 Ford F-150 Crew Cab.

The paramedics said that if she had been in a car, she would have died.  And now my daughter knows why I like large vehicles, so she got a new/used truck that she can afford the monthly payments and insurance on.

Me and the rest of the kids are still at my mother's house three streets over from my wrecked house.

FEMA gave me enough money to gut my house but not enough to rebuild it, so I will have to buy a cheap camper for us to live in and a cheap used truck to haul us all around and haul materials in.  That will cost me about 5 grand with tax, title and license.  Then the boys and I will have to gut the house ourselves, walls, ceilings, and floors, and rebuild it ourselves.

I will also have to get the roof replaced first.  I hope I will have enough funds to replace the shingled roof with a metal roof and to install stronger hurricane straps between the roof and the walls.

Then I will have to replace all of the windows and the front and back doors.

I'm going to take a page from some of the other homes in the area and "Ferrocrete/Ferrocement" the exterior walls.  Think of concrete stucco.  Yes my house will look like a concrete block house, but I won't have to worry about any further hurricanes.  And the boys and I could do most of it ourselves.

I'm still not sure how much damage was done to my septic system, nor how much it is going to cost to repair.  The last time I had to have it repaired it cost me almost a thousand dollars.

It's going to be hard, especially as I have a totally screwed up spine and the boys are back in school.  So, I'm going to have to hire some help somehow on less than $1,200.00 a month income from Social Security

I know that I will need an extension ladder and some scaffolding about 20 feet max, where I'll get the money for those and everything else, I'm still not sure.

So if you wish to help out you can always donate to the Go Fund Me my daughter set up: https://www.gofundme.com/help-for-anderson-family

Or you can send me money through PayPal: paypal.me/greylocke

I'll try to post more updates as I can, however I'm still using my cruddy HP Netbook which continually locks up on me, and I'm having to use my cell phone to tether it as we still don't have phone or cable lines back up in my area.  I just switched to the all cable bundle to save myself over $200.00 a month, then a hurricane happens.

So if anyone has an old work station or desktop computer with at least 8 GB of ram and can run Windows Vista 64 Bit or Windows 7 64 Bit, please let me know by e-mailing me.  I can REALLY use a full size computer again.  This netbook is maxed out at 2 GB of RAM and is so slow it's driving me batty.  I also can't use it to edit photos or video, and I have over 28 GB of photos and video of the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey to edit and post.

One VERY good thing that did happen though is the Greener MK III that I ordered and finished paying for in March finally arrived and my FFL took it to his Sooper Sekrit Bunker to sit out the hurricane.  It's now in my safe with all of my other firearms.  It only took me 4 months to pay that shotgun off at $125.00 a month, I'm glad I didn't lose it to the hurricane as well.