Habitat

Good news, everyone!

I'm getting a house! Rather, my family's getting a house! It's kind of a big deal.

Since about the summer before my Junior year of high school, my mom, brother, sisters, and myself moved in with my grandparents. In their two bedroom house.

It's a tight squeeze.

The basic sleeping arrangements are my grandparents in their room, my sisters in the other room, and my mom, brother and myself in the living room. That's changed a few times, but for the most part, that's where everyone sleeps while we're here. When my siblings go to their dad's, my mom tends to stay at the hotel she works at because it's convenient for her since she's an assistant manager and she's always around if someone messes something up or needs help. With the four of them gone, I'll take the other room, which is basically a mattress on the floor in a room full clothes and other stuff belonging to my family.

Now, it's not like we've liked being a burden upon my grandparents. We actually really dislike it. My mom has looked on and off for the years we've been living at my grandparents' place. Houses are kind of expensive. My mom has a family of five to care for. She works as much as she can. But there are bills to pay, things to buy, and so on and so forth.

But lo and behold, things come along at unexpected times. A few months ago, my grandmother read in our local paper that there was a house going to be built for a family in need through Habitat for Humanity. I forwarded the clipping to my mother and she hummed and hawed about applying (as my mother tends to do), but eventually she put in an application to be considered for the house.

Then we waited. I think we waited for a few weeks before we heard for sure whether or not we would be the one's receiving the house. But through some good fortune and our current situation (and the fact that I think we were the only family to apply), we were chosen as the family to receive the house.

The house that is being built is awesome. It's nothing fancy, but it's a place my family can call home. Finally. We've been kind of a bunch of drifters for years now. A neat thing about this house is that we get to have a hand in building the place we'll be living - we're required to put in so many hours of work on the house. And any of the work our friends and other family do counts toward our hours. So, really, it's a labor of great love and compassion.

And here are some obligatory pictures of the house so far:

And that is after about a month of work. Give or take. They say that we'll (er, rather, my mom and siblings) will be able to move into the house either toward the end of August or the beginning of September. Ideally, it would be before school starts.

So yeah, that's the big news I have and never bothered telling anyone till now. I think I only told one or two people and even then only one knew anything in depth.

Until next time, g'night and sleep tight