Did We Survive Hurricane Katrina or Not?

We're working out our finances. There's not much left of them. We don't have the money to fix the house and I don't know how or if we ever will. FEMA has sent us some money for home repair but we're unable to use it until insurance pays whatever they may pay. We had to spend such a huge chunk of upfront to have the sheetrock removed that now all we can do is wait and see what happens. I'm trying to gather as many estimates as I can in the meantime.

It would help if our mortgage payment was deferred - but it is not. Dave called them as soon as we got to a telephone and asked for deferred payments and they said they could do so for 90 days. That would have helped us a lot. What actually happened was we received a Mortgage Default letter a couple weeks later dated for a few days after Dave called. How we were in default when the mortgage wasn't even due yet was a mystery. So Dave called them and explained the deferred payments, the fact that his payment wasn't due, and the default letter. It was explained to him that Freddie Mac actually holds the mortgage and this is the way they were doing things. "This" being they were putting everyone who needed deferred payments into the default system. This particular person's explanation to Dave was that in December all three payments would come due - along with December's payment -- and the company was well aware that no one would be able to afford it when it happened. Therefore, they simply started the default process right away. Sounds quite skewed to me. Dave of course wanted to know why no one told him he was going to be in default for this. There wasn't an answer. So we mailed the mortgage payment and although the guy on the phone said there would not be a late charge -- we mailed that anyway... Don't want to give these guys anything to work with.

We all have colds now. Yvonne has the sniffles and an ear ache and so does Emily. We took everyone to the health department to try to get them checked out. We were given some nasal spray and told to go get over-the-counter decongestant. I guess I could have done that myself.