Life's Journey Part 2

Life can be a wild ride with many ups and downs. That is how our first year of marriage was.

After returning from our honeymoon, we sat and talked on several occasions about his job and that fact that things were not looking up for the company. He was working for Hills Dept. store when we started dating and shortly afterwards, they were bought out by Ames Dept. store. Even after being bought out things were still not looking up. Sales weren't increasing and it became obvious that somewhere down the road Ames would eventually go out of business too. We wer 4 hours from our families in an area where we didn't have many friends. So he decided to try to get rehired by Kmart where he had worked previously. After a few weeks, he was rehired and we had to move 2 states away to Bergen County, NJ, a suburb of NYC. We had a few days to find an apartment and if you've never had to locate an apartment in a hot market, it's not an easy feat. We looked at several apartment complexes but everyone had a waiting list. There are tons of multi-family houses in this area but you have to go through a Realtor to find one. So we set out looking for a Realtor and managed to find one. Most apartments were going for over $1000/mo and that's not something that we could afford. I wouldn't have a job right away since I was working for Wal-mart and in early 2000, they still did not have a store in Bergen County so I would have to find a new job.

The realtor was nice and we managed to find an apartment almost immediately in a two family home where the landlord occupied the first floor and we would have the second floor. The couple seemed really nice and they accepted our application.

Daniel had to live in a hotel room for about 2 weeks before we could move in and I was stuck in Ohio, packing everything that I had unpacked earlier that year. I did manage to get everything packed and ready to move early and was able to spend a week with him in NJ before we moved.

However, his first couple of days in NJ, a hurricane came up the coast and dumped inches and inches of rain on NJ. At this time he had his precious Dodge Daytona Shelby version that he just loved. It was his pride and joy. Unfortunately, just because other cars can make it through a half a foot of water does not mean that a car that sits fairly low to the ground can make it through. Needless to say he stalled out his car in the water and did manage to get it started again but the poor thing never rain the same after that. We'll go into this more later.

Moving day came and luckily my sister was dating a guy whose dad was a truck driver, and he was able to move us using a company truck. Unfortunately the smallest he could get was a 53' trailer. Moving day came and we decided to do a two day move since it would take at least 8 hours to get to our apartment so we had a small caravan go from Niles, OH to Milton, PA, where my family is from where we stayed the night. The next morning after breakfast we continued our journey to NJ this time we were a larger caravan since both of our families were with.

We arrived at our apartment and started unloading our stuff and then everyone went home. We spent the next several days unpacking and settling in. Now remember our landlords live downstairs and they are an older retired couple of Italian descent. We spent a very uneventful first two months there then came Thanksgiving and since I was working at a bank, I had the day off and he had to work that evening (Kmart only closes for Christmas) so we decided to have my family there. There would be a total of 10 of us and they wanted to spend the night which was no problem with me but we asked the landlords just in case they would have a problem with that and they said it was fine. They were going their son's house in southern NJ and wouldn't be home until Monday so we didn't have to worry about noise or anything.

We enjoyed a very peaceful Thanksgiving, our first as a married couple and my first to cook for. Things went well, my sisters and I did a little shopping on black Friday before they left. Hubby was working Friday and Saturday and had Sunday off since Bergen County has blue laws and the stores aren't open. Well the landlords came home Sunday and asked to speak with us, we said okay. So they came up and proceeded to yell at us and scream and pitch a royal fit because the Mrs. had problems sleeping all weekend thinking that their was a fire in the house and we all burned and blah, blah, blah. On and on. I said you know we were nice and asked beforehand and you said it would be okay (we had informed them before we got the apartment that we had family from out of state that would be spending the night on occasion). They proceeded to go on about the "huge" truck that showed up with all our stuff and had they known we had so much stuff they never would have accepted our application. First, we didn't have much stuff then and the truck was only because we didn't have the money to pay for a U-haul. Also, my brother-in-law was a firefighter so he would never let us burn to death in an apartment if he could help it. They didn't want to hear any of this. I eventually had to tell them that they either left our apartment or I was calling the cops on them and they left then. She sure was showing that red headed Italian side of herself, that's for sure.

Life after that was very strained with the landlords. We were able to coexist with them but we didn't talk unless we had to. We paid our rent on time and managed to fulfill our lease through the year. We started our apartment hunt as soon as we could and found two that we were approved for and chose the one that was a little closer to his job. We had both apartments for a month and moved as much as we could ourselves early and left a few things in the old apartment so that we could clean it before handing over our keys.

One day I went to the apartment after work to clean a little and get something and Mr landlord came out and mentioned that he was upstairs about something and I should be careful about what I leave in the apartment when we're not there (meaning my camera). I asked him why he felt the need to be in our apartment without our permission since it was an emergency and I was nice to start but I eventually started getting mad and eventually called the cops on them and the officer that responded told him to stay out of our apartment until we moved out unless he called us first to let us know. He was not very happy about that but hey I paid rent through the end of the month.

We did completely move out and managed to get our security deposit back in full from them.

We were in the new apartment for about 6 months when Daniel got transferred to a store in PA and were able to move closer to our families.

More to come later..............