Finally got a vehicle by julie77 Blog entry

Blog: Surviving the Oil Spill
by julie77

Finally got a vehicle

Leaving florida because of the oil spill

Date: 12/16/2010 9:04:42 AM ( 14 y ) ... viewed 46054 times

Pulling up and going is very hard, no matter how intense the need. We finally got a vehicle, we bought a Ford econoline van, almost new, it only has 28 thousand miles on it, and it's our first actual real progress on leaving.
We've gotten the major work done on our house that we needed to do to sell, amazingly hard to find people willing to work even with the unemployment situation as it is.
We have real estate agents coming to day to look at the house.
We should be able to list Jan 1, not a bad time to sell in Florida.

I don't know if this is too little too late, or if we will be able to recover from the chemical exposure when we finally do leave. We hope that whoever buys the house doesn't react as we have, or is new to the area, so they won't have the brunt of it, as we did last summer.

My husband has a rash all up and down his legs, I've got muscle cramps in my legs that are painful, and don't go away no matter what I do. I assume I'm having some circulatory issues, I think hubbies got the 'corexit rash'.
What seems to have been happening here is that people get heart problems, the heart gets enlarged, and they have either a heart attack or a stroke. We had yet another couple of customers die last week, one suddenly from bone cancer, and another from a heart attack, we have a lot of elderly customers, so it's no surprise, but it's hard when you know what is going on.

We gave up on school busses because my husband is 6-6, and he would constantly have to bend over in whatever bus we bought. I think the van will do, I'm able to drive it, it seems to have no blind spots, it has a v-8 that runs on ethanol, and it's not like driving a sewing machine.
It's already stripped, so we can put our tools and our shop in it, we should be able to get what is essential to making a living in it, and go.

We are both less worried about that, it turns out that the chinese have come up with alloys that mimic both silver and gold, and a good deal of what gets sent out for repair by the big companies to china is coming back altered.
We've already seen pieces that don't react the way that they should to heat. The stuff passes an acid test, but it doesn't look quite like gold. I gather it has a lot of brass and copper. At this point, the only way to determine content is to have something assayed, which changes the jewelry business big time.
It makes me grateful that I've never bought scrap gold. I suspect that people who do on site repair will be in demand. The other little trick we've heard about is to suck the inside out of a bullion bar, fill it with lead, and then clean up the exterior with a lazer repair. It's a nasty world, people who can fix jewelry will have work.

We just have to sell the house, and we can go.

I am less sad about leaving my shop, we have had undercover cops in the fleamarket almost every week end, last week end we had uniformed cops searchng vendors booths for hot items. I don't know how anyone can do business in this climate, if it's like this, when we set up again we will do work for other jewelers and not have a public shop.

We have pissed everyone we know off completely because we have been outspoken about the oil spill. Last week end we found out that one of the vendors kids was in ICU because she attended a wedding at the beach, and the MD's were blaming it on coresit exposure. We've been personally attacked by people we have known for years, we just can't keep doing it, other than this blog, now I keep my mouth shut, and I'm putting my energy into saving myself. it's just amazing how nasty people can be when they are in denial.
Julie77