So... Ain't been really around for over a year, so this is going to be a series of uncut journals about the adventures of the amazing homeless woman! Not homeless anymore though.

So we start on March 10th 2008, the beginning of the journey.

We started on the road in La Belle Missouri around 6am. There were three of us; my sister Jessica, me, and my boyfriend Dale. We were looking to go to Hannibal and try our fortunes there, as we couldn't find jobs where we were. I think Jessica just wanted to get away. I had to leave Jason behind, because I couldn't take a one year old on a 50 mile walk. My father said he would take care of him.

Let me tell you. 50 miles is nothing to laugh at, and between me and Jessica, we were carrying a house. We arrived in Hannibal around 6 that night. Immediately, we to the police station to sign into the local shelter, inaptly named the "Hope House". When we were told the doors were open and we could walk across town (through the worst neighborhood) we ran into a man. I can't remember his name now, but Jessica immediately called him "Kitty". He had evil red hair an a creepy child molester look on his face. She followed him everywhere the following morning.

NOw, Dale had had a bad rep with the guy running the shelter from the get-go, so when "kitty" got into a fight with the guy that second night in Hannibal, the guy was convinced both guys were involved, and let them know the next morning they were out. But of course, the girls are more than welcome to stay.

Jessica followed my lead in staying with Dale, really she was staying with "kitty", who was following us at this point. So when "kitty" found a preacher willing to put the four of us in a hotel for the night we were good.

Then shit hit the fan. Jessica refused to sleep on the bed with me, and let the boys sleep on the floor. She insisted me and Dale sleep on the bed and let her sleep next to her "kitty". I woke up in the night and Dale was watching Family Guy. Jessica was having sex. She never yelled, even whispered for help. We thought it was consentual, and seeing as how she was 18, we couldn't do anything.

So we did what we could. We forced her to come with us to Dale's biological mom's house with us and told him See Ya.

She didn't say a word until we got to Julie's. Then she told all. I tried to convince her to go to the cops. She finally agreed after supper. And that is how we made sure she was safe. We had the police get her a Domestic Violence advocate and she got into the Battered Women's Shelter. Me and Dale stayed on the streets. On good nights we slept by the river, on bad ones we caught zzz's in the Police Station lobby. She refused to acknowledge our existance. Then, about a week later, she told us that Jason was gone. She had gone home to get her cat and my dad had given my son to DHS. He told them that I was out doing drugs and had abandoned him.

LIES! I had left to get a job and home. And my dad had lied to me. And Jessica abandoned me. I tried to help her, and the moment she got the chance, she got herself off the street, and forgot the person who helped her get away from our jackass father. We stayed in Hannibal on the street for almost three weeks waiting to hear from her and hear about the rape case. When we found out that she had told everyone she wanted nothing to do with us anymore and the case was dismissed, we left.

We went to Dale's father's home in the backwoods of Missouri. We stayed there, and heard that Jason was indefinitely placed in a foster home. We could do nothing, so we went to Columbia Missouri to try and see how our hand played out. Salvation Army Shelter. 602 N Ann St. I got a job in less than two weeks. It was 8 dollars an hour, 40 hours a week. One problem. I got sick. Very sick.

What's worse, me and Dale weren't allowed to be together in the shelter, so we walked a lot. We knew I was pregnant. But it took the whole time in Hannibal and his Dad's house and two more weeks in Columbia for the test to go positive.

And I lost my job because I was so sick from it. In the meantime, I had contacted DCFS to try to get my baby back. I had a visit with him one day before we went back to Clarksville to really fight. He didn't react well to me at first, but even though Dale had shaved and cut his hair, when Jason saw the panther tattoo on Dale's right arm he said Daddy, like Dale was his birth father and jumped into his arms. Dale cried. Ever since me and Jason met him, he thought of Jason as his own and Jason was the same. We both bawled when we watched him leave. And we followed the next day.


To be continued...(That was May 08)