Hi!

So, my name is Erin, and I have lived in my house all but two years of my life (we don’t talk about Arkansas.) My house is in my name, and I own it outright. That’s a huge blessing, especially right now!

However, a few years ago I missed a year of property tax. I was busy dealing with major health issues while finishing my career as a high school teacher. I changed jobs and saved my life. I became a budtender. Yup, I sell the Devil’s Lettuce at work. I have better insurance than I did teaching, and that is how we found POTS and other forms of dysautonomia as well as a 9mm brain tumor in my fourth ventricle. Due to chemical sensitivities and allergies, I can’t even take gabapentin. We’re still trying to figure out what type of tumor Charlie is.

So, anyway, the house. I didn’t pay property tax because I was just so dissociated from the world from the shock my body was still in from all my health stuff. I paid 2024 taxes like a good noodle. I was late paying 2025 by one week, so now it’s also considered late. When it’s late, we can’t do payments. We have to pay in cash up-front at the tax collector’s office.

Last week, my husband was injured at work. He’s trying to claim worker’s comp.

I was trying to get a loan so I could pay the property taxes all at once, and they needed a $500 lock fee to keep the rates as they were. I asked my husband to ask the owner of the company if she would maybe make a loan of $350 against the paycheck. She’s done it before with no problem at all. They always said to let them know if there’s ever any problems or if we needed help.

This time, however, it was a big problem. Not only did the owner say “no” (which is absolutely okay) but the branch manager had him fired for being a “financial liability.”

So now, I am working full-time as a budtender for hourly wages and doing notary work and tutoring, but I need to pay these taxes so I continue to have a home for my family. We just need some help getting the property tax money so they won’t auction off my house to someone who’ll rip down our memories and gentrify our neighborhood. This house has seen so much joy and tears. Yesterday was the 25th anniversary of my mother dying. We’ve been through a lot!

If I don’t earn the money here, I’m going to have to set up an OnlyFans, and no one needs to see all that.