You must be ready to go bungee jumping without the bungee!!
With the battery etc: Put your test light between neg post of battery and the disconnected cable with everything off - doors closed, hood light disconnected and the test light should stay off. If it lights there's a short. Just to test that you did that right open a door and watch the test light light up. If there is a short hit back and we can talk about how to find that.
Now with battery charged just take its voltage reading. Should be 12-12.2 -- then start the car and read the voltage. It should read over 13.5 to perhaps 14.5 or so but not much higher. Now turn on all lights, blower, RW defroster and look at the voltage. It must stay above 13.5 now but may have dropped some from with everything off. That should mean the alternator can put out the amps the car needs. If getting a muli-meter is a finacial problem they have a real cheap one at Wal-Mart for under ten bucks but don't expect much. It works but is cheap and the volts scale is hard to pin point the exact # but good enough. It's the size of a pack of cigarettes and you get what you pay for with that one. I've seen them for a little more at other places and real good stuff goes on up in price but you really don't need to go wild.
If you can catch the car totally dead again test between connections at battery to see if the battery has voltage but not the cable and right along with both cables. OHM meter on multimeter can do that or just test light if hooked up right and hook a pos jumper to the test light's clip to test for ground. Grounds count just as much as pos current.
Hit back with results, I'm here,
T